the art of making stone-soup. But then, I know I am in a
minority among persons of taste. Some of the very best literary criticism
of recent years has been aroused by admiration for Henry James. There is a
man on the _Times Literary Supplement_ who, whenever he writes about Henry
James, makes me feel that I have mistaken my vocation and ought to have
entered the Indian Civil Service, or been a cattle-drover. However, I
can't help it. And I give notice that I will not reply to scurrilous
letters.

ENGLISH LITERARY CRITICISM

_3 Nov. '10_

I learn that Mr. Elkin Mathews is about to publish a collected uniform
edition of the works (poems and criticism) and correspondence of the late
Lionel Johnson. I presume that this edition will comprise his study of
Thomas Hardy. The enterprise proves that Lionel Johnson has admirers
capable of an excellent piety; and it also argues a certain continuance of
the demand for his books. I was never deeply impressed by Lionel Johnson's
criticisms, and still less by his verse, but in the days of his activity I
was young and difficult and hasty. Perhaps my net was too coarse for his
fineness. But, anyhow, I would give much to have a large homogeneous body
of English literary criticism to read _at_. And I should be obliged to any
one who would point out to me where such a body of first-rate criticism is
to be found. I have never been able to find it for myself. When I think of
Pierre Bayle, Sainte-Beuve, and Taine, and of the keen pleasure I derive
from the immense pasture offered by their voluminous and consistently
admirable works, I ask in vain where are the great English critics of
English literature. Beside these French critics, the best of our own seem
either fragmentary or provincial--yes, curiously provincial. Except
Hazlitt we have, I believe, no even approximately first-class writer who
devoted his main activity to criticism. And Hazlitt, though he is very
readable, has neither the urbaneness, nor the science, nor the learning,
nor the wide grasp of life and of history that characterizes the three
above-named. Briefly, he didn't know enough.

* * * * *

Lamb would have been a first-class critic if he hadn't given the chief
part of his life to clerkship. Lamb at any rate is not provincial. His
perceptions are never at fault. Every sentence of Lamb proves his taste
and his powerful intelligence. Coleridge--well, Coleridge has his
comprehensib