I happen to be reading Jacques Barzun's tome "From Dawn To Decadence,"
an encyclopedic, though distinctly French-biased review of the past 500
years, and would like to contribute his definition of an "Intellectual."
He differentiates the Intellectual from say, the Romanticist or the
Classicist, as someone who typically aligns with a social or political
point of view, acts in an organized group and is neither an artist or a
thinker, per se.

Critics may or may not be artists or thinkers.  But without them, how much
music or art would ever be discernible or even available, to the ignorant
masses or the general public?

Rosemary