Page:In the dozy hours, and other papers.djvu/158

 144 fairy story—lures a man away from his subject, and sends him dancing over pages in a glittering fashion that is as useless as it is pretty. It is amazing how brightly he shines, but we see nothing by his light. "He uses his topic," says Mr. Saintsbury, "as a springboard or platform on and from which to display his natural grace and agility, his urbane learning, his faculty of pleasant wit." We read, and laugh, and are entertained, and seldom pause to ask ourselves exactly what it was which the writer started out to accomplish.

Now the finest characteristic of all really good criticism is its power of self-repression. It is work within barriers, work which drives straight to its goal, and does not permit itself the luxury of meandering on either side of the way. In this respect at least, it is possible for the most modest of anonymous reviewers to follow the example of the first of critics, Sainte-Beuve, who never allowed himself to be lured away from the subject in hand, and never sacrificed exactness and perspicuity to effect. If we compare his essay on the historian Gibbon with one on the same subject