Page:Men of Letters, Scott, 1916.djvu/20

xiv matter. Not that this was a new kind of criticism. Sensitive Lamb and eager Hazlitt were of the past, chronologically; and they had had imitative successors. But only now was it generally recognized that their method was the most trustworthy and the best; that the critic was not the superior of the creative artist; that his duty was not to dictate, but to understand and suggest; that he had, in fine, no right to wear a full-bottomed wig and looked very well in a peaked cap with round the front of it.

Let those of us critics who chafe at the comparative modesty of their head-gear take comfort in the thought that they are very much more interesting to themselves and to others than the old Judges ever were. Long robes and ermine may have been gratifying to their wearers, but were incompatible with any natural freedom of movement, and smothered all individuality. Nowadays the critic is free to be actively himself. It is always pleasant to be that, and always worth while to watch any one being that. Of course the degree of interest and pleasure taken in watching a critic be himself is greater or less according to what sort of self his is. A fussily obtrusive self diminishes the pleasure; a languid self abates the interest. Never for a moment will you find Dixon Scott consciously interposing his "ego" or in any way bothering about it. Not the less is he always a self-revealing writer; and the revealed is consistently charming and engaging. As for languor, I daresay that the more rest-loving of his readers will sigh, now and again in the course of his pages, for a touch in him of that defect. They may wish he went a little more slowly and quietly. I agree that his manner is sometimes open to the charge of boisterousness. But let it be remembered that in writing for the press a man does not—or at any rate should not—write in exactly the tone he would use in writing a book, and that most