28. Criticism "You may abuse a tragedy, though you cannot write one. You may scold a carpenter who has made you a bad table, though you cannot make a table. It is not your trade to make tables." Boswell: Life Link 165. Criticism; Publicity When the people criticised and answered his pamphlets, papers, &c. "Why now, these fellows are only advertising my book (he would say); it is surely better a man should be abused than forgotten." Piozzi: Anecdotes Link 350. Criticism; Publicity "A man who tells me my play is very bad, is less my enemy than he who lets it die in silence. A man, whose business it is to be talked of, is much helped by being attacked." Boswell: Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides Link 504. Advice; Criticism; Vanity "Censure is willingly indulged, because it always implies some superiority: men please themselves with imagining that they have made a deeper search, or wider survey than others, and detected faults and follies which escape vulgar observation." Johnson: Rambler #2 (March 24, 1750) Link 506. Criticism "Yet there is a certain race of men, that either imagine it their duty, or make it their amusement, to hinder the reception of every work of learning or genius, who stand as sentinels in the avenues of fame, and value themselves upon giving Ignorance and Envy the first notice of a prey. "To these men, who distinguish themselves by the appellation of Critics, it is necessary for a new author to find some means of recommendation. It is probable, that the most malignant of these persecutors might be somewhat softened, and prevailed for a short time to remit their fury. ..." Johnson: Rambler #3 (March 27, 1750) Link 642. Criticism "Much mischief is done in the world with very little interest or design. He that assumes the character of a critic, and justifies his claim by perpetual censure, imagines that he is hurting none but the author, and him he considers a pestilent animal, whom every other being has a right to persecute: little does he think how many harmless men he involves in his own guilt, by teaching them to be noxious without malignity, and to repeat objections which they do not understand; or how many honest minds he debars from pleasure, by exciting an artificial fastidiousness, and making them too wise to concur with their own sensations. He who is taught by a critick to dislike that which pleased him in his natural state, has the same reason to complain of his instructor as the madman to rail at his doctor; who, when he thought himself master of Peru, physicked him to poverty." Johnson: Idler #3 (April 29, 1758) Link 758. Biography; Criticism "To judge rightly of an author, we must transport ourselves to his time, and examine what were the wants of his contemporaries, and what were his means of supplying them. That which is easy at one time was difficult at another." Johnson: Dryden (Lives of the Poets) Link 770. Criticism "It is not by comparing line with line that the merit of great works is to be estimated, but by their general effects and ultimate result. It is easy to note a weak line, and write one more vigorous in its place; to find a happiness of expression in the original, and transplant it by force into the version: but what is given to the parts may be subducted from the whole, and the reader may be weary, though the critic may commend." Johnson: Dryden (Lives of the Poets) Link 856. Criticism; Writing "The purpose of a writer is to be read, and the criticism which would destroy the power of pleasing must be blown aside." Johnson: Pope (Lives of the Poets) Link 857. Criticism "Every art has its terms, and every kind of instruction its proper style; the gravity of common critics may be tedious, but is less despicable than childish merriment." Johnson: Pope (Lives of the Poets) Link 858. Criticism "All truth is valuable, and satirical criticism may be considered as useful when it rectifies error and improves judgment; he that refines the public taste is a public benefactor." Johnson: Pope (Lives of the Poets) Link 860. Criticism "Every art is best taught by example. Nothing contributes more to the cultivation of propriety than remarks on the works of those who have most excelled." Johnson: Pope (Lives of the Poets) Link 916. Criticism "The care of the critick should be to distinguish error from inability, faults of inexperience from defects of nature." Johnson: Idler #25 (October 7, 1758) Link 917. Actors/Acting; Criticism "If in an actor there appears an utter vacancy of meaning, a frigid equality, a stupid languor, a torpid apathy, the greatest kindness that can be shown him is a speedy sentence of expulsion." Johnson: Idler #25 (October 7, 1758) Link 918. Criticism "He that applauds him who does not