Complete Essays, Literary Criticism, Cryptography, Autography, Translations & Letters. Эдгар Аллан По
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feebleness of the breath which will be adequate to the blowing it from beneath their feet. With the help of a hearty good will—even we may yet tumble them down. There is not a decent individual in all Christendom who would not applaud us for so doing.
In our general design we see difficulties to be overcome—yet are prepared, because resolved, to overcome them. For example; so firm, through a long endurance, has been the hold taken upon the popular mind (at least so far as we may consider the popular mind reflected in ephemeral letters) by the laudatory system which we have deprecated, that what is, in its own essence, a vice, has become endowed with the appearance, and met with the reception of a virtue. Antiquity, as usual, has lent a certain degree of speciousness even to the absurd. So continually have we puffed, that we have at length come to think puffing the duty, and plain speaking the dereliction. What we began in gross error we persist in through habit. Having adopted, in the earlier days of our literature, the untenable idea that this literature, as a whole, could be advanced by an indiscriminate approbation bestowed upon its every effort,—having adopted this idea, we say, without attention to the obvious fact that praise of all was bitter although negative censure to the few alone deserving, and that the only tendency of the system, in the fostering way, would be the fostering of folly—we now continue our vile practices through the supineness of custom—even while, in our national self-conceit, we indignantly repudiate the notion of the present existence of that suppositious necessity for patronage and protection, in which originated our conduct. In a word, the press throughout the country has not been ashamed to make head against the very few bold attempts at independence, which have, from time to time, been made in the face of the reigning order of things. And, if, in one, or perhaps two, insulated cases, the spirit of severe truth, urged with high talent, and sustained by an unconquerable will, was not to be so put down—then, forthwith, were private chicaneries set in motion—then was had resort, on the part of those who conceived themselves injured by the severity of the criticism (and who were so, if the just contempt of every ingenuous man is injury,) resort to arts of the most virulent indignity—to untraceable slanders of a character so utterly outrageous and outre, that, while the sensitive minds thus assailed sunk for a brief period beneath their influence, the monstrous absurdity of the slanders themselves precluded the possibility (as the petty assassins had well anticipated,) of any, or even the slightest effort at reply. We say these things were done—while the press in general looked on, and, with a full understanding of the wrong perpetuated, spoke not against the wrong. The idea had absolutely gone abroad—had grown up little by little into toleration—that attacks however just, upon a literary reputation however obtained—however untenable—were well retaliated by the basest and most unfounded traduction of personal fame. But is this an age—is this a day—in which it can be necessary even to advert to such considerations, as that the book of the author is the property of the public, and that the issue of the book is the throwing down of the gauntlet to the reviewer whose duty is the plainest—the duty not even of approbation, or of censure, or of silence, at his own will, but at the sway of those sentiments, and of those opinions, which are derived from the author himself, through the medium of his written and published words? True criticism is the reflection of the thing criticised upon the spirit of the critic.
There is no prevalent error more at war with the real interests of literature, than that of supposing these interests to demand a suppression, in any degree, of the feelings—whether of enthusiastic admiration, or of ridicule, or of contempt, or of disgust—which are experienced, in regard only to the pages before him, by the public censor of a book thrown open avowedly to the inspection of the public. He is circumscribed, and should be circumscribed, by no limits save those of the book itself. That he should not be personal, is, of course, a point too thoroughly understood to need comment. He is to forget that the author has an existence apart from his authorship. This forgetfulness and the laws of critical art, are his sole fetters. Yet men are to be found, even to day, who will contend that all sarcasm is inadmissible—that its use is a personal bias, even when levelled most rigidly at letters alone—that the business of the critic, in short, is to repress every impulse (except, perhaps, when impulse makes in favor of the reviewed) and to present a false, in presenting a subdued, image of the impression he has received from what he has read. Such thinkers, however, or rather such individuals innocent of thought, are usually they who have the most to fear from the effects of the research they would overthrow. For some people, indeed, whom we know, as the loudest in outcry, the question is an awkwardly one-sided affair. No satirist, they answer very well as subjects for satire. They are no Archilochuses themselves. They have small pretensions to the αχλύς òς τρìν ετηεν. But then we have nothing to do with their peculiarities. We cannot trouble ourselves with attention to their feeble capacities for action or passion. We positively refuse to be bound down by the self-interest of their unsupported and insupportable assertions.
In the attempt at obtaining definite information in regard to the whole of any one portion of our literature—and, especially, in regard to the department of Romance—the merely general reader, or the foreigner, will turn in vain from the lighter to the heavier journals. It is not our intention here to dwell upon the radical, antique, systematized deficiency of our Quarterlies. It is in the favor of these saturine pamphlets, that they contain, now and then, a good essay de omnibus rebus et quibusdam aliis, which may be looked into, without decided somnolent consequences, at any period not immediately subsequent to dinner. But it is useless to expect criticism from periodicals called “Reviews” from never reviewing—as lucus is lucus a non lucendo. Besides, all men know, or should know, that these books are sadly given to verbiage. It is a part of their nature—a point of their faith. Nobody minds them. No one pays any attention to their proceedings. They love generalities and are rarely particular. Your veteran Reviewer has ideas of his own, and is fussy in parting with them. His wit lies with his truth, in a well; and there is always a world of trouble in getting it up. He is a sworn enemy of all things simple and direct. He gives no ear to the advice of the giant Moulineau—“Belier, mon ami commencez au commencment.” He either jumps at once into the middle of his subject, or gets in at a back door, or sidles up to it with the gait of a crab. No other mode of approach has an air of sufficient profundity. When fairly in for it, however, he is seldom able to see his way out. He is dazzled with the scintillations of his own wisdom. A film comes over his eyes—the ηχηεντες ιαμβοι. Tired of laughing at his antics, or frightened at seeing him flounder, the reader at length shuts him up in the book. “What song the Syrens sang,” says Sir Thomas Browne, “or what name Achilles assumed when he hid himself among women, though puzzling questions, are not beyond all conjecture”—but we think that, in nine cases out of ten, it would pose Sir Thomas, backed by Achilles and all the Syrens in Heathendom, to say what is the object of the droll circumgyratory manuvers of a regular-bred Quarterly Reviewer.
In the fulfilment of our purpose, already stated, we shall endeavor, at least, to be perspicuous. We shall not reject the manifest advantages of method. We shall be pardoned for proceeding as if such things as previous criticisms were not. It is our desire, especially, to bear upon the reader’s mind the fullest impression of the honesty of our opinions—an impression derivable from the internal evidence afforded by these opinions themselves. We shall make it manifest that we fear no man nor set of men—yet would not have it supposed, for a moment, that we design to deal at all in the language of that region where, Addison assures us, “they sell the best fish and speak the plainest English.”
In our next article under this head we shall comment upon the novels of CHARLES BROCKDEN BROWN. The whole series of papers may be drawn out to some length—but this is a necessary evil. It may also chance that some of those with whom we are related on terms of honest, social friendship, come under the ban—and others, whose contributions to the pages of this Magazine place them in the light of coadjutors, and, of a consequence seem to elevate them above the wholesome investigations of critical impartiality, may accuse us of a lack of urbanity and literary comity in discussing their graver labors in the spirit of severe truth. The reader whose attention has been lent to a perusal of our foregoing remarks will understand the principles governing us in all such cases, and we can but say to those who may be directly concerned, that we think not less favorably of the man while it becomes our duty to expose the faults of the author.
To our co-laborers in the Press,