Oscar Wilde has some thoughts.

Ernest: The critic, then, considered as the interpreter, will give no less than he receives, and lend as much as he borrows?

Gilbert: He will be always showing us the work of art in some new relation to our age. He will always be reminding us that great works of art are living things - are, in fact, the only things that live. So much, indeed, will he feel this, that I am certain that, as civilisation progresses and we become more highly organised, the elect spirits of each age, the critical and cultured spirits, will grow less and less interested in actual life, and will seek to gain their impressions almost entirely from what art has touched. For life is terribly deficient in form. Its catastrophes happen in the wrong way and to the wrong people. There is a grotesque horror about its comedies, and its tragedies seem to culminate in farce. One is always wounded when one approaches it. Things last either too long, or not long enough.