New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1904-05-18
"SLOSHY" REVIEWING.
The IgnobIe Arnly Of Tzcaddlers and
the EUiL They DO.
nm The London Saturday Review.

From The London Saturday Review
It is a truism that every critic, every reviewer.
should keep his mind the masterpieces. BY
what accident is il that in these days almost
all books seem to almost all critics as good as II
they had written them themselves CRITICISMS
in general are become testimonials, mere sup
pressions OF the bad, and thus necessarily give
one no idea of the value Of the book and very
little of its nature. If a cook has all the moral
qualities you know that she never made toll
cradle omeette If a schoolmaster is described
as an acute scholar, a delightful man, you
know he has utterly failed to keep his form in
order. If book is in admirable taste. delicate
~ written, with touches OF Lamb and reminls-
cences Of Hazlitt, you may be tolerably sure
that it is a book making essay in nat platltude
Censure is thing TO be apologized for; 1t Is
taken by authors and publishers as a symptom
Of animus and in consequence criticism has
come to such pass that notices of the slighter,
sketchier novels suggest that talent swarms;
and criticisms OF the rapid work Of ten or twelve
leading novelists'' would lead any uninitiated
reader to suppose that Balzacs were everywhere
1t were well enough If lived in an age OF
masterpiece in that candid age" which
No other way could tell
To be ingenious but by speaking wen,
when, rightly enough who best could praise
had then the greatest praise" MARVEL had
grounds for railing against "envious caterpil-
lars" "woodpeckers. paper rats, book scorpions,
he would certainly that to praise all is TO
make impossible praise OF ths elect. When
every one is somebody than no ones any
body" in the words OF one satirist OF the time.
Indeed. satire has itself been killed by the wash
Of compliment and no one even laughs when
Shakespeares are two penny" like the daily
papers. Perhaps the finest protest against this
complimentary twaddle was made in America,
the country which most needed it; and Of the
debt which Americans owe to Edgar Allen Poe.
II they have desire to pay il, We are reminded
IN a well annotated book OF selections from his
works To Poe pTaising bad work slurring
faults as a lie IN the soul He the
apostle Of literary purity; yet how few people
have heard of that should-be famous locus clas-
scus, the prospectus Of the Penn Magazine.
The new magazine Is to be remarkable for an
absolutely independent criticism holding itself
alOOf from all personal bias; acknowledging no
fear save that OF outraging the right; yielding
no point either 10 the vanity of the author or
TO assumptions Of antique prejudice, or to the
involute and anonymous cant Of the quarterlies,
or TO the arrogance of those organized cliques
which hang like nightmares on American Ntera-
ture. manufacture, at the nod of our principal
booksellers, a pseudo public-Opinion by whole
sale" With what fine scorn he speaks OF
''laudation'; and yet he is the most splendid Of
miTation had eyes. For a little while the force
Of Poe's original insight and free onslaughts
sent up the circulation of one of the magazines
by 100 per cent, and literary taste by that
measure for the moment raised. But the effect
Of the protest against vacuous and commercial
''laudation' in England or America has never
lasted long in either country. Sloshy panegyrio
IS the note Of the critic. Here are we finding
the virtues of Shakespeare, BalZac and Boswell
IN shelf loads of fnical verses dilettante
novels ard vulgar biographies of nobodies with
such a model behind us as Poe who, In spite of
its merits, rated the mistakes Of "Barnaby
Ridge" and THE Drama of Exile and put his
knife into the ''devilled Kidneys of Charles
O'Malley." Are books written better now or Is
it only that they sell better?