Daily Inspiration Quote by William Gilmore Simms

A novelist laying down rules for critics is never just offering etiquette; he is staking a claim for who gets to decide what lasts. Simms draws a hard line between criticism as social theater (the backslap of praise, the petty thrill of blame) and criticism as civic infrastructure. The verbs do the heavy lifting: discriminate, establish, prescribe, award. That’s not the language of taste; it’s the language of governance. He’s imagining the critic less as a commentator and more as a magistrate of culture, charged with sorting, legitimizing, and even directing future work.

The subtext is defensive and ambitious at once. In a 19th-century literary marketplace where reputations were made in newspapers and magazines, “praise or blame” could feel like partisan noise or personal vendetta. Simms, writing as an American novelist in an era still anxious about cultural authority (and often looking to Europe for it), wants criticism to be something sturdier than mood or clique. “Justly” and “honestly” are tells: he’s responding to a world where criticism can be corrupted by rivalries, regional bias, or commercial incentives.

What makes the passage work is its moral posture. Simms doesn’t argue that critics should be nicer; he argues they should be useful. By framing criticism as a duty, he elevates it, but he also cages it: the critic’s highest calling is not self-expression, but judgment with consequences. That’s a bid for legitimacy - and a warning that lazy scoring (thumbs up, thumbs down) is a dereliction of cultural responsibility.