"This is the work of a man who seems to have an alert appreciation of the poetic side of things."
This he asked Mr. Bryant to sign and return to him for use as an advertisement, explaining that "Your great name will help me to sell my book, and I need the money. It cost me nearly two hundred dollars to get the book out, and so far I haven't been able to sell more than twenty-seven copies of it, though I have canvassed three counties at considerable expense for food, lodging, and horse-feed."
I saw how seriously distressed Mr. Bryant was by this appeal, and volunteered to answer the letter myself, by way of relieving him. I answered it, but I did not report the nature of my answer to Mr. Bryant, for the reason that in my personal letter I dealt by no means "gently" with this particular poet.
For the further distraction of Mr. Bryant's mind from a matter that distressed him sorely, I told him of the case in which a thrifty and shifty London publisher turned to good advertising account one of the Saturday Review's most murderous criticisms. The Review had written:
"There is much that is good in this book, and much that is new. But that which is good is not new, and that which is new is not good."
The publisher, in his advertisements, made display of the sentence: "There is much that is good in this book, and much that is new.—Saturday Review."
One thing leads to another in conversation and I went on—by way of the further diversion of Mr. Bryant's mind—to illustrate the way in which the Saturday Review, like many other publications, sometimes ruined its richest utterances by dilution. I cited a case in which that periodical had begun a column review of a wishy-washy book by saying:
"This is milk for babes, with water superadded. The milk is pure and the water is pure, but the diet is not invigorating."
As a bit of destructive criticism, this was complete and perfect. But the writer spoiled it by going on to write a column of less trenchant matter, trampling, as it were, and quite needlessly, upon the corpse of the already slain offender.
The habit of assuming that the distinguished editor of a newspaper writes everything of consequence that appears in its columns, is not confined to rural poets in Ohio, as three occurrences during my service on the Evening Post revealed to me.