Well; we are creatures of infinite limitations. A certain range of sentiment comes within the province of our comprehension; vast tracts of life must be for all time to us an unknown country. J. C. Squire announces that _Jurgen_ is a poor book, but he does not persuade us that our admiration has been misplaced. We regard his article as the statement of a personal dislike. For criticism in the end comes always back to this: “I like it, or I do not like it.” Criticism is autobiography, as these pages are autobiography, the expression of personal preferences and distastes. And, on the whole, I think critics are ill advised to write of books that they do not like. Their inability to appreciate the book is as likely to be their fault as the author’s. And I find myself singularly out of sympathy with the type of critic who tries to explain his enthusiasms and disapprovals by metaphysics. He discusses for three pages what he considers to be the function of literature. “Literature,” he concludes, “is the sublimation of phenomena.” And, for the remainder of his article, proceeds to show which poets do, and which do not, satisfy the requirements of his formula. And, of course, he leaves us unimpressed. The ability to conduct an argument is not a proof of literary taste. And if the substance of the article is to be “I like, or do not like, this book,” then the critic is beholden to persuade us that he is a person whose opinion is deserving of attention. He can prove it to us in two ways, preferably in both. He can show that he has read and appreciated a quantity of good literature. “A man,” we say, “who has really appreciated Turgenev, should have a standard implicit in his emotional response to other books. If he says this book is good, there must be something in it.” Or the critic may prove by writing well and interestingly that he has a sense of literature. For there is nothing more damning to a book than a favourable, but ill-written, notice. “If the ass who wrote this,” the reader thinks, “liked that book, then I’m pretty certain that I shouldn’t.” Criticism would carry much more weight if it would forget its sense of responsibility, and would remember that its purpose is, as that of all literature, the entertainment of the reader.