CRITICAL DISINTERESTEDNESS.

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The editor of the Snarler is young, but I am glad to know he must be happy.

The truly virtuous are ever thus.

It would have been a proud moment for the Duke of York if he could have foreseen that this sweet young man would some time edit a paper in that city which is so closely connected with the immortal name of the duke aforesaid.

The duke died shortly before the Snarler's time, but it is glorious to feel that he would have received the enthusiastic support of its spotless editor, if he had got his job printing done at the Snarler office.

Even my eyes don't seem to satisfy the Snarler, although they have been favorably received in other cities.

At Evansville, Indiana, they got two rounds of applause (one each) and there were indications that they might be called in front of the curtain.

A gifted editor in that place stated that they were as "soft and melting as a summer's sun while ever and anon they flashed with the fury of the eagle disturbed in its eyrie heights."

It is true he called on me the next day and wanted to sell me a house-lot, but I feel confident that his admiration of my eyes was sincere.

Besides, he told me this lot would double in value in two years.

I don't know whether it is quite the thing to quote Scripture in this connection, but if it were, I should like to request the editor of the Snarler to pluck out the mote from his own eye before he notices the beaming in mine. But the object of this screed is not to pick flaws with the critics.

Many of them have treated me very kindly.

Even the bitterest of those who have found fault with me wrote as he did simply because he was paid to do so.

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UNREASONABLE EXPECTATIONS.

It is pleasant to reflect that he would have praised me on the same terms.

I don't know how it is, but we are somehow expected to unite all the virtues of the angels, the beauty of the gods, and five times the learning of the erudite Edipus himself.

Our faults are magnified-our advantages are underestimated our personal character discussed—the genuineness of our teeth and hair doubted-our dressmaker found fault with the probabilities of her bill being paid or otherwise strongly insisted upon-vague hints thrown out in regard to the extreme likelihood of our remote maternal grandfather having been a pirate and a cutthroat robber (which supposition if true would fully account for the unsatisfactory "rendition" of our role in the last new comedy), and few other trifling personalities of the same sort help to make up "criticism" in the Metropolis of this undoubtedly extensive country.

This species of criticism, unluckily, is far more galling than the product howsoever bitter of genuine talent, and that feu sacre must be a perfect bonfire of tar-barrels and other rubbish which can keep blazing while the hose of the b'hoy critic is ejecting the puny stream of his milkand-watery disapproval."

"Grant me

As the gentle Tristam Shandy said: patience, just Heaven! Of all the cants which are canted in this canting world, though the cant of hypocrites may be the worst-the cant of criticism is the most tormenting. I would go fifty miles on foot, for I have not a horse worth riding on, to kiss the hand of that man whose generous heart will give up the reins of imagination into his author's hands-be pleased he knows not why, and cares not wherefore."

Badinage aside, let me say a word I tried once before to say, concerning Western critics, and did not say half

A CRITICAL HEDGEHOG.

425

as well as I wished. Practice makes perfect, and I intend to keep at this subject till I have expressed myself properly.

The general idea of Western criticism, as entertained by Eastern critics, is that it is one prolonged shriek of adulation; adjectives quite inadequate to relieve the pentup feelings of the critic, and all the high-flown images known to rhetoric pressed into the service to describe some mediocre actor, orator, or poet.

What stuff and nonsense this all is, I well know from experience.

It is true there are some towns in the West where local dramatic companies and third-rate "Professors," lecturing on bumpology, are extolled to the skies, praise being carefully regulated by the amount of job-printing ordered. But these are always small towns, whose newspapers are as insignificant in calibre as they would be in towns of the same size East.

The only place in the West where I was attacked at column length, with a discourtesy and stupidity worthy of an enraged hedgehog, was a little city where I was engaged by a local speculator, who owed the printer and I suppose still owes him.

The rage of this little editor when he found that, in spite of my large house, there was no money left for him, was something awful. He called me nicknames, said I was a ballet-girl when at home in New York, and a good deal more of the same sort. Unable to see any excellence in me, it was a great relief to my imagination when I observed in another column a loud puff of a local actor, of the most ordinary calibre, who was boldly compared to Edwin Booth.

But to gauge Western critics, as a class, by such petty examples as this, would be thoroughly unjust. So far as my observation goes-and I think it is a pretty careful

426

WESTERN CRITICISM.

one-I should say there was really very little difference between Western and Eastern critics. The little difference consists in the Western critic being more industrious than his confrere of the East.

I know it is the opinion of some of the best judges in the East that there is scarcely a writer in the West who would be fit to write editorials for first-class Eastern journals without some months of preparation; but then the best writers on the Western press are of the opinion that Eastern writers could learn "a thing or two" about the newspaper business by coming West.

However that may be, there is only one point to which I hold, and that is that ridicule, as directed to Western critics for their "shrieks of adulation," is a great absurdity.

Western criticism often has a rollicking independence of tone about it which would horrify staid Eastern readers; like that of the Western critic who paid his respects to the great Ristori in this off-hand manner:

"As it is we have a recompense in the first of Americans if not the last of Italians, and need not starve for dramatic luxury. So, au revoir, Ristori! Old girl, good evening! We wish you well."

But critics do not always write for print. Sometimes they are private individuals; and apropos of this, a little story.

In the same hotel where Macready resided during his first engagement in a Southern city, lived a gentleman who enjoyed the tragedian's friendship and intimacy. Mr. S. had with him a son about four years of age, a bright, intelligent boy, who became an especial favorite of Mr. Macready. "The great actor, frequently, after delighting a large auditory with his sublime conceptions of Shakespeare or Byron, would, with a simple pleasure that did him honor, take the little Thaddy on his knee,