Yet by the very nature of the case he
labored under a disadvantage which forever barred him from calling
himself critic as well as reviewer. He was a specialist in
reporting, in making a story from the most unpromising material,
and also in the use of his mother tongue, but a specialist,
usually, in no other field whatsoever. Fiction, poetry, biography,
science, history, politics, theology--whatever came to his mill
was grist for the paper, and the less he knew of the subject and
the less he had read and thought, the more emphatic were his
opinions.
The club and saber work of Pope's day and Christopher North's has
gone--advertising has made it an expensive luxury, and here at
least commercialism has been of service to literature. It was
wholesale and emphatic praise that became a trademark of
journalistic reviewing. First novels, or obscure novels, were
sometimes handled roughly by a reviewer whose duty was to prepare
a smart piece of copy. But when books by the well known came to
his desk it was safer to praise than to damn, because in damning
one had to give reasons, whereas indiscriminate praise needed
neither knowledge nor excuse.
Pages:
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226