pen to minor poets and unimportant eighteenth century figures.
But, asked Edith, does not the reader in his own mind contradict the consistent critic? Does not this answer your purpose?
By no means. What you say is quite true. A dogmatic writer rouses a spirit of contradiction in the reader, but this is often a spirit of ire, of deep resentment. That is in itself, assuredly, something, but it is not the whole purpose of criticism to arouse anger, whatever the prima donna who reads the papers the morning after her début at the Opera may think. Criticism should open channels of thought and not close them; it should stimulate the soul and not revolt it. And criticism can only be wholesome and sane and spiritually stimulating when it is contradictory. I do not mean to say that a critic should never dogmatize— I suppose at this moment I myself appear to be dogmatizing! He may be as dogmatic as he pleases for a page or two pages, but it is unsafe to base an entire book on a single idea and it is still more unsafe to reflect this idea in one's next book. It is better to turn the leaf and begin afresh on a new page. Artists are never consistent. Ibsen apparently wrote A Doll's House to prove that the truth should always be told to one's nearest and dearest and, apparently, he wrote The Wild Duck to prove that it should not. Ibsen, you see, was a poet an he knew that both his theses were true. In his at
