‘Then, are we Critics of no use in the world?’ Mr Howells has been asking in Harper's Magazine. He does not appear to be very certain that we are. ‘Perhaps criticism does some good we do not know of’ he says, in a spirit of agnosticism. ‘They say it does one good,’ murmured Nicholas of ancient days, when he was crossing the Channel in a gale. ‘But,’ he added, ‘I'd rather be done good to some other way.’ This is probably the feeling of many authors. Perhaps criticism does them good. But they would rather be done good to ‘some other way.’ Let me try to point out to the proud race of authors how criticism does them good. In the first place, it stops some of them in their first rush (which is always wild, like a salmon's) and turns them from a business in which they are of no avail. The present babbler humbly believes that his very earliest criticism of a novel had this valuable effect. The review set forth that there was only one excuse for publishing such a bad novel: the thing might be palliated if the novelist wished to commit a crime on his own account, and then to bring in the novel as proof of insanity. The idea, of course, would not be original, it would be borrowed from Married Beneath Him. The author then wrote to me, thanking me for the kind frankness of my remarks and the consideration I had obviously bestowed on his work. He asked what intellectual pursuit I would recommend to him. This was how an author should take criticism! I replied that I thought he might have a turn for writing sonnets, and perhaps he had; in any case he did not again invade the shores of old Romance. Here, then, was one good action to the credit of the humble but not absolutely heartbroken Critic.

Critics do plenty of other good deeds; of course I don't want to boast, but merely to encourage Mr. Howells. Nobody could go on being a Critic if he thought the profession useless. For example, the Critic, like Sister Anne, is on a watch-tower, and the public, like Madame de la Barbe-Bleue, is below, anxiously awaiting some new genius.