Interludes

Judging books and pictures fairly becomes a practical duty in Horace Smith's opening essay on criticism. He argues that sound judgment requires understanding, and uses literary quotations, comic anecdotes and examples of wounded authorial pride to examine why criticism so often goes wrong. The collection brings together two essays, a story and verse, moving between direct argument and scenes of social observation.

The story introduces Porkington's reading party, whose students bring very different habits to their studies. Harry Barton favours university sports and pleasures, Richard Glenville enjoys exposing pretensions, and Thomas Thornton earns the narrator's respect for doing his work. These portraits give the prose a teasing tone while showing how money, family expectations and temperament shape student life. Readers interested in literary judgment and the manners of educated society can find both sustained discussion and humorous character sketches here.