New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1870-06-16
LITERARY RESPONSIBILITY.

LITERARY RESPONSIBILITY
The extraordinary and melancholy interest
excited by the death of Mr.. Dickens has yet
hardly at all abated; the newspapers still come
to us full-freighted with notices of the de-
parted novelist. No literary man has died in
our time whose loss will be so generally re-
gretted. Indeed Mr.. Dickens's fame quite
stands out from ordinary literary success-cer-
tainly since Voltaire (who was quite differ
ent writer we suspect that no one has had so
many readers and yet between the number
of Voltares admirers and that of Mr.. Dick
ens's it would be absurd to make any compar-
ison. For the purpose OF any such COM
putation the two men are not to be named
together for Mr.. Dickens was fortunate
enough to live in an age of universal
reading, and of a light and portable literature
which has made reading universally possible.
When Sir Charles Grandson came, with his
ineffable grace and his inexpressible goodness,
he came in so many volumes that only rich
people could afford to buy his biography.
Smollet, we think, set the example of publish
ing one of his novels in cheap monthly parts
but even this expedient could not compensate
for the small number of ordinary people who
of things with the hordes, the swarms, the
countless caravans of readers which MIR. Dick
ems has had. What tremendous power has
been his, and how faithfully and honorably has
that power, on the whole, been exercised! If
there be here and there in these novels few
things which have made people no better, how
few are there which have made them worse.
Now, knowledge may be power but it is not
perity. There is a knowledge of Good and
there is a knowledge of Evil. There are books
which confuse the moral perceptions, bewilder
the heart, and make truth and virtue seem
but empty cheats-popular books, fascinating
books, which the Devil himself might have
written, and then scattered broadcast to work
an infinity of misery and wo and degradation
of body and of mind. There is one book in
the English tongue written by man of singu-
lar literary dexterity, which has done infinite
mischief-a book not to be named, and for the
writing of which, if the author was not con-
demned to unquenchable fires, he must now
be at least in PurgatOry with but in
tinitesmal chances of getting out. This
was the kind of Popular Literature which was
once supplied for the reading of the poor in
England; and it may be sold there to some
extent still. But the difference is that there
are now better chances, if one chooses to seek
them, and inexpensive chances at that. We
question whether Mr.. Dickens's works are so
much read in England as in America but
even there they must have had most refining
influence. He is not "goodyish )" be can call
spade spade upon occasion; but he is a
singularly clean writer, and absolutely free
from pruriency of thought, though employing
occasional coarseness of expression and the
morality of his books is always healthy, ro-
bust, and benevolent.
But we are not intending a criticism of Mr..
Dickens's books, nor specially notice of their
author. What we desire to point out is the
immense responsibility which the general adj
dicton to reading has imposed upon the liter
airy class-upOn the writers particularly of
Poems, Dramas Novels, and Newspapers. We
do not think that there is so much bad and
cheap printed matter in the market as there
was a few years ago-but there is enough to
do great deal of mischief, though fortunately
much of it is too dull for the general endur-
ance of mankind. But in the heat and hurry
of fugitive literary labor, even the cautious
may lapse into the PRONUNCIATION of error or into
OHtuseS against SOOu TASTE ana SOunu crlIlCS1n.
1t is MT pleasant consideration that you may
be in danger of misleading a fellow creature,
who, in his turn, may mislead one of his fell
low-creatures, and SO on, ad mfRitum. 1t
makes one see deadly weapon in his pen, and
all Tartarus in his inkstand. Mr.. Carlyle
once humorously said in preface to new
edition of his own Life of Schiller that it
was a book which deserved "tO be knocked
on the head !" yet book once printed un-
fortunately could not be knocked on the head
but went up and down doing all manner of
mischief This is true of much printed mat
ter, though during scarcity of rags the |
paper-mills have sent quantities of folly to OBJ |
liyion. But we have often thought that the |
old verse about dying and leaving no line |
which one would wish TO blot out, had in it a |
good deal of pathetic significance. 1t is easy |
to be wrong. 1t is so difficult to comprehend !
the exact want of the reader 1t is so hard, |
even with the best intention, always to avoid |
the suggestion of the false. Well, God grant |
that all honest gentlemen who are plying |
their pens may make no mistake of matter or |
uanner. AS Tor the dishonest writer's in the |