^ 
 
 
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Book-Reviews 
 
 By 
 
 Edmund Lester parson 
 
 The New York 
 
 Public Library 
 
 1917 
 
NOTE 
 
 ^J^HESE papers are based upon four lectures given to an 
 -* audience composed of the librarians of small libraries 
 and of library assistants. They were part of a series of lec- 
 tures held in The New York Public Library, under direction 
 of the Library School. Miss Plummer, the late Principal 
 of the School, wished to give the visiting librarians some 
 discussion of the literary and human aspects of library 
 work, aside from its routine. Other lecturers spoke about 
 modern poetry and fiction, book-illustration, and the drama. 
 I do not pretend to offer much that will be new to those 
 who have access to large and scholarly libraries, but in the 
 material collected here, there may be something to interest 
 almost any librarian. — E. L. P. 
 
 
 *' «" 
 
 J J.*«; •■ 
 
 Reprinted March 1917 
 
 FROM THE 
 
 Bulletin of The New York Public Library 
 OF November - December 1916 
 
 form p-88 [111-14-17 6cl 
 

 BOOK-REVIEWS 
 
 
 IN these talks we shall discuss some of the faults and merits of book-review- 
 ing as it is done to-day, and as it interests librarians. Its importance to 
 librarians will be emphasized; but it may be taken for granted that they are 
 interested in all that pertains to books and reading. It is necessary for a 
 librarian to read book-reviews, and to get all the help which she can get from 
 them, but it is especially undesirable for her to depend too much upon them. 
 She must know how to review books for herself, and must not always accept 
 as final the judgment of any other reviewer, no matter in what publication 
 he writes. 
 
 To make these points, I shall speak to-day of the present condition of 
 book-reviewing in this country. At the next lecture, we can talk about the his- 
 tory of book-reviewing in England and about some of the contemporary 
 reviews. After that, the history of reviewing in the United States, and our 
 present book-reviewing periodicals. The fourth lecture will consider the dif- 
 ferent classes of lx)ok-reviews, the processes of getting a book reviewed, and 
 the minor subject of book annotation. 
 
 §2 
 
 "There are five groups interested in literary criticism: publishers of 
 l30oks, authors, publishers of reviews, critics, and finally, the reading public." 
 This classification was made by an essayist in the Atlantic Monthly half a 
 dozen years ago. You will see at once that he has left us out of the reckoning 
 entirely, — he pays librarians not even the bare compliment of mention. All 
 the persons in these five groups, by the way, are accustomed to leave librarians 
 out of their reckoning, — all but the publishers of books, at any rate. When 
 a writer, or a critic, is speaking of literary or bookish folk he never mentions 
 librarians. This is a strange thing, — librarians who do nothing but collect, 
 preserve and distribute books are thought of as a sort of class apart from 
 all others who deal with literature. What is the reason for this ? Are libra- 
 rians themselves partly to blame? Have they so busied themselves with the 
 machinery of their profession, have they been so much interested in the 
 
 [3] 
 
4 '...•• TiH^-'^'^^W: yORK PUBLIC LIBRARY 
 
 methods of collecting, preserving and distributing books that the impression 
 has gone abroad that they have no time to open the covers, and finally, no 
 inclination to do so, even if they had time? You and I are indignant at this 
 charge; we know that we read books and love them. But, we must admit 
 that the mistaken view is rather widely held, and that few writers in naming 
 the various kinds of people interested in books, remember to include librarians. 
 
 To be quite honest we must also remember that some of our colleagues 
 seem wholly concerned with getting libraries (i. e., the buildings) constructed; 
 with buying, cataloguing, and lending books. They boast that they have no 
 time to read anything but the "literature of the profession." The Lord for- 
 give them for that use of the word "literature" ! At last, they come to look 
 upon any kind of book, except a code of library rules, as too trivial for a 
 librarian to read. I am sure you all have seen librarians caught reading a 
 book, and looking as guilty as a boy stealing apples. 
 
 Nevertheless we must correct the error of that Atlantic essayist (he was 
 Charles Miner Thompson, the editor of The Youth's Companion), we must 
 correct his error, and include librarians in the class of those interested in 
 book-reviews, as well as in books. 
 
 He said "interested in literary criticism." "^he subject of these talks is 
 "book-reviews." The terms are sometimes used as if interchangeable, so 
 it may be well to establish the distinction at the outset. 
 
 It is not always easy to draw the line between them, — indeed, it is 
 certain that both in what I quote and in what I have to say myself, the terms 
 "criticism" and "literary criticism" will occasionally enter. Yet every one 
 of us recognizes the difference between a "reviewer of books" and a "literary 
 critic." Probably there are youths or maidens so ingenuous and callow that 
 as soon as they write a book-review or two for the local newspaper, will refer 
 to themselves as "literary critics," — just as the member of a board of alder- 
 men might fancy himself a "statesman." 
 
 Book-reviewing is, of course, a humble branch of literary criticism. It 
 is an entirely honorable occupation or diversion, but it does not confer upon 
 
 its practitioner the dignity of the acknowledged critic. The literary critic 
 
 » 
 
 is presumably a man of learning. He weighs the written products of the 
 centuries, and is seldom concerned with the books of the week. 
 
 The reviewer, on the other hand, need not be, and often had better not 
 be, a person of profound scholarship. He must have a good education, to 
 be sure; he must be well read. But, supposing that he can write at all, he 
 can pass a satisfactory judgment on Barrie's latest comedy without quoting 
 Aristotle's "Poetics"; he can compose a sensible paragraph about a volume of 
 
BOOK-REVIEWS 5 
 
 verse by some contemporary poet without having Boileau at his fingers' ends; 
 and he can deal with the average novel of to-day, and render an opinion which 
 will serve the usual intelligent reader, even if he is not perfectly familiar with 
 the theories of their art held by Flaubert and his disciple, Maupassant. There 
 are not half a dozen genuine literary critics in this country to-day; some per- 
 sons would probably say there is not one. But perhaps even the most severe 
 commentators on the state of our book-criticism would admit that there are 
 scores of persons who can write decent reviews. 
 
 To sum up. then, the difference between book-reviewing and literary criti- 
 cism, — here it is, practically in the words of Professor Brander Matthews: 
 The aim of book-reviewing is to engage in discussion of our contemporaries, f 
 It is a department of journalism, and must be carefully distinguished from 
 criticism, which is a department of literature. 
 
 §3 
 
 I said that those who comment upon the state of book-reviewing in 
 America — in other words, those who review the reviewer — might arg^e that 
 there are scores of persons who can write fairly good book-reviews. But 
 is this correct? Are they even so lenient as this? 
 
 It happens that the state of American book-reviewing has been under 
 consideration to an unusual degree, within a few years. Two articles by Bliss 
 Perry (in the Yale Review, for July and for October, 1914), started the dis- 
 cussion. But as the essay by Mr. Thompson, to which I have already referred, 
 antedates Mr. Perry's articles by six years, let me quote from that, first. Mr. 
 Thompson finds little that is good. All five of the groups of persons, which 
 he cited, are, says he, discontented with the present condition of American 
 criticism, — 
 
 "Publishers of books complain that reviews do not help sales. Publishers 
 of magazines lament that readers do not care for articles on literary subjects. 
 Publishers of newspapers frankly doubt the interest of book-notices. The 
 critic confesses that his occupation is ill-considered and ill-paid. The author 
 wrath fully exclaims — but what he exclaims cannot be summarized, so various 
 is it. Thus, the whole commercial interest is unsatisfied. The public, on the 
 other hand, finds book-reviews of little service and reads them, if at all, with 
 indifference, with distrust, or with exasperation. That part of the public 
 which appreciates criticism as an art maintains an eloquent silence and reads 
 French." ^ 
 
 * From "Honest Literary Criticism," by Charles Miner Thompson, Atlantic Monthly, August, 1908. 
 
6 THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY 
 
 And now, as we have added a sixth group — librarians — it may be said 
 that they also complain about book-reviews.^ They complain for the same 
 reason as Mr. Thompson's "reading public," because they often find book- 
 reviews of little service, and they complain for another reason, — that of 
 timeliness. In other words, the average book-review appears weeks, if not 
 months, after the librarian really needs it. Since this is a practical difficulty, 
 rather than an intellectual one, it is sometimes disregarded. 
 
 The librarian or library assistant, with a score of. her readers demanding 
 a new book, may be in doubt as to whether it is one she ought to buy. Now 
 is the time for a book-review whose advice she may follow. Under these 
 circumstances she would rather have the opinion of some reviewer with com- 
 mon-sense, given to her when it would be useful, than the solemn and final 
 judgment of the greatest living authority upon that subject — whatever it is 
 — delivered like a decision of the Supreme Court, anywhere from eighteen 
 months to three years after the publication of the book. And she is quite right. 
 
 So we will add librarians to the list of those interested in book-reviews, 
 and stipulate promptness as a quality which they may justly demand in book- 
 reviewing. 
 
 What do the critics of book-reviewing say is the matter? Well, here is 
 the leading indictment from the most eminent and most recent of them. I 
 quote directly from Mr. Bliss Perry's article "Literary Criticism in American 
 Periodicals" (Yale Review, July, 1914): 
 
 "We all agree that the status of literary criticism in America is unsatis- 
 factory. Those of us who write books agree that it is only now and then, 
 and by lucky accident, that our books are competently reviewed. We get 
 praise enough, and sometimes blame enough — or nearly enough — but we 
 do not often get real criticism. The reader and would-be buyer of books has 
 great difficulty in discovering what new books are worth buying or reading. 
 A generation ago one could often depend upon the local bookseller for this 
 information, but, for well-known economic reasons, the old type of book- 
 seller has in most towns been driven from business, and the young lady who 
 
 ^ Since this was written, I have seen, for the first time, an article called "The Failure of Book 
 Reviewing" by John Cotton Dana. It is in Mr. Dana's book, "Libraries" (1916), but it was originally 
 printed in the Springfield Republican in 1900. It is, perhaps, as severe an arraignment of American book- 
 reviewing as any librarian has written. Everybody interested in this subject should read it, although one 
 of the periodicals which the author analyzes has now stopped publication, and another has radically 
 changed. Mr. Dana blames the literary journals for not giving facts as to the quality of paper used in 
 a book, as to binding, type, ink, index, margins, and page illustrations. The criticism itself, he says, is 
 "a chorus of praise," and of the four periodicals which he discusses, all, except TJie Nation, "lack the courage 
 of condemnation." The exclusion from Mr. Dana's analysis of one of these four — plainly a commercial 
 publication — and the inclusion of The Dial, might have made our book-reviewing look a little less hopeless. 
 
BOOK-REVIEWS 7 
 
 arranges her hair behind the book-counter of the department store is obviously 
 puzzled by your questions. If you turn to the newspapers for information 
 about the twelve or thirteen thousand books published in this country every 
 year, you find, it is true, a heroically compiled mass of book notices, — many 
 of them composed, in their essential features, by the advertising clerks of 
 the publishers who are trying to sell the books. There were never so many 
 Saturday and Sunday literary supplements and other guides to the book buyer; 
 but there was never, even in the Eighteen-Thirties, any less actual criticism 
 in proportion to the number of books published. Here and there, there is 
 a daily or weekly journal that endeavors, according to its abilities, to uphold 
 and to apply critical standards. I need not name them, for they are rare 
 enough to be generally known. Technical treatises, it is true, frequently meet 
 with competent criticism in technical journals; although I have heard the 
 editor of a scientific paper boast that he had dictated, in sixty minutes, reviews 
 of eleven new scientific books, not one of which he had taken the trouble to 
 read beyond the preface and the table of contents." 
 
 That last sentence is an illuminating comment upon the veneration which 
 librarians sometimes lavish upon "technical journals," upon "scientific" and 
 "expert" opinion! / 
 
 In October of the same year, and in the same magazine, Mr. Perry con- 
 siders "The American Reviewer" himself. Who is this reviewer, he asks? 
 He quotes Mr. Thompson: "Commonly in the newspapers, and frequently 
 in periodicals of some literary pretension, the writers of reviews are shiftless 
 literary hacks, shallow, sentimental women, or crude young persons full of 
 indiscriminate enthusiasm for all printed matter." 
 
 Thus it is phrased, bluntly and brusquely, by Mr. Thompson. We can 
 find the thing said ever so much more effectively in "Pendennis." That is 
 always the way, — if we wish facts, we go to a book of facts, but if we wish 
 truth, we have to consult what we call fiction. 
 
 Pendennis, you will remember, in his London experiences, was a writer, 
 journalist, poet, and book-reviewer. This is what Thackeray says of him: 
 
 "The courage of young critics is prodigious; they clamber up to the judg- 
 ment seat, and, with scarce a hesitation, give their opinion upon works the most 
 intricate or profound. Had Macaulay's History or Herschel's Astronomy 
 been put before Pen at this period, he would have looked through the volumes, 
 meditated his opinion over a cigar, and signified his august approval of either 
 author, as if the critic had been their born superior and indulgent master and 
 patron. By the help of the Biographie Universelle or the British Museum, 
 he would be able to take a rapid resume of a historical period, and allude to 
 
8 THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY 
 
 names, dates, and facts, in such a masterly, easy way, as to astonish his mamma 
 at home, who wondered where her boy could have acquired such a prodigious 
 store of reading, and himself, too, when he came to read over his articles two 
 or three months after they had been composed, and when he had forgotten 
 the subject and the books which he had consulted. At that period of his life 
 Mr. Pen owns, that he would not have hesitated, at twenty-four hours' notice, 
 to pass an opinion upon the greatest scholars, or to give a judgment upon the 
 Encyclopaedia." 
 
 What Mr. Thompson has said of reviewers, says Mr. Perry, is true 
 enough, no doubt, and yet the latter believes that there are "hundreds of 
 reviewers of a better sort, college-trained young men and young women, who 
 have some notions of literary standards, plenty of professional ambition, a 
 tolerable skill in writing, and who would really like to do their best." 
 