deserve praise, is endeavouring to deceive the publick; he that hisses in malice or sport, is an oppressor and a robber." Johnson: Idler #25 (October 7, 1758) Link 919. Actors/Acting; Criticism; Writing "The art of the writer, like that of the player, is attained by slow degrees. The power of distinguishing and discriminating comick characters, or of filling tragedy with poetical images, must be the gift of nature, which no instruction nor labour can supply; but the art of dramatick disposition, the contexture of the scenes, the involution of the plot, the expedients of suspension, and the strategems of surprise, are to be learned by practice; and it is cruel to discourage a poet for ever, because he has not from genius what only experience can bestow." Johnson: Idler #25 (October 7, 1758) Link 989. Criticism "It is ... the task of criticism to establish principles; to improve opinion into knowledge; and to distinguish those means of pleasing which depend upon known causes and rational deduction, from the nameless and inexplicable elegances which appeal wholly to the fancy, from which we feel delight, but know not how they produce it, and which may well be termed the enchantress of the soul. Criticism reduces those regions of literature under the dominion of science, which have hitherto known only the anarchy of ignorance, the caprices of fancy, and the tyranny of prescription." Johnson: Rambler #92 (February 2, 1751) Link 992. Criticism "In trusting therefore to the sentence of a critic, we are in danger not only from that vanity which exalts writers too often to the dignity of teaching what they are yet to learn, from that negligence which sometimes steals upon the most vigilant caution, and that fallibility to which the condition of nature has subjected has subjected every human understanding; but from a thousand extrinsic and accidental causes, from every thing which can excite kindness or malevolence, veneration or contempt." Johnson: Rambler #93 (February 5, 1751) Link 993. Criticism "Critics, like the rest of mankind, are very frequently misled by interest." Johnson: Rambler #93 (February 5, 1751) Link 994. Criticism; Patriotism "Scarce any can hear with impartiality a comparison between the writers of his own and another country; and though it cannot, I think, be charged equally on all nations, that they are blinded with this literary patriotism, yet there are none that do not look upon their authors with the fondness of affinity, and esteem them as well for the place of their birth, as for their knowledge or their wit. There is, therefore, seldom much respect due to comparative criticism, when the competitors are of different countries, unless the judge is of a nation equally indifferent to both. The Italians could not for a long time believe that there was any learning beyond the mountains; and the French seem generally persuaded, that there are no wits or reasoners equal to their own. I can scarcely conceive that if Scaliger had not considered himself as allied to Virgil, by being born in the same country, he would have found his works so much superior to those of Homer, or have thought the controversy worthy of so much zeal, vehemence, and acrimony." Johnson: Rambler #93 (February 5, 1751) Link 995. Criticism; Writing "He that writes may be considered as a kind of general challenger, whom every one has a right to attack; since he quits the common rank of life, steps forward beyond the lists, and offers his merit to the public judgement. To commence author is to claim praise, and no man can justly aspire to honour, but at the hazard of disgrace." Johnson: Rambler #93 (February 5, 1751) Link 996. Criticism; Influence; Writing "The faults of a writer of acknowledged excellence are more dangerous, because the influence of his example is more extensive; and the interest of learning requires that they should be discovered and stigmatized, before they have the sanction of antiquity conferred upon them, and become precedents of indisputable authority." Johnson: Rambler #93 (February 5, 1751) Link 997. Criticism "The duty of criticism is neither to depreciate nor dignify by partial representations, but to hold out the light of reason, whatever it may discover; and to promulgate the determinations of truth, whatever she shall dictate." Johnson: Rambler #93 (February 5, 1751) Link 1,034. Criticism; Writing "Many causes may vitiate a writer's judgement of his own works. On that which has cost him much labour he sets a high value, because he is unwilling to think that he has been diligent in vain: what has been produced without toilsome efforts is considered with delight as a proof of vigorous faculties and fertile invention; and the last work, whatever it be, has necessarily most of the grace of novelty." Johnson: Milton (Lives of the Poets) Link 1,038. Art; Criticism; Poetry On Milton's Lycidas: "In this poem there is no nature, for there is no truth; there is no art, for there is nothing new. Its form is that of a pastoral, easy, vulgar, and therefore disgusting: whatever images it can supply are long ago exhausted; and its inherent improbability always forces dissatisfaction on the mind." Johnson: Milton (Lives of the Poets) Link 1,160. Criticism; Drama "Comedy has been particularly unpropitious to definers; for though, perhaps, they might properly have contented themselves with declaring it to be such a dramatic representation of human life as may excite mirth, they have embarrassed their definition with the means by which the comic writers attain their end, without considering that the various methods of exhilarating their audience, not being limited by nature, cannot be comprised in precept. Thus, some make comedy a representation of mean, and others of bad men; some think that its essence consists in the unimportance, others in the fictitiousness of the transaction. But any man's reflections will inform him that every dramatic composition which raises mirth is comic; and that, to raise mirth, it is by no means universally necessary that the personages should be either mean or corrupt, nor always requisite that the action should be trivial, nor ever, that it should be fictitious." Johnson: Rambler #125 (May 28, 1751) Link 1,161. Criticism; Drama "If the two kinds of dramatic poetry had been defined only by their effects upon the mind, some absurdities might have been prevented, with which the compositions of our greatest poets have been disgraced, who for want of some settled ideas and accurate distinctions, have unhappily confounded tragic with comic sentiments. They seem to have thought that as the meanness of persons constituted comedy, their greatness was sufficient to form a tragedy; and that nothing was necessary but that they should crowd the scene with monarchs, and generals, and guards; and make them talk, at certain intervals, of the downfall of kingdoms, and the rout of armies. They have not considered that thoughts, or incidents, in themselves ridiculous, grow still more grotesque by the solemnity of such characters; that reason and nature are uniform and inflexible; and that what is despicable and absurd will not, by any association with splendid titles, become rational or great; that the most important affairs, by an intermixture of an unreasonable levity, may be made contemptible; and that the robes of royalty can give no dignity to nonsense or folly." Johnson: Rambler #125 (May 28, 1751) Link 1,221. Criticism "To expunge faults where there are no excellencies is a task equally useless with that of the chemist, who employs the arts of separation and refinement upon ore in which no precious metal is contained to reward his operations." Johnson: Rambler #139 (July 16, 1751) Link 1,222. Criticism "The learned world has always admitted the usefulness of critical disquisitions, yet he that attempts to show, however modestly, the failure of a celebrated writer, shall surely irritate his admirers, and incur the imputation of envy, captiousness, and malignity." Johnson: Rambler #140 (July 20, 1751) Link 1,278. Creativity; Criticism "Criticism, though dignified from the earliest ages by the labours of men eminent for knowledge and sagacity, and, since the revival of polite literature, the favourite study of European scholars, has not yet attained the certainty and stability of science. The rules hitherto received are seldom drawn from any settled principle or self-evident postulate, or adapted to the natural and invariable constitution of things; but will be found upon examination the arbitrary edicts of legislators, authorized only by themselves, who, out of various means by which the same end may be attained, selected such as happened to occur to their own reflection, and then, by a law which idleness and timidity were too willing to obey, prohibited new experiments of wit, restrained fancy from the indulgence of her innate inclination to hazard and adventure, and condemned all future flights of genius to pursue the paths of the Mæonian eagle." Johnson: Rambler #158 (September 21, 1751) Link 1,279. Criticism "We owe few of the rules of writing to the acuteness of critics, who have generally no other merit than that, having read the works of great authours with attention, they have observed the arrangement of their matter, or the grace of their expression, and then expected honour and reverence for precepts which they never could have invented: so that practice has introduced rules, rather than rules have directed practice. "For this reason the laws of every species of writing have been settled b the ideas of him who first raised it to reputation, without inquiry whether his performances were not yet susceptible of improvement. The excellences and faults of celebrated writers have been equally recommended to posterity; and so far has blind reverence prevailed that even the number of their books has been thought worthy of imitation." Johnson: Rambler #158 (September 21, 1751) Link 1,280. Criticism; Writing "In writing, as in life, faults are endured without disgust when they are associated with transcendent merit, and may be sometimes recommended to weak judgments by the lustre which they obtain from their union with excellence; but it is the business of those who presume to superintend the taste or morals of mankind to separate delusive combinations, and distinguish that which may be praised from that which can only be excused." Johnson: Rambler #158 (September 21, 1751) Link 1,384. Criticism; Writing "The diversion of baiting an author has the sanction of all ages and nations, and is more lawful than the sport of teasing other animals, because, for the most part, he comes voluntarily to the stake, furnished, as he imagines, by the patron powers of literature, with resistless weapons, and impenetrable armour, with the mail of the boar of Erymanth, and the paws of the lion of Nemea."." Johnson: Rambler #176 (November 23, 1751) Link 1,386. Criticism; Self-Confidence; Writing "Critics ought never to be consulted, but while errors may yet be rectified or insipidity suppressed. But when the book has once been dismissed into the world, and can be no more retouched, I know not whether a very different conduct should not be prescribed, and whether firmness and spirit may not sometimes be of use to overpower arrogance and repel brutality." Johnson: Rambler #176 (November 23, 1751) Link 1,387. Criticism; Sensitivity; Writing "The animadversions of critics are commonly such as may easily provoke the sedatest writer to some quickness of resentment and asperity of reply." Johnson: Rambler #176 (November 23, 1751) Link 1,651. Criticism; Perspective "It has been formerly remarked by The Guardian, that the world punishes with too great severity the errours of those, who imagine that the ignorance of little things may be compensated by the knowledge of great; for so it is, that as more can detect petty failings than can distinguish or esteem great qualifications, and as mankind is in general more easily disposed to censure than to admiration, contempt is often incurred by slight mistakes, which real virtue or usefulness cannot counterbalance." Johnson: Adventurer #131 (February 5, 1754) Link 1,751. Criticism "Criticism is a study by which men grow important and formidable at a very small expense. The power of invention has been conferred by nature upon few, and the labour of learning those sciences which by mere labour be obtained is too great to be willingly endured; but every man can exert such judgment as he has upon the works of others; and he whom nature has made weak, and idleness keeps ignorant, may yet support his vanity by the name of a critick." Johnson: Idler #60 (June 9, 1759) Link 1,752. Criticism "Criticism is a goddess easy of access and forward of advance, who will meet the slow, and encourage the timorous; the want of meaning she supplies with words, and the want of spirit she recompenses with malignity." Johnson: Idler #60 (June 9, 1759) Link 1,774. Criticism; Ouch!; Relativity Soon after Edwards's Canons of Criticism came out, Johnson was dining at Tonson the Bookseller's, with Hayman the Painter and some more company. Hayman related to Sir Joshua Reynolds, that the conversation having turned upon Edwards's book, the gentlemen praised it much, and Johnson allowed its merit. But when they went farther, and appeared to put that authour upon a level with Warburton, "Nay, (said Johnson,) he has given him some smart hits to be sure; but there is no proportion between the two men; they must not be named together. A fly, Sir, may sting a stately horse and make him wince; but one is but an insect, and the other is a horse still." Boswell: Life of Johnson Link 1,857. Criticism; Reading; Tradition; Writing "There are three distinct kind of judges upon all new authors or productions; the first are those who know no rules, but pronounce entirely from their natural taste and feelings; the second are those who know and judge by rules; and the third are those who know, but are above the rules. These last are those you should wish to satisfy. Next to them rate the natural judges; but ever despise those opinions that are formed by the rules." Fanny Burney: Diaries and letters Link