Life & Wisdom Quote by William Shenstone

A small barb dressed up as a compliment, Shenstone's line flatters poets while quietly putting critics in their place. "Every good poet includes a critic" proposes that real artistry contains its own internal editor: the poet who can appraise, cut, and refine is already doing criticism from the inside. The subtext is that judgment is not an external add-on to creation but a necessary ingredient of it, baked into the work as discipline and taste. It's an argument for craft over inspiration, and for self-suspicion over self-expression.

"But the reverse is not true" is where the knife turns. Shenstone isn't denying that critics can be perceptive; he's denying that perception alone is generative. A critic may diagnose why a line fails without being able to produce one that sings. In 18th-century Britain, when periodicals and coffeehouse culture inflated the authority of reviewers, this is a defensive maneuver from the creative class: a reminder that commentary often rides on the back of making.

The structure matters: it grants critics a role (inside the poet) while narrowing their independence. The "good" qualifier does heavy lifting too, implying that bad poets lack that internal critic and therefore deserve the external one. Shenstone's intent is less anti-criticism than pro-authorship: the highest form of critique is the kind that risks something, that has to live on the page.