 §5 
 
 Why don't they do it, you ask ? Mr. Perry thinks it is commercialism, — 
 the control of the advertising department over the literary page of the paper. 
 The young reviewer often has his honest say, he admits, and so does many 
 an older reviewer. And not all publishers and advertisers are disingenuous. 
 But the control exists. The system is simple. Copies of all reviews are sent 
 to the publisher: if these reviews tend to be unfavorable, the publisher will 
 often cut down or threaten to cut down his advertising; and then the counting- 
 room of the newspaper wants to know why the young reviewer cannot take 
 a more "reasonable" attitude of mind. That is all: and if the reviewer's living 
 is dependent upon his taking a "reasonable" view, he often surrenders. Here 
 is an instance, cited by Mr. Perry: 
 
 "I am not, of course, putting a theoretical case. Any publisher's office 
 or newspaper office has its own stories to tell. In fact, since I began to write 
 these pages, I have stopped to listen to the adventures of a young newspaper 
 man, a recent graduate of that joyous school of journalism, the Harvard 
 Lampoon, who is now doing the literary and dramatic criticism for an even- 
 ing paper in an inland city. This boy's amazed discovery that his light-hearted 
 notices of certain very light fiction brought rebuking response from the pub- 
 lishers, from the manager of the local bookstore, and from the counting-room, 
 was comic, and it would have been tragic if the Lampoon humorist had not 
 demonstrated in other ways his value to his newspaper. But he does not joke 
 any more about the advertisers: he has seen, in a flash of illumination, the 
 
BOOK-REVIEWS 9 
 
 relation between the far-away publishers and the weekly pay-envelope of the 
 cub reviewer." 
 
 Aside from commercialism Mr. Perry declares that, compared with for- 
 eign periodical criticism, American book-reviewing lacks candor, it lacks trained 
 intelligence, and it lacks distinction. It is often ambitious, — he cites a Holi- 
 day Number of the New York Times, with its "Review of the Hundred Best 
 Books of the Year." But although the books were selected and described by 
 a committee from the department of English of Columbia University, the per- 
 formance "revealed the limitations of the amateur." 
 
 §6 
 
 Let us discuss these two charges against American book-reviewing. First, 
 there is the commercialism, the control of the literary page by the business 
 manager; the muzzle placed upon a free expression of honest opinion by the 
 power of the dollar. There can be little doubt that it exists. The testimony 
 of men who ought to know is so strong; the antecedent probability is so much 
 in its favor, that it cannot wholly be denied. 
 
 From personal experience I am unable to relate a single thrilling encounter 
 with Mammon. During five or six years I have intermittently written reviews 
 of various books for a newspaper which devotes to reviewing probably more 
 space than any other journal in the country. It also carries a large amount 
 of book-advertising. For a much shorter time I wrote reviews for one of 
 the periodicals. Whether the editors were so impressed by my appearance of 
 honesty that they thought it hopeless to tempt me, or whether they are not 
 accustomed to try to tempt anyone, I will let you decide. But they never con- 
 veyed to me, directly or indirectly, that I should praise this book, or "go 
 easy" on that book, because its publisher was a big advertiser with them. Nor 
 was one line, nor one word, of adverse criticism, condemnation or ridicule 
 ever deleted or altered in my reviews by the editorial "blue-pencil," — that 
 mythical implement which all editors are supposed to keep handy. Perhaps 
 my experiences were lucky: in fact, I know they were. 
 
 But it would be wrong to argue from this instance that there is no such 
 thing as commercial influence on book-reviewing. In certain places it un- 
 doubtedly exists, — the testimony of experienced and widely-informed men, 
 is almost invariably in the affirmative. The man who buys space in news- 
 papers and magazines, whether to advertise books, or patent medicines, or a 
 department store, or a theatre, or a railroad, holds a weapon over the heads 
 of the publishers. His power can be used — it frequently is used — as a subtle 
 
10 THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY 
 
 and effective kind of bribery, one of the new and refined forms of sin which 
 our civilization has developed. 
 
 So this evil which affects us, is only a small manifestation of a very large 
 national evil: the power which the advertiser holds to corrupt the press, and 
 through the press to mislead public opinion. It is bad; it bothers us and 
 troubles us to find that there are book-reviewing publications which can be 
 muzzled or bought. But as we are citizens first, and librarians afterwards, it 
 is absurd to lose the sense of proportion. It is foolish to explode with wrath 
 over this matter and not to save any indignation for the larger damages which 
 can be wrought. It would be ridiculous to think merely of venal book-reviews 
 and to forget the children who are drugged and the wretched invalids who 
 are humbugged because many publications do not dare tell the truth about 
 patent medicines; or to forget the railroads and corporations which, by purchas- 
 ing advertising space can and do buy editorial opinion, color the news, and 
 poison at its source the information upon which we depend to govern our acts 
 and votes. 
 
 There are two or three other considerations about this matter of com- 
 mercialized book-reviewing. It cannot be defended for an instant, and yet 
 it — or something — has come over the spirit of book-reviewing and made 
 it kindlier and less given to the old-fashioned slashing attack. In the old days 
 they sought to kill an author as far as literary reputation went. In one 
 instance, — that of John Keats, which we shall consider with English book- 
 reviewing, there were persons who believed that a review killed him in body 
 as well as in spirit. 
 
 Thackeray describes an incident of the old-school criticism, in the novel 
 previously quoted: 
 
 "The person of all most cruelly mauled was Pen himself. His verses 
 had not appeared with his own name in the Spring Annual, but under an 
 assumed signature. As he had refused to review the book, Shandon had 
 handed it over to Mr. Bludyer, with directions to that author to dispose of it. 
 And he had done so effectually. Mr. Bludyer, who was a man of very con- 
 siderable talent, and of a race which, I believe, is quite extinct in the press 
 of our time, had a certain notoriety in his profession, and reputation for 
 savage humour. He smashed and trampled down the poor spring flowers 
 with no more mercy than a bull would have on a parterre; and having cut up 
 the volume to his heart's content, went and sold it at a bookstall, and purchased 
 a pint of brandy with the proceeds of the volume." 
 
 Some of the persons who find fault with reviewing as it exists today, 
 seem to imply that the all-important thing is that bad books should be blamed. 
 
BOOK-REVIEWS 1 1 
 
 They forget that it is equally important that good books should be praised 
 and their authors encouraged. 
 
 In our every-day speech we have almost lost the primary meaning of 
 the word "criticism." We seldom think of it in its real sense, — a "judgment." 
 Almost invariably we use it in its third or fourth meaning: "harsh or un- 
 favorable judgment." I once observed a certain Freshman class in a college, 
 whose members gave a curious illustration of this habit of thinking that there 
 is only one kind of criticism, and that unfriendly. They were given, on an 
 examination paper in English composition, an extract from a book, and told 
 to criticise it, to comment upon the use of words, and so on. Now, the pas- 
 sage was an exquisite example of Stevenson's style, — from the description 
 of sleeping outdoors, in "Travels with a Donkey." But the Freshmen did 
 not know that; it was not labelled in any way. So they seized their fountain- 
 pens as if they were harpoons, and proceeded to lay about them with a heavy 
 hand. They tore that beautiful bit of English to shreds and tatters, and 
 accused the author of every literary atrocity known to the text-book. They 
 threw the fragments upon the ground — figuratively speaking — and danced 
 upon them. Then they sat back and wondered why they didn't get better marks 
 in the examination ! 
 
 It is easy to smile at them, but are not all of us more or less like them ? 
 Do we not judge too much by external evidence, by the surroundings rather 
 than the thing itself?' You will remember the dramatic critics in "Fanny's 
 First Play," who stood about and positively refused to give any opinion about 
 the play until they knew who had written it. It's absurd, they said, to ask 
 us whether it is a good play or not. How can we tell, until we know the 
 dramatist's name? 
 
 Has it ever occurred to you to wonder what might happen to some of 
 the greatest classics of literature if they could suddenly appear to us unattended 
 by their reputations? Suppose that the mighty name of Shakespeare was 
 totally unknown, that the world had never seen nor heard of his plays. Then 
 suppose that somebody discovered the plays and published them. I think 
 I can see, in my mind's eye, some of the comments they would provoke in 
 certain cautious publications. How the "sensationalism" of the last act of 
 "Hamlet" would be deplored! Do you fancy that our Library Association's 
 Book-List would approve "Othello"? 
 
 * Since writing this I have heard a man say to a newspaper writer: "I didn't think much of those 
 ▼ersea of yours, when they were in your own paper. When they were quoted in that other paper, I saw 
 that they were mighty good." 
 
12 THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY 
 
 There is still another matter which it is well for librarians to remember. 
 When we demand absolute frankness of criticism of books it may be whole- 
 some for us to ask: do we get absolute frankness of criticism about our own 
 work? Or do we get comment tempered and softened by the desire to speak 
 kindly of our own colleagues and associates ? So long as the latter is true, is 
 it not a little unreasonable for us to expect a stern and uncompromising im- 
 partiality from writers of book-reviews, and from editors, toward the authors 
 of books ? For they — reviewers and editors — are often upon the same terms 
 of association, acquaintance, or friendship with authors, as the writers in 
 library magazines are with other librarians. Human nature has its way in 
 both cases. 
 
 §8 
 
 Finally, it is important not to exaggerate the effect of an unfavorable 
 book-review, nor to overestimate the publisher's fear of such a review. The 
 publisher who wishes to sell his books in large numbers (we speak sometimes 
 of this natural wish as if there were something reprehensible about it!) does 
 not care a great deal whether one of his books is praised or blamed so long as 
 it is not ignored. He would far rather see it given a column of stinging abuse 
 than to have it turned off with a few lines of faint praise. I think you 
 will agree that you would rather see a column of blame allotted to a book 
 which you had written, than to feel that the critic and editor thought it 
 was of no particular importance one way or the other. So far as commercial 
 success is concerned, unfavorable reviews may now and then spoil a book's 
 chance of success, as they certainly may help to ruin a play; but there are 
 too many proofs that the popular novelist can laugh at the bitterest attacks 
 which reviewers may make. Marie Corelli wore, like a sort of garland, whole 
 pages of adverse criticism, sneering comment, ridicule and abuse. She pointed 
 to her enormous sales, her thousands of readers, and her place firm in the 
 hearts of the indiscriminating crowd. When one of Mrs. Florence Barclay's 
 sweety-sweety novels was published, almost every newspaper in New York 
 praised it. The conspicuous exception was the Evening Post. The publishers 
 quoted a few lines of praise, some of it laid on exceedingly thick, from all 
 these papers, then tacked to the end, in a prominent position, a few lines of 
 ridicule from the Post, and printed the whole thing as an advertisement in a 
 number of newspapers, including the Post itself. 
 
BOOK-REVIEWS 13 
 
 §9 
 
 In regard to the other comment of Mr. Perry, about American book- 
 reviewing — that it lacks candor, trained intelligence, and distinction — that 
 is true, but not novel. Many of the attacks upon book-reviewing are unduly 
 severe. Mr. Thompson, in the article in the Atlantic Monthly which I have 
 quoted, was inclined to be rather strict with the book-reviewers, as well as 
 with authors, who do not maintain the dignity of literature and keep small 
 personalities about themselves out of print. A number of years ago, Pro- 
 fessor Brander Matthews wrote an essay called "Literary Criticism and Book- 
 Reviewing." ^ He speaks of those who make ". . .a three-fold assumption: 
 — first, that it is the chief duty of the critic to tear the mask from impostors 
 and to rid the earth of the incompetent; second, that the critics of the past 
 accepted this obligation and were successful in its accomplishment; and third, 
 that there is to-day, at the beginning of the twentieth century, a special need 
 for this corrective criticism." 
 
 Mr. Matthews denies the truth of all these assumptions. His article is 
 extremely sensible, and valuable to read in connection with Bliss Perry's indict- 
 ments of book-reviewing. Although written some years before Mr. Perry's 
 articles, it is in the nature of an answer to them, stating, as it does, the other 
 side. He wrote in reply to a British author of a volume of "Ephemera Critica," 
 and at the beginning makes the distinction, which I have already quoted 
 between book-reviews and literary criticism: 
 
 "The aim of book-reviewing is to engage in discussion of our contem- 
 poraries, and this is why book-reviewing, which is a department of journalism, 
 must be carefully distinguished from criticism, which is a department of litera- 
 ture. This is why also we need not worry ourselves overmuch about the 
 present condition of book-reviewing, since it has not all the importance which 
 the British author of "Ephemera Critica" has claimed for it and since it can 
 really have very little influence upon the future of literature. As a fact, the 
 condition of book-reviewing is not now so lamentable as the British author 
 has declared, and it is not indeed really worse than it was in earlier years; 
 but it might be very much worse than it is, and very much worse than it ever 
 was, without its having any unfortunate influence on the development of a 
 single man of genius. Indeed, genius never more surely reveals itself as 
 genius than in its ability to withstand the pressure of contemporary fashion 
 and go on doing its own work in its own way." 
 
 * It may be found in his "Gateways to Literature." 
 
14 THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY 
 
 In regard to the notion that there were so many great book-reviewers in 
 the golden past, Mr. Matthews relates this experience: 
 
 "In my leisurely youth, when I had all the time there was, I bought a 
 forty-year file of a London weekly of lofty pretensions and of a certain an- 
 tiquity, since it has now existed for more than threescore years and ten; and 
 in the course of a twelvemonth I turned every page of those solid tomes, not 
 reading every line, of course, but not neglecting a single number. The book- 
 reviewing was painfully uninspired, with little brilliancy in expression and 
 with little insight in appreciation; it was disfigured by a certain smug com- 
 placency which I find to be still a characteristic of the paper whenever I chance 
 now to glance at its pages. But as I worked through this contemporary record 
 of the unrolling of British literature from 1830 to 1870, what was most sur- 
 prising was the fact that only infrequently indeed did the book-reviewers 
 bestow full praise on the successive publications which we now hold to be 
 among the chief glories of the Victorian reign, and that the books most 
 lavishly eulogized were often those that have now sunk into oblivion." 
 
 §10 
 
 What kind of book-reviews does a librarian need so far as her own work 
 is concerned? By that I mean, what kind will give her the readiest help when 
 she is in doubt as to whether to buy a certain book or not? It is plain that 
 she can scarcely use the graceful essay which must be read from beginning 
 to end in order to find the critic's opinion. It should be rather short and 
 concise. It is perhaps easier to find a satisfactory review of a work of fact, 
 than of the various branches of imaginative literature, such as fiction, poetry, 
 and the drama. After all, book-reviews of contemporary works in these classes 
 of literature are not much more than expressions of personal opinion. And 
 the personal opinion of a young man who will graduate from Columbia next 
 year, or of a girl who graduated from Bryn Mawr last year, is not necessarily 
 any more useful to us than our own judgment, supposing that we can get time 
 and opportunity to form judgment. It is not necessarily decisive even though 
 it comes to us through the pages of such respectable papers as The Nation or 
 The Dial. This matter of opinion, of like and dislike in belles lettres is very 
 difficult. 
 
 "Aubrey de Vere," wrote Professor Lounsbury,^ "tells us of three con- 
 versations he held the very same day on the very same subject with three 
 different authors. Two of them were men of great poetic genius, the third 
 
 ^ In the Yale Book of American Verse. 
 
BOOK-REVIEWS > 15 
 
 was a man of distinct poetic talent. The topic of discussion in each case was 
 the poetry of Burns. The difference of opinion expressed struck him as 
 remarkable. The first with whom he talked was Tennyson. 'Read the ex- 
 quisite songs of Burns,' exclaimed that poet, 'in shape each of them has the 
 perfection of the berry; in light the radiance of the dewdrop; you forget for 
 its sake those stupid things, his serious pieces.' 
 
 "A little later in the day he met Wordsworth. Again the conversation 
 fell on Burns. 'Wordsworth,' he writes, 'praised him even more vehemently 
 than Tennyson had done, as the great genius who had brought poetry back to 
 nature.' "Of course," he said in conclusion, "I refer to his serious efforts, 
 such as 'The Cotter's Saturday Night'; those foolish little amatory songs of 
 his one has to forget," ' On the evening of this same day he chanced to fall 
 in with Henry Taylor. Him he told of the different views expressed by the 
 two poets. The author of "Philip Van Artevelde," disposed of them both very 
 summarily. 'Burns' exquisite songs and Burns' serious efforts are to me alike 
 tedious and disagreeable reading,' was the comment he made. 
 
 "The story is somewhat singular" Professor Lounsbury continues, "but 
 after all it is much more singular for the rapidity with which the expression 
 of these varying views chanced to follow one another than for the views ex- 
 pressed. The disparagement of great poetic work by writers, themselves of 
 great poetic ix)wer, and likewise the extraordinary praise lavished by them 
 upon very ordinary verse, are both significant facts which can hardly fail to 
 arrest at times the attention of the student of literature. The history of letters, 
 in truth, abounds in singular judgments which men of genius have passed upon 
 the productions of other men of genius. It is often hard to tell which is the 
 more remarkable — the mean opinion which these entertain of what the rest 
 of the world has approved, or the admiration they have or profess to have 
 for what the rest of the world refuses to regard with favor. 
 
 "Many will recall the lofty scorn which Matthew Arnold poured upon 
 the men who for generations had admired and enjoyed Macaulay's 'Lays of 
 Ancient Rome.' He proclaimed that a man's power to detect the ring of 
 false metal in these pieces was a good measure of his fitness to g^ve an opinion 
 about poetical matters at all. The self-sufficiency of this utterance is as 
 delicious as its positiveness. These 'Lays', it may be added, had been welcomed 
 with such intense enthusiasm by Christopher North, the critical lawgiver of 
 the generation of their appearance, that Macaulay felt himself constrained to 
 make a personal acknowledgment of the cordiality of the greeting his work 
 had met from the then all-powerful reviewer who had been one of his extreme 
 political adversaries." 
 
16 THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY 
 
 Professor Lounsbiiry points out the fallibility of authors as critics: "The 
 possession of creative power is indeed far from implying the possession of 
 a corresponding degree of critical judgment. In literature all of us have our 
 preferences and our aversions. Perhaps even more than their inferiors are 
 men of genius susceptible to feelings of this nature and to the errors of judg- 
 ment caused by them. The revelation of their likes and dislikes is in conse- 
 quence apt to be more entertaining than edifying. . ." 
 
 "For the truth is that in the case of works of the imagination the settled 
 judgment of the great body of cultivated men is infinitely superior to the 
 judgment of any one man, however eminent. Very wisely that body will not 
 in the long run, nor ordinarily even in the short run, accept the decision of any 
 self-constituted censor which runs counter to its own conclusions. A genuinely 
 great production will in the end find its own public which in time will become 
 the public; and that public will not be deterred from admiring it by the most 
 bitter attacks of the ablest writers in the most influential periodicals. In his 
 estimate of works involving special knowledge, the individual wisely defers 
 to the authority of experts. In works of the imagination, however, every man 
 of culture is in varying degrees an expert himself." 
 
 § 11 
 
 To sum up: Book-reviewing is to be distinguished from literary criticism. 
 The former is a branch of journalism; the latter a branch of literature. Book- 
 reviewing suffers from haste in the work of the reviewer, lack of intelligence 
 and from commercialism, — the control of the advertiser upon the literary 
 department. Yet the commercialism is only one fault among many, and it is 
 part of a great national evil. It must be borne in mind that criticising is 
 judging, which does not mean blaming altogether. "The fine art of praising" 
 is sometimes part of a critic's duty. 
 
 It is a mistake to assume that book-reviewing of to-day has degenerated 
 from a noble past. The reviewing of former days was faulty and unsatisfac- 
 tory, often absurdly savage in its attacks. This will be shown still further 
 in a discussion of English reviews. 
 
 Book-reviews for a librarian's use must be prompt, they ought to be brief 
 and clear; they should express an opinion. On imaginative literature they are 
 most apt to be doubtful, and the librarian should be able to judge for herself. 
 
BOOK-REVIEWS 17 
 
 II 
 
 §1 
 
 It is said that the first English review of a book in the modern sense 
 was a tract, by John Dennis, on a fashionable epic of the moment, published 
 in 1696. It is not necessary, however, for us to go back so far as that, and 
 it is impossible in an hour's talk, to make an attempt to study English book- 
 reviewing from its beginning. It is worth while to look back about a hun- 
 dred years, and to consider what is undoubtedly the most famous period 
 of book-reviewing in the English language. Not only do the famous book- 
 reviewers, their writings and their victims, illustrate a number of points which 
 are important to-day, but the men and the period are intensely interesting in 
 themselves. The time is that of the opening years of the nineteenth century, 
 when Europe was convulsed, exactly as it is now, in a terrible struggle to rid 
 itself of an enemy of human liberty. We know to-day that the period is famous 
 in English literature, and that, so far as creative work is concerned, there 
 were giants in those days. The age of reason had passed, and the tide of 
 romance was flowing. Scott was soon to start writing his novels; Coleridge, 
 Wordsworth, Shelley, Byron, Keats, and Southey were publishing their poems. 
 
 §2 
 
 The Edinburgh Rcviezc, the first of the famous book-reviewing maga- 
 zines, was founded in 1802.* From the beginning Francis Jeffrey was its 
 editor. He held that post for twenty-seven years, and he continued to write 
 for it for about forty-six years. He would be personally interesting if for no 
 other reason, as the author of one of the most famous book-reviews ever 
 printed, — that on Wordsworth's "The Excursion." He was a young Scotch 
 advocate, educated at the Universities of Glasgow and Oxford, and practic- 
 ing law in his native city of Edinburgh. He was invited to conduct the 
 Reviezv, and did so until 1829, when he was appointed Chief of the Faculty 
 of Advocates and resigned his post to Macvey Napier. Jeffrey became Lord 
 Advocate of Scotland in 1830; doubtless a very important post, but one chiefly 
 interesting to readers of English novels because of Lord Advocate Grant and 
 his fascinating daughter, who appear in the pages of "David Balfour." Later 
 Jeffrey became a judge, as Lord Jeffrey, and sat upon the bench until his 
 
 • Any reader familiar with Mr. R. Brimley Johnson's volume "Famous Reviews," will see that I am 
 greatly indebted to it for information. 
 
18 THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY 
 
 death in 1850. He was beyond compare the arch-critic of the old school, 
 dictator of literature, who uttered his judgments with the authority of a 
 Pope speaking ex cathedra. Physically he was a small man, but when he sat 
 in the chair of the editor of the Edinburgh, he roared like all the bulls of 
 Bashan. Thomas Carlyle speaks of him as delicate and attractive, a dainty 
 little figure hardly five feet four inches in height. 
 
 In considering the fact that Jeffrey frequently treated authors very much 
 as though they were guilty prisoners at the bar, and he the judge upon the 
 bench, wearing the black cap and about to pronounce sentence of execution, 
 it must not be thought that he was entirely a wielder of the club. It is true, 
 that he believed one of his principal duties was, as Mr. Gosse says, to put an 
 extinguisher on small men of letters. But his standards were those of the 
 eighteenth century; he did not understand the nineteenth. Campbell was an 
 eighteenth century poet, and so he praises Campbell. Byron, Keats, and 
 Wordsworth were nineteenth century poets, and consequently fell under his 
 displeasure. He did not understand the new spirit, and thought whatever 
 was new was surely bad. He finds something to blame in Keats, but also 
 something to praise. In a review of Keats's poems in 1820 he says that he 
 has been exceedingly struck with the genius which they display and the spirit 
 of poetry which breathes through all their "extravagance." Here, surely, is 
 a case of criticism repeating itself. Do not the comments of Lord Jeffrey 
 upon Keats sound very much like those of some staid book-reviewer to-day 
 dealing with such rebels as Vachell Lindsay or the author of that extraordinary 
 book, "The Spoon River Anthology" ? 
 
 In Lord Jeffrey's career there is a case of a book-review leading to a 
 duel, as in the century before, when precise mannered English gentlemen 
 fought with rapiers over the correct scansion of a line of poetry. Jeffrey 
 reviewed the poems of Thomas Moore, with the result that arrangements 
 were made for a duel between the reviewer and the poet. The police, however, 
 had orders to interrupt and there was no bloodshed. 
 
 The solemnity and finality of his sentence of literary death pronounced 
 upon Wordsworth, can hardly be surpassed. Beginning with the famous 
 sentence "This will never do," Lord Jeffrey seems to believe that he has 
 retired the poet to obscurity forever. The "Lyrical Ballads," he says, wavered 
 between "silliness and pathos," but "The Excursion" makes him perceive that 
 "the case of Mr. Wordsworth. . .is now manifestly hopeless; and we give him 
 up as altogether incurable." He had found in Wordsworth "occasional gleams 
 of tenderness and beauty," but now he must consider him "finally lost to the 
 good cause of poetry." 
 
BOOK-REVIEWS 19 
 
 As we all know, Wordsworth frequently wrote things marked by bathos 
 and absurdity, but if we consider the reputation accorded to his work as a 
 whole, it is only necessary to read Jeffrey's review (in the Edinburgh, Novem- 
 ber, 1814). to recognize truth in the saying that *'the whole history of criticism 
 has been a triumph of authors over critics." 
 
 Lord Brougham was an associate of Jeffrey in the foundation of the 
 Edinburgh Reviezv, and is said to have written eighty articles for the first 
 twenty numbers of it. In later years, Walter Savage Landor spoke of the 
 better spirit which then prevailed in the Edinburgh from the generosity and 
 genius of Macaulay. "But," says Landor, "in the days when Brougham and 
 his 'confederates' were writers in it, more falsehood and more malignity marked 
 its pages than in any other journal in the language." Brougham (or possibly 
 Jeffrey) was the author of the review of Byron's "Hours of Idleness." 
 
 Byron published it in* 1807. It was praised in the Critical Review, of 
 September, 1807, and abused in the first number of the Satirist. In January, 
 1808, the famous criticism came out in the Edinburgh Rez'iezv. It has been 
 said of the review that its want of critical acumen is less obvious than the 
 needless cruelty of the wound inflicted upon a boy's harmless vanity. Byron 
 was deeply hurt. He had already under way a satirical poem, which he now 
 carefully polished. "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers," appeared in the 
 middle of the following March and at once made a hit. 
 
 §3 
 
 This is the way he countered upon the Edinburgh critics: 
 
 A man must serve his time to every trade 
 Save censure — critics all are ready made. 
 Take hackneyed jokes from Miller, got by rote, 
 With just enough of learning to misquote; 
 A mind well skilled to find or forge a fault; 
 A turn for punning, call it Attic salt; 
 To Jeffrey go, be silent and discreet. 
 His pay is just ten sterling pounds per sheet: 
 Fear not to lie, 't will seem a sharper hit; 
 Shrink not from blasphemy, 't will pass for wit; 
 Care not for feeling — pass your proper jest, 
 And stand a critic, hated yet caressed. 
 
20 THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY 
 
 And shall we own such judgment? no — as soon 
 
 Seek roses in December — ice in June; 
 
 Hope constancy in wind, or corn in chaff; 
 
 Believe a woman or an epitaph, 
 
 Or any other thing that's false, before 
 
 You trust in critics, who themselves are sore; 
 
 Or yield one single thought to be misled 
 
 By Jeffrey's heart, or Lambe's Boeotian head. 
 
 To these young tyrants, by themselves misplaced, 
 Combined usurpers on the throne of taste; 
 To these, when authors bend in humble awe, 
 And hail their voice as truth, their word as law — 
 While these are censors, 't would be sin to spare; 
 While such are critics, why should I forbear? 
 But yet, so near all modern worthies run, 
 'Tis doubtful whom to seek, or whom to shun; 
 Nor know we when to spare, or where to strike, 
 Our bards and censors are so much alike. 
 
 Then should you ask me, why I venture o'er 
 
 The path which Pope and Gifford trod before; 
 
 If not yet sickened, you can still proceed: 
 
 Go on; my rhyme will tell you as you read. 
 
 "But hold!" exclaims a friend, — "here's some neglect: 
 
 This — that — and t'other line seem incorrect." 
 
 What then? the self-same blunder Pope has got. 
 
 And careless Dryden — "Ay, but Pye has not": — 
 
 Indeed ! — 'tis granted, faith ! — but what care I ? 
 
 Better to err with Pope, than shine with Pye. . 
 
 Another founder of the Edinburgh, and one of its reviewers was Sydney 
 Smith, the only one of the trio, apparently, who was really witty. He poked 
 fun at Miss Hannah More in very much the same way that a light and amus- 
 ing writer of to-day, say, Mr. E. S. Martin of Life, might enjoy jesting about 
 some serious reformer, such as Dr. Anna Shaw. 
 
 The second of the famous reviews was the Quarterly, founded in 1809, 
 with William Gifford as its editor. Gifford, it is said, undoubtedly established 
 
BOOK-REVIEWS 21 
 
 the reputation of this magazine for scurrility. He was known as the man 
 who did the "butchering business" in political journalism. His bludgeon was 
 far heavier than Jeffrey's. Hazlitt declared that Gifford believed that mod- 
 ern literature should wear the fetters of classical antiquity; that truth is to 
 be weighed in the scales of opinion and prejudice; that power is equivalent 
 to right; that genius is dependent on rules; that taste and refinement of 
 language consist in word-catching. Gif ford's review of Keats's "Endymion," 
 called forth Byron's famous apostrophe to: 
 
 John Keats, who was killed of f by one critique 
 Just as he really promised something great, 
 
 If not intelligible, without Greek 
 
 Contrived to talk about the gods of late 
 
 Much as they might have been supposed to speak. 
 Poor fellow ! his was an untoward fate; 
 
 'Tis strange the mind, that very fiery particle, 
 
 Should let itself be snuff'd out by one article. 
 
 The attacks on Keats appeared both in Blackzvood's Magazine and the 
 Quarterly Rcvietii. The Blackzvood article was Number 4 of the series bear- 
 ing the signature "Z" on "The Cockney School of Poetry." The previous 
 articles of the same series had been a series of preposterous insults directed 
 against Leigh Hunt. Mr. Sidney Colvin thinks it is not quite certain who 
 wrote them, but that there is every reason to believe that they were the work 
 of John Wilson, suggested and perhaps revised by the publisher, William 
 Blackwood. The Edinburgh critics attacked Hunt's opinions, his weaknesses 
 as a writer, and proceeded to gross accusations of vice and infamy. The 
 articles on Hunt included several allusions to "Johnny Keats," representing 
 him as a puling satellite of Hunt. The attack was merely a tirade of the sort 
 which one associates with backwoods journalism of half a centufy ago. 
 
 It begins with the words: "Our hatred and contempt of Leigh Hunt," 
 and proceeds to accuse him of "low-born insolence," a "leprous crust of self- 
 conceit," and "loathsome vulgarity." This is the man who is remembered 
 to-day very largely for his innocent rhyme: "Jenny Kissed Me," and for "Abou 
 Ben Adhem" ! But Blackzvood's speaks of Hunt's "polluted muse." "We 
 were the first." writes the reviewer, "to brand with a burning iron the false 
 face of this kept-mistress of a demoralizing incendiary. We tore off her 
 gaudy veil and transparent drapery, and exhibited the painted cheeks and 
 writhing limbs of the prostitute." 
 
22 THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY 
 
 It seems difficult to believe that Lockhart, son-in-law of Sir Walter Scott 
 and the author of the biography of Scott, could have written the attack 
 on Keats, — the fourth of the series. Mr. Sidney Colvin, however, thinks 
 that it was all but absolutely proved that Lockhart was really the author of 
 it. Then followed the articles in The Quarterly Review, on Keats's "Endy- 
 mion," probably written by Gifford, the editor. The review, it has been said, 
 is quite in Gif ford's manner, — that of a man insensible to the higher charm 
 of poetry, incapable of judging it except by mechanical rule and precedent, 
 and careless of the pain he gives. Considering the perfect modesty and good 
 judgment with which Keats had in his preface pointed out the weakness of 
 his own work, both attacks are inexcusable. 
 
 "Endymion," says the critic, is "calm, settled, imperturbable, drivelling 
 idiocy." (It will be well to remember that the next time you hear vigorous 
 denunciation of a contemporaneous book.) The review ends with the famous 
 cruel reference to Keats — who is called a "starving apothecary," — "so back 
 to the shop, Mr. John, back to plasters, pills, and ointment boxes, &c." 
 
 The poet's friends arose in his defense, and there was a warfare of articles, 
 ending, so far as two of the writers were concerned, in some bloodshed. John 
 Scott, the editor of the London Magazine, was shortly afterwards killed in a 
 duel by a friend of Lockhart. The duel arose from these very quarrels about 
 the Blackzvood articles. Keats took the attacks upon himself very calmly, 
 although there is little doubt that he was for a while immensely discouraged 
 by them. He said that he would write no more poetry, but try to serve the 
 world in some other way. Afterwards he recovered his poise, and fortunately 
 for English literature, continued to write. Many of his friends, however, 
 fully believed that his early death was caused more or less directly by these 
 savage onslaughts. Byron's jingle is well known: 
 
 Who killed John Keats? 
 "I," said The Quarterly, 
 So savage and Tartarly, 
 "I killed John Keats." 
 
 Considering the nature of the disease from which Keats suffered, it is not 
 at all improbable that these criticisms may have indirectly hastened his death. 
 He spoke about the subject with noble simplicity: 
 
 "I cannot but feel indebted to those gentlemen who have taken my part.. 
 As for the rest, I begin to get a little acquainted with my own strength and 
 weakness. Praise or blame has but a momentary effect on the man whose 
 love of beauty in the abstract makes him a severe critic on his own works. 
 
BOOK-REVIEWS 23 
 
 My own domestic criticism has given me pain without comparison beyond 
 what Blackwood or the Quarterly could possibly inflict: and also when I feel 
 I am right, no external praise can give me such a glow as my own solitary 
 reperception and ratification of what is fine." 
 
 And again: "There have been two letters in my defence in the Chronicle, 
 and one in the Examiner, copied from the Exeter paper, and written by 
 Reynolds. I don't know who wrote those in the Chronicle. This is a mere 
 matter of the moment: I think I shall be among the English Poets after my 
 death. Even as a matter of present interest, the attempt to crush me in the 
 Quarterly, has only brought me more into notice, and it is a common expres- 
 sion among bookmen, *I wonder the Quarterly should cut its own throat.' " 
 
 Another critic who wrote for the Quarterly, was John Wilson Croker, 
 who is immortal for one remark which Macaulay made about him: "I hate 
 him," said Macaulay, "worse than cold boiled veal." After all, and in spite 
 of the animosity, rancor, and venom which characterized a good deal of the 
 criticism and counter-criticism of literary men in those days, it must be ad- 
 mitted that some of them had a power of expression which added salt to life. 
 Doubtless we could name public men of to-day who hate one another worse 
 than cold boiled veal, but few of them would have such vigorous thought and 
 power of expression. 
 
 Sir Walter Scott was also a critic on the Quarterly Review. Scott's criti- 
 cal writings usually contain something generous about every writer they have 
 occasion to mention. His fine and intelligent praise of Jane Austen is well 
 remembered. He showed therein that he appreciated the qualities in her work 
 which was absent in his own. 
 
 §5 
 
 The third of the great reviewing magazines, and the last one of this group 
 which we can consider, was Blackzvooil's Magazine, founded in 1817. This 
 has already been mentioned, in connection with the assaults upon Keats. With 
 Blackwood's is associated the name of John Wilson, as literary editor, from 
 1817 to 1852. His pen-name was Christopher North. Wilson was an athlete 
 as well as a man of letters, and there are fine stories of his spending the night 
 in drinking and singing songs with his friends, and starting out at daybreak to 
 run from London to Cambridge. Charles Dickens declared that he was a 
 patron of cock-fighting, wrestling, pugilistic contests, boat-racing and horse- 
 racing. "He was fond of all stimulating things," said Carlyle, "from tragic 
 
24 THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY 
 
 poetry to whiskey-punch." Tennyson repHed to one of Christopher North's 
 criticisms in the verse: 
 
 You did late review my lays', 
 
 Crusty Christopher; 
 You did mingle blame and praise 
 
 Rusty Christopher. 
 When I learnt from whence it came, 
 I forgave you all the blame 
 
 Musty Christopher 
 I could not forgive the praise 
 
 Fusty Christopher! 
 
 I have not dwelt upon this side of the famous reviews in order to make 
 out that they were altogether bad and untrustworthy. Their violent attempts 
 to crush writers, whom they often entirely misunderstood or were incapable 
 of appreciating, were, however, the things for which they are most famous. 
 It is useful for us to know about their violence and their blunders, lest we 
 pay too much heed to the reviewers to-day. Nearly all of these old reviews 
 are alive to-day, — old-fashioned in appearance, bulky, and solemn, but a 
 good deal sweetened in temper. They are usually behind the times, and proud 
 of it; but they are solid and dignified. Certainly not up-to-date, from the 
 point of view of the cheaper magazines, they are, nevertheless, well edited 
 and authoritative. They review but few books, and they are usually late in 
 doing this. So for book-reviewing they are seldom useful to librarians. 
 
 Now, we come to the weekly reviews, of a later generation. 
 
 The Saturday Review was founded in 1855. It is not primarily a literary 
 review, but is of a general nature, devoted especially to politics, literature, 
 science and art. It is conservative, not to say high Tory, in its politics, and has 
 always breathed the spirit of the old universities, the established church, the 
 conservative party, and classical scholarship. A short story, published about 
 twenty years ago, contains a few sentences descriptive of the Saturday Review, 
 and of the mental attitude of many of its readers. One Englishman met 
 another sitting on a park bench somewhere in Ital)^ One of them pulled 
 a copy of the Saturday out of his pocket and began to read it, remarking that 
 it was the Bible of the Englishman when travelling. The other said, "Yes, 
 
BOOK-REVIEWS 25 
 
 Shakespeare we have to share with the Americans; but, damn it, the Saturday 
 Review is all our own !" 
 
 You can hardly get the spirit of the vanished England of a generation 
 ago better than by turning to a volume anywhere in the 1870's or 80's. It 
 never approved of the United States of America; and anything, whether a 
 book, a man, or a custom, which hailed from this country was in its eyes 
 presumably wrong. So far as one can discover, the reason for this attitude 
 was that we have a republican form of government from which, in the view 
 of your fine, old, crusted Tory, no good thing can come. This attitude toward 
 America was maintained in the Saturday Rcviezv until recent years, and was 
 still apparent as late as the outbreak of the Spanish War, in 1898. The Review 
 freely predicted disaster for us if we should attempt to try conclusions with 
 Spain, but had its predictions falsified by the outcome of the Battle of Santiago. 
 Inasmuch as the Tory spirit is quick to acclaim success, the Saturday Review 
 had to admit that the victory of the American fleet was complete, and the 
 action of our sailors toward their defeated enemies beyond criticism. The 
 editor seemed to stutter as he uttered his praise, and it was with obvious relief 
 that he turned, in the next paragraph, to condemn the bad conduct of the 
 French mariners on the sinking liner, "La Bourgogne," for France had been 
 a hereditary enemy as well as this country. It is looking back into English 
 history to remember these old enmities and animosities. Things are changed 
 to-day ! 
 
 The Saturday Reviezu kept up the tradition of a severe, not to say savage, 
 critical journal. It denounced Thackeray for his lectures on "The Four 
 Georges," and made violent onslaughts upon Dickens. In the number for 
 January 3, 1857, it contained an article on Dickens as a politician, in which 
 it objected to the novelist's attacks upon the abuses of his day almost exactly 
 as some journals now denounce the novelists who refuse to flatter the powers 
 that be in politics and religion. "Who," asks the Saturday Revieiv, "takes 
 Mr. Dickens seriously? Is it not as foolish to estimate his melodramatic 
 and sentimental stock in trade gravely as it would be to undertake a refuta- 
 tion of the jests of the clown in a Christmas pantomime?" It solemnly pro- 
 tests against Dickens's legitimate satirization of the Court of Chancery in 
 "Bleak House," and objects to the picture of a government office as repre- 
 sented by the Circumlocution Office in "Little Dorrit." It made that final 
 and crushing charge against Dickens, that he only wanted to sell his books. 
 The Saturday admitted, in the manner of its kind, that no doubt there are 
 great abuses in the country, and much that wants reform in Parliament and 
 in the law. And then it went on, exactly as its prototypes do to-day, and 
 
26 THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY 
 
 will do SO long as the world lasts, to object to the manner of the criticism 
 and to imply that nobody has any right to criticise except the persons criti- 
 cised. Consequently, it would follow that there should never be any criticism 
 of anything! In a final delightful paragraph it declares that Dickens is 
 utterly destitute of any kind of solid requirements, absolutely ignorant of 
 law and politics; does not know his own meaning; does not see the conse- 
 quences of his own teaching; and is unable to play any part in any movement 
 more significant than that of the fly, and generally a gad-fly, on the wheel. 
 Again, speaking of "Bleak House" and "Little Dorrit," the Saturday Review 
 remarked that they were both "paltry, dry bundles of nonsense." 
 
 As a result of its attacks on various writers, including, by the way, Long- 
 fellow, Froude. Lytton, and the Kingsleys, Charles and Henry, it became 
 variously called "The Saturday Snarl," "The Saturday Scorpion." "The Satur- 
 day Slasher," "The Saturday Butcher," and "The Saturday Reviler." In 
 spite of its frequent savagery, it has maintained a high level of scholarship; 
 while fear of its attacks upon faulty English and slipshod writing have prob- 
 .ably had a good effect. On the other hand, Mr. James Grant, the writer of 
 a severe criticism of the Saturday Revieiv, declared sarcastically that its abuse 
 was desirable, for that the very fact that it praised an author was presumptive 
 proof that he was a man of inferior merit. 
 
 §8 
 
 The Athenaeum, another weekly,^ was founded in 1828 by James Silk 
 Buckingham, who aimed, he said, to make it "like the Athenaeum of antiquity, 
 a resort of the most distinguished philosophers, historians, orators, and poets 
 of the day." The Athenaeum, unlike the Saturday Revieiv, is first and fore- 
 most a book-review periodical; its sub-title is "Journal of English and Foreign 
 Literature, Science, the Fine Arts, Music, and the Drama." It has never been 
 famous for severe attacks upon writers, and when it celebrated its seventieth 
 birthday in 1898, declared with apparent truthfulness that it had from the 
 first opposed such criticism as that which the Edinburgh Review had employed 
 against Wordsworth, Shelley, and Keats. Writers like Charles Lamb, Walter 
 Savage Landor, Thomas Hood, Thomas Carlyle, Leigh Hunt, Hazlitt, and 
 Mrs. Browning, have been numbered among its contributors. 
 
