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Just read Huxley's introduction1 to Haydon's Autobiography. Felt the criticism might be made of myself and with it the immediate
[Benjamin Robert Haydon . Huxley insisted that Haydon's true talent lay as a romantic novelist but had wasted his creative energy on painting: “a born writer who wasted his life making absurd pictures when he might have been making excellent books” (Huxley, 1926). Ed.]
denial – indeed a refutation that could be said to forestall the criticism it is so immediate – of the criticism. How impossible self-criticism is, no matter what anyone may say to the contrary. The only reassurance I can get is – for what it is worth – the feeling that I like devoting myself to psychoanalysis. Haydon apparently had capacity. It is not over-criticism from which one suffers but lack of criticism, lack of quality in criticism.