But this truth is no reason for “answering back” the critics who do not appreciate it. Nothing is quite true—except The Incarnation—a naïve statement you may call it, but as a corollary of the epigram, true too! It is better, by far, to realize that modern criticism is most valuable from the purely literary point of view, and yet that the purely literary point of view is only one side of the model the artist must study before he learns how to draw.
Therefore, when any critic tells me of this or that fault in technique, I take his expert opinion for what it is worth—an expert opinion—and try to learn from his criticism. I try to learn and do better. When the post-bag discloses a criticism obviously animated by personal prejudice or dictated by the religious politics of the paper in which it appears, I grin and bear it—though I don’t like it!—and console myself with the verse composed by the American poet whose critics were always unfair, or at least he said so—
“The cow is in the garden,
The cat is in the lake,
The pig is in the hammock,
What difference does it make!”
No author, who has a public at all, suffers from criticism which is fair or even from criticism which is unfair.
An author is not well advised in publicly answering or combating either.
When Disraeli said that the critics were the “people who had failed in literature and art,” he forgot that bad wine often makes excellent vinegar. I am quite certain that I have never suffered in the suffrages of my readers—and so in pocket!—from hostile criticism. And I have had any amount of it—the little green wrapper is not always pleasant reading. But I have never shouted out that I have been personally hurt or wounded by hostile criticism, and I certainly never shall. The days are past when the Quarterly could kill Keats, and the days have not arrived when the reprobatory finger which is sometimes wagged at one can take one’s bread-and-butter away.