 The War, which is blamed for so many things — from the rise in price 
 of Russian caviare (from the Mississippi) to the increased cost of paper and 
 printing materials — is probably responsible for the change to monthly form 
 
 * It became a monthly in January, 1916. 
 
BOOK-REVIEWS 27 
 
 of The Athenaeum. Such a change instantly deprives it of some part of its 
 value to librarians, — the timeliness of its reviews. Before the change I 
 should have been inclined to recommend it as perhaps the best English book- 
 reviewing periodical for the small library which can only subscribe to one. 
 Many librarians might think it still the best for such a library, and they may 
 be right. For The Athenaeum has begun to cater to librarians even more than 
 does The Dial in this country. Working in harmony with the Library Associa- 
 tion, it publishes each month an annotated list of new books, arranged by the 
 Decimal Classification, with the best books for libraries marked by a star. The 
 last is done by a "Committee of Specialists" from the Library Association. 
 In other words, this part of the periodical looks like the A. L. A. Book List. 
 It is a straightforward adoption of certain American library methods, and 
 The Athenaeum has been frank in its admiration of many of these methods. 
 We should. I suppose, be complimented. It is probably old fogyism which 
 makes me believe I like The Athenaeum better as it was. 
 
 Do not think, however, that its value has been decreased by this work 
 by and for librarians. On the contrary, it is only the lessened frequency of 
 issue which, generally speaking, could be lamented. Its reviewing work is of 
 a high average, and it is, so far as I know, never bitter nor violent in spirit. 
 Its typography and api^earance are pleasing. 
 
 §9 
 
 In a small library, the librarian may have to prefer one of the periodicals 
 of a general nature, and so may choose The Spectator, with its traditionally 
 sympathetic attitude toward America, or The Nation (London). Both of 
 these weeklies treat book-reviewing seriously; in both, the reviews are usually 
 good, sometimes excellent. Whether an American librarian should select a 
 periodical because it is friendly in its tone toward this country is a question. 
 With our easy-going characteristics, euphemistically called "optimism," a 
 steady course of praise is not necessarily suggested. 
 
 A number of new reviews, rather too many to discuss separately, have 
 come into existence, as some of the older ones (like The Academy) have 
 passed out. These devote varying amounts of space to book-reviews. They 
 are chiefly useful for their championship of "new" and radical ideas, — about 
 verse forms, about freedom in speech, or rather in writing, on "sex" subjects, 
 and about politics and religion. They are useful because of their champion- 
 ship of what is supposed to be new, and they are also to be distrusted for the 
 same reason. In reading them it is often apparent that their liberalism is 
 
28 THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY 
 
 but toryism in another guise, — "What I Hke is good, and what you like is 
 bad." Their narrow-mindedness is sometimes as remarkable as their tolerance, 
 and their originality frequently consists in taking an ancient maxim and tipping 
 it upside down. Twenty-five years ago the paradoxes of Oscar Wilde were 
 a new note in English letters; to-day they are old-fashioned. It does not take 
 courage now to defend vers litres among educated people, nor to speak a good 
 word for the "free" novel. It is conventional to do so. The brave man, the 
 really "advanced" thinker would be the one who would come boldly to the 
 defence of the despised "Mid- Victorian" period in art and letters. 
 
 Ill 
 
 §1 
 
 The course of book-reviewing in the United States does not offer the 
 striking incidents nor coherent history which may be found in Great Britain. 
 The latter years of the eighteenth century saw the rise in America, of a num- 
 ber of magazines, miscellanies, and "repositories," many of which lived for 
 only a few years. Some of them expired after the publication of one or two 
 numbers. Their names are almost universally forgotten, and are known only 
 to the investigator of the dry beginnings of our periodical literature.^ With 
 the nineteenth century came the North American Review, which celebrated 
 its centennial in 1915. The North American was conceived as a scholarly 
 review, in the manner of the famous quarterlies in England and Scotland. 
 It did not, as a matter of fact, become a monthly until many years had passed. 
 Its editors were able and erudite men, and the list includes the names of 
 Lowell and of Charles Eliot Norton. From the first, it attracted many of 
 the best writers in this country. The centennial numbers reprinted contribu- 
 tions from its pages in the past, by writers like Edward Everett, Jared Sparks 
 (the dignified scholar who succeeded in editing nearly all the humanity out of 
 George Washington), John Adams and Longfellow. Other contributors were 
 Bryant, Ticknor, Daniel Webster, and George Bancroft. What is true of 
 the English and Scotch reviews is in part true of the North American. In its 
 early days, the book-reviewing section was of importance, owing to the fact 
 that the disproportion between the number of books reviewed and the number 
 published was not so great as to-day. In a current number of the North 
 American, out of about a hundred and sixty pages, fourteen are devoted to 
 
 ^ One of these investigators, whose work resulted in a volume far from dry — sprightly, rather 
 Mr. Algernon Tassin. His book, "The Magazine in America," is valuable and entertaining. 
 
BOOK-REVIEWS 29 
 
 book-reviews. The North American has never pretended to pay any atten- 
 tion to light literature, and has purposely confined its reviews to what it con- 
 siders more serious and important books. It has moved with the age: it no 
 longer publishes book-reviews of twenty or thirty pages in length. Fourteen 
 pages of reviews in the current number to which I referred, include notices 
 of six books, and these are not works published six months or a year or 
 two ago, but are what may be called, with reasonable accuracy, recent. So 
 far as they go, then, the book-reviews in the North American are well worth 
 while, but it would be folly to say that any librarian would subscribe to it 
 primarily for them. 
 
 §2 
 
 Another of America's excellent magazines is, of course, the Atlantic 
 Monthly, younger by some decades than the North American Review, but 
 even more distinguished in its career. Its editors include James Russell 
 Lowell, William Dean Howells, and Thomas Bailey Aldrich; and the list of 
 its contributors reads like a biographical dictionary of American literature. 
 Tht Atlantic has had its lean years. One of its editors is said to have remarked 
 that his predecessor had outdone Moses, for while Moses made the Red Sea 
 dry, this editor had succeeded in making the Atlantic dry. Even less than the 
 North American, is the Atlantic Monthly concerned to-day with book-review- 
 ing. It is one of those periodicals quoted in the Book Review Digest, but on 
 looking over the last four or five numbers I saw only one article devoted to 
 book-reviews. This gave the writer's views on twenty-nine novels of the pre- 
 ceding year. It was a pleasant article, but rather an essay on the fiction of 
 the year, to keep the general reader posted, than a series of reviews useful to 
 a librarian. By the time it appeared most librarians had looked over these 
 novels and formed an opinion for themselves, or adopted one from some other 
 reviewing publication, and the books had either been rejected for purchase, or 
 else had been in circulation for a number of months, and were already showing 
 signs of wear. 
 
 §3 
 
 The first weekly periodical of its kind to be published in this country 
 and to continue without break to the present day, is The Nation, founded in 
 1865, in New York. The first editor of The Nation, who left his personality 
 stamped upon it, was the late Edwin L. Godkin, a journalist of Irish birth and 
 education. He had high motives, strong opinions, great ability, both as a writer 
 and editor, and a peculiar power of sarcastic utterance. Mr. Godkin had been 
 
30 ' THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY 
 
 a war correspondent and what he had seen of the horrors of war made him 
 become a Hfelong advocate of international peace. He, and others, bequeathed 
 this advocacy to The Nation, as well as the militant attitude toward political 
 corruption, and sympathy with the independent spirit in politics. 
 
 James Bryce, comparing The Nation with English reviews, wrote: "The 
 Nation resembled the Spectator in devoting its opening pages to comments on 
 current events, and also in the definiteness of its political programme, while 
 it recalled the Saturday Review in the pungency of its tone as well as in the 
 excellence of its literary criticism. It was, however, no mere imitation, either 
 of those journals or of any other, but a new creation which brought new 
 elements into the American press." ^ 
 
 Since 1881, The Nation has been owned by the Evening Post of New 
 York. Much, but by no means all of its contents, appears first in that journal. 
 The Post (and The Nation) set high their standards of political conduct and 
 literary merit. Some of their critics thought that they set them impossibly 
 high, and that what their editors termed idealism, was instead a supercilious 
 and contemptuous attitude toward human weakness and human failings. 
 
 From the start, The Nation appealed to an educated audience. Its earliest 
 friends and contributors were connected with the colleges and universities; 
 its readers to-day are, in great number, members of the faculties of these 
 institutions. As a result, it has often applied to it the term "high-brow," — a 
 phrase somewhat impaired in usefulness by its frequent application to any 
 journal which prefers genuine news to petty gossip, a well-written book to a 
 "best-seller," and grammatical to slipshod English. 
 
 The Nation has kept up its tradition, not only as a foe to war, but as a 
 consistent advocate of the rights of the so-called inferior races, especially the 
 American negroes. The latter advocacy would be a natural inheritance from 
 its first literary editor, Wendell Phillips Garrison, as well as from abolitionists 
 among its founders. Its high literary standards came, in great part, from 
 Mr. Garrison. It has opposed a protective tariff, urged and supported reforms 
 of the civil service, and decried inter-collegiate athletics, or what it deemed an 
 over-development of them. Its views on sociological and fiscal questions are 
 what are termed "sound" by some, and conservative by others. One has, in 
 considering book-reviews, to remember the principles and the prejudices of 
 the magazine in which they appear. Reviewers know, or soon learn, the 
 traditions of a publication, and even their minor paragraphs are affected 
 thereby. 
 
 * Quoted in "Fifty Years of American Idealism; The New York Nation, 1865-1915," by Gustav Pollak, 
 — a volume whose title illustrates the warmth of the affection bestowed upon The Nation by its contributors 
 and admirers, as well as the reason why many Americans have accused it of self-conscious rectitude. 
 
BOOK-REVIEWS 31 
 
 Writers are inclined to think of The Nation as the Sir Hubert Stanley of 
 American book-reviewing publications, — its approbation is praise indeed. 
 Some writers — and not those alone who have been slated in its pages — 
 regard it with dislike. You will remember the punishment reserved for the 
 priggish tutor in Mr. Owen Wister's "Philosophy 4": he is left "writing book- 
 reviews for the 'New York Evening Post.' " 
 
 Among librarians there is a respect for The Nation which sometimes 
 borders upon reverence. We can afford to smile at this attitude, but any 
 weekly periodical, of high standards, discussing as The Nation does, politics, 
 science, music and finance, as well as books, old and new, is almost indispens- 
 able for the library. It devotes a large amount of space to current reviews. 
 A recent number, which I pick up at random, considers twenty-one books; 
 and many weeks the number would be much larger than that. Its longer re- 
 views on special subjects, such as books about the fine arts, scientific books, 
 works about military and naval science (for this pacific periodical contains 
 many contributions from learned officers of the army and navy), and about 
 government and sociology, are worthy of respect. Its shorter reviews, 
 especially those of current fiction, are, as is almost invariably the case with 
 any publication, its weakest feature. A review of a current novel is frequently 
 nothing more than the expression of personal like or dislike, and when a re- 
 viewer sits down to write for The Nation his opinion upon a new novel, he is 
 inclined to err upon the side of fault-finding, as in another periodical he 
 might be too flattering. * 
 
 §4 
 
 "The Literary History of America," by Professor Barrett Wendell, refers 
 to The Dial, in Chicago, as a paper which seems at present the "most un- 
 biassed, good humored, and sensible organ of American criticism." We have 
 no weekly devoted solely to book-reviewing. We have no monthly devoted 
 entirely to it, as the greater part of The Bookman is devoted to general literary 
 articles, and to paragraphs about authors. The Dial, which appears fort- 
 nightly, is, I think, the only publication of the kind in the United States; and 
 it has been pursuing its pleasant and dignified career for about thirty-six 
 years, most of the time under the editorship of the late Francis F. Browne. 
 It appears to be conducted on the theory that a paper may avoid being fussy 
 or pedantic and still not be deficient in scholarship, and that it may dis- 
 
 * An interesting article — not a review — about a famous book, appeared in The Nation for February 23, 
 1905. It is called "The Winner in the Chariot Race," and it is typical of the kind of literary article which 
 is exquisitely pleasing to some readers, but sure to give pain to others. 
 
32 THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY 
 
 criminate between good and bad literary work without any note of hostility 
 or ill humor. To be sure, one sometimes misses in it the amusing and brilliant 
 flashes of malice which enliven other periodicals, and although it never sinks 
 below a certain level, it seldom rises far above it. The Dial has a respectably 
 high average which it strikes year in and year out. This is true at any rate 
 for the last decade, which is about as far back as my personal experience of it 
 goes. 
 
 A recent number contains two reviews of a page or more in length, three 
 longer articles which review in groups a number of books, — works on govern- 
 ment, biography, and the more important novels. Eleven other new books are 
 treated more briefly, but probably adequately, in about half a page apiece. 
 This number opened with two general articles on literary subjects, and 
 four pages of comment upon books and reading, and upon libraries and 
 librarians. (For this literary magazine gave especial recognition to librarians 
 before The Athenaeum did so.) It closes with brief notes and news, and a 
 long list of the titles of recent books. This was a smaller number of The 
 Dial, not one of the special issues which appear in the height of the publishing 
 seasons.^ 
 
 It is unnecessary to speak at length of The Bookman (New York), an 
 illustrated monthly magazine ''of literature and life." It is now in its forty- 
 fourth volume, and like all magazines has varied in quality. A custom which 
 it followed for a number of years was to group some of the novels of the 
 month in one article and review them under such a heading as "The Personal 
 Equation, and Twelve Novels of the Month," or "The Note of Pessimism, 
 and the Novels of the Month." This style of book-reviewing seems always 
 to appeal to Feviewers who take themselves rather seriously, as it gives a touch 
 of scientific literary criticism to their work. It often helps to make an agree- 
 able article for the general reader, but it is apt to be confusing to librarians 
 who wish specific comment upon a certain book. If in one or two of the 
 novels there is really nothing to which the phrase "the personal equation" 
 especially applies, the reviewer must needs distort that novel or color his 
 review of it in such a way as to make it seem to apply. The Bookman has 
 enlisted the services of many competent reviewers; as a whole it is always 
 readable, and it possesses a sense of humor. 
 
 1 In the number for January 25, 1917, it is announced that Mr. George Bernard Donlin is to be the 
 editor of The Dial. "It will try to meet the challenge of the new time by reflecting and interpreting its 
 spirit..." — whatever that means. 
 
BOOK-REVIEWS 33 
 
 §6 
 
 The publications which we are considering now are so familiar to Ameri- 
 can librarians that it is unnecessary, if not impertinent, to dwell long upon 
 them. The reputation for kindliness in the reviews published in the Neiv 
 York Times Book Review is well established among librarians. The excellence 
 of many of its longer reviews is also a point to be remembered. 
 
 There are probably a hundred newspapers in the United States which 
 pay more or less attention to books, and a few of them include surprisingly 
 good reviews. Some of these papers can command the services of intelligent 
 book-reviewers. An author is always pleased when a review indicates that 
 its writer has read the book, and read it intelligently. To read the book which 
 one is about to review is not always the custom. Yet when it is followed, the 
 result is not only gratifying to the author, but valuable to us all. In the 
 rush and hurry of the offices of a newspaper, a great many books do not 
 get read at all. Either, as Mr. Bliss Perry pointed out, the reviewer clips 
 the publisher's notice, or he takes a few sentences from the preface, or 
 he glances casually into the book and jumps to a hasty conclusion. The 
 frequency with which the publisher's notice (that paragraph of puffing usually 
 printed on the jacket of a book and known as the "blurb"), the frequency with 
 which this is repeated in newspaper book-reviewing is almost incredible. I 
 know an author who subscribed to a press-clipping bureau and read the hun- 
 dred or more notices which were sent to him about his new book. Nearly 
 twelve months later, a relative of this author wrote to him that she had heard 
 of a complimentary notice which had appeared about his book and about 
 him as a writer, in some paper in Texas. The kind relative went on to say 
 that she had not yet seen the notice, but had only heard about it in a letter 
 from a friend in the city where it was first printed. The friend had lent it 
 to another friend, and in course of time it was to be sent to the* relative who 
 promised to forward it to the tremulous and expectant author. After more 
 or less correspondence the author at last received the clipping, which was 
 nearly worn out, it had passed through so many hands. It was, indeed, 
 flattering in its nature, and indicated a belief that the reputation of such 
 writers as Thackeray, Dickens, and Howells were wavering in the balance on 
 account of the rise of this new and extraordinarily gifted novelist. The author 
 did his best to thank his friendly correspondent, and he refrained from saying 
 that the delightful nature of this compliment was somewhat impaired for 
 him by the fact that he had already read the same praise, uttered verbatim et 
 literatim, by about thirty-five different newspapers from Portland, Maine, to 
 
34 THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY 
 
 Santa Barbara, California, and that, moreover, the whole thing originated in 
 the puff, by means of which the publishers of the book were doing their 
 best to increase its sale. 
 
 In spite of this sort of thing, there is occasionally a newspaper, some- 
 times of the most unexpected sort, which happens to have upon its staff a 
 man or a woman who is writing honest, intelligent and witty book-reviews. 
 An author who had seen many reviews, uniformly favorable, of his 
 books, told me that a little twenty-line notice in a rather obscure Yorkshire 
 newspaper, not only pleased him most, but seemed to show more intelligent 
 appreciation of what he was trying to say, than all the others. Sometimes 
 these reviewers are doing their work without any pay except the practice which 
 it gives them, the pleasure of seeing their writing in print, and the opportunity 
 to gain the editor's notice, and so merit, in the future, payment in money. 
 Such writers of reviews are frequently not hurried; they may spend a week 
 in reading a single book and in writing a review of it, and the work is often 
 correspondingly careful. (An experienced hand, of course, might do far 
 better in a few hours. The plodding nature of much of our own work as 
 librarians may make us exalt the plodder, and forget that brilliant work is 
 frequently done at high speed.) Sometimes there are professional men or 
 women who enjoy dabbling in literary work in their odd moments, and so write 
 reviews. Certain papers and periodicals devoted to special interests, such as, 
 for instance, those published by religious sects, often contain excellent book- 
 reviews. All of these are interesting and valuable to ♦the librarian, if they 
 appear in time. Unfortunately, they seldom do that. 
 
 In discussing newspapers, it should be said that the three quoted in the 
 Book Reviezv Digest, are the "New York Times, the Springfield Republican, 
 and the Boston Evening Transcript. 
 
 §7 
 
 To librarians a great deal need not be said about the little publication 
 to which the American Library Association chooses to give the cryptic and 
 unattractive name of A. L. A. Booklist. It is, of course, aimed especially at 
 the small libraries which can afford to wait until the Booklist appears. It is 
 undoubtedly cautious and conservative in its recommendations, keeping in 
 mind not the educated person of mature mind and catholic taste, but rather 
 the provincial type of library patron who is easily shocked.^ If any of us ever 
 
 1 While this is in press a librarian writes to Public Libraries to complain that the A. L. A. Booklist 
 has failed in its duty, — it did not, with sufficient severity, condemn a recent novel by Jack London, — a 
 book apt, thinks this librarian, to do great barm to young people. 
 
BOOK-REVIEWS 35 
 
 write a book, we may feel fairly certain that out of a feeling of fellowship 
 for us as librarians the A. L. A. Booklist will duly recommend it, showing 
 that however stern and uncompromising they would have the professional 
 literary critic, when it comes down to their own case librarians prefer the milk 
 of human kindness to the corrosive acid of outspoken criticism. 
 
 Judging from the current number (January, 1917), the phraseology of 
 the annotations in the Booklist is open to improvement. One does not demand 
 graceful writing in these notes, but such awkwardness of expression as to leave 
 the meaning in doubt certainly impeaches the value of the criticisms. 
 
 §8 
 
 There are innumerable periodicals of a general nature, wh'ch contain 
 book-reviews. However useful they may prove, from time to time, a discus- 
 sion of them is superfluous now. No library subscribes to the Outlook, the 
 Independent, nor the Literary Digest, primarily for the sake of its book-re- 
 views. The reviews in The New Republic are especially worth attention because 
 in it we have not only an ably edited paper, but one with different opinions, 
 different sympathies, from those of the other weeklies. On a question of 
 sociology, of economics, or of politics, The Neiv Republic would usually 
 represent the opposite opinion from The Nation, for instance. These different 
 opinions are reflected in the reviews, — hence the value of both periodicals to 
 the librarian. The reviews in The New Republic frequently have a studied 
 sophistication which makes it rather a task to consult them. 
 
 §9 
 
 Not the least among the minor reviewing publications is Life, with its 
 brief, but often witty and penetrating comments upon books. I mention it, not 
 so much for the purpose of recommending it to you in this connection, as to 
 point out from what unorthodox sources many of the readers at your library 
 get their impulses to read this or that book. I mean that while few librarians 
 would dream of speaking of Life for its book-reviews, some of them would 
 be surprised to learn of its influence upon the reading of their friends. A 
 little investigation will, I think, show you that a great number of intelligent 
 men and women, not engaged in literary or scholastic work, never see — and 
 some never even hear of — the standard book-reviewing publications. If they 
 take a newspaper which publishes reviews, they skip that page as regularly 
 as I skip the court record or the real estate section. But I believe you can find, 
 
36 THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY 
 
 as I have done, university men who invariably read the comments upon books 
 in Life, and accept their advice. It is usually eminently sensible advice. 
 
 For your own pleasure, and as the one touch of humor in this entire sub- 
 ject, you have not failed to read the "Rhymed Reviews" in Life, by Arthur 
 Guiterman. They are now suspended, but perhaps only temporarily. At a 
 time when scores of lazy persons seek the title of "poet" by composing 
 mechanical imitations of vers litres, which only a few can master, Mr. Guiter- 
 man handles unexpected rhymes and difficult metres with a dexterity second 
 only to a poet like Calverley. His comments upon current books, in his in- 
 genious verse, sometimes appeal to you because of their whimsicality, but often 
 because in them he has said merrily what another reviewer could only say 
 heavily. 
 
 §10 
 
 It is impossible for the small library to subscribe to all the literary re- 
 views. It is often impossible for the librarian to read all to which there is 
 access. Hence the convenience of some sort of review in tabloid form. 
 
 The Book Review Digest supplies this compressed form of book-review 
 in a practical fashion. It suffers from one of the faults of the reviews them- 
 selves, in that its notices often appear too late to be of the greatest service to 
 the librarian. Indeed, as this publication has to wait until the reviews are 
 published before it can go to press, it is naturally still later than the reviews. 
 Its system of indicating the favorable or unfavorable nature of a review by 
 a plus or minus sign is not invariably satisfactory, as I have known an ironical 
 review to be misunderstood by the person who made the digest of it, and 
 marked with a plus sign, when the reviewer meant something quite different. 
 It is not always possible to get the meaning of a review, which may be eleven 
 or twelve hundred words in length, into a summary of eight or ten lines, any 
 more than it is possible to have a genuine knowledge of a book merely by 
 reading a review of it. The Book Review Digest reflects, of course, and in 
 some respects accentuates the faults of the book-reviews. Like the reviews it 
 is a good thing for a librarian to call upon for help, but a bad one upon which 
 to rely absolutely. It would be safe, I think, to name The Book Review Digest 
 as one of the four or five most desirable publications to help in the selection of 
 books. But that would be bad advice unless coupled with a warning not to 
 depend too much upon digests, excerpts, extracts, and machinery, thereby 
 neglecting the few opportunities a librarian has of reading books, and forming 
 opinions about them. 
 
BOOK-REVIEWS 37 
 
 IV 
 
 §1 
 
 In the last of these talks it may be useful to consider the various kinds 
 of book-reviews, and try to discover which of these we are most likely to 
 need. We talk glibly, says Mr. Bliss Perry, in our academic class-rooms 
 about various types of literary criticism: "the judicial, the interpretative, the 
 appreciative, the impressionistic, and so on. It is evident that these types 
 or species of book-reviews exist and co-exist, and that they are found not 
 merely in the periodical literature of our own country, but in all civilized coun- 
 tries, and that the processes indicated by the words 'judicial,' 'interpretative,' 
 'impressionistic' may be traced not only in the work of any one critic, but even 
 in successive pages of the same critical essay." 
 
 Another classification of book-reviews, one suggested to me by Miss 
 Mary W. Plummer, is: the informational review, the non-committal, the per- 
 functory, and the critical. The perfunctory book-review is one I have al- 
 ready mentioned in connection with much of the book-reviewing done in 
 newspapers. The person entrusted with the work of reviewing books is ap- 
 parently the office boy, who, equipped with a pair of scissors and a jar of 
 paste, clips out the publisher's notice of the book, perhaps taking it from the 
 little printed advertising leaflet which accompanies the copy sent for review, 
 and sends it, just as it stands, to the composing room. 
 
 And thus it often happens that when a novel is published, fifty or a 
 hundred newspapers scattered across the country, from the Atlantic to the 
 Pacific, solemnly record that Mr. or Mrs. Blank's novel is a heart-gripping 
 work, a book filled from cover to cover with human interest, pulsating with 
 good red blood, strong, virile, compelling, and convincing. (That word "con- 
 vincing" is their pet and their darling.) Its hero, Roderick Livingstone, 
 is a fine type of clean-limbed young American manhood, while the heroine, 
 the delightful Betty Fairfax, is a most charming and winsome speci- 
 men of the American girl in full flower of her charm. Those who have read 
 Mr. or Mrs. Blank's novel feel that a new star has risen on the literary horizon, 
 and that by this work Mr. or Mrs. Blank takes his or her rightful place with 
 the imperishable masters of English fiction. The new book combines the 
 dramatic power of Dumas, the humor of Dickens, the keen insight of Balzac, 
 
 and the wit and irony of Thackeray. The charming illustrations are by 
 
 : $1.25 at all bookstores. 
 
38 THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY 
 
 §2 
 
 The non-committal type of book-review may be written by someone 
 who has not really read the book. Sometimes, however, it is a part of a set 
 policy of the publication to play safe and offend no one. Each new book is, 
 therefore, credited with a notice, which, although really written in the office 
 from which it emanates, is so neutral in tone that it might apply equally well 
 to the "Decameron" or to "Rollo at Play." Except for the fact that the non- 
 committal book-review will as a rule tell you whether the book is one of 
 history, biography, or whatever, it is almost wholly useless. 
 
 §3 
 
 The informational type of book-review gives its reader a fair idea about 
 the contents of the book without going far into real criticism. Often this is 
 a useful type. The review may consist chiefly of quotations from the book, 
 and in some classes of literature there can be nothing better than that. A re- 
 view of a volume of poems, for instance, which does not quote as extensively as 
 space allows, has certainly failed to do its duty. There are other kinds of 
 books from which quotations, if well chosen, will tell the reader of the review 
 more than any amount of criticism, no matter how clever the criticism. Mr. 
 Frank B. Sanborn, who has for many years written literary and other letters 
 to the Springfield Republican has said that copious quotations from a book 
 give it the best kind of review. 
 
 In the genuine critical book-review the art of reviewing reaches its high- 
 est level. The reviewer who is well enough informed to appraise a book 
 fairly, to point out with justice its strong and its weak sides, to assign with 
 some degree of accuracy its real importance, and to do all this in clear terms 
 and briefly, produces the kind of review for which the librarian, at any rate, 
 is seeking. To do this, the reviewer must possess that amount of knowledge 
 of general literature which gives him a sense of proportion. The writer of 
 some of Baedeker's guidebooks declares that a man must know something of 
 the whole world to write a good guidebook of any one country. It will not 
 do, he says, for the writer to become over-awed about the low range of sand 
 hills which form the highest points of land in Holland, so long as the Alps 
 and the Rocky Mountains are in existence. In the same way the book-re- 
 
BOOK-REVIEWS 39 
 
 viewer must curb his enthusiasm for the latest volume of plays until he con- 
 siders them against the background of the great dramatists of the English 
 stage. This does not mean, however, — and it is important for the reviewer 
 of books to remember that it does not mean — that all current books should 
 be contrasted with the monuments of literature, and condemned because 
 they do not reach an equal height. If librarians should reject every novel 
 that comes along until they find one as good as "The Tale of Two Cities," 
 they would not only go without buying any new fiction for a great many ^ 
 years, but they would also miss an amount of good work. 
 
 The author's profession is peculiar; he is one of the few people who suffer 
 from the competition — literally the competition, commercial and otherwise 
 — of the dead. There can always be found persons who like to shake their 
 heads and exclaim mournfully, "The days of the great novelists or poets are 
 past. We shall have no more Scotts, Dickenses, nor Thackerays; no more 
 Byrons, Words worths, nor Tennysons." This may be true, but it is also true 
 that in the days of those great novelists, the critics and other despondent 
 persons would shake their heads and Say, "Do not talk to me about Scott, 
 Thackeray, and this Charles Dickens, — the days of the great novelists are 
 past. Where is there to-day anyone to compare with Richardson, Fielding 
 and Smollett?" And in the days of Richardson, Fielding, and Smollett, I 
 do not know to whom the melancholy critics harked back, but I am sure that 
 they spoke regretfully of some writers of past glory, whose equals would 
 never be seen again, ^ 
 
 In the essay, already quoted, on "Literary Criticism and Book Review- 
 ing," Mr. Brander Matthews writes: "The aristocrats of culture put their 
 trust in academic standards, as becomes the custodians of tradition. They 
 look to the past only; they rarely understand the present; they are prone to 
 distrust the future. They did not perceive the scope of 'Don Quixote,' of 
 'Hamlet,' of the 'Cid,' and of the 'Femmes Savantes.' They were outraged 
 by Hugo's 'Hernani' as they were disgusted with Ibsen's 'Ghosts.' They are 
 rarely open-minded enough to disentangle what is praiseworthy out of the 
 powerful works which revolt them — Zola's, for example, and Whitman's. 
 But it is only fair to suggest that they are swift to belaud delicate art and 
 technical skill. They found it easy to appreciate Virgil and Racine, Gray and 
 Longfellow, and in general any other poet who has felt himself to be the heir 
 of the ages and who has walked reverently in the footprints of his predecessors. 
 They are, therefore, more likely to be right in their opinions on authors of the 
 
 ' For instance, Joseph Green Cogswell, first superintendent of the Astor Library, a man of culture 
 and wide education, wrote to Ticknor in 1854, regretting that the "young fry" who came to the Library spent 
 their time "reading the trashy, as Scott, Cooper, Dickens..." 
 
40 THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY 
 
 second rank than in their judgments upon original geniuses. In this latter task 
 their very education seems often to be a disadvantage, sophisticating their 
 perceptions and leaving them less ready to understand the elemental and the 
 universal than the plain people are. It may even lead them to distrust a 
 writer of primitive force, chiefly because the plain people like him. 
 
 "The book-reviewers are wise in rejecting the advice of the strenuous 
 writers quoted early in this paper and in not being tempted to take themselves 
 too seriously. It is enough to give them pause to recall the fate of more than 
 one of their predecessors and to remember that when a book-reviewer de- 
 cides that it is his duty to scourge the incompetent and to drive out the false 
 pretenders, he may be clever enough to select Robert Montgomery as his vic- 
 tim, or he may be unlucky enough to happen upon Byron or Keats or Words- 
 worth." 
 
 In speaking of the critical book-review, we must recognize the different 
 standards of criticism for different classes of books. In mathematics, and 
 in many of the more or less exact sciences, accuracy is, of course, the first 
 requisite. The book cannot adequately be reviewed except by a specialist in 
 that branch of learning. In the same way, while a person of good general 
 information may review a book on, let us say, Greek sculpture or Italian opera, 
 and produce a fair book-review which describes the scope of the work, of 
 course only an expert is prepared to give anything like a definite judgment 
 upon it. That is why I have spoken so much about longer reviews and pref- 
 erably the signed reviews in such publications as The Nation and The Dial. 
 The editor of the book-reviewing publication does not turn over important 
 books to the people who write the brief notes and paragraphs. The men or 
 women who are qualified to review a book on government, or the fine arts, or 
 philosophy, are usually able to command a fee for doing the work. They ex- 
 pect a certain amount of space, and they are accustomed to sign their names to 
 the review. 
 
 Even then, while the librarian may accept these judgments as the best 
 at that time, and buy the book on the recommendation, it must be remembered 
 that the greatest experts often go sadly astray, or are themselves condemned 
 and ridiculed by the experts of the next decade or generation. Even in the 
 field of science, that domain of "exact" knowledge, the discoverers and 
 pioneers are often hooted down by the orthodox critics of their day. 
 
 The ideal w riter of a book-review -is-a. person who combines knowledge 
 of his suljject, w ith sy mpathy, tolerance, and humanity^ He sees mistakes 
 
BOOK-REVIEWS 41 
 
 and errors, if they exist, but he does not allow them to blind him to posi- 
 tive merits. Certain experts, sometimes employed to review books, think that 
 the art of criticism consists in tracking down minute, unimportant blunders. 
 They run over the pages, hunting for some trifling inaccuracy or typographical 
 mistake, and are triumphant when they find one. It is well for the author's 
 sake, as well as for that of the reader, that errors should be detected and, if 
 possible, corrected in a future edition. It is certainly desirable that any im- 
 portant errors, tending to misinform the reader of the book, should be noted in 
 a review of it. It may be well to chronicle even small mistakes. But it is a 
 question, if the critic's motive is purely altruistic and he is merely animated 
 by a passion for accuracy, whether he should not bring about his laudable 
 purpose by a brief letter to the publisher or author, who will be duly grateful. 
 The reader of a book-review has seldom time to learn, nor does he care to 
 learn, that there is a trifling mistake, say, in the pagination of the index, or 
 that the middle initial of some obscure and unimportant person — to whom 
 the only reference in the whole volume is made in a footnote — is given as 
 "E" when it should be "A". Yet there are people who seem to think that in 
 recording such things they are displaying their scholarship, when as a matter 
 of fact, they are merely advertising their lack of it. I have heard learned men 
 chanting, in a kind of barbaric glee, the fact that they had discovered in some 
 colleague's book an error in a date, and one doubtful statement. 
 
 It is unwise to be too fond of exposing the minor inaccuracies of other 
 folk. The chances are many that just as, with a triumphant chuckle, we in- 
 dulge ourselves in the pastime, we may fall into some blunder as bad as the 
 one about which we are complaining. In a brief review, which I once read, 
 the reviewer recorded two or three small errors he had found. One of his 
 discoveries was that the author had spoken of the right-hand page of a book 
 as having an even number, when, really, that page in book-making is always 
 given an odd number. As the book under discussion was wholly imaginary, 
 the error might have seemed rather small to record, — especially, as only a 
 few lines above, this meticulous reviewer had mis-spelled the name of the 
 author whose carelessness he was reproving ! 
 
 §6 
 
 The reviewer, then, has a right to demand absolute accuracy in scientific 
 works, knowledge of the subject in all books, and a readable quality in every 
 book, except a reference book. I am not sure that even that should be ex- 
 cepted. Books are made to be read, even though some people dislike to admit 
 
42 THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY 
 
 it ! The precise scholar is apt to look with distrust upon any book which is easy 
 to read. I heard a conversation not long ago between a historical scholar and 
 another man, in which the historian was inclined to laugh at the writings of 
 Francis Parkman because they are readable and because they attempt to con- 
 vey something of the romance which surrounded the early exploration of 
 North America. He seemed to have in mind some special passage in which 
 Parkman spoke of travellers near the St. Lawrence River, passing through 
 woods by moonlight. Inasmuch as moonlight is more or less inseparably con- 
 nected with romance, it annoyed him to have anything said about it at all; and 
 he seemed to believe that Parkman should have suppressed all mention of the 
 moon, or, if he felt bound to bring it in, should have procured an almanac, to 
 "find out moonshine," and should have limited his description to a statistical 
 table, giving the hours of the moon's rising and setting during this expedition. 
 The other man agreed that it would be wrong for the historian to represent 
 the moon as shining on any specific night, unless he had documentary evi- 
 dence; but inasmuch as this expedition lasted for several months, he went 
 on to say, it seemed reasonable to suppose that some time during those months 
 the moon was really visible; and as it was known that the travellers did march 
 by night, a reference to the theory of probabilities might seem to bear out, 
 almost mathematically, Parkman's statement that on one night, at any rate, 
 they marched by moonlight through the woods. Moreover, he maintained, 
 it was not only justifiable but thoroughly commendable to try to fix in the 
 minds of readers the events of those days, by describing the long line of 
 French explorers, headed by their Indian scouts, proceeding through the forest 
 by moonlight. By such a method he attained a degree of historical truth far 
 above any astronomical hair-splittings. 
 
 But, no; it would not satisfy the historian. There were no living wit- 
 nesses of that moonlight; there was not even a sworn affidavit about it; and 
 so, while he was not quite ready to cast Parkman out from the accepted band 
 of historians, he felt that he was still more or less an object of suspicion. Thus 
 does scientific criticism make itself ridiculous when it ventures out of the 
 fields in which exact knowledge is possible. 
 
 §7 
 
 In all books, the critic has the right to demand good English; clear Eng- 
 lish at any rate, grammatical English in all books, and choice English in works 
 which pretend to belong to the belles lettres. Here again, it is possible to be 
 fussy and pedantic; for over-exacting schoolmasters and grammarians can 
 
BOOK-REVIEWS 43 
 
 search the works of the best writers and come away with a fine crop of blun- 
 ders of every kind. I suppose that the split infinitive has been the mistake 
 most widely discussed by those who put an undue amount of trust in books of 
 rules, and by those who think that culture may be acquired by obeying certain 
 prohibitions. Certainly many persons and many writers of book-reviews 
 take great joy in discovering split infinitives, just as our teachers at school 
 used to search them out in our themes and compositions. It is wrong to 
 split an infinitive — besides, as someone said, being cruel to the infinitive — 
 but it is foolish to set up that, or any other mistake, as the touchstone of good 
 usage. Not only does the split infinitive occur over and over again in the 
 writings of lesser authors, but it may be found in the works of such masters 
 of style and expert literary craftsmen as Matthew Arnold, Walter Pater, and 
 Robert Louis Stevenson. This is only one example of the sort of error upon 
 which the hypercritical book-reviewer may waste his time. 
 
 In an article on "Book Reviewing" ^ Mr. Robert Lynd has said: "Those 
 to whom popular books are anathema have a temperament which will always 
 find it difficult to fall in with the limitations of the work of a general re- 
 viewer. The curious thing is that this intolerance of easy writing is most 
 generally found among those who are most opposed to intolerance in the 
 sphere of morals. It is as though they had escaped from one sort of Puri- 
 tanism into another. Personally, I do not see why, if we should be tolerant 
 of the breach of a moral commandment, we should not be equally tolerant 
 of the breach of a literary commandment. We should gently scan not only 
 our brother man but our brother author. The ultra-artistic person of to-day, 
 however, will look kindly on adultery, but show all the harshness of a Pil- 
 grim Father in his condemnation of a split infinitive. I cannot see the logic 
 of this. If irregular and commonplace people have the right to exist, surely 
 irregular and commonplace books have a right to exist by their side." 
 
 §8 
 
 It is scarcely worth while to spend time in reading the book-review which 
 is written not so much for the purpose of informing its reader as to give its 
 writer the opportunity to cultivate an involved and tortuous style. Such re- 
 views are not infrequent; they are the products of a sophomoric period of de- 
 velopment continued in maturer years. One of the recent editors of the 
 Atlantic Monthly said that the chief difficulty with manuscripts submitted by 
 young writers — especially those at the college age — was not simplicity, but 
 
 » In Tht British Review, April, 1915. 
 
44 THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY 
 
 the lack of it, — the belief that wandering in obscure mazes of thought, and 
 expressing oneself in mystic phrases meant profundity. Thus the German 
 commentators upon Shakespeare read into the text metaphysical subtleties 
 never dreamed of by the dramatist; and in like manner the Browning Society 
 made new difficulties with their poet's works, until Browning himself, when 
 asked to explain a line, used to laugh, and say "I'm sure I don't know; ask the 
 Browning Society." The peculiar style of Henry James was a genuine re- 
 flection of his mind; his imitators merely achieve his obscurity without the 
 delicate power of analysis which lay behind it. A small mind may for a 
 time look great by getting itself into a fog, but the illusion does not last. 
 
 §9 
 
 Writers of reviews sometimes blame a book for not possessing qualities 
 which it never was intended to possess. They form an idea of the purpose 
 which the author ought to have had, or of the manner in which the book 
 should have been written. It does not occur to them to ask whether the 
 author's purpose and manner may not be as good as their own. Because he 
 did not think with them, they condemn him and his book. 
 
 Persistently to find defects does not indicate intellectual distinction. To 
 be the one dissenting voice in a chorus of praise assures attention, and the 
 temptation to attract such attention is, to a few persons, irresistible. From 
 a recent review, on Ian Hay's (Captain Beith's) "The First Hundred 
 Thousand," the following sentences are quoted: 
 
 "What strikes a reader who knows nothing of war is the bright ama- 
 teurishness of it all. In a way one admires this tremendously. Soulful talks 
 would be trying. . . But war, after all, is war. It is not a game or a sport. 
 And Captain Beith's spirit is the spirit of the British public school with a 
 strong suggestion of Punch . . . But to go from the playground to the battle- 
 field in the very spirit of the playground suggests a lack of imagination. 
 And this lack of imagination sticks out all over this volume, , . However one 
 may feel about the Germans, one may be sure they do not take their work in 
 this spirit. . . Perhaps the class humor with which the recruits are described 
 . . . has something to do with a sense that Captain Beith has not quite clinched 
 with the difficult task of describing the war. . . That he and his regiment 
 were gloriously gallant one is warmly conscious. If one is disappointed it is 
 mainly because their deeper emotions are not presented with success. One 
 does not doubt for a second the sportsmanlike attitude of these men. One 
 only doubts their willingness to accept the psychic as well as the physical clash 
 
BOOK-REVIEWS 45 
 
 of the war. . . But pleasant though Captain Beith's narrative is, it does not 
 convey a fine total sense of his adventure, his army and his empire. It has 
 for a grave event a too-familiar imperturbability, an air of preserving style 
 at the expense of sincere response ..." 
 
 §10 
 
 Reviews of this kind are fashionable to-day. Their manner of courteous 
 superiority sometimes makes the reader exclaim: "Here, at last, is real 
 criticism!" Yet the reviewer's phrase: "an air of preserving style at the 
 expense of sincere response," is applicable to his own work. You cannot 
 escape the feeling that this polite fault-finding is done for the sake of fault- 
 finding, and that if Captain Beith had indulged in the least emotionalism this 
 reviewer would have denounced him more cuttingly than he does for its 
 lack. In other words, his mental attitude is as if he had said: "Here is a 
 well-liked, straightforward, and occasionally humorous narrative, — I must 
 delicately, very delicately, point out its defects. I can find these defects with- 
 out difficulty by imagining what my mental attitude would have been in 
 similar circumstances, and regretting that the author's experiences were 
 different." 
 
 Why shoiiW this reviewer have thought that the author desired to "clinch" 
 with "the difficult task of describing the war"? It is clear that Captain Beith 
 had no such intention. Suppose that the narrative does not "convey a fine 
 total sense of his adventure, his army and his empire" — what then? In fifty 
 years l^q. novelist, no historian even, has conveyed "a fine total sense" of our 
 Civil War. How can a reviewer demand such an achievement from an author 
 actually writing at the front ? 
 
 Surely, to lament because Captain Beith's Scotch soldiers lacked the 
 "willingness to accept the psychic. . .clash of the war" is rather absurd and 
 recalls Reginald Bunthorne. 
 
 §11 
 
 What does the general reader think of book-reviews? How much does 
 he use them, and what importance does he attach to them? If you have not 
 already discovered, you can easily find out that only a small percentage of 
 the public read book-reviews at all. Should you inquire among fairly well- 
 informed people, those who are moderately interested in books and read- 
 ing, I think you will be astonished to learn how many of them never read 
 
46 THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY 
 
 a book-review, and do not even know the names of such pubhcations as 
 The Athendeiirn, The Nation, and The Dial. The average person who reads 
 a few books, reads little or nothing about them except what he sees in the 
 advertisements. If a review is quoted in an advertisement it may catch his 
 eye. Forty reviewers may have condemned the book, three may have said 
 one or two good words for it in the course of an otherwise unfavorable notice. 
 The publisher naturally quotes the favorable lines from the three merciful 
 critics, combines these as an advertisement, and the person who goes no farther 
 than that gets the impression that the new book is entirely praiseworthy. 
 
 § 12 
 
 What do publishers think of book-reviews? It is said that some of them 
 do not much care whether their books are reviewed or not, and that so far 
 as they are concerned would gladly save the cost of the hundred or two 
 hundred copies which are sent to the literary editors. It is hard, however, to 
 break away from old custom, and, moreover, the publisher well knows that 
 it tickles the author's vanity to read the reviews, and that it may put him in 
 an amiable frame of mind to receive the news of slender sales. The author, 
 at least at the time of the publication of his or her first book, is frankly 
 delighted to receive the reviews, and treasures any kind words which may have 
 been said, even by the most obscure paper. 
 
 " 'Tis pleasant, sure, to see one's name in print; 
 A book's a book, although there's nothing in't," 
 
 seems to be as true to-day as it ever was, although now that there is an author 
 in every family the joy might be expected to have worn off a little. But I 
 do not know, I met a gentleman last winter who, at the age of seventy or over, 
 had written his first book, a volume of reminiscences. He had already had 
 a successful career, not without some marks of distinction in his own pro- 
 fession, but the generally kind and complimentary notices which his book was 
 receiving had reduced him to a state of almost speechless delight. Not in- 
 frequently authors who have been pleasantly treated feel called upon to write 
 to the. reviewer and thank him, although I believe that Dr. Johnson said that 
 was a foolish thing to do, because if a critic had blamed your book, there was 
 nothing for you to say, while if he praised it and his praise was deserved, he had 
 only performed his duty, and needed no thanks. 
 
 The instances in which an author has taken adverse criticism to heart, 
 accepted it as just, and been guided by its advice, are, I should imagine, very 
 
BOOK-REVIEWS 47 
 
 rare. Richard Grant Moulton declared that the history of literature was the 
 history of the triumph of authors over critics; and Christopher North, him- 
 self a famous critic, declared, "I care not one single curse for all the criticism 
 that was ever canted or decanted." Sir Arthur Conan Doyle said that the only 
 kind of literary criticism which amounts to much is that of a boy who, in 
 genuine indignation or enthusiasm, finishes a book with the word "Rubbish!" 
 or with the word "Bully!" I know of an author who found in a book-review 
 the adverse opinions with which he himself had come to regard his own work. 
 He was interested enough to inquire the name of the writer of the review 
 and to send him a letter, substantially as follows: 
 
 "My dear Sir: Somewhat recently a clipping from the of De- 
 cember 20th was sent me. It interested me very much, made me mad (with 
 myself) and did me much good. I have learned that you are the author of 
 this criticism and wish to thank you for pitching into me. Your compliments 
 on my earlier book, of course, made me blush, but the direction of your 
 criticism on the latter was right in line with what I have been feeling for 
 years, and you gave me the fillip necessary to decide me to call a halt on books 
 of the kind I have been rnaking recently and endeavor to go back to the thing 
 I like best. It will interest you, I hope, to know that I am going to bring 
 out, next fall, a book in the manner of my original venture." 
 
 Moreover, the author kept his word, and the book duly appeared. Such 
 instances as this are probably rather rare and form a pleasant contrast to 
 wliat is a more frequent experience of book-reviewers, — to have an author 
 pass over forty lines of praise, remember only one or two lines of censure, 
 and write a petulant complaint to the reviewer or the editor. 
 
 § 13 
 
 There are, or used to be, some warm-hearted persons sitting in editorial 
 chairs who believe that it is the function of the reviewer always to say some- 
 thing pleasant and encouraging to every author. If we had to choose be- 
 tween this method and the merciless flaying which used to delight the 
 writers for the Quarterly Review, there can be no doubt that the humane 
 method is best. There is a story told, — it is my impression by Laurence 
 Hutton, but I have been unable to find the exact reference, — concerning 
 William Cullen Bryant. Mr. Bryant always desired, according to this story, 
 to say something cordial about every book, no matter how bad it might be. 
 He gave Mr. Hutton a volume of poems to review, and told him it was ap- 
 parently written by some poor woman who was aspiring to be a poet. "You 
 
48 THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY 
 
 can find something good in it," he said. Mr. Hutton hunted through the 
 book and brought it back to Mr. Bryant, challenging him to find one line in 
 the whole volume which was not execrable. Bryant hunted, and had to admit 
 that no good word could be spoken for it. "But perhaps," said he, "you can 
 praise the cover," and he turned the book over and looked at the cover. "No," 
 he continued, "it is an affront to taste; but here, the cover is put on well; you 
 can say that." And so the book notice appeared, giving the author's name 
 and the title of the volume, followed by the single comment, "The cover is 
 well put on." 
 
 § 14 
 
 Book annotation has been authoritatively discussed in the Library Journal 
 by Mrs. Fairchild and by Mr. George lies. The annotations which it is urged 
 should be put on the catalogue cards, or printed under the entry of the book 
 in a library bulletin, furnish an important and interesting subject for the 
 librarian to investigate. The more one tries to write satisfactory annotations, 
 to boil down into almost the space of a telegram the contents of a book, the 
 more difficult he discovers it to be. In controversial subjects it is useful to 
 say in the annotation which side of the controversy the author takes, provided 
 he is a partisan. In general, it seems to me that the annotation should tend to 
 recommend the book to the reader's notice. When a library prints the title 
 of a book in its bulletin it means that the library stands behind that book, and 
 that it is worth purchasing and listing. Still more is this true in a selected 
 list, for here the library is choosing certain books from many others of the 
 same class, and recommending them as the best which it owns or can obtain. 
 Then surely, it is no time for the critical note which bears as strongly on the 
 weakness as upon the strength of the book. The writer of a book annotation 
 sometimes forgets that he is not to display his ability to analyze, but rather 
 to indicate the book's usefulness, or worth. 
 
 Some important examples of annotation occur in Baker's "Guide to 
 the Best Fiction." This is a useful and admirable book, but its anno- 
 tations are sometimes so impartial that it is doubtful if anyone would realize 
 that the compiler really intended to describe these books as worthy of at- 
 tention. Take, for instance, the note on "Vanity Fair." Mr. Baker says 
 that "Vanity Fair" is the author's "most representative novel — a picture of 
 society on a broad canvas, embracing a great variety of characters and in- 
 terests, the object being to depict mankind with all its faults and meannesses 
 without idealization or romance. There is little set design." All the classes 
 of society "are portrayed in the most lifelike way. Episodes strong in tragedy, 
 
BOOK-REVIEWS ' .•;.:: 49 
 
 dramatic displays of passion, are mingled with pure comedy. Thackeray 
 combines comment with narrative even more intimately than Fielding. To 
 many readers, indeed, his sarcastic dissertations are the chief intellectual de- 
 light. Lord Steyne is drawn from the Marquis of Hertford, Mr. Wagg from 
 Theodore Hook, and Wenham from J. W. Croker." Now, this annotation is 
 correct in all essentials, from beginning to end. It could only have been 
 written by a man with a respectable knowledge of Thackeray and generally of 
 the English novel. It shows a genuine critical quality; yet it has about as 
 much enthusiasm in it, about as much warmth, as a dead fish. No one would 
 guess from it that the book under discussion was what many judges would 
 name as the highwater mark of English fiction. I certainly cannot imagine 
 that it would arouse in anyone a strong desire to read the book. Such a 
 note is not necessarily wrong in a volume like Mr. Baker's, but I do believe 
 that in library annotation a little less cool analysis and a little more enthusiasm 
 is desirable. In annotation, as in book reviewing, maudlin enthusiasm, bub- 
 bling sentimentality, are surely to be avoided. But that does not mean that we 
 should look at works, which after all are designed to appeal to the imagination 
 and the emotions, entirely in the cold light of the intellect. 
 
 §15 
 
 In spite of the length of this discussion, it is not my theory that a librarian 
 should read reviews without ceasing. There are other methods of finding 
 out about books. First and foremost, among them, is reading the books 
 themselves, in whole or in part, and forming our own opinions about them; 
 opinions which we should sometimes be willing to maintain in opposition to 
 what the reviewers may say. But sometimes the reviews are of no avail, 
 because they do not come promptly. Again, it may not be necessary to have 
 recourse to reviews at all. No librarian would wait, when Mr. Howells 
 published a book, to find out whether the book-reviewers say that it is of 
 a sufficiently high literary standard to warrant its admission to a public 
 library. We are sure about that in advance. Nor have we any reason to 
 feel uneasiness as to whether its ethical tone is high enough. That is true 
 of such a writer as Mr. Howells, and while he is merely one example, it is 
 also true of writers in other fields. If James Bryce publishes a book on gov- 
 ernment, or Professor Gildersleeve one on Greek, we know that we have to do 
 with a book by a competent writer, and for the most part the questions which 
 arise as to its purchase are merely financial. We buy it if we have the money. 
 
 Librarians use, and must constantly use, a number of facts about a book: 
 the author's reputation, if he is already known, the publisher (by no means 
 
50 THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY 
 
 a sure guide one way or the other, but always to be considered), and the 
 general circumstances attending the publication of the book, — even its physi- 
 cal appearance. Librarians must often use these clues, and make their de- 
 cisions without consulting any review at all. 
 
 § 16 
 
 It may be that I have quoted or said some things which will lead you 
 to read or investigate a little in this by-path of literature or journalism. If 
 you should examine Mr. Brimley Johnston's "Famous Reviews," or if you 
 can go back to some of the old reviews themselves, I believe that you will find 
 the experience enjoyable. It is important to emphasize the fact that critics, 
 even the most learned and distinguished, have been wrong over and over 
 again in their judgments of contemporary literature; have applauded writers 
 of no importance, and violently condemned or ridiculed men whose works are 
 now the chief glories of our literature. To say this, however, ought not leave 
 a feeling of scorn for book-reviewing and literary criticism. To correct such 
 an impression it is only necessary to look at one of the half dozen best reviews 
 in English to see the number of sensible and useful book notices which are 
 appearing all the time. 
 
 I should like to emphasize what I believe to be the fact: — that long 
 reviews of books other than fiction are usually of more importance, and that 
 the shorter reviews of books of imaginative literature, while often interest- 
 ing and sometimes valuable, may nevertheless be merely expressions of per- 
 sonal opinion on a subject about which people differ as much as they do in 
 their taste in food. There are writers, like Meredith, about whom critics 
 differ sharply. To a man who does not like parsnips there is no use arguing 
 that parsnips are good. One writer of book-reviews enjoys Conrad's novels 
 and another cannot read them. The latter might have condemned his earlier 
 books as unreadable. Now, if he were competent, he would have in mind the 
 esteem in which thousands of discriminating readers hold Joseph Conrad, and 
 have respect for their opinions. But here he could not, if he were honest, 
 deal fairly. Perhaps he ought to decline to review Conrad's books and let 
 them be passed upon by a sympathetic critic. 
 
 Reading reviews is one of a librarian's duties, and also one of a librarian's 
 pleasures. In this it resembles reading of books and of everything else. "A 
 librarian who reads is lost," — that is one of the bland falsehoods about our 
 work. A librarian who does not read is hardly worth losing, and, moreover, 
 must have very poor fun. 
 
JUL i ? 195^ 
 
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 This book is due on the last date stamped below, or 
 
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