Excerpt from On American Books The English reader of this roll-call of critics may ask: Have any of these critics interpreted a single writer with the touch of a master, or added a single aesthetic idea to the sum total of our knowledge of the meaning of art? Perhaps the English reader may find an answer by asking the same question con cerning the critics of his own country to-day. The Victorian poet who said that good critics are rarer than good authors was right. To feel deeply and yet to think profoundly, to know much and yet to write well - it is no easy staircase that the great critic has to climb. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.