Mr. Sidney
Colvin in looking over the criticisms of Mr. Stephen Phillips' poetry
recently discovered in three periodicals convincing parallels that led
Mr. Arthur Symons to confess to the authorship of all three critiques.
The average reader would in most cases be strongly influenced by the
united verdict of the critics of the _Saturday Review_, the _Athenaeum_
and the _Quarterly Review_; in this instance his convictions would
undoubtedly be rudely shattered when he learned the truth. Under such
conditions anonymous criticism is a menace, not an aid to the reader's
judgment.
In conclusion, it must be borne in mind that criticism is not an end but
a means to an end. All the literary criticism ever uttered would be
useless as such if it did not evince a desire to further the development
of literary art. The _Iliad_ and the _Oedipus_ were written long
before Aristotle's _Poetics_, and it is not likely that either Homer or
Sophocles would have been a greater poet if he could have read the
Stagirite's treatise. Yet the _Poetics_, as a summary of the essential
features of that art, served an important purpose in later ages and
exerted far-reaching influences.
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