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and I called upon him to ask whether he had any objection to my duplicating. He was good enough to say, "No, I don't mind your doing it; but I am not fond of it as a rule. If the reviews are unfavourable, it is scarcely fair to the author; and if they are favourable, it rather deceives the public." It cannot, I think, be denied that there is a good deal of force in this. Moreover, it will necessarily happen that if a man has a great deal of reviewing work thrown on his hands, and if, at the same time (as the conditions above enumerated make almost certain), his editors would much rather have short slight reviews from him than long and careful ones, he will-I shall not say scamp his work, I think very few gentlemen of the press do that, but, let us say, do what is required of him and no more.

On the other hand, the great mass of reviewing cannot possibly be done by these few men, and it is doubtless done by others. The result of course varies inevitably in quality, from work as good as the most practised hand can turn out down to that class of work which is described by a catchword very rife just now among men of letters, I believe, as "done by the office-boy."

And I have been told, and indeed partly know, that this evil is attended by another, which, though a little delicate to speak of, is very serious. Those who have studied the history of newspapers and periodicals know that the extreme disrepute into which newspaper writing generally, and reviewing in particular, fell at the end of the last century coincided with an "office-boy period in other words, with a period when it was handed over to wretchedly paid hacks of all work, or even to volunteers, who,

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for vanity, or spite, or pastime, or what not, would write without any pay at all. These were the days of Southey's "seven pounds and a pair of breeches for six months' reviewing - I cannot be certain of the exact figures, but it was something about as absurd as this. The establishment of the 'Edinburgh,' with its hard-andfast rule that everybody was to be paid, that everybody was to take his pay, and that the pay itself was to be fair, was the turning-point from this state of things, and until quite recently reviewing of the better class, if not a magnificently was at any rate a fairly well paid profession. People will grumble at anything, of course. But for my own part I do not think that any one but a very great man can consider himself underpaid when he receives, as used to be the average, threepounds ten shillings for work which should on the average take him an evening to read, and not the whole of the next morning to write. For I think that a review should never be written on the same day on which the book is read. The night brings counsel; tones down dislike to a reasonable disapproval and rash fancy to intelligent appreciation; substistutes order and grasp for chaos and want of apprehension. But this is a digression, and we must return to £ s. d. I am told, once more, that with the rapid spread and rise in numbers both of reviews and reviewers, the average payment of the latter has gone down very considerably, and that, with the constant supply of workers and the apparently reduced demand for the best work as compared with quantity of work, it is likely to go down farther.

This is as it may be; and at any rate I see nothing improbable

in it.

For (and this is a point to which I have not yet come, and it is one on which I should be sorry to be silent) reviewing is very fascinating work, and its very fascination increases its perils of all kinds, not least those of which we have just been speaking. To a person who really loves literature and knows something of it, who has a fairly wide range of tastes beyond mere books, and takes some interest in life likewise, I know no occupation more constantly delightful. I never myself got tired of it-with a slight exception, I must admit, in the case of the lower class of novel-in the course of twenty years' unceasing practice. The words of that locus classicus of reviewing, the middle part of Pendennis': "As for Pen, he had never been so delighted in his life; his hand trembled as he cut the string of the packet and beheld within a smart new set of neat calico-bound books-novels, and travels, and poems"-remain true (except, perhaps, as to the trembling of the hand) of some of us to the last. To find such a package by your table at breakfast; to be fortunate enough (which seldom happens to reviewing man) to remember that you have got no horrid fixed engagement to spoil the fair perspective of the day; to dip into the books before you settle which you will formally read first; to select that temporary sultana; to diverge from her and look along your shelves for an older favourite which may settle some point, or suggest a comparison, or fill up a gap in your memory; to ejaculate "What an ass the man is!" when you disagree with him; or nod approval when he puts your sentiments neatly; to find luncheon-time coming just when the books have given you an appetite for something else besides

VOL. CLXI.-NO. DCCCCLXXV.

authors, and to relapse upon them, not unaided by tobacco perhaps, when you have done,-these are pleasant things and good. I do not say, Be it mine often so to spend my days, because change is good, and it is a mistake to reopen closed accounts. But I do say most heartily and sincerely that I have never in any kind of work enjoyed days more than such as these, and that a very large proportion of days of ostensible pleasure seem to me very dreary things in comparison.

Sometimes, too, these generally pleasing labours become something more than merely pleasing, and the reviewer, like Lockhart's Wandering Knight in his "ride from land to land," his "sail from sea to sea," finds fate more kind at last. He may, when scarcely out of his apprenticeship, open upon such a matchless stanza as

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'As a star sees the sun and falters,
Touched to death by diviner eyes,
As on the old Gods' untended altars
The old fire of withered worship dies."

He may a little later discover in the " Voyage of Maeldune" how half a century of constant poetical production need impair neither a poet's mastery nor even his command of new measures and methods. He may, after for years delighting in another poet's verse, see how Mr William Morris, like Sir Walter Scott, though not with like welcome from the vulgar, could close the volume of poetic romance only to open that of romance in prose. He may hear almost simultaneously the raising of two such swan songs as the prologue to Asolando' and Crossing the Bar"; and he may discover, as at last in Catriona,' the only grace that had been missing to make perfect the work of the most brilliant of his younger contem

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and I called upon him to ask whether he had any objection to my duplicating. He was good enough to say, "No, I don't mind your doing it; but I am not fond of it as a rule. If the reviews are unfavourable, it is scarcely fair to the author; and if they are favourable, it rather deceives the public." It cannot, I think, be denied that there is a good deal of force in this. Moreover, it will necessarily happen that if a man has a great deal of reviewing work thrown on his hands, and if, at the same time (as the conditions above enumerated make almost certain), his editors would much rather have short slight reviews from him than long and careful ones, he will-I shall not say scamp his work, I think very few gentlemen of the press do that, but, let us say, do what is required of him and no more.

On the other hand, the great mass of reviewing cannot possibly be done by these few men, and it is doubtless done by others. The result of course varies inevitably in quality, from work as good as the most practised hand can turn out down to that class of work which is described by a catchword very rife just now among men of letters, I believe, as "done by the office-boy."

And I have been told, and indeed partly know, that this evil is attended by another, which, though a little delicate to speak of, is very serious. Those who have studied the history of newspapers and periodicals know that the extreme disrepute into which newspaper writing generally, and reviewing in particular, fell at the end of the last century coincided with 66 an office-boy" period in other words, with a period when it was handed over to wretchedly paid hacks of all work, or even to volunteers, who,

for vanity, or spite, or pastime, or what not, would write without any pay at all. These were the days of Southey's "seven pounds and a pair of breeches pair of breeches" for six months' reviewing-I cannot be certain of the exact figures, but it was something about as absurd as this. The establishment of the 'Edinburgh,' with its hard-andfast rule that everybody was to be paid, that everybody was to take his pay, and that the pay itself was to be fair, was the turning-point from this state of things, and until quite recently reviewing of the better class, if not a magnificently was at any rate a fairly well paid profession. People will grumble at anything, of course. But for my own part I do not think that any one but a very great man can consider himself underpaid when he receives, as used to be the average, threepounds ten shillings for work which should on the average take him an evening to read, and not the whole of the next morning to write. For I think that a review should never be written on the same day on which the book is read. The night brings counsel; tones down dislike to a reasonable disapproval and rash fancy to intelligent appreciation; substistutes order and grasp for chaos and want of apprehension. But this is a digression, and we must return to £ s. d. I am told, once more, that with the rapid spread and rise in numbers both of reviews and reviewers, the average payment of the latter has gone down very considerably, