The Sun.
London, England, 1852-09-14 00:00:00

ANECDOTES OF CRITICISM.
(From Eliza Cook's Journal.)
If, in criticism, there were less brilliance and more
charity, better justice would be distributed between the
authors who write and the public who read. When I,
as a reviewer, take up my ivory knife, and set down to
cut open the leaves of a new book, what do I invoke,. asl
the genius, to attend upon my chair?
think of anything but the un'ortunate writer, of theif
work. My object is to flavour my " article, ' and
he shall.
" our author" can supply spices, well and good;
supply relish to my periods; but if unhappily not,. he is
then the mere ground of the dish, and I serve him up
transmogrified from his original shape—with. onions of
ne seer
I am afraid
satire, cloves of sarcasm, ginger of vituperation—
thinking of him, but of making a " stinging review."
My pen is no quill from the wing of a pacific goose,
my ink no odorous distillation from an Indian wood; the
one is tsuipered steel—the proper material to stab with
—the other is undiluted gall to pour into the wound.
All around my table are the busts of brilliant critics,
famous in their day, whose trophies are built upon a
pyramid of epics, essus,l3-rics, histories, romances, and
disquisitions, amalgamated into solid bricks, by thr,
pestle fire', and pressure next, of " first-rate reviews.
One I see mangling some "half-fledged poet;" another
"crushing a young sieging-bird in its nest;" another
clasnehinss ihe lamp of Bonne ambitious student's inspi-
ration. Then I ring my own hammer on the rock, that
an echo may come to me of similar fame, and that nsY
vanity may be plumed by the idea that some poetaster,
or prosaic dullard has been
"extinguished" by a blot of
the terrible liquid, lying, black as Phlegethon, before me. Lately, however, I nave been reflecting on the critical
art and the critic's responsibility; but lam not going to
write a. disquisition on either. I have, fur 'iv own edi-
fication, collected some anecdotes to
illustrate phut I
is
have been saying, and to show that infallibility 00
more an attribute of the editorial table than it is of
Peter's chair. The victims of great reviews have
mounted to high fame in spite of their reviewers. Men
have fallen into ridiculous errors through their refusal
to acknowledge, or their inability to
appreciate genius
when its work is piesented tangibly to their observation.
There are some episodes in the history of criticism
which are universally known—how, the living fire of
Keats's inspiration was " snuffed out" by an article in
the Quarterly; how Byron was hunted by the Scotch
their turn with a vengeance; how Swift cut to pieces a
wrehvioelewearrsmuynoti la
fl
scerisbteosodbyatmbea3', and renewed them in
means
of
how Pope, with a single feather from the goose's wing,
wrote a sacrificial song for a hecatomb of detractors.
there have Other episodes,one satirical essay;
however, been, less known,
but no less remarkable than these.
There never was, for instance, amore extraordinary,
a more absurd, a more impudent criticisire, than that of
Rymer upon the tragedy of Othello. Ile said it was
"a bloody farce, without salt or savour, that fillsthe head
with vanity, confusion, tintamarre, and jingle-jangle."
Now Rymer, in his time, was thought a judicious man;
reviewed a good many books—perhaps deeided the lite-
rary fate of several authors.
.Yet, if the public accepted
his opinion, how much injustice was there not com-
mitted. Nearly equal in impertinence was the observa-
tion of Gifford, that Shakspero was, as a
poet, inferior
to Pope. This remark, however, from such a man,
though it startles, does not astonish us. He was utterly
incompetent to appreciate the richness, sweetness, and
beauty of that poetic nectar which flowed from the lips
of him who was our noblest muse. Ile said, that the
only excellence of the dramatic minstrel, whose melo-
dies gushed as though "Ilyssus were in his throat," was
his wit, and that among his merits rhythmical modulation
was by no means to be included.
After this, I do not so greatly wonder that a dull,
dry, and dusty mathematician once told us that Milton'.
Paradise Lost is " worth nothing, because it proves
nothing." This scientific pedant would have valued
mere highly the solution of an algebraical problem,' or
an ingenious disposition of straight lines, curves, and
cones. Figures arithmefical be loved, but figures of
speech, or flowers of thought, he could by no possi-
bility understand. Perhaps he would equally have
whichscorneda
contemporary
cariticCOus naita, with the most
Country Churchyard, of
amusing condescension,—" This little poem, how-
ever humble its pretensions, is not without ele-
gance or merit !" What, however, can surprise us,
when Goldsmith's reviewer in the Monthly sot down his
Traveller as a " flimsy production;" when Wordsworth
has been described as the " verbose, dry, drab-coated
proser of the lakes;" when Scott has been compared to
Homer; when Rogers has been eulogised as " superior
to Coleridge, Shelley, or Moore;" when Shakspere has
been sneered at by Ben Jenson as an ignoramus, be-
cause he makes Bohemia a maritime country; and when
beenit has
iha
than
pronounced of of S hell ya poetry, as it was by
characteristic s
" its total want
of meaning."
The truth is, that there can be no absurdity imagined
which has not been perpetrated by critics, at one time or
another. Time, however, cures the little stings inflicted
Gifford,
by the feeble. The day has gone. by when readers of
the Literary Gazette would submit to be told by that
journal that " Queen Mab" was " a mere mass of bloated
words," or that " Adonallu" exhibited nothing but " in-
curable absurdity." Fortunately also the day has long gone
by when that periodical would open its columns for any
critic to effuse through them such spleen of a malignant
soul. The " late remorse of love" has made amends to
the fame of the poet, and if the cheap flatteries of poste-
rity atone anything for the wrongs endured in life, they
have been amply yielded in the " immortals" which
now grace the Roman tomb of Keats, and have made
another Lycidas of Shelley, who does not " float upon
his watery bed without the awed of some melodious
tear."

are surprising when, in, opposition to this, we find
Warton declaring that yQur opinion of Lycidas decides
whether you have a " true taste for poetry or not." Bat
Boswell's bear could not appreciate Milton. As he con-
fessed to Beattie, he n ever read him through till he
wanted to get words for his dictionary. Of Shakspere's
sonnet' he also wrote—" Of the best it can only be said
that they ar© not bad." Pope condemned the author of
Hamlet as writing in "a is: style of a bad age," and re-
gretted that he had not 3opied Sackville more! "Rare
Ben," too, was indifferent as a critic. Spenser's stanzas
"pleased him not, nor biz manner." Shakapere" wanted
art, and sometimes sense. Waller saw nothing in Milton
but " an old blind school maaster, who had written a dull
poem, remarkable for not hing but its length." Milton
preferred Cowley to Drydu a. Dryden esteemed Catherine
Philips above Sappho; an asked p.ermission from the
bard of Paradise Lost to turn that poem into rhyme?
It was he, too, who eulogised Lord Halifax as " the
greatest genius," and Lo rd Rosccnamon as equal to Ho-
race or Virgil. But that te were flatteries which should
have made the receivers .of them blush. What, how-
ever, could be expected fx o m a critic who admired that
Rymer who tells us that :Le character of Desdemona is
below that of any kictien -snaid.
Gray thought Voltaire had no genius but for writ-
ing plays, and scorned the most exquisite productions
of Rousseau. " David El :Lime," he said, Was an infant
all his lite, though unhal ipily he was taught to read and
write."

Obviously, therefore, w 6 en poets begin predicting, and
announcing the distributic it of renown, fur their contem-
poraries, it is not always us that—

The name
Of poet and the p: rophet is the same.
On the contrary, iho most lauded writers 'lava
frequently had the In ost short-lived reputations.
Pegs Pinder. though trs n slated into many languages,
is now decaying in the eut st; and after the ephemeral
brilliance of a few seas ,ons' popularity, thousands of
names vanish and dissi pate like vapours from the
hill. Maccabe gives a g .c,od satirical imitation of one
of these exuberant panegyrics, supposed to be a friendly
criticism from the Mu, Ord Chronicle:—"Ferdinand
Count Schwellinbach.—A tale of the Sclavonic
We welcome with delight this new proof of the genius
of the author of Baptista, or the Traitor's Grave. It is
indeed, an unlooked-for ai :cession to the stores of ro-
mantic fiction, with wl Lich our literature happily
abounds. In it we find th e broad and genial humour of
Fielding; the cutting Bare asm of Smollett; and the deep
tone of feeling and sentin tent which pervades the works
of Sterne; the whole wor [zed up with a power which is
only displayed at inters 'his in the splendid fictions of
Scott; and a sunny gleami mess which is only seen stream-
inz over the page or Avon 'a bard!"
Exaggerated this may si WM, but I have read as un-
diluted encomiastics on the i most squalid performances in
our own day. Criticism, however, is far more honest
than it was fifty years ago, and far more judicious. Good
writers may be "cut up, or, which is worse, they may,
be neglected, while quacks :may be puffed into an evanes-
cent renown; but on the w hole, there is a temperate and
candid tono in the critical Iterature of the day. After all,
however, time is the great judge. Mighty floats of folios,
and sb .ning hot-pressed " twelves,"
qareua quartos, octavos,
perpetually,
drifting
in to oblivion; but the stars cf
real light shine with an eternal lustre. Dr. Howard,
during the reign of Georg the Second, collected copies
of
more than four hundred, editions of Horace. That is
the true monument of an author's fame. Meanwhile,
however, the critics have g :mat power; they are improv-
ing their use of it, and it i 3 to be hoped that this branch
of literature will rise to tl elevation it deserves to oc-
cupy. I, for one, since .E began these remarks, have
mingled some honey with iny ink, and taken the quill of
a dove instead of the stela I pen, so that with this soft
quivering pinion, dipped li=t a phial of sweeter solution,
use books I review in futuve , shall with more charity be
treated ! THE CRITIC REPENTANT.

Byron and Wordsworth were harshly used by
their reviewers ; but they could themselves criticise
harshly, end lot us add, unjustly. The latter spent
hours with Thomas Roscoe, railing at Campbell, and de-
scribed the most magnificent lay of Burns as " over-
rated stuff—miserable insanity, without a thought, with-
out an image." We all remember how bitterly he was
himself assailed by the roaming poet of Newstead Ab-
bey, who seldom missed the opportunity to aim a blow
at the—

Clumsy, frowsy poem, called the "Excursion,"
Writ in a wanner that is my aversion.
Or at " the warbling waggoner,' whose rhymes he com-
pared to the cracking of a ploughman's whip. From
the same pen also descended those reckless lashes which
galled " Bob Southey,"—" turncoat Southey, that incar-
nate lie,"—epithets with which a poet should never soil
his page. Nor did Byron ever display himself more
unworthy of his genius than when he spoke of the beau-
tiful writings of Dean Miltnan, as effusions from " the ox
of verse, who ploughs for every line," though he was,
perhaps, more correct when he likened the stanzas of
Tasso's biographer to " gilded icicles." When, however,
the author of Childe Harold was in the humour to utter
a sarcastic thing, he little cared on whom or what his
arrows fell, whether on Campbell's " drouth hippocrene,"
or Wordsworth's " crazed beyond ally
hope ;" cr
"drunken Coleridge," or "quaint and mouthy Southey ;'
or Walter Savage Landor, that " deep-mouthed Bo"'
Liam" Byron, also, if he could spit venom on an enemy,
was capable of superb laudation on a friend—as on
Moore—

To whom azifiven
He won them well and may hell weasrotnli'm
The lyre and laurels of trium
long!
This miscalled criticism, however aids little the
,
victory of solid literature over the concoctions of
quackery. It is no less ridiculous than that of the
Irishman, who once reviewed a poem in
word hey was rhymed with sea. lie seriously declared
it was a barbarous blunder, or
at learnt poet's license
a
carried beyond the limits of the most extended tolera-
tion. "For," he concluded, "to justify the rhyme, hay
must be supposed to be pronounced kee I"
This Milesian critic was probably as wise in
nature uninspired, untaught by art," But his gene-
ration as his brother of the same craft, who tells us that
which the
Churchill, as a poet, is " drivelling and dull,"—" bY
most offensive instance of criticalwas afforded
vulgarity
many years ago by the Dublin University Review, which
little resembled then the mild and equitable censor now
reigning under a similar title in the Irish capital. The
reviewer had exhausted his acidulous ink
from the book he turned to the author,upon one of
Campbell's poems ; he had not another fierce word to
say; he had not a point left to attack; a line remaining
to dissect. But his yet satisfied. So
rancour was not --
cdiently gross to tell his readers that there was no won-
der Campbell should write ill, since he had " eyes oold
tahne_ glassy, like those of a dead haddock." This, never-
,es though more directly expressed, was perhaps
less malicious than the in sin ' - of a famous London
sinnation
reviewer,when,after added
speaking of Thalaba, he
this ungracious sentence •-." Of Mr. Southey himself we
know nothing, and we desire to know nothing.'
Philosophers pretend to be careless of opinion; but
poets, whatever they affect, very seldom are indifferent.
Wordsworth professed never to read a criticism on his
own works; but Keats, as I have said, perished under
the hand of Gifford; Kirk White was blasted by one
critique; wounded Racine
a single stroke of raillery
almost to death; Hawkesworth is said to have died un-
der the assaults of reviewers, who swarmed like wasps
and stung into the sunshine
him just as he was emerging
of Popularity; Pope writhed under the tortures inflicted
by Dennis; and even Newton cut short a friendship of
twenty years' duration with one who had uttered an un-
favourable criticism on some of his works'
If, however, some authors have been injured by their
reviewers, most owe their reputation to their critics. It
re
was the Literary Gazette which won a laurel wreath for
L. E L,; it
White a name;
E.
it was Leigh Hunt who rescued John Keats from the as-
persions of those who wished to tie their heavy reviews
to his genius, and sink it into oblivion. And in proportion
as. the reviewer is great, does the exultation of the au-
thor he praises rise. Sheridan broke into tears of joy
when he learned that Byron bad uttered a laudation of
his powers. In some instances, indeed, the panegyric
of the amiably-disposed has been as absurd, though not
so contemptible as the detraction of the envious or un-
kind.d Haelitt, for example, declared that the " Lao-
-8113in" was a poem fit only to be read in Elysium. It is
not easy to determine which is most injurious to the
author,—this unscrupulous rancour, or that inconsi-
derate partiality; whether Turner lost more when it
was said that his pictures were " mere daubs of yoke of
egg," or Rogers, when his compositions were described
as superior to those of Coleridge and Shelley.
Good poets are often bad critics, and sometimes false,
because '
jealous. Anna Seward,—who was herself
vain enough to boast that she could translate au ode of
Horace while curling her hair,..—tells us that when
Darwin had published his " Botanic Garden," in
couplets, he never would read blank verse again.
Samuel Johnson, ends his review of " Paradise
Lost" by
-' Saying, that its perusal is rather a duty
than a pleasure; he also said that the diction
of Lycidas was harsh, and its rythm unpleasing: " he
would hang a dog that should read that poem twice."
" What then," asked a lady, "must become of me, who
can say it by heart?" " Die," replied the Goth, "of a
andP e ria, Is
suffi-
ciently ffih e _
surfeit of bad taste." Now the contradictions of genius

EVENING, SEPTEMBER 145 i 852.

THE INCOME-TAX.

Those of our contemporaries who must loudly
clamour for a graduated income-tax, judiciously
evade the trouble of investigating the theory of taxa-
tion by an incessant appeal to common sense—or, in
other words, to the uninstructed popular judgment on
a purely scientific question. On the other hand, the
actuaries who were examined before the Committee
display abundant ingenuity and arithmetical skill, as
well as a general indifference to the practical difficul-
ties. which might result from the adoption of their
proposals. Their calculations are unassailable, and
their conclusions infallible, on the assumption that
they have stated the question correctly. One of the
most judicious of their number observes, with con-
siderable acuteness, that the present impost is unjust
so far as it falls partly on income, and partly on pro-
perty. But the whole of the arguments in favour
of graduation are based on the assumption
that no distinction whatever ought to be nude
between income and capital. The scheme for
converting every income into a perpetuity, by
taxing only the interest on its assumed marketable
worth, is founded on a most arbitrary fiction. As an
ordinary rule, men live on their annual receipts, and
not on 3 per cent. of their saleable value. There are,
of course, exceptions, but all the actuaries in England
will fail to persuade any reasonable person that the
rare operation of capitalizing a professional income
forms the rule of private economy. If, in point of
fact, a lawyer, aged 40, with an income of 1,0001. as,
year—which would be worth, as Mr. Williams in-
forms us, seven years' purchase—were considered by
himself and his neighbours as the owner of 2001. a
year, the State might safely assess him at that suin,in
the expectation that it would descend to his children.
But, in reality, the income is transitory, and so is the
per tentage levied by the tax-gatherer ; nor would the
assessment be strictly just, even on the assumption
which we have suggested. Professional incomes have
been adjusted•
with some reference to the wants of
the recipient,
as proportioned to his education and
position; and
assuredly the foundation of au heredi-
tary estate was never
indispen-
sable necessaries ofconsidered one of the
undue greediness when.the century were professional existence.
The Popes of thei7th
ages or principalities nephewsforthYeir.
sons. In England, however, itof
created p e perpetual alal ace lcguia
tspiempaaanot of
undue
seem, accord-
. 0 is to
ecclesiastical incomes are principally ing to the judgment of some
alithe witnesses, that
patrimoniesassumption
bishop
o r
that
af for
prebendary
ht
ell ew dl l elsec
ae
von
efd
ha4:si pts each
incumbent.intended tofo un d
be fixed on the
the full value
l for his
whichof the
ownof hislifepreferment,interest.
Some
ot o
the a
present day would, according to the schpermeeatiens
all the actuaries concur, be assessed at not more
one-fifteenth or one-twentieth part of their
actualth re-
venues. venues. It is surprising that gentlemen so competent
to calculate individual chances, should have forgotten
that a large number of casualties virtually amount to
a certainty. The entire income of the Church is a
perpetuity, though all existing incumbents may
possibly die to-morrow ; yet the witnesses deem
it demonstrably just—and some of our contemporaries
echo the assertion—that the revenues of the Church,
as compared with hereditary property, should be at
once increased by a definite and calculable per ten-
tage. The incomes of the legal profession, being held
by a more insecure tenure, will doubtless receive a
still larger advantage. The landlord will not find
that, on an average of years, he pays less to his soli-
citor than formerly; but he will have the satisfaction
of knowing that he also pays income-tax for the
purpose of ensuring the lives both of attorney and
counsel. Nor will his steward fail to derive a similar
benefit. In former days, two or three per cent. on
the rental may, perhaps, have been considered a
sufficient remuneration for agency. But new
lights have arisen. The rental, being hereditary, is
subjected to income-tax; but service, prover-
bially, is no inheritance, and the steward's place
may not be worth three years' purchase. The tax,
therefore, is levied, ,in his case, on the interest of
three times the annual value, while the employer
pays on thirty-four times his yearly revenue. After
the expiration of the three years, he must still pay
the same or another steward; but he will not the
less continue liable to the same disproportionate as-
sessment. Under such circumstances, one of two
results must ensue. Either a general readjustment
of salaries and of professional remuneration must take
place—or the entire sum paid by the community, in
the form of fees and wages, must be proportionally
increased by the exact amount which the actuaries
and their friends propose to deduct from the tax on
precarious incomes. Until this obvious consequence
has been explained and justified, theoretical reasoners
will concur in that disinclination to change which
practical politicians entertain on grounds of fiscal
convenience. It is scarcely necessary to add that
any diminution of salaries to meet a graduated in-
come-tax would itself prove that the new-fangled
system introduced an anomaly.
While the scientific advocates of fiscal inequality
are considering this difficulty, we may conveniently
turn to the so-cAod olljectione of common sense—
one of which is urged by a correspondent of our own,
under the appropriate signature of " Ignoramus,"
aho prefaces his remarks with the candid admission,
"I am very ignorant." We have no doubt that
" Ignoramus" at least understands his own affairs too
well to have engaged in the ruinous transaction which
he has thought fit to convert from an hypothesis into
a narrative. It will be observed that the bargain
which he describes was made "a short time since "
at a period, therefore, when the income-tax had ex-
isted for ten years, and was likely to continue for
ten years more. We can assure " Ignoramus " that,
although eminent actuaries may have forgotten so
trifling a consideration, no purchaser of any security
can be affected by an impost, however unjust origi-
nally, which existed at the time of the contract.
Our correspondent, on his own showing, deliberately
incurred the loss of which he complains. If there
were an income-tax of 50 per cent. on short annuities,
a purchaser, with notice of the burden, could be in
"Ignoramus" states
no way injured or aggrieved.
his case thus :
" 90/. per annum, dividend on 3,0001. Three per
Cent. Consols,jias been my income hitherto, exempt
from tax. A short time since a friend, on the eve of
his departure from England, had immediate occasion
for 3,0001. I sold my stock ; lent him the money at
the same rate of interest that it yielded in Consols
(3 per cent.), he giving me a charge upon his estate.
I was to be repaid in three years,l,oool. in each year.
In the ordinary way the money would have come
back to me thus :—End of
Ist year 1,0001., with interest on 3,000/..... 1,0901.
2d „ 1,0001., ~ 2,000/..... 1,060/.
31 „ 1,000/.5 1,0001..... 1,0301.

In all 3,1801.
By re-investing in Consols 1,0001. of the first receipt,
the dividend thereon, added to 601. of the second,
retained as income, would leave 1,0001. again to re-
invest; and the dividend on the 2,0001., added to 301.
of the third, would leave another 1,0001., which, re-
invested, would replace me as I was before ; I in each
year having had the same income, 90/.
" But, to meet the convenience of my friend, I
agreed to take a charge on his estate entitling me to
receive 1,0601. in each of the three years, amounting
in the aggregate to the same sum of 3,180/. And I
now find myself in this position :---If the
income-
tax is continued at its present rate, and is made
to apply, as it now doesa,orateo
of
fmporary as to
yourt h
perpetual annuities, as
corres-
pondents contend that it ought,
have now an annuity for threeyears eonf,
1,0601.1
per annum, not exempt from tax. I shall be taxed on
3,1801., in the three years—viz., 921. 155., besides on
the dividends on the first two investments, making.i
more than 90/.—M thsre l e
all more than 95/. ; and
o
this tax of 95/. falls ycaenarnsot27toar_oasnin in-
comewhich
with a weight exceeding 35 per
cent., I must, therefore, either limit my expenditure
to 551. per annum, or I must cutinto the
Place
That such a transaction should have taken P
during the existence ~ _we of the income-taxis, is, as have
inconve-
nience practical) • *bl The utmost
y impossi e. first impos-
which could arise, except at the
ent of bar-
tion of the tax, would be the discouragement of
indeed,
gains in the particular form suPPosea principal."
actual law, if pro-
be doubted whether, even under thewould have been
perly enforced, the capital
i:luainced. But if the law
liable to duty to it Was rres'inas"
were interpreted as g assumes, the in-
convenienceould only be attributable
to the unavoidable
of the result"lgweneral terms. When Par-
liamentctuahsxe on annuities, it is not on the
incomes are mere instalments of
supposition im ptohsaets
such
of an estate is paid
a debt.it is •
of in one, evidently
in three annual sums,
insteadimpost.The case suggested by our
not liable to the . .
If the purchase-money
is of a similar kind ; and a puzzle will
to the precise boundary line between
always Thirty or twenty years ago
income and property.
correspondent
nr
as
the Government Long Annuities were universally
treated as income ; and when the income-tax was im-
posed in 1842, by far the greater part of that Stock
was held under the same character. No holder who
has purchased since that year has a right to complain
of a tax which must have been taken into account in
his bargain. But, in 1852, the Long Annuities
which will expire in 1860 have naturally come to be
treated only as a matter of speculation, or,
in other words, as capital. The purchaser
at the present time intends to re-invest his re-
ceipts, after deducting the ordinary rate of interest—
in other words, he is practically acquiring a per-
petuity ; and so long as a belief in the permanence of
the present income-tax prevails in the market, he may,
effect this object on as advantageous terms as if the
impost had never been devised. A respected cor-
respondent, who signed himself " A Capitalist," will,
we are convinced, not dispute this qualification of the
conclusions at which he arrived on the assumption of
a new tax being about to be imposed. As a general