Excessive, and often ill-natured, criticism of others is one of the minor vices which seem to grow up with advancing civilisation and intelligence rather than to retreat before them. It seems, as a rule, to prevail much more in educated than in uneducated society. The reason is not difficult to find. Education naturally makes men more fastidious and more keenly alive to the defects of those with whom they associate. And then, when educated men converse together, they are apt, merely from the facility with which they deal with language, to express in an exaggerated form the unfavourable estimate which they have formed of others, especially if this exaggerated form can be compressed into an epigram. But it requires little reflexion to see that this keen and exaggerated habit of criticism must be productive of much discomfort in a society in which it is general, and that, when applied to literary work, even though it may be a protection against inaccuracy and breaches of taste, it must be a great discouragement to the young and repressive of much honest and valuable effort. To restrain the critical spirit, whether applied to mind or conduct, with proper limits, it is necessary, keeping these considerations in view, to ask how much we can reasonably or profitably require of men, and, above all, never to lose that sympathetic touch with others which renders us as keenly alive to their difficulties as their errors, to their aspirations as their failure to fulfil them. I shall say nothing here of detraction, backbiting, or malicious representation, because these are social vices which are too obvious and too generally acknowledged to be of any service as illustrations of those extensions or new applications of morality which I have in view in the present chapter. I may, however, notice in passing, that the invention or exaggeration of stories, which have a tendency to bring men into ridicule or contempt, is a practice which, from the entertainment it affords, is too easily tolerated by society, and usually fails to meet with the reprobation it deserves.