But no one answered these questions, least of all the haughty white Persian.
Apparently unreasonably (this biography was as far from my mind as anything well could be), following a habit which I never could explain to myself until I became a professional writer and the reason became clear, before going to bed, I made notes on this and several subsequent evenings and it is upon these notes that I am drawing now, to refresh my memory. A few nights later, when Edith and Peter and I were sitting alone on the loggia, Peter talked to us about the critics.
The trouble with the critics, he was saying, is that they are not contradictory enough. They stick to a theory for better or worse, as unwise men stick to an unwise marriage. Once they have exploited a postulate about art or about an artist, they make all his work conform to this postulate, if they ad mire it. On the other hand, if the work of an artist displeases them, they use the postulate as a hammer. I think it is Oscar Wilde who has written, Only mediocre minds are consistent. There is something very profound in this aphorism.
Consider Frank Harris's Shakespeare theory, for example. It is good enough as an idea, as a casual inspiration it is almost a masterpiece. It would make a fine essay; if it had been used as a passing reference in a book, it probably would have been quoted for years. Harris, however, has spun it out into two thick volumes and made it fit into crev-
