As for the critics, the majority of them no doubt only do what they are told. It is a thousand pities the habit of reviewing so many new books in the literary papers has become general. It is a trade thing. Were a literary paper to have no advertising columns, do you suppose it would review half the new books it does? Certainly not. It gets the books, and it gets the advertisements, and then it does the best it can for itself and its readers by distributing the former amongst its contributors with the request that they will make as lively ‘copy’ as they can out of the materials thus provided them. The reviews are written and printed; then begins the wail of the author: My reviewer, says he, has not done me justice; his object appears to have been, not to show me off, but himself. There is no sober exposition of my plan, my purpose, my book, but only a parade of the reviewer’s own reading and a crackling of his thorns under my pot. The author’s complaint is usually just, but he should remember that in nine cases out of ten his book calls for no review, and certainly would receive none on its merits. The review is not written for those who have read or intend to read the book, but for a crowd of people who do not mean to read it, but who want to be amused or interested by a so-called review of it, which must therefore be an independent, substantive literary production.
What a mercy it would be if the critical journals felt themselves free to choose their own subjects, new and old, and recognised that it was their duty to help to form the taste of their readers, and not merely to pick their provender for them or to promote the prosperity of publishers, which, as a matter of fact, they can no longer do.
The critics who criticise in print, were they left to themselves, would be found praising enthusiastically all they found praiseworthy in contemporary effort. Even now, when their tempers must be sorely tried by the dreary wilderness in which they are compelled to sojourn, it is marvellous how quick they are to snuff the fresh, blowing airs of genuine talent. It is slander to say that present-day critics are grudging of praise. They are far too free with it. Had they less hack-work, they might by chance become a little more fastidious; but even if this were so, it would only increase their joy, delight, and satisfaction in making the discovery that somebody or another—some Stevenson, some Barrie, some Kipling—had actually written something which was not only in form but in fact a new book.
Fiery souls there would no doubt always be who would insist, on occasions, in rushing out to strike the shield of some many-editioned living author, and defy him to mortal combat. An occasional fray of the kind is always an agreeable incident, but a wise editor would do his best to control the noble rage of his contributors, bidding them remember the words of John Keats: ‘The sure way, Bailey, is first to know a man’s faults, and then be passive.’
The time and space liberated by giving up the so-called criticism of bad and insignificant books could be devoted to the real criticism of the few living and the many dead classics; and, for one does occasionally get a little weary of the grand style, with arguments and discussions about smaller folk. If basting there must be, let it be the basting of the brainless compilers, the plagiarists, the sham philosophers, and the languishing poetasters of the past. Dead donkeys are far more amusing than living ones, and make much better texts for fierce critics than men with wives and families dependent upon them. The vagaries of great authors have often done harm in their generation; the follies of small ones, including the supreme and most visible of all their follies, that of thinking themselves great, have never harmed a human creature.
Elliot Stock, Paternoster Row, London.