this sentiment, for this is not Shakespeare's opinion, it is that of an incensed lover. So Richard III remarks:
Devised at first to keep the strong in awe.
But Hamlet replies:
Both are true, both good philosophy, and so from the playwright, the great poet, the novelist, you get a rounded view of life which a critic usually denies you.
Occasionally a critic does contradict himself and really becomes human and delightful and we take him to our hearts, but the next day all the doctors and professors and pundits are excoriating him, assuring us that he is not consistent, that he is a loose writer, etc. Good critics, I should like to believe, are always loose writers; they perpetually contradict themselves; their work is invariably palinodal. How, otherwise, can they strive for vision, and how can they inspire vision in the reader without striving for vision themselves? Good critics should grope and, if they must define, they should constantly contradict their own definitions. In this way, in time, a certain understanding might be reached. For instance, how delightful of Anatole France to describe criticism as a soul's adventures among masterpieces, and then to devote his critical
