Page:The Clergyman's Wife.djvu/345

FAULT-SEEKERS.

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t is easier to cavil than to applaud—easier to carp than to appreciate. The voice of praise is low and feeble, for it issues from the generous and discriminating few; its tone is readily drowned by the loud cries of condemnation roared from the lips of the captious million. No talent, no taste, no information are requisite to qualify the self-constituted censor for his office.

"A man must serve his time to every trade
Save censure—critics all are ready made,"

says the poet. These surgeons of literature pass through no college, and earn no diplomas, to establish their right to cut and slash, dismember and decapitate the fair offsprings of mightier minds. Walter Scott aptly designates them as "tinkers who, unable to make pots and pans themselves, set up for menders of them."

In art, as in literature, their eyes search out defects alone, and are as blind to beauties as bats

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