The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Edgar Allan Poe [750]
It has become, indeed, the plain duty of each individual connected with the press, heartily to give whatever influence he possesses, to the good cause of integrity, and the Truth. The results thus attainable will be found worthy [[of]] his closest attention and best efforts. We shall thus frown down all conspiracies to foist inanity upon the public consideration, at the obvious expense of every man of talent who is not a member of a clique in power. We may even arrive, in time, at that desirable point from which a distinct view of our men of letters may be obtained, and their respective pretensions adjusted, by the standard of a rigorous and self-sustaining criticism alone. That their several positions are as yet properly settled — that the posts which a vast number of them now hold, are maintained by any better tenure than that of the chicanery upon which we have commented — will be asserted by none but the ignorant, or the parties who have best right to feel an interest in the "good old condition of things." No two matters can be more radically different than the reputation of some of our prominent littérateurs, as gathered from the mouths of the people — who glean it from the paragraphs of the papers — and the same reputation as deduced from the private estimate of intelligent and educated men. We do not advance this fact as a new discovery. Its truth, on the contrary, is the subject, and has long been so, of every-day witticism and mirth.
Why not? Surely there can be few things more ridiculous than the general character and assumptions of the ordinary critical notices of new books. A back-woods editor, sometimes without the shadow of the commonest attainment — always without time — often without brains — does not hesitate to give the world to understand that he is in the daily habit of critically reading and deciding upon a flood of publications, one-tenth of whose title-pages he may possibly have turned over — three-fourths of whose contents would be Hebrew to his most desperate efforts at comprehension — an whose entire mass and amount, as might be mathematically demonstrated, would be sufficient to occupy, in the most cursory perusal, the attention of some ten or twenty readers for a month. What he wants in plausibility, however, he makes up in obsequiousness — what he lacks in time, he supplies in temper. He is the most easily pleased man in the world. He admires everything, from the big dictionary of NOAH WEBSTER, to the last diamond edition of TOM THUMB. Indeed his sole difficulty is in finding tongue to express his delight. Every pamphlet is a miracle — every book in boards is an epoch in letters. His phrases, therefore, grow larger and larger every day; and if it were not for talking "HARRISON AINSWORTH," we might call him a "regular swell."
Yet, in the attempt at getting definite information in regard tn any one portion of our literature, the merely general reader, or the foreigner, will turn in vain from the lighter to the heavier journals. But it is not our intention here to dwell upon our Magazines. Undoubtedly, one of the very best of them was "Arcturus." It was edited by gentlemen of taste, of high talent, and of much general literary knowledge. Of the honesty of Arcturus we have a high opinion — but what even it did, or was likely to do, in tho cause of judicious criticism, may be gleaned from a passage in one of its most elaborate contributed papers. It says: —
"But now, criticism has a wider scope and a universal interest. It dismisses errors of grammar, and hands over an imperfect rhyme, or a false quantity, to the proofreader. It looks now to the heart of the subject, and the author's design. It is a test of opinion. Good criticism may be well asked for, since it is the type of the literature of the day. A criticism, now, includes