Pseudo-Critics

A certain set of individuals calling themselves critics have attacked ‘Lavengro’ with much virulence¹ and malice². If what they call criticism had been founded on truth, the author would have had nothing to say. The book contains plenty of blemishes³, some of them, by-the-by, wilful⁴ ones, as the writer will presently show; not one of these, however, has been detected and pointed⁵ out; but the best passages in the book, indeed, whatever was calculated to make the book valuable, have been assailed⁷ with abuse and misrepresentation. The duty of the true critic is to play the part of a leech⁸, and not of a viper⁹. Upon true and upon malignant¹⁰ criticism there is an excellent fable¹¹ by the Spaniard Iriarte. The viper says to the leech, ‘Why do people invite your bite, and flee from mine?’ ‘Because,’ says the leech, ‘people receive health from my bite, and poison from yours.’ ‘There is as much difference,’ says the clever Spaniard, ‘between true and malignant criticism as between poison and medicine.’ Certainly a great many meritorious¹² writers have allowed themselves to be poisoned by malignant criticism; the writer, however, is not one of those who allow themselves to be poisoned by pseudo-critics; no! no! he will rather hold them up by their tails, and show the creatures

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