literary productions. The discoveries continually made in the physical sciences must render a number of the books on them obsolete; so must the discoveries and fashions (for there is a great deal of fashion among mathematicians, though they are not generally suspected of it,) in pure mathematics. No schools of literature have succeeded and dethroned one another so fast as the schools of modern metaphysics. Astronomers tell us that some fixed stars may never be visible on this earth until after they have ceased to exist; and in like manner, a German writer on mental philosophy is frequently exploded and his theory upset by his countrymen, just as England, France, and America are beginning to take an interest in him. Nor do the writings of the craniologists in any way influence or accelerate the destruction of our present literature, except by their own numercial addition to the perishing portion of it. As to your suggestion of craniologizing all future literature, it is the essence of farce. One hardly knows how to attempt treating such a proposition seriously. To be sure, there are "reforms" equally absurd to keep it in countenance. Not very long ago I chanced to see the writings of some people who called themselves (if I recollect rightly) Phonetics, modestly claimed to have invented a perfect alphabet, and seriously proposed to alter the spelling of the whole language, and oblige every existing book to be rewritten and reprinted.

--

Here, then, we arrive at the great conclusions of your advice to young men, which I have found it convenient to consider in a nearly inverse order a dogma, that craniology is at the head of all desirable human knowledge another dogma, that rich men are dangerous to the community, a deduction that it is wrong to encourage literature and the arts, and a practical inference that the best use a man can make of his money is to found a systematically irreligious college with it. "Amphora cœpit

Institui; currente rota cur urceus exit ?" For really, if we deduct the dietetic maxims, very proper in themselves, though expressed with unnecessary extravagance and violence of language; and the description of the beauties of the natural world, gorgeous and glowing enough to command admiration as a mere piece of writing,

but of no particular value in their connection; these four points are the principal original propositions in your lecture.

Yet I must own that, to myself, the perusal of your "Thoughts" caused no disappointment. I enjoyed the blessing promised by Dean Swift to those who expect nothing. I never do expect anything from modern radicalism. For the magnificence of its general promises is the inverse measure of its particular performance. Its professions and practices form a contrast that would be amusing, were it not so lamentable. Proclaiming fraternity and kindred intercourse among all nations, it begins by destroying the citizen's affection for his own country. Preaching brotherly love and sympathy among all classes of the community, it stimulates one class against another by unfounded invectives. Denying the claims and value of ancient lore, it confers the once honored title of professor on every itinerant cobbler. Parading a great show of reverence for the physical and metaphysical sciences, it sets up over their heads the pseudo-sciences of craniology and mesmerism. Barely deigning to believe in God, it has no hesitation to believe in the absurdest ghosts. Ostentatious at times in its patronage of Christianity, it carefully drops out all the vitality of the system, and virtually turns the Saviour of mankind out of his own religion. In short, it is, in all general phraseology, sublime and comprehensive, in all minutiæ of detail, narrow-minded and unwise, reminding one perpetually of the astrologer in the fable, who was so occupied in watching the stars, that he never saw the pit under his nose until he tumbled into it.

Hoping that your future political and social career may be saved from some of these inconsistencies, that your philanthropic zeal may be tempered by a discriminating judgment, and the charity you feel for some classes may be extended to all; that you may learn to consider a man of property as not necessarily an enemy to society, and the claims of religion, as well as those of benevolence, compatible with a love of literature and art,

I remain

Your obedient servant,

New-York, May 15, 1850.

C. A. B.

Vol. IV.

3

To the Editor of the Literary World, March 1848.

DEAR SIR: In submitting to your attention some remarks suggested by your leading article of the 19th ult., I shall not be daunted by the consideration that it may seem "behind the time" to refer to what was written so long ago. Some wiseacre whom I heard or read lately, says that an article in a periodical is seldom of any importance beyond the current week or month. I should think that depended very much on the character of the article and the character of the periodical. And without shocking your modesty so far as to hint that your papers will become standard classics, like the critical writings of Jeffrey, Sidney Smith, and Macaulay (whose name it may be well to inform the accurate editor of the Democratic Review, is not spelt Macauley), I may certainly take it for granted that your subscribers have fresh in their memories what you presented to them a month, or less than a month since.

Some correspondent asked you, just for a change, to give "a spicy and personal cut-up of an author." This you refused to do, and your refusal must have called forth the earnest approval of every reader. Personality is one of the most damning vices of criticism, because, laying aside its violation of literary and gentlemanly decorum, it is putting the question of a book's merits on a totally false and irrelevant issue. And it is the more carefully to be avoided because the temptation to it is sometimes very great, when an author's friends and admirers will drag his private life before the public, and insist on making a flourish of trumpets before him every time he goes out to tea. So convinced am I of this, that I would refrain from any approach to it, even in cases where it has become proverbially allowable. If Gracchus were to write a pamphlet against sedition, I would not use a tu quoque argument against him.

But while the leading assertion of your article thus carries its own recommendation with it, there are some more general remarks following, which by no means so self-evidently command assent, particularly the conclusion you arrive at, that "that criticism is most true which rather seeks the good than the evil;" or to put the pro

position into a concrete form, that the critic is most true who seeks rather to praise than to blame.

Now, with all due submission, it seems to me, that the spirit of true criticism considered in the abstract, and independently of age or country, cannot be said to have a bias either to praise or blame, its object and purpose being to judge impartially of works of art by rules of art; and that the proper animating spirit of criticism in any age and country will depend upon contingent circumstances, viz. the wants, errors, and tendencies, of the country and period to which it has reference.

To illustrate my meaning. Your conclusion is immediately founded on a very pleasant and ingenious position of Leigh Hunt. But, before making a practical application of his remarks to ourselves, it will be well to examine the peculiar circumstances under which he wrote. When he made his appearance in the critical world, politics influenced all literary judgment in England, and literary and political partisanships were mingled together, that it seemed almost impossible to separate them. Great poets, more or less intimately associated with Hunt himself, were depreciated, misquoted, and abused, by the Quarterly Review, and the Tory writers generally, on account of their political opinions. I say on account of their political opinions, for it would be absurd to suppose that such men as Gifford and Southey could not discover the genius of such men as Shelley and Keats. The public mind was thus most unfairly prejudiced against these poets, and it required some competent critic to call attention to their beauties. Hunt was the very man. His perfect good humor and gentleness formed a highly prepossessing contrast to the virulence of the Tory reviewers, and his fascinating style conciliated and enticed the most bigoted. It would be curious to inquire how many of his readers Keats owes to Hunt. Another aim of our critic was to excite a more general taste for some of the fathers of English poetry, and especially for Chaucer. In this too he was eminently and deservedly successful.

Now if any similar state of things existed among ourselves; if the literary mind of America, or any large portion, was violently prejudiced against any man or men, from political or other extraneous reasons; if, for instance,

all the Whig littérateurs were trying to write down Cooper and Bryant, because they are democrats, or if the whole Southern press had made a dead set at Professor Longfellow because he has written some anti-slavery poems, then we should certainly need judicious praisers, honey-tongued critics, who delight in lingering over beauties themselves, and are skilful in displaying them to others. Or if the founders of our national literature were already becoming neglected; if people began to leave off reading Knickerbocker, and Salmagundi, and the Spy; then, too, whe should undoubtedly want a laudatory school of criticism to awaken the public attention to beauties which were escaping it. And, not to take any hypothetical state of things, such a laudatory school we did want at the appearance of Cooper and Irving, to show us what genius was among us, and not leave the discovery to English writers.

But how stands the case now with our literary public? Is its disposition in any way similar to that of the English public, when Leigh Hunt first wrote? Is there anywhere a tendency to decry any native author or school of authors? Does not the fashion run in the very opposite direction, to exaggerated and almost random praise? Can you point out one instance of a good book published here for the last ten or twenty years that has not met with merited praise and success? And have not many worthless books been fulsomely eulogised, and, in consequence, sold largely? If these questions must be answered in the affirmative (and it would be difficult to give them any other answer), then is the critic's duty something very different from what it would be in a captious and prejudiced community.

English criticism has divested itself of its political unfairness. Blackwood has praised Miss Martineau, and been glad to receive Bulwer as a contributor. But the English critics are still high in their standard, and chary of their praise. To compare them with ours in this respect, we must not look merely at the Quarterlies, which only notice a few works at a time, and those such as they can found telling articles upon; but turn to those periodicals which notice more or less briefly all the new publications which they receive. Such are the Athenæum, Literary Gazette, Examiner, Spectator, and those maga