nscience will very speedily be seared with a red-hot
iron. You will be on the road which leads from mere dishonour to crime;
and you may find yourself actually practising _chantage_, and extorting
money as the price of your silence. This is the lowest deep: the vast
majority, even of social _mouchards_, do not sink so low as this.

The profession of the critic, even in honourable and open criticism, is
beset with dangers. It is often hard to avoid saying an unkind thing, a
cruel thing, which is smart, and which may even be deserved. Who can say
that he has escaped this temptation, and what man of heart can think of
his own fall without a sense of shame? There are, I admit, authors so
antipathetic to me, that I cannot trust myself to review them. Would
that I had never reviewed them! They cannot be so bad as they seem to
me: they must have qualities which escape my observation. Then there is
the temptation to hit back. Some one writes, unjustly or unkindly as you
think, of you or of your friends. You wait till your enemy has written a
book, and then you have your innings. It is not in nature that your
review should be fair: you must inevitably be more on the look-out for
faults than merits. The _ereintage_, the "smashing" of a literary foe is
very delightful at the moment, but it does not look well in the light of
reflection. But these deeds are mere peccadilloes compared with the
confirmed habit of regarding all men and women as fair game for personal
tattle and the sating of private spite. Nobody, perhaps, begins with
this intention. Most men and women can find ready sophistries. If a
report about any one reaches their ears, they say that they are doing him
a service by publishing it and enabling him to contradict it. As if any
mortal ever listened to a contradiction! And there are charges--that of
plagiarism, for example--which can never be disproved, even if
contradictions were listened to by the public. The accusation goes
everywhere, is copied into every printed rag; the contradiction dies with
the daily death of a single newspaper. You may reply that a man of sense
will be indifferent to false accusations. He may, or may not be,--that
is not the question for you; the question for you is whether you will
circulate news that is false, probably, and spiteful, certainly.

In short, the whole affair regards yourself more than it regards the
world. Plenty of poison is sold: is it well for you to be