Public opinion is no more than this, What people think that other people think. - Alfred Austin

One can put up with, indeed more than put up with, a certain amount of technical carelessness in Poetry, provided it be in other respects of a very high order, as not unoften, for instance, in Shakespeare and Byron. But similar blemishes in a picture would be all but fatal to it in the estimation of connoisseurs, since it would be the first thing that struck them in it.

There is no office in this needful world
But dignifies the doer if done well.

Towns can be trusted to corrupt themselves.