In the early twenties of this century I. A. Richards, with a view to assessing the power of literary appreciation of his students at Cambridge, gave them a few unsigned poems for their comments and appraisals.
“The result was horrifying. Magazine poetasters were extra was imply praised. Donne, Hopkins, and Christina Rossetti firmly damned; every felicity was ridiculed, and every absurdity praised, by large minorities, and even majorities.” This experiment initiated a literary movement, known as “practical criticism.” Criticism, to him, is “the disinterested exercise of intelligence.”