My point is essentially that "critical success" is meaningless, because critical opinion doesn't actually say anything about the work itself, and will flip back

My point is essentially that "critical success" is meaningless, because critical opinion doesn't actually say anything about the work itself, and will flip back and forth arbitrarily often given a large enough historical timeframe. Commercial success at least implies that at one point, there were large numbers of people who enjoyed the work. But when critics write about a work, they are really writing about themselves, and there is no reason to value what they say beyond its applicability to a very limited temporal and cultural context.