To the Editor of the Literary World, March 1848.

DEAR SIR: In submitting to your attention some remarks suggested by your leading article of the 19th ult., I shall not be daunted by the consideration that it may seem "behind the time" to refer to what was written so long ago. Some wiseacre whom I heard or read lately, says that an article in a periodical is seldom of any importance beyond the current week or month. I should think that depended very much on the character of the article and the character of the periodical. And without shocking your modesty so far as to hint that your papers will become standard classics, like the critical writings of Jeffrey, Sidney Smith, and Macaulay (whose name it may be well to inform the accurate editor of the Democratic Review, is not spelt Macauley), I may certainly take it for granted that your subscribers have fresh in their memories what you presented to them a month, or less than a month since.

Some correspondent asked you, just for a change, to give "a spicy and personal cut-up of an author." This you refused to do, and your refusal must have called forth the earnest approval of every reader. Personality is one of the most damning vices of criticism, because, laying aside its violation of literary and gentlemanly decorum, it is putting the question of a book's merits on a totally false and irrelevant issue. And it is the more carefully to be avoided because the temptation to it is sometimes very great, when an author's friends and admirers will drag his private life before the public, and insist on making a flourish of trumpets before him every time he goes out to tea. So convinced am I of this, that I would refrain from any approach to it, even in cases where it has become proverbially allowable. If Gracchus were to write a pamphlet against sedition, I would not use a tu quoque argument against him.

But while the leading assertion of your article thus carries its own recommendation with it, there are some more general remarks following, which by no means so self-evidently command assent, particularly the conclusion you arrive at, that "that criticism is most true which rather seeks the good than the evil;" or to put the pro

position into a concrete form, that the critic is most true who seeks rather to praise than to blame.

Now, with all due submission, it seems to me, that the spirit of true criticism considered in the abstract, and independently of age or country, cannot be said to have a bias either to praise or blame, its object and purpose being to judge impartially of works of art by rules of art; and that the proper animating spirit of criticism in any age and country will depend upon contingent circumstances, viz. the wants, errors, and tendencies, of the country and period to which it has reference.

SO

To illustrate my meaning. Your conclusion is immediately founded on a very pleasant and ingenious position of Leigh Hunt. But, before making a practical application of his remarks to ourselves, it will be well to examine the peculiar circumstances under which he wrote. When he made his appearance in the critical world, politics influenced all literary judgment in England, and literary and political partisanships were mingled together, that it seemed almost impossible to separate them. Great poets, more or less intimately associated with Hunt himself, were depreciated, misquoted, and abused, by the Quarterly Review, and the Tory writers generally, on account of their political opinions. I say on account of their political opinions, for it would be absurd to suppose that such men as Gifford and Southey could not discover the genius of such men as Shelley and Keats. The public mind was thus most unfairly prejudiced against these poets, and it required some competent critic to call attention to their beauties. Hunt was the very man. His perfect good humor and gentleness formed a highly prepossessing contrast to the virulence of the Tory reviewers, and his fascinating style conciliated and enticed the most bigoted. It would be curious to inquire how many of his readers Keats owes to Hunt. Another aim of our critic was to excite a more general taste for some of the fathers of English poetry, and especially for Chaucer. In this too he was eminently and deservedly successful.

Now if any similar state of things existed among ourselves; if the literary mind of America, or any large portion, was violently prejudiced against any man or men, from political or other extraneous reasons; if, for instance,

all the Whig littérateurs were trying to write down Cooper and Bryant, because they are democrats, or if the whole Southern press had made a dead set at Professor Longfellow because he has written some anti-slavery poems, then we should certainly need judicious praisers, honey-tongued critics, who delight in lingering over beauties themselves, and are skilful in displaying them to others. Or if the founders of our national literature were already becoming neglected; if people began to leave off reading Knickerbocker, and Salmagundi, and the Spy; then, too, whe should undoubtedly want a laudatory school of criticism to awaken the public attention to beauties which were escaping it. And, not to take any hypothetical state of things, such a laudatory school we did want at the appearance of Cooper and Irving, to show us what genius was among us, and not leave the discovery to English writers.

