It is, of course, open to the man of science to declare that Wordsworth was not a botanist. It is possible, indeed, that Wordsworth did not know that his “host of golden daffodils” belonged to the natural order _Amaryllidaceæ_. This, however, would be to quarrel about words. Wordsworth and the man of science alike give an honest report of the flowers they have seen, and for my part I find Wordsworth’s report the more interesting. It is much the same with books as with flowers. The scientific critic shakes his head over the imaginative treatment of books. His ideal critic would write about books in the spirit of a Linnæus rather than of a Wordsworth. This, I think, is to take a narrow view of criticism. Criticism is an art which has developed in a score of different directions, and it is best to use the word in a sense that includes them all. Criticism--good criticism, at least--is almost any sort of good writing about books by a man or woman of taste. Criticism, says the dictionary, is the art of judging. As a matter of fact, criticism is something more than that. The good critic does a great deal more than deliver judgments on books and authors. He may at times play the part of the defending counsel rather than that of the judge. There are occasions on which he makes no attempt to hide the warmth of his feelings. He cannot announce a masterpiece as though a summary of pros and cons expressed what it meant to him. That is why I like to think of a critic as a portrait-painter rather than a judge. The portrait-painter reveals the character of his subject. He does not label or analyse it so much as set before us a synthesis of all the most interesting things he has seen, felt and thought in observing it. The judgment is always there, but it may be implicit rather than explicit. The author sits to the critic for his portrait. Even the book may be said--if we may put a slight constraint on language--to sit to the critic for its portrait. In criticism the character-sketch of the book or author is as important as any technical analysis. Criticism is a magic mirror, in which a work of art is reflected with a new emphasis and in new relations. The critic must bathe his subject in the light of his own mind--his taste, his enthusiasm, his moral ideas, his knowledge. Hence criticism is an extremely personal thing. It relates, if one may adapt Anatole France’s famous phrase, the adventures of masterpieces in the soul of the critic, or--to put it a little more precisely--in the intellectual and imaginative world of the critic.