This is particularly noticeable in the
minor reviews where contributions are not paid for and most of the
writing is, in a sense, amateur, but it holds good in the
magazines and the national reviews also. The specialist knows his
politics, his biology, or his finance as well as his English or
French contemporary, but he cannot digest his subject into words
--he can think into it, but not out of it, and so cannot write
acceptably for publication. Hence in science particularly, but
also in biography, in literary criticism, and less often in
history, we have to depend frequently upon English pens for our
illumination.
The reasons for this very serious deficiency, much more serious
from every point of view than the specialists realize, are well
known to all but the specialists, and I do not propose to enter
into them here. My point is that this very defect, which has made
it so difficult to edit a valid and interesting review (and so
creditable to succeed as we have in several instances succeeded),
is a brake also upon the family magazine in its attempt to regain
virility. The newspaper magazines have cornered the market for
clever reporters who tap the reservoirs of special knowledge and
then spray it acceptably upon the public.
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