As a reviewer I must again confess, although as an editor I may
bitterly regret the confession, that the passion for reviewing is
almost inexplicable. Reviewing has the primal curse of hard labor
upon it. You must do two kinds of work at once, and be adequately
rewarded for neither. First you must digest another man's
conception, assimilate his ideas, absorb his imagination. It is
like eating a cold dinner on a full stomach. And then when you
have eaten and digested, you must tell how you feel about it--
briefly, cogently, and in words that cannot be misunderstood.
Furthermore, your feelings must be typical, must represent what a
thousand stomachs will feel, or should feel, or could feel if they
felt at all, or instead of being hailed as a critic you will be
accused of dyspepsia.
The mere mental labor of picking up the contents of a book as you
proceed with your criticism, and tucking them in here and there
where they fit, is so great that, speaking as a reviewer, I should
give up reviewing if there were no more compelling reasons than
requests to write criticism. There are, there must be; and still
speaking as a reviewer I begin to glimpse one or two of them.
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