Judged from any point of view, anonymity in criticism, seems to me to be absolutely indefensible.
The question is an old one, I admit, but it is
none the less serious for that, and comes readily to the pen and the memory.
That the critic, in the long run, is in the ascendant will be granted, but when he, in the person of Lord Brougham, attacked Byron, or through some less powerful channel, attacked Keats, thereby bringing down the magnificently expressed scorn of Percy Bysshe Shelley, he did not come off with his accustomed success.
The criticisms were ephemeral, the replies immortal. One may venture upon a wish that more such offences should be perpetrated, could similar results be certain of arrival. At any rate we owe to them Byron's "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers," the first work which revealed his genius to the world, and made himself conscious of it, and the still greater "Adonais," of Shelley.
In the rush and flurry of musical events to-day, it is naturally impossible for one representative of a paper to record, much less criticise them, and this fact often leads to things that, if inevitable, are none the less regrettable. I have in my possession two issues of a prominent London paper. They contain critical notices of a certain orchestral work. In the first, it is written of in terms of high appreciation, among others, the word "remarkable" being applied to it. In the second, it is alluded to in language that makes one wonder not only that an educated gentleman could find it in him to put pen to, but that a sub-editor could be found to pass it.
It would often appear as if the modern editor valued literary ability in his colleagues, rather
than critical acumen. If the idea is a correct one, it would largely account for such inconsistencies.
So large a body must necessarily include men of varied powers, varied educational endowments, and, probably, of various races; from the highly-cultured leading critic of the great daily journals, down to the cosmopolitan writer, whose other occupations seem strangely inconsistent with the exercise of so fine an art.
The gratitude, however, of all English musicians should go out to the eminent men who, daily, portray so vividly the strangely-moving panorama of music, as it faces us all to-day. People who live in serene atmospheres may not realize their work at its true value, but that it is of powerful and far-reaching influence, there is no room for doubt.