“Diamonds, says Miss W., are the joy of her life. Each night on the stage of the Olympia she wears between £30,000 and £40,000 worth of jewellery.” The woman who confides her wardrobe list and the prices of her clothes to a Fleet Street hack of the pen is far gone past recall, but her manner of misdemeaning herself should not be proclaimed in the Press under “headings” as if it were news of importance to the country; and it would not be so proclaimed were the Press entirely, instead of only partially, in the hands of educated men. In olden days it would seem that a great part of the responsibility of the Press lay in its criticism of art and literature. That burden, however, no longer lies upon its shoulders. Since the people began to read for themselves, newspaper criticism, so far as books are concerned, carries little weight. When some particular book secures a great success, we read this kind of thing about it: “In argument, intrigue and style it captures the fancy of the masses without attracting the slightest attention from the critical and discriminating few whose approval alone gives any chance of permanence to work.” This is, of course, very old hearing. “The critical and discriminating few” in Italy long ago condemned Dante as a “vulgar” rhymer, who used the “people’s vernacular.” Now the much-abused Florentine is the great Italian classic. The same “critical and discriminating few” condemned John Keats, who is now enrolled among the chiefest of English poets. Onslaughts of the bitterest kind were hurled at the novels of Charles Dickens by the “critical and discriminating few”--in the great writer’s time--but he “captured the fancy of the masses” and lives in the hearts and homes of thousands for whom the “critical and discriminating few” might just as well never have existed. And when we look up the names of the “critical and discriminating few” in our own day, we find, strange to say, that they are all disappointed authors! All of them have-written poems or novels, which are failures. So we must needs pity their “criticism” and “discrimination” equally, knowing the secret fount of gall from which these delicate emotions spring. At the same time, the “responsibility” of the Press might still be appealed to in literary, dramatic and artistic matters as, for example: Why allow an unsuccessful artist to criticize a successful picture? Why ask an unlucky playwright who cannot get even a farce accepted by the managers, to criticize a brilliant play? Why depute a gentleman or lady who has “essayed” a little unsuccessful fiction to “review” a novel which has “captured the fancy of the masses” and is selling well?