The ego-frisky reviewer is not what the biologist would call a
pure form. He (or she) is usually a yellow journalist, adopting
criticism as a kind of protective coloration. The highly personal
critic, adventuring, or even frolicking among masterpieces, and
recording his experiences, is the true type, and it is he that the
ego-friskish imitate. Such a critic in the jovial person of Mr.
Chesterton, or Professor Phelps, or Heywood Broun, contributes
much to the vividness of our sense for books. But their imitators,
although they sometimes enliven, more often devastate reviewing.
Alas, I am best acquainted among them all with the dull reviewer,
who is neither good nor useful. The excellent books he has
poisoned as though by opiates! The dull books he has made duller!
No one has cause to love him unless it be the authors of weak
books, who thank their dull critics for exposing them in reviews
so tedious that no one discovers what the criticism is about.
The dull reviewer has two varieties: the stupid and the merely
dull. It is the stupid reviewer who exasperates beyond patience
the lover of good books. He is the man who gets a book wrong from
the start, and then plods on after his own conception, which has
no reference whatsoever to the author's.
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