He is remembering no doubt Aristotle’s remark that “the artist must preserve the type and yet ennoble it”, but interpreting it in his own way. For him the type is fixed simply by convention and his acceptances take no note of internal necessities but are governed merely by accordance with external canons. His is an extreme case, but to avoid his error in subtler matters is in fact sometimes the hardest part of the critic’s undertaking. But whether our conception of the type is derived in some such absurd way, or taken, for example, as from a handbook of zoology, is of slight consequence. It is the taking of any _external_ canon which is critically dangerous. When in the same connection Rymer objects that there never was a Moorish General in the service of the Venetian Republic, he is applying another external canon, that of historic fact. This mistake is less insidious, but Ruskin used to be particularly fond of the analogous mistake in connection with the ‘truth’ of drawing. 3. Truth may be equivalent to Sincerity. This character of the artist’s work we have already touched upon briefly in connection with Tolstoy’s theory of communication (Chapter XXIII). It may perhaps be most easily defined from the critic’s point of view negatively, as the absence of any apparent attempt on the part of the artist to work effects upon the reader which do not work for himself. Too simple definitions must be avoided. It is well known that Burns in writing ‘_Ae fond kiss_’ was only too anxious to escape _Nancy’s_ (Mrs Maclehose’s) attentions, and similar instances could be multiplied indefinitely. Absurdly naive views upon the matter[99] exemplified by the opinion that Bottomley must have believed himself to be inspired or he would not have moved his audiences, are far too common. At the level at which Bottomley harangued any kind of exaltation in the orator, whether due to pride or to champagne, would make his stuff effective. But at Burns’ level a very different situation arises. Here his probity and sincerity _as an artist_ are involved; external circumstances are irrelevant, but there is perhaps internal evidence in the poem of a flaw in its creating impulse. Compare as a closely similar poem in which there is no flaw, Byron’s ‘_When we two parted_’. [95] The reader who is a psychologist will notice many points in this statement at which elaboration and qualifications are required. For example, when we are ‘introspecting’ factors normally belonging to the second set may enter the first. But he will be able, if he grasps the general theory, to supply these complications himself. I did not wish to burden the text with unnecessary intricacies.