Page:In the dozy hours, and other papers.djvu/155

 Rh skilled in his petty craft; but we are merely paving the way to disappointment if we expect subtle analysis, or fervent eulogy, or even very discriminating criticism from his pen. He is not a Sainte-Beuve in the first place, and he has not a week of leisure in the second. We might console ourselves with the reflection that if he were a great and scholarly critic instead of an insignificant fellow-workman, our little books would never meet his eye.

Another complaint lodged periodically by discontents is that the author gains no real light from the comments passed upon his work, which are irritating and annoying without being in the smallest degree helpful. This is the substance of those sad grumblings which we heard some years ago from Mr. Lewis Morris; and this is the argument offered by Mr. Howells, who appears to think that Canon Farrar dealt a death-blow to reviewers in the simple statement that he never profited by their reviews. But at whose door lay the blame? It does not follow that, because a lesson is unlearned, it has never been taught. The Bourbons, it is said, gained nothing from some of the sharpest admonitions ever given