In fact, it is
impossible to set a line where criticism ceases and reviewing
begins. Good criticism is generally applicable to all literature;
good reviewing is good criticism applied to a new book. I see no
other valid distinction.
Reviewing in America has had a career by no means glorious. In the
early nineteenth century, at the time of our first considerable
productivity in literature, it was sporadic. The great guns--
Lowell, Emerson--fired critical broadsides into the past; only
occasionally (as in "A Fable for Critics") were they drawn into
discussions of their contemporaries, and then, as in the Emerson-
Whitman affair, they sometimes regretted it. Reviewing was carried
on in small type, in the backs of certain magazines. Most of it
was verbose and much of it was worthless as criticism. The belated
recognition of the critical genius of Poe was due to the company
he kept. He was a sadly erratic reviewer, as often wrong, I
suppose, as right, but the most durable literary criticism of the
age came from his pen, and is to be found in a review, a review of
Hawthorne's short stories.
After the Civil War the situation did not immediately improve.
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