Daily Dose

From Table Talk, Volume II, by William Hazlitt

A CRITIC

“A critic does nothing now-a-days who does not try to torture the most obvious expression into a thousand meanings, and enter into circuitous explanation of all that can be urged for or against its being the best or worst style possible. His object indeed is not to do justice to his author, whom he treats with very little ceremony, but to do himself homage, and to show his acquaintance with all the topics and resources of criticism.”

From On Criticism