All the other powers of literature are coy and haughty, they must be
long courted, and at last are not always gained; but criticism is a
goddess easy of access and forward of advance, she will meet the slow
and encourage the timorous. The want of meaning she supplies with words,
and the want of spirit she recompenses with malignity.--_Johnson._
It is a barren kind of criticism which tells you what a thing is
not.--_Rufus Griswold._
The legitimate aim of criticism is to direct attention to the excellent.
The bad will dig its own grave, and the imperfect may be safely left to
that final neglect from which no amount of present undeserved popularity
can rescue it.--_Bovee._
There are some critics who change everything that comes under their
hands to gold, but to this privilege of Midas they join sometimes his
ears!--_J. Petit Senn._
~Cruelty.~--Cruelty, the sign of currish kind.--_Spenser._
One of the ill effects of cruelty is that it makes the by-standers
cruel. How hard the English people grew in the time of Henry VIII. and
Bloody Mary.--_Charles Buxton._