The good critic must in some way begin by accepting literature as it is, just as the good lyric poet must begin by accepting life as it is. He may be as full of revolutionary and reforming theories as he likes, but he must not allow any of these to come like a cloud between him and the sun, moon and stars of literature. 高明的书评，首先应该是接纳文学本来的面目，恰如好的抒情诗人，首先是接受生活的真相。他可以满腹革新与创见的经纶，但他不能让这些成为遮云，阻挡在自己与日月星辰般永恒伟大的文学本色之间。
02
The man who disparages the beauty of flowers and birds and love and laughter and courage will never be counted among the lyric poets; and the man who questions the beauty of the inhabited world the imaginative writers have made--a world as unreasonable in its loveliness as the world of nature-- is not in the way of becoming a critic of literature. 一个贬低鲜花、飞鸟、爱、欢笑与勇气的人，是无法成为抒情诗人中的一员的；而一个质疑富有想象力的作家们苦心构建的尘世之美——如同既美好动人亦不可理喻的自然界一般——的人，同样无法成为一个真正的文学评论家。
03
So appalling is it, indeed, that most of us nowadays labour under such a terror of accidentally condemning something good that we have not the courage to condemn anything at all. 令人诧异的一点，是我们多数人因为害怕批评了那些本来可能是好的作品，而丧失了批评任何作品的勇气。
04
We think of the way in which Browning was once
taunted for his obscurity, and we cannot find it in our hearts to censure Mr.
Doughty. We recall the ignorant attacks on Manet and Monet, and we will not
risk an onslaught on the follies of Picasso and the worse-than-Picassos of
contemporary art. 我们因为嘲笑过布朗宁的诗歌晦涩难懂，于是就不敢发自内心指责道提的写作；我们想起当初出于无知攻击过马奈与莫奈，就不敢再冒险抨击毕加索和比他更差的当代艺术的欺世盗名。
05
Indiscriminate praise, in so far as it is the result
of distrust of one's own judgment or of laziness or of insincerity, is one of
the deadly sins in criticism. 而不由分说的赞美更是评论的大忌，那是因为对自己的观点没有信心，或根本上出于疏懒或缺乏真诚。
06
True criticism is a search for beauty and truth and
an announcement of them. It does not care twopence whether the method of their
revelation is new or old, academic or futuristic. It only asks that the
revelation shall be genuine. 真正的评论，是寻索作品的美与真并将其公诸于世的过程。至于写作风格是创新还是传统，是学术派的还是未来派的，并不重要，只要文字是发自肺腑足够真切的。
07
It is the false pretences in literature which
criticism must seek to destroy. Recognizing Mr. Galsworthy's genius for the
realistic representation of men and women, it must not be blinded by that
genius to the essential second-rateness and sentimentality of much of his
presentation of ideas. 文学批评需要摧毁的是文学中虚伪的造作，评论既要能看到高尔斯华绥栩栩如生描写现实人物的才能，也不能不看到他所表达的多数见解是属于二流的且多愁善感的。
08
He is a man of genius in the black humility with
which he confesses strength and weakness through the figures of men and women.
He achieves too much of a pulpit complacency---therefore of
condescendingness--- therefore of falseness to the deep intimacy of good
literature---when he begins to moralize about time and the universe. 在承认自己塑造人物的擅长与不足之处时，他显示出黑色幽默般的谦逊；但他洋洋自得如同在讲台上布道的写作——也因此显得倨傲——缺乏了好的文学作品必不可少的真情实感——尤其当他高高在上指点时间与宇宙万物的时候。
09
One finds the same complacency, the same
condescendingness, in a far higher degree in the essays of Mr. A.C. Benson. Mr.
Benson, I imagine, began writing with a considerable literary gift, but his
later work seems to me to have little in it but a good man's pretentiousness. 同样的自满，同样的傲慢，在亚瑟·克里斯托弗·本森的散文中更加明显。在我看来，本森最初写作时是带着相当的文学天分的，但在他后期的作品已然不见，读到的只是“一个好人的矫揉造作”。
10
It has the air of going profoundly into the secrecies
of love and joy and truth, but it contains hardly a sentence that would waken a
ruffle on the surface of the shallowest spirit. 它们只是给人一种试图探究真善美爱的表象，但几乎没有一个句子能够吹起最肤浅的灵魂表面的微澜。
11
It is not of the literature that awakens, indeed, but
of the literature that puts to sleep, and that is always a danger unless it is
properly labelled and recognizable. Sleeping-draughts may be useful to help a
sick man through a bad night, but one does not recommend them as a cure for
ordinary healthy thirst. 事实上它不属于唤醒类的文学，充其量只是助眠的文字，但如果没有人适当对其归类并明示，其实是有危险的。安眠药物只能助益长夜难熬的病人，却无法用它来疗愈健康而渴望求知的正常人。
12
Nor will Mr. Benson escape just criticism on the
score of his manner of writing. He is an absolute master of the otiose word,
the superfluous sentence. He pours out pages as easily as a bird sings, but,
alas! it is a clockwork bird in this instance. He lacks the true innocent
absorption in his task which makes happy writing and happy reading. 本森的写作方式也是难辞其咎的，他太擅长驾驭无用字词与多余句子的堆砌。他像鸟儿啼鸣般铺陈篇章，但是，哎，这时候他就像那报时钟里的布谷鸟，在他身上见不到写作时那种忘我的、令写者愉、读者悦的纯真专注的投入。
13
It is frequently the wild claims of the partisans of
an author that must be put to the test. This sort of pretentiousness often
happens during "booms," when some author is talked of as though he
were the only man who had ever written well. How many of these booms have we
had in recent years---booms of Wilde, of Synge, of Donne, of Dostoevsky! 还有一种需要被检验的现象，是对一个作家过度狂热的追捧，尤其在这位作家如日中天的当下，对他的评论说得好像他是唯一的一个会写作的人。回顾下这些年出现过多少这样的“名噪一时“——譬如王尔德，譬如辛格、邓恩和陀思妥耶夫斯基。
14
It is when men begin to exaggerate in herds---to
repeat like a lesson learned the enthusiasm of others---that the boom becomes
offensive. 当所有人上课一般人云亦云、不经头脑而众口一词地夸大对一个当红作家的极度赞美时，
也是令人生厌的。
15
Insincerity is the one entirely hideous artistic
sin---whether in the creation or in the appreciation of art. The man who enjoys
reading The Family Herald, and admits it, is nearer a true artistic sense than
the man who is bored by Henry James and denies it: though, perhaps, hypocrisy
is a kind of homage paid to art as well as to virtue. 心口不一是对艺术最大的恶行——无论是对艺术的创作者还是鉴赏者。一个喜欢阅读家庭先驱报并且不在意承认的人，在我看来，比一个并不喜欢亨利·詹姆斯但却掩饰否认的人更具备真实的艺术品质。虽然，有时附庸风雅的虚伪，也是出于想对美德和艺术表达敬意。
16
None of the best critics have been men of destructive
minds. They are like gardeners whose business is more with the flowers than
with the weeds. 但是满怀恶意批评的人，永远不可能成为最好的批评家，批评家如同园丁，更重视的是呵护花朵的美丽，而不会过多在意杂草旁生。
17
If I may change the metaphor, the whole truth about
criticism is contained in the Eastern proverb which declares that "Love is
the net of Truth." It is as a lover that the critic, like the lyric poet
and the mystic, will be most excellently symbolized. 换个比喻来说，有关批评家的描述，可以用一个东方的谚语——“爱是真相之网”。所有优秀的书评家，如同抒情诗人与玄学家一般，是努力找寻打捞美好的真心爱人。
【注】Robert Lynd罗伯特·林德，北爱尔兰批评家，散文家，作品被誉为“二十世纪英国散文史的巅峰（Summit of prose writing）”。
