The distinction between technical and critical remarks is of real importance. Confusion here is responsible for some most curious passages in the histories of the arts. A certain technique in certain cases produces admirable results; the obvious features of this technique come to be regarded at first as sure signs of excellence, and later as the excellence itself. For a while nothing, however admirable, which does not show these superficial marks, gets fair consideration. Thomas Rymer’s denigration of Shakespeare, Dr Johnson’s view of Milton’s pauses, the aftermath of the triumph of Pope, archaistic sculpture, the Greek poses in the compositions of David, the imitations of Cézanne, are famous instances; they could be multiplied indefinitely. The converse case is equally common. An obvious technical blemish in a special case is recognised. It may be too many S’s in a particular line, or the irregularity and rimelessness of a ‘Pindaric’ Ode; henceforth any line superficially similar, The lustre of the long convolvulusses, any unrhymed lyric, is regarded as defective. This trick of judging the whole by the detail, instead of the other way about, of mistaking the means for the end, the technique for the value, is in fact much the most successful of the snares which waylay the critic. Only the teacher knows (and sometimes he is guilty himself) how great is the number of readers who think, for example, that a defective rime—bough’s house, bush thrush, blood good—is sufficient ground for condemning a poem in the neglect of all other considerations. Such sticklers, like those with a scansion obsession (due as a rule to Exercises in Latin Verse), have little understanding of poetry. We pay attention to externals when we do not know what else to do with a poem. [9] G. W. Mackail, _Lectures on Poetry_. Introduction. [10] We can diagrammatically represent the delusion as follows. What actually occurs is that A, a work of art, causes E an effect _in us_, which has the character b; A _causes_ E[b]. We _speak_ as though we perceived that A has the quality B (Beauty); we are perceiving A[B]; and if we are not careful we think so too. No one of our recent revolutions in thought is more important than this progressive rediscovery of what we are talking about. It is being inevitably followed by wide changes in our attitudes to the world and to fellow-creatures. One current in this change is towards tolerance, another towards scepticism, a third towards far more secure founding of our motives of action. The startling philosophical changes in the general outlook sometimes’ predicted for Relativity (or for popular ideas about it when once they become widespread) appear likely, if they occur at all, to be engulfed by these more unobtrusive but more domestic changes. CHAPTER IV Communication and the Artist Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds.—_The Defence of Poetry_.