CRITICISM OF THE ABSENT.
[TO TIM EDITOR OF TIIR "SPECTATOR.') SIR,—Travelling abroad, I have only just received the Spectatof of 'March 17th, with your admirable reflections on " Criticism of the Absent." It would be difficult, no doubt, to refute such a plea for the discussion of our friends' characters as is put forth by the writer in the Cornhill. But, unfortunately, criticism seldom stays at that high and discriminating level, and few there are who can be trusted with its habitual exercise. Any one who has lived much in a house where " criticism " was free and unchecked would acknowledge, I believe, that the result is an atmosphere desiccating in the long run both to fineness of judgment and to charity, the reason being that criticism, when it has become a habit, almost always tends to the discernment of weak rather than strong points. (Even the first wOrds of the writer in the Cornhill are directed towards what is lacking in his host's character !) This is why one dreads anything that can be twisted into a defence of what we are all too prone to already,—i.e., the habit of picking people to pieces. And if it be thus in the case of one's friends, how much more is the tendency to be deprecated in that of relations,—the subjects, that is, of the strange law (for so it appears) whereby those who are truly " nearest and dearest " are also those who seem possessed of a quite unaccountable power to vex each other. I believe reflection would show that this is largely traceable to the habit of indulging in " mutual criticism " by those who are of the same blood, though not of the same family circle. And though the temper of such criticism may be poles apart from the delightful and informing spirit in which the essayist proposed to discuss his host, still one cannot but feel the danger of pleading for what is even distantly allied' to a thing which, more perhaps than any other, mars the sweetness of human relationship.—I am, Sir, &c.,'
Previous page
