t gives is purely adventitious and depends for its existence
on rarity. No rarity, no beauty. As for the profounder aesthetic
significance, if a man were to believe in its existence he would cease
to be a collector. The question to be asked is--"Is this rare?" Suppose
the answer favourable, there remains another--"Is it genuine?" If the
work of any particular artist is not rare, if the supply meets the
demand, it stands to reason that the work is of no great consequence.
For good art is art that fetches good prices, and good prices come of a
limited supply. But though it be notorious that the work of Velasquez is
comparatively scarce and therefore good, it has yet to be decided
whether the particular picture offered at fifty thousand is really the
work of Velasquez.

Enter the Expert, whom I would distinguish from the archaeologist and
the critic. The archaeologist is a man with a foolish and dangerous
curiosity about the past: I am a bit of an archaeologist myself.
Archaeology is dangerous because it may easily overcloud one's aesthetic
sensibility. The archaeologist may, at any moment, begin to value a work
of art not because it is good, but because it is old or interesting.
Though that is less vulgar than valuing it because it is rare and
precious it is equally fatal to aesthetic appreciation. But so long as I
recognise the futility of my science, so long as I recognise that I
cannot appreciate a work of art the better because I know when and where
it was made, so long as I recognise that, in fact, I am at a certain
disadvantage in judging a sixth-century mosaic compared with a person of
equal sensibility who knows and cares nothing about Romans and
Byzantines, so long as I recognise that art criticism and archaeology
are two different things, I hope I may be allowed to dabble unrebuked in
my favourite hobby: I hope I am harmless.

Art criticism, in the present state of society, seems to me a
respectable and possibly a useful occupation. The prejudice against
critics, like most prejudices, lives on fear and ignorance. It is quite
unnecessary and rather provincial, for, in fact, critics are not very
formidable. They are suspected of all sorts of high-handed
practices--making and breaking reputations, running up and down, booming
and exploiting--of which I should hardly think them capable. Popular
opinion notwithstanding, I doubt whether critics are either omnipotent
or utterly depraved. Indeed, I believe that some of