Page:The Newspaper and the Historian.djvu/356



fields from which it finds the community drawing its mental food, and to point out, to the best of its ability, what those fields produce— what is bad and what is good ; what had better be tasted, what digested , and what thrown away; to keep before the public the best standard in every department, and point out

departures from it, according to the critic's understanding of it.” 22

The monthlies have for themost part paid comparatively little attention to criticism ,23 and it is to the quarterlies that in general,

especially in the early days of serious reviewing, the historian must turn for information in regard to the reception accorded new works of literature. How far can he accept the contemporary

verdict of the critic as authoritative and final? It must be said that much of the criticism of the nineteenth

century, especially that through the first half, and especially that of the quarterlies, was characterized by personal abuse and private hostility, and was lacking in nearly every characteristic that is now associated with genuine literary criticism. The critics indeed took themselves and their work most seriously. Sydney Smith gives the reasons that led him and other young enthusiasts to found the Edinburgh Review in 1802 and he explains that to appreciate its value " the state of England at the period

when that journal began should be had in remembrance," — all the manifold abuses and the thousand evils that were in existence in English political and social conditions were to be

lessened or removed by the new review .24 Yet even so, Harriet Martineau, in speaking of these young men who had projected

the Edinburgh Review, feels that " there is no doubt that these young advocates of freedom indulged in much tyranny, and the most vehement denouncers of oppression inflicted dreadful pain ,” and she cites Romilly as saying: “ The editors seem to

23 " Our Literature and Our Critics,” TheNation, March 1, 1866, 2: 266 – 267: 23 The Paisley Magazine, for example , commented in 1828 on “ the fierce

invasion with which Magazines now threaten Reviews," and notes that “ Magazines have been obliged thus to come into collision with Reviews," a situation to be deprecated since “ reviewers are the caterpillars of litera ture. . . . Critics they are not .” — “ Magazines and Reviews,” April, 1828 , I : 169 – 179.

24 Works of Sydney Smith, Pref