The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Edgar Allan Poe [747]
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 forgetrulness [[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 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 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"