But it is in criticism, in criticism competently, honestly, and fearlessly applied, that the chief salvation lies. There is probably no review or newspaper in London which does not number among its contributors men of the first order of ability and intelligence, men who are real scholars and real critics, men who see through all that I have been describing and are sick of it. Let them not remain an impotent minority, but combine, and become influential. If popular Literature aspires to be ambitious, and trespasses on the domains of scholarship and criticism, let them submit it to the tests which it invites, let them try it by the standards which it exacts. There is no more reason for the co-existence of two standards, as is now practically the case, in the production of writings treating of our own Literature than there is in the production of writings dealing with Classical Literature. The work of any one who meddles with the last, even in the way of popularizing it, is instantly called by scholars to a strict account, and sciolism and charlatanry are exploded at once. But in the case of our own Literature there is no such solidarity. It seems to be assumed that a scholar is one thing and a man of letters another, that the difference between work which appeals to connoisseurs and work which appeals to the public is not simply a difference in degree, but a difference in kind, and that the criteria of the multitude need be the only criteria of what is addressed to the multitude. The manuscript of a History of Greek or Roman Literature, or a monograph on an ancient classic, if it were not at least solid and trustworthy, would have no chance of ever getting beyond a publisher’s reader. But a History of English Literature, or a monograph on an English classic, teeming with errors in fact and with absurdities in theory and opinion, will not improbably be regarded as an authority, and pass, unrevised, into more than one edition.