Critical Notices [pp. 326-340]

SOUTHERN LITERARY MESSENGER.
327
feeling, it has been our constant endeavor, since assuming the Editorial duties of this Journal, to stem, with
what little abilities we possess, a current so disastrously
undermining the health and prosperity of our literature.
We have seen our efforts applauded by men whose
applauses we value. From all quarters we have received abundant private as well as public testimonials
in favor of our Critical Notices, and, until very lately,
have heard from no respectable source one vword impugning their integrity or candor. In looking over,
however, a number of the New York Commercial
Advertiser, we meet with the following paragraph.
The last number of the Southern Literary Messenger
is very readable and respectable. The contributions to
the Messenger are much better than the original matter.
The critical department of this workl —much as it would
seem to boast itselfof impartiality and discernment,-is
in our opinion decidedly qitacky. There is in it a great
assumption of acumen, which is completely unsustained.
Many a work has been slashingly condemned therein,
of which the critic himself could not write a page, were
he to die for it. This affectation of eccentric sternness
in criticism, without the power to back one's suit withal,
so far from deserving praise, as some suppose, merits
the strongest reprehension.-[Philadelphia Gazette.
We are entirely of opinion with the Philadelphia Gazette in relation to the Southern Literary Messenger,
and take this occasion to express our total dissent from
the numerous and lavish encomiums we have seen bestowed upon its critical notices. Some few of them have
been judicious, fair and candid; bestowing praise and
censure with judgment and impartiality; but by far
the greater number of those we have read, have been
flippant, unjust, untenable and uncritical. The duty
of the critic is to act as judge, not as enemy, oftie writer whom he reviews; a distinction of which the Zoilus
of the Messenger seems not to be aware. It is possible
to review a book severely, without bestowing opprobrious epithets uponI the writer: to condemn with courtesy, if not with kindness. The critic of the Messenger has been eulogized for his scorching and scarifying
abilities, and hlie thinks it incumbent upon him to keep
up his reputation in that line, by sneers, sarcasm, and
downright abuse; by straining his vision with nmicroscopic intensity in search offaults, and shutting his eyes,
with all his might, to beauties. Moreover, we have detected him, more than once, in blunders quite as gross
as those on which it was his pleasure to descant.*
In the paragraph fromn the Pliladelphia Gazette,
(which is edited by Mr. Willis Gaylord Clarki, one of
the Editors of the Knickerbo)cker) we find nothing at
which we have any desire to take exception. Mr. C.
has a right to thinlk us quacly if he pleases, and we do
nriot remember having assumrned for a nmomenit that we
could write a single line of the works we have reviewved.
But there is something equivocal, to say the least, in the
remarks of Col. Stone. HIe acklinowvledg,es that "soiie
of our notices have been judici(tus, fair, and candid, bestowing praise and censure with judgment and imtpartiality." This being the case, how can he reconcile his
total dissent firom the public verdict in our favor, with the
* In addition to these things we observe, in the New York
Mirror, what follows: " Those who have read the Notices of
American books in a certain Southern Monthly, which is striving
to gain notoriety by the loudness of its abuse, inay find amniuse4ment in the sketch on another page, entitled' The Successful
Novel.' The Southern Literary Messenger knows ~ by experieice_ what it is to write a successless novel." We have,
in this case, only to deny, flatly, the assertion of the Mirror. The
Editor of the Messenger never in his life wrote or putblishlicd, or
attempted to publish, a novel either successful or successless.
dictates of justice? We are accused too of bestowing
"opprobrious epithets" upon writers whom we review,
and in the paragraph so accusing us we are called nothing less than "flippant, unjust, and uncritical."
But there is another point of which we disapprove.
While in our reviews we have at all times been particularly careful tot to deal in generalities, and have never,
if we remember aright, advanced in any single instance
an unsupported assertion, our accuser has forgotten to
give us any better evidence of our flippancy, injustices
personality, and gross blundering, than the solitary dictutm of Col. Stone. We call upon the Colonel for assistance in this dilemma. We wish to be shown our
blunders that we may correct them-to be made aware
of our flippancy, that wve niay avoid it hereafter-and
above all to have our personalities pointed out that we
may proceed forthwith with a repentant spirit, to make
the amende honorable. In default of this aid from the
Editor of the Conmmercial we shall take it for granted that
we are neither blunderers, flippant, personal, nor unjust.
Who will deny that in regard to individual poems
no definitive opinions can exist, so long as to Poetry in
the abstract we attach no definitive idea? Yet it is a
common thing to hear our critics, day after day, pronounce, with a positive air, laudatory or condemnatory
sentences, eit iasse, upon metrical works of whose
merits and demerits they have, in the first place, virtually confessed an utter ignorance, in confessing ignrorance of all determinate principles by which to regulate
a decision. Poetry has never been defined to the satisfaction of all parties. Perhaps, in the present condition
of language it never will be. Words cannot hem it in.
Its intangible and purely spiritual nature refuses to be
bound down within the widest horizon of mere sounds.
But it is not, therefore, misunderstood-at least, not
by all men is it misunderstood. Very far from it.
If, indeed, there be any one circle of thought distinctly and palpably marked out from amid the jarring
and turultuous chaos of human intelligence, it is that
evergreen and radiant Paradise which the true poet
knows, and knows alone, as the limited realm of his
auithority-as the circumscribed Eden of his dreams.
But a definition is a thing of words-a conception of
ideas. And thus while we readily believe that Poesy,
thlie term, it will be troublesome, if not impossible to define-still, with its itmage vividly existing in the world,
we apprehend no difficulty in so describing Poesy, the
Sentiment, as to imbue even the most obtuse intellect
with a conmprehension of it sufficiently distinct for all
thle purposes of practical analysis.
To look upwards fiom any existence, material or
immaterial, to its design, is, perhaps, the most direct,
and the nmost unerring nmethod of attaining a just notion
of the nature of the existence itself. Nor is the principle at fault when we turn our eyes from Nature even
to Nature's God. We find certain faculties implanted
within us, and arrive at a morec plausible conception of
the character and attributes of those faculties, by considering, with what finite judgment we possess, the
itlterition of the Deity in so implanting them within us,
hain by any actual investigation of their powers, or
any speculative deductions from their visible and materital effects. Thus, for example, we discover in all
men a disptisition to hlok with revencie upon supe.