poets, then by all means quote freely, but do not try to kindle in him the sensation caused by a hearing of César Franck's D minor Symphony by printing copious excerpts from the published works of Swinburne and Mallarmé. Music criticism has two purposes, beyond the obvious and essential one that it provides a bad livelihood for the critic: the first, and perhaps the most important, is to entertain the reader, because criticism, like any other form of literature, should stand by itself and not lean too heavily on the matter of which it treats; the second is to interest the reader in music, or in books about music, or even in musicians. Criticism can be informing without being pedantic; it can prod the pachydermatous hide of a conservative old fogy concert-goer without deviating from the facts. Above all else criticism should be an expression of personal feeling. Otherwise it has no value. "Whoever has been through the experience of discussing criticism with a thorough, perfect, and entire Ass," writes Bernard Shaw, "has been told that criticism should above all things be free from personal feeling."
On one occasion I experienced an irrepressible desire to rail against the intellectual snobbery which persuaded flaccid minds that the string quartet was the noblest musical art form and that the organizations which devoted themselves to
