e stile and considered the good
cow grazing, confident that in the end she must "bite off more than
she can chew."

The "Outsiders."

Still, the aristocracy of letters exists: and in it, if nowhere else,
titles, social advantages, and commercial success alike count for
nothing; while Royalty itself sits in the Court of the Gentiles. And I
am afraid we must include in the crowd not only those affable
politicians who from time to time open a Public Library and oblige us
with their views upon literature, little realizing what Hecuba is to
them, and still less what they are to Hecuba, but also those affable
teachers of religion, philosophy, and science, who condescend
occasionally to amble through the garden of the Muses, and rearrange
its labels for us while drawing our attention to the rapid
deterioration of the flowerbeds. The author of _The Citizen of the
World_ once compared the profession of letters in England to a Persian
army, "where there are many pioneers, several suttlers, numberless
servants, women and children in abundance, and but few soldiers." Were
he alive to-day he would be forced to include the Volunteers.

FOOTNOTES:

[A] In a private letter, from which I am allowed to quote, Mr. Hall
Caine (October 2nd, 1894) explains and (as I think) amends his
position:--"If I had said _time_ instead of _the public_, I should
have expressed myself exactly. It is impossible for me to work up any
enthusiasm for the service done to literature by criticism as a whole.
I have, no doubt, the unenviable advantage over you of having wasted
three mortal months in reading all the literary criticism extant of
the first quarter of this century. It would be difficult to express my
sense of its imbecility, its blundering, and its bad passions. But the
good books it assailed are not lost, and the bad ones it glorified do
not survive. It is not that the public has been the better judge, but
that good work has the seeds of life, while bad work carries with it
the seeds of dissolution. This is the key to the story of Wordsworth
on the one hand, and to the story of Tupper on the other. Tupper did
not topple down because James Hannay smote him. Fifty James Hannays
had shouted him up before. And if there had not been a growing sense
that the big mountain was a mockery, five hundred James Hannays would
not have brought it down. The truth is that it is not the 'critic who
knows' or the public which does not know that determines the u