they are in the same dilapidated condition. We should be glad and not
sorry when a fundamentally wrong notion of which we have been secretly
conscious for a long time finally gains a footing and is proclaimed both
loudly and openly. The falseness of it will soon be felt and eventually
proclaimed equally loudly and openly. It is as if an abscess had burst.

The man who publishes and edits an article written by an anonymous
critic should be held as immediately responsible for it as if he had
written it himself; just as one holds a manager responsible for bad work
done by his workmen. In this way the fellow would be treated as he
deserves to be--namely, without any ceremony.

An anonymous writer is a literary fraud against whom one should
immediately cry out, "Wretch, if you do not wish to admit what it is you
say against other people, hold your slanderous tongue."

An anonymous criticism carries no more weight than an anonymous letter,
and should therefore be looked upon with equal mistrust. Or do we wish
to accept the assumed name of a man, who in reality represents a
_soci�t� anonyme_, as a guarantee for the veracity of his friends?

The little honesty that exists among authors is discernible in the
unconscionable way they misquote from the writings of others. I find
whole passages in my works wrongly quoted, and it is only in my
appendix, which is absolutely lucid, that an exception is made. The
misquotation is frequently due to carelessness, the pen of such people
has been used to write down such trivial and banal phrases that it goes
on writing them out of force of habit. Sometimes the misquotation is due
to impertinence on the part of some one who wants to improve upon my
work; but a bad motive only too often prompts the misquotation--it is