In Outcries and Asides, J.B. Priestley quotes from On Writing and Writers, which consists of extracts from the notebooks of Professor Walter Raleigh:

Criticism is not the exciting thing it was in the brave days when the critics were few and bold. It has become an industry of the workshops, carried on by those who look at new books, and look at nothing else. The greater part of critics are parasites, who, if nothing had been written, would find nothing to write. Until they meet with a live author, they cannot get to work; and they are not unwilling, in case of necessity, to infest one another. Shakespeare says what he thinks of life; Coleridge says what he thinks of Shakespeare; the modern essayist says what he thinks of Coleridge; we say what we think of the essayist—where is all this to stop? It goes on until the parasite that completes the chain is too small to nourish another. . . .

This reminded me of Clive James, in Cultural Amnesia, translating a paragraph from Alfred Polgar:

Civilization and culture, if they are left in peace long enough by war and pestilence, generate mould. And over this mould a layer of dust forms. And in this layer of dust microscopic life-forms settle. And these microscopic life-forms generate excrement. And in the breakdown-products of this excrement even less visible life-forms find their domicile. And these life-forms, as long as they are resident within the periphery of Vienna and eligible to vote in the central electoral district, generate the world portrayed in the comedies of Raoul Avernheimer.

In one of his notebooks, Nietzsche says that “99 parts of all ‘creating’ is imitation, in sounds or thoughts. Theft, more or less consciously.” I own up to that. I like to think that I, too, say what I think about life, but “life” does include everything from Shakespeare down to social media, after all. It’s all grist for the mill, mulch for the garden, glitter for the nest. I would not even claim to stand on the shoulders of giants. I rummage in their wastebaskets. I am more often found beneath their windows, like a magpie, making off with a glittering phrase, a loose metaphor, a philosophical button, some bright shaving from the workshop floor. I am less a critic than a dung beetle of the republic of letters, rolling some compacted pellet of other men’s brilliance across the sand and calling it my contribution. As a bin man of the blogosphere, I may not add much to the literary environment, but I can at least keep its refuse moving.