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By Root 15968 0

unopposed by the press at large, but absolutely supported in proportion to the vociferous clamor with which they are made — in exact accordance with their utter baselessness and untenability? We should have no trouble of pointing out, to-day, some twenty or thirty so-called literary personages, who, if not idiots as we half think them, or if not hardened to all sense of shame by a long course of disingenuousness, will now blush, in the perusal of these words, with a consciousness of the shadowy nature of that purchased pedestal upon which they stand — will now tremble in thinking of the 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 speciousnes[[s]] 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 thse [[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,