EMPSON ON THE TWO TYPES OF CRITICS.

EMPSON ON THE TWO TYPES OF CRITICS. Another passage from Empson that has stayed with me for fifty years: Critics … are of two sorts: those who merely relieve themselves against the flower of beauty, and those, less continent, who afterwards scratch it up.” Empson confessed that he aspired to the second of these classes. I realized then that as a reader I also aspired to the second of the classes.