The semi-weekly messenger. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1897-1908, 1898-01-04
WILMINGTON. n. C..
DEFECTS IN CRITICISM

opinions of even of the
arises in the variant and antagonizing
opinions Of critics of supposed taste.
Judgment, acquisition and ability, and
the excessive praise bestowed by lead
ing literary opponents on both sides of
h Atlantic. The Messenger has com
mented upon the laudations of books of
ephemeral career and the great extrav-
agance INDUCED in by critics of the
gifts of writer's of the last one or two
decades. We have pointed out that SO
great is the indulgence in adjectives as
applied to new writer's, that il the
greatest geniuses of the world in the
literature were to eappea there would
be no language strong enough left with
(which to characterize their powers and
productions. You will find the same
exhaustive terms applied most freely
to the recent poets and to recent now
e1ists as are applied discriminatory to
the great masters in the ages from
Homer to Tennyson, and from Richard
son and Fielding to Thackeray. Dick
ems and George Eliot. Recent critics
so laud and magnify late contem-
porary writers that the readers moi
thoroughly versed in the literatures of
the last three centuries will conclude
that in Weyman, Doyle, Hawkins, and
a dozen others of the romantic and his
torical school you have full rivals Of
Scott, Hugo, Dumas, the elder, and any
-ala,. . +lo er,ao toet ,of tho 70 col, M
ing school. When Meredith, Hardy,
Baackmore, Mrs. Ward and some others
of the cleverest novelists of the last
thirty years are considered, you will
be induced to believe that they are
essentially greater, not only greater
than Bulwer, Trollope, Charles Reade,
Mulock, Charlotte Bronte, Charles
Kingsley and his brother, but greater
even tina Fielding, Jane Austen, Scott,
Thackeray, Dickens, and George Eliot.
AN this is brought about by the VIOLA
ton of taste, sanity of judgment, a pro-
per appreciation of terms and that pen
etration without which there can be no
sound Interpretation of genius, and no
reliable information as to merit COM
municated. Holding this through some
years, as we have been misled again
and again by the indulgence of super
Iatives in criticism, we are rejoiced to
see signs Of a return to more sober and
bakanced criticism-to a more rigid and
candid examination of contemporary
writers and their productions.
The super-abounding adjectives must
be eliminated, and right judgment,
based upon candid study and calm
consideration, must be delivered, or else
criticisms in leading newspapers and
literary journals will be utterly mis-
leading and uninforming. We have
been led frequently to read novels by
the splendid Endorsements of authori-
tics we trusted, and found them not
comparable to the description and far
below the rank assigned them. Recent
ay we read with very muct satisfaction
a critical essay, in London Literature"
upon 1.-The Age of Superlatives." 1t
was so much in accord with our own
conclusions previously stated and from
time to time through at least two or
three years, that we naturally felt glad
to see a first rate literary English
weekly discussing the grossest abuses of
criticism and apply the cautery 80
promptly, for the essay appears in the
seventh issue Of that able critical ga
zette. 1t is so vigorous and direct in it's
censure Of critical outrages upon sense
N taste and judgment, that we take
leave to cop a passage or so. The
editor sys:
'For, indeed, the immense reading
public so called, of today-that gross
sndiscriminate feeder upon all printed
matter which has anything of an appe-
tizing appearance-never stops to dis
finguish between either the quality or
the Source~of its food. To the guileless
Of gossip about books and
their authors every puff paragraph is
CRITICISM and the ignorant or inter-
ested raptures of the casual scribe who
penned it become the authoritative pro-
nouncement of 8 critic. y tCriti-
cism,' of the kind to which he Ca con-
tributcr) refers has become a mere
orgie of superlatives. A young rhymer
cannot produce a volume OF creditable
verse without being acclaimed as a
great poet; a new novelist writes a
stirring romance of adventure, and he
is paraded before us as the legitimate
successor-possibqy the future rival
OF Scott; an experimentalizing essayist
turns out a series of pretty PAPER on
fha carving of cherry stones and he
is discovered to have begun where
Lamb left off; a word painter, just re-
emily started in business. dashes off a
slim booklet of impressionist studies,
and we are invited to hail another
Ruskin; a rhapsodist rhapsodizes about
his own or somebody. else's emotions,
and an ave. R-public is Informed
ew music to Eng
Of give par
1--WE read
pg Post,