Transcribed from the 1892 Macmillan and Co. edition by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk INTERLUDES being TWO ESSAYS, A STORY, AND SOME VERSES BY HORACE SMITH London MACMILLAN AND CO AND NEW YORK 1892 p. 1ESSAYS. p. 1 I. ON CRITICISM. Criticism is the art of judging. As reasonable persons we are called upon to be constantly pronouncing judgment, and either acting upon such judgment ourselves or inviting others to do so. I do not know how anything can be more important with respect to any matter than the forming a right judgment about it. We pray that we may have “a right judgment in all things.” I am aware that it is an old saying that “people are better than their opinions,” and it is a mercy that it is so, for very many persons not only are full of false opinions upon almost every subject, but even think that it is of no consequence what opinions they hold. Whether a particular action is morally right or wrong, or whether a book or a picture is really good or bad, is a matter upon which they form either no judgment or a wrong one with perfect equanimity. The secret of this state of mind is, I think, that it is on the whole too much bother to form a correct judgment; and it is so much easier to let things slide, and to take the good the gods provide you, than to carefully hold the scales until the balance is steady. But p. 2can anybody doubt that this abdication of the seat of judgment by large numbers of people is most hurtful to mankind? Does anyone believe that there would be so many bad books, bad pictures, and bad buildings in the world if people were more justly critical? Bad things continue to be produced in profusion, and worse things are born of them, because a vast number of people do not know that the things are bad, and do not care, even if they do know. What sells the endless trash published every day? Not the few purchasers who buy what is vile because they like it, but the many purchasers who do not know that the things are bad, and when they are told so, think there is not much harm in it after all. In short, they think that judging rightly is of no consequence and only a bore. p. 2
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