Law and medicine
are admirable examples. Every time they develop a new kind of
specialist they gain in prestige and emolument.
A reviewer, however (unless he publishes a collected edition and
becomes a critic), has so far remained in the eyes of the public
just a reviewer. In fiction we have been told (by the reviewers)
of romancers and realists, sociologists and ethicists, naturalists
and symbolists, objectivists and psychologists. Are there no
adjectives, no brevet titles of literary distinction for the men
and women who have made it possible to talk intelligently about
modern fiction without reading it?
My experience with reviewers has led me to classify them by
temperament rather than by the theories they possess; and this is
not so unscientific as it sounds, for theories usually spring from
temperaments. No man whose eliminatory processes function
perfectly is ever a pessimist, except under the compulsion of hard
facts. No sluggish liver ever believes that joy of living is the
prime quality to be sought in literary art. And by the same
eternal principle, moody temperaments embrace one theory of
criticism; cold, logical minds another.
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