ABSTRACT
Authors may take for granted, in the first place, that honesty without which sound criticism is impossible. The critic who, from whatever motive, calls a thing good which he believes to be bad, or bad which he believes to be good, is clearly false to his fundamental duty—the duty towards himself. Involuntary bias, involuntary narrowness, involuntary blindness, are quite sufficiently active sources of error. He should be sorry to insult his cloth by dwelling upon voluntary falsity, whether mercenary or malevolent, as a thing probable or even possible. It is foolish to argue that he should shun those whom he has to criticize, as though they brought with them a contagion not to be escaped save by the disinfectant intervention of the footlights; yet it seems to him that the air of the theatrical clubs is but moderately conducive to sound criticism.