But how stands the case now with our literary public? Is its disposition in any way similar to that of the English public, when Leigh Hunt first wrote? Is there anywhere a tendency to decry any native author or school of authors? Does not the fashion run in the very opposite direction, to exaggerated and almost random praise? Can you point out one instance of a good book published here for the last ten or twenty years that has not met with merited praise and success? And have not many worthless books been fulsomely eulogised, and, in consequence, sold largely? If these questions must be answered in the affirmative (and it would be difficult to give them any other answer), then is the critic's duty something very different from what it would be in a captious and prejudiced community.

English criticism has divested itself of its political unfairness. Blackwood has praised Miss Martineau, and been glad to receive Bulwer as a contributor. But the English critics are still high in their standard, and chary of their praise. To compare them with ours in this respect, we must not look merely at the Quarterlies, which only notice a few works at a time, and those such as they can found telling articles upon; but turn to those periodicals which notice more or less briefly all the new publications which they receive. Such are the Athenæum, Literary Gazette, Examiner, Spectator, and those maga

zines which give an appendix of literary notices. Compare these with corresponding American publications. It will be found that in the latter, the majority of the works noticed are approved of; while in the English periodicals above-mentioned, a very large number, probably a moiety at least, if not a majority of the works noticed, are condemned. In saying that the English critics as a body are men of the best education, and so situated as to be very little subject to extraneous influences, either from authors or publishers, I speak from personal observation and knowledge; and I also speak from personal observation and knowledge in saying that many of our soi-disant critics are most indifferently qualified for their task, and that a great deal of what passes for criticism among us, either directly emanates from or is suggested by the large publishers. Thus, it is well known to those behind the scenes, that some houses in this city have their salaried readers connected with the literary department of the daily press. This may be an extreme case, but I fear it is not a solitary one.

But it may be said, "What harm is there after all, if an author is praised more than he deserves to be? Even admitting that praise, when nearly indiscriminate, loses much of its value, and becomes a mere form, why should we not have forms of courtesy and say fine things to one another out of pure compliment, in literary as well as in fashionable society? At any rate it serves to keep up cordiality and good-will, and is therefore preferable to a rigid impartiality, which provokes acrimony and causes mortification." To which I reply, that unmerited and misapplied praise does very positive harm to both reader and author, however convenient and comfortable it may be for the critic.

when, as happays five dollars sell it at auction he suffers a very

And first for the reader. When a man is led by an adroit puff to purchase a trashy book .pened to myself not very long ago, he for a work one week, and is glad to for twice as many shillings the next tangible and most easily appreciated injury in pocket, not to mention the disappointment and vexation which amount almost to a sense of personal injury sustained from the reviewer. Or if less experienced, and more credulous, so that his faith in the critic seduces him not

merely into buying the book, but into believing it to be good, then the mischief is much more serious. His powers of appreciation and discrimination, his taste and judgment, become more or less vitiated by a bad model, or he adopts error while supposing himself to be acquiring information. You say that if the badness of a book predominates, it will soon condemn itself. This depends entirely on what you mean by soon. If you mean that in two or three generations a book will be likely to find its level, few will dispute this point; but it by no means follows that a worthless production may not be made to impose upon part of one generation, if there is no true friend of the public to unmask it.

Next, as to the author. Let us begin by speaking of the larger class, who will write books, invitâ Minerva. I take for granted that it is an act of real kindness to such to dissuade them from continuing in a vocation for which they were not destined by nature; just as, to adopt your own Socratic mode of illustration, if we found a man to be a uniformly unsuccessful shoemaker, the most friendly advice we could give him would be that he should devote his energies to some other trade. But if, on a false theory or out of mere good nature, we praise what is not praiseworthy, the subjects of our panegyric are directly encouraged to persevere in a mistaken course.

It is more serious matter when we have to deal with authors who possess real merit tarnished by great defects. The best thing that can happen to them is that they should clear themselves of their blemishes; and accordingly while all credit is given to their excellences, these blemishes should be strictly noticed. Nothing is more natural than that a writer should be ignorant of his own errors, particularly faults of style and expression; and though in some cases wounded pride will make him persist in them after they are pointed out, in most instances he will be inclined to profit by the criticism, even if not over well-disposed towards the critic. But if his characteristic vices are never animadverted upon, they will be sure to grow upon him, and he will deteriorate, instead of improving. And this will help us to account for the singular fact (I think it may be called a fact; at least I have never heard the proposition disputed), that the earliest works of American authors are almost invariably