Let us define criticism as the form of skilled labour which is occupied in writing about other men's books, old or new. If Sainte-Beuve wrote on Dante, that is Criticism; and if a paragraphist in a newspaper compose a column of printed matter out of the prefaces of new books which he has not read, that is Criticism also. It is Criticism which discovers that Homer's works were compiled, in about five hundred years, by about fifty different authors. And it is Criticism which finds out that Mr. Smith or Mr. Brown steals his successful novels from Bishop Berkeley or Thomas Moore. The former is an example of the Higher Criticism, the latter of the lower species, and, really, both seem about equally valuable. It is not easy to find a common factor in Criticism, in the studies of which Aristotle and Longinus, Matthew Arnold and Sainte-Beuve, are masters, while unsuccessful lady novelists and uneducated pressmen form, perhaps, the majority of the school. All of them write about the work of other people, all distribute praise and blame; these are points common to all critics, though in reading, knowledge, taste, and temper there is every sort of diversity. All critics are contemplating works of literary art through the medium of their own temperaments, looking at them with their own eyes, estimating them by their own standard. Yet the writings of some critics are eternal possessions; always good to know and to live with, like the Poetics of Aristotle, or the Ars Poetica of Horace, or the Treatise of Longinus on the Sublime. The writing of other critics, daily or weekly, are often so ignorant, so prejudiced, so spiteful, so careless, that perhaps no printed matter is more entirely valueless and contemptible. It may be said that the topics with which the ordinary reviewer deal, the books on which he pronounces judgment, are not much better than the judgments he pronounces. This is very true, but it seems a pity that bad books should not be barren, but should beget bad reviews. That great George Dandin, the public, has willed it so.