‘I will go further,’ cried Ponto, recklessly, ‘and I will fearlessly assert, that in the golden roll of the fearless and fecund Parisian Parnassus, there is no more affluent name than that of my friend Gavrolles. His “Chant Aromatique” to the Venus of Dahomey would alone entitle him to a place in that Pantheon where the names of Victor Hugo and Achille de Ganville shine effulgent, while his masterly management of the Sestina, in his great address to myself, is only to be compared with the Titanic sculpture cf Michael Angelo, or the colossal imagery of Potts.’
Serena smiled gloomily. He was familiar with that sort of praise, as addressed to himself, but, with all his cynicism, he scarcely approved of its lavish application to an obscure Frenchman. The fact was, that the whole speech formed part and parcel of an eulogistic article, in Ponto’s best manner, then in type for the ‘Megatherium,’ a widely circulated literary journal in which nepotism and malignity formed equal parts.
‘By the way,’ observed Serena, still quietly at work, ‘I see that MacAlpine has been falling foul of our friend Potts in the “North British.”’
MacAlpine was a cantankerous critic, hailing from beyond the Border, and with a Highland disregard of consequences in the expression of his literary opinions. Ponto turned livid.
‘MacAlpine,’ he exclaims, ‘bears to the immortal Potts the relation that a leper does to Paian Apollo. It is well known that MacAlpine has been guilty of murder, bigamy, rapine, incest, and larceny, but all these are nothing compared to his fiendish and futile statement that Potts is not the most stupendous, wonderful, awe-inspiring, celestial, and cosmic creature existing on this planet. Mac Alpine, it is notorious, left his grandmother to starve in the workhouse, and kicked his little brother to death, but these crimes are venial by the side of his hateful and hellish assertion that your divine and spirit-compelling picture of “Psyche watching the Sleep of Eros” is out of proportion.’
Serena sighed, then smiled.
‘Do you know, my dear Ponto, I sometimes think that a little hostile criticism is refreshing. I really find it so, when it comes in my way.’
Ponto shuddered.
‘The only true attitude of criticism is that of worship,’ he exclaimed. ‘The man who, in contemplating your consummate masterpiece, could be conscious of any feeling save of the surging forces of cosmic yearning, flowering into the form of perfect idealisation, and shining with the reflected light of coruscating eternities of sterile pain—such a man, I say, is capable of any social crime, and incapable of any aesthetic perception.’
‘Pardon me,’ returned Serena. ‘What you say is doubtless very flattering, but if criticism is pure worship, how do you account for your own attacks on the literary productions of the enemies of the aesthetic school?’