Furthermore, since the chief object
was to have one's review read, excessive praise had every
advantage over measured approval. Who would hesitate between two
articles, one headed "The Best Book of the Year," and the other,
"A New Novel Critically Considered"!
Thus, journalism _per se_ has done little for the cause of
American reviewing, and directly or indirectly it has done much
harm, if only by encouraging publishers who found no competent
discussions of their wares to set up their own critics, who poured
out through the columns of an easy press commendations of the new
books which were often most intelligent, but never unbiased.
The newspapers, however, have rendered one great service to
criticism. In spite of their attempts to make even the most
serious books newsy news, they, and they alone, have kept pace
with the growing swarm of published books. The literary
supplement, which proposed to review all books not strictly
technical or transient, was a newspaper creation. And the literary
supplement, which grew from the old book page, contained much
reviewing which was in no bad sense journalistic. Without it the
public would have had only the advertisements and the publishers'
announcements to classify, analyze, and in some measure describe
the regiment of books that marches in advance of our civilization.
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