The yellow book: an illustrated quarterly (5.1895)

Mr. Meredith in Little

By G. S. Street

I

IN addition to its possible concealment of irrelevant motives,
anonymous criticism has this certain advantage, that it is not
of necessity ridiculous. When the anonymous critic is confronted
with such a question as that put, a trifle rudely but quite con-
clusively, by Charles Lamb to Dr. Nott—“ You think : who are
you ? ” “I,” he may answer proudly, “am The North Boreshire

Inquisitor.” Being that, he may go on to protect the interests of
our hearths and homes, or to point out the approaching end of the
Century, without danger of seeming superfluous or impertinent.
To do these things is feit to be part of the duty of The North
Boreshire Inquisitor. But when Jones—I hope nobody is really
called Jones-—implies a supposition that the world will be glad to
read what he, Jones, thinks of some great Contemporary, he runs
a risk of humorous eyebrows. Even when the critic is somebody
whose name is a household word for eminence, one of those
distinguished few before whom generations of intruders have
trembled or basked, and the criticised only “a Mr. ” So*and-so—
there is a deal of national character in that use of the indefinite
article—one suspects that the judgment, however instructive, has

in