on the house-tops, by way of showing your abhorrence for such sins; whereas your responsibility is in truth limited by your own example and that of those over whom you have power and influence. If then you are sufficiently intimate with the party to speak yourself to himself about it, do so; but you are not likely to good by speaking of it to any one else, and are very sure to do harm. I have said my say pretty much, and now methinks I hear some grave person exclaiming with asperity, 'And so, Sir, you consider talking about sin as bad as sin itself. You put gossip on a level with profligacy.' My dear Sir, or Madam, I do not think any better of dissipation than you do; but I think worse of scandal. I do not palliate the one: I condemn the other. It is not easy, or pleasant, or profitable, if it be possible, to weigh the comparative heinousness or veniality of sins in themselves, but we can calculate the harm they do to others, and you can see as well as I, that while the evil produced by an act of debauchery or extravagance is frequently, if not generally, temporary and limited in its effects, ten words of scandal may set half-a-dozen people by the ears together for life, and their children after them for three generations. You, Sir, have never had any wild oats to sow. Therefore you have great cause to be thankful. But do n't suppose that your correct life gives you a license to talk ill of others. That was just the mistake of the Pharisee of old. No one, not even the clergyman, or that mighty man of men, the daily editor, has a right to appoint himself custos morum; and if you make a practice of repeating unfavorable stories, true or false, your practice is a very ungentlemanly and unmanly one. You, Madam, are an unimpeachable wife and a devoted mother; regular at church, and charitable to the poor. For this you are worthy of much praise; but if, with all this, you delight in pulling to pieces your neighbors' reputations, and spreading scandalous reports, you are a great sinner, and your parson will tell you so if he does his duty. Apropos of parsons, I once heard a conversation between two, which will serve me for a fitting conclusion. A young clergyman, who found his position among his flock not very comfortable, had called on an old one for instruction and assistance. The senior did not send me away, either because I was too young to require this, or because he thought me old enough to share in the profit of his counsel. 'Put cotton in your ears, Brother K.,' said he 'so that you can't hear any stories.' The junior bowed. Put cotton in your mouth, so that you can't tell any stories.' THE PERIODICAL LITERATURE OF AMERICA. Blackwood, January 1848. BRITISH readers are not unacquainted with the American newspaper press, as, not to mention the numerous extracts from transatlantic papers in the columns of London journals, the merits of that press formed, but a few years ago, a topic of controversy between two London Quarterlies. But of American magazines and reviews they seldom hear anything. This is certainly in no degree owing to the scarcity of these publications, for they are as numerous, in comparison, as the newspapers, have a very respectable circulation (in some cases nearly forty thousand), and that at the not remarkably low price of four or five dollars per annum. Neither is it to their insignificance at home, for their editors make a considerable figure in the literary world, and their contributors are sufficiently vain of themselves, as their practice of signing or heading articles with their names in full would alone show. * Indeed Willis' idea (so ridiculed by the Edinburgh) of a magazine writer becoming a great lion in society, is not so very great an absurdity if applied to American society. Nor is this due to the fact that their topics are exclusively local; for there is scarcely a subject under heaven of which they do not treat, and a European might derive some very startling *One of the superficial peculiarities of American magazines is that the names of all the contributors are generally paraded conspicuously on the cover, very few seeking even the disguise of a pseudonym. The number of "most remarkable” men and women who thus display themselves in print is really surprising. information from them. The Democratic Review, for example, has a habit of predicting twice or thrice a year that England is on the point of exploding utterly, and going off into absolute chaos. "Perhaps," interrupts an impatient non-admirer of things American generally, "it is because they are not worth hearing anything about." And this suggestion is not so far from truth as it is from politeness. Considering the great demand for periodical literature in the New-World, one is surprised to find it so bad in point of quality. Not that the monthly and quarterly press is disfigured by the violence and exaggeration that too often deform the daily. Over-spiciness is the very last fault justly chargeable upon it. In slang language, it would rather be characterized by the terms "slow," "seedy," "remarkably mild," and the like. Crude essays filled with commonplaces, truisms, verses of the true non Di non homines cast, tales such as shopboys and milliners' girls delight in, and "critical notices," all conceived in the same spirit of indiscriminating praise, make up the columns of the monthlies; while the one or two more pretending publications which now represent the quarterly press, are a uniformly subdued and soporific character. : Now the first phenomenon worthy of notice is, that this has not always been the case. It was very different eight or nine years ago. The three leading cities of the north, New-York, Boston, and Philadelphia, had each its Quarterly the Knickerbocker, a New-York magazine, boasted a brilliant list of contributors, headed by Irving and Cooper, and its articles were frequently copied (sometimes without acknowledgment) into English periodicals. This change for the worse is worth investigating, at least as a matter of curiosity. "I don't know that it is a change for the worse," says a prim personage in spectacles. "If your periodical literature dies out entirely, you need not be very sorry. I shouldn't be if ours did." And then come some murmurs of "light," "superficial," "unsound," and more to the same effect. "My good sir, this in the face of Maga! not to mention the Quarterly and the Edinburgh. With such fails accomplis against you, what can you say?" "I don't believe in faits accomplis. They are the ex cuse of the timid man, and the capital of the unprincipled man. Fait accompli means, in plain English, that 'because it is so, therefore it ought to be so' a doctrine which I, for one, will never assent to." "Well, there is something in that last position of yours. We will condescend, therefore, to argue the question. Let me ask you, then. "First, Do you see any prima facie improbability in supposing that a man may write a very good essay, who could not write two good volumes octavo; or a racy and interesting sketch, who could not put together a readable novel; or a few graceful poems, without having matter enough for a volume of poetry ? "Secondly, Is a treatise necessarily profound, because it is long; or superficial, because it is of practicable dimensions? "Thirdly, When you use the term 'superficial,' do you really believe and mean to imply that periodical writers are in the habit of discussing subjects which they do not understand? Would you say, for instance, that Macaulay's reviews denote a man ignorant of history, or that Sedgwick knows less geology than the man who wrote the Vestiges of Creation, or that Mitchell knew less Greek than Lord Brougham? that "But perhaps it is the literary criticism to which you object. You are an author yourself, perhaps, though we have not the pleasure of recollecting you. You have written a goodsized volume of Something, and Other Poems, and cannot bear that your thoughts and rhymes should be scrutinized and found fault with by a riviewer your immortal fire should be tested in so earthy a crucible. In that case you will find many more or less distinguished names to sympathize with and encourage you. There is Bulwer, with whom the word critic is an exponent of everything that is low, and mean, and contemptible; and on our side of the water (sorry are we to say it) a much milder man than Bulwer Washington Irving has spoken of the critical tribe as having little real influence, and not deserving more influence than they have; while of the small fry of authorlings, there is no end of those who are ready to rate the reviewer roundly for finding fault with his betters.' One cannot even condemn an epic of impracticable length and hopeless mediocrity nay, not so much as hint that verses are not necessarily poetry without being assailed by an unceremonious argumentum ad hominem - You couldn't make better.' And perhaps the critic could not. It is more reasonable to suppose that he wouldn't if he could, entertaining the commendable conviction, that to spend a day, much more a mouth or a year, in writing middling verse, is an awful waste of time. But what an absurd irrelevancy of counter-charge! Suppose Brummell had found fault with the Nugee or Buckmaster of his day for misfitting him, and the schneider had replied, 'Mr. Brummell, you couldn't make as good a coat in a year.' 'Very probably not,' the beau might have retorted; 'but my business is to wear the coat, and yours to make it.' Must a man be able to concoct a bisque d'écrevisse himself, before he can venture to hazard an opinion on the respective merits of the Trois Frères and the Café Anglais? Or shall he be denied the right of giving a decided vote and holding a decided opinion in politics, because he has not ability or opportunity to become a cabinet minister to-morrow? In seeking to put down, or affecting to despise criticism, the author makes a claim which no other distinguished character ventures. The artist does not insist on controlling the judgment of his contemporaries, still less the statesman. Did a premier fulminate his dictum to the effect that no journalist had a right to find fault with his measures, he would raise a pretty swarm of hornets about his ears. By what precedent or analogy, then, can the poet, or novelist, or historian, set himself up as autocrat in that realm of letters, which is proverbially a republic? "Besides, suppose for a moment that all professional critics were Sir-Peter-Lauried in the most complete manner, who should help to guide the popular mind in determining on the merits of a work? Are we to trust the written puffs of the author's publisher, or the spoken puffs of his friends? Or are authors only to judge of authors, and is it quite certain that in this way we shall *We have heard this argument again and again in America, generally in reference to the seediest of verses; and there could not be a greater proof of the vagueness and erroneousness of American public opinion as to the nature and object of criticism, and the qualifications for exercising it. Vol. III. 2 |