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164 genuine criticism, anything like a genuinely critical public. But, as it was, he was praised for his bad work and blamed for his good, until the faculty of distinction in him became hopelessly blurred and bewildered. The grotesque worthlessness of the criticism which he, like all the rest of us, received and receives in the ravenous and whirling columns of the Press, he must soon have learned to rate at its true value for a serious writer. But the critical effort (and that comes to mean the effort in what may be called comparative culture) which still alone can prove the salvation of such an one among ourselves, this, alas, he has not made. The result is that his most ambitious work—work which should have proved a masterpiece and which contains the elements of a masterpiece—has absolutely missed its aim and falls away. 'This sort cometh not out save by prayer and fasting.'

Yes, truly there are moments in which one does not realise how supremely rare anything really admirable is. At such moments one is prone to regret that the man who had painted a pig perfectly had not expended his energy on the painting of a man, as if perfectly painted pigs were so common! Why, it is just the reverse, and the producer of such is not to be worried by our bootless desires that he should be something else than what he is. Many