LITERARY CRITICISM [To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—In your
issue of January 23rd there appears a most interesting paragraph in "A Spectator's Notebook," in refer- ence to literary criticisni, and to what "Auspex" describes RS "The dilapidation of our critical terminology."
"The alternative view' (he says) is that we are really living in an epoch of unparalleled creative genius, which I would like to believe, but cannot."
In The Life and Letters of Edmund Gosse, edited I think by Evan Cliarteris, there occurs the following passage in a letter written by Cease to Drinkwater in 1918: "There is something extremely unwholesome in the way reviews are conducted now. Every new author expects, for everything ho writes, unmitigated praise. It would be amusing to take one single day's issue of all the. English newspapers and see how many books on that particular day were buttered and soaked in praise which would be preposterous 'if given to Keats for his Odes or Miss Austen for Emma:
Tudor' Close Hotel, Rollingdean, Sussex.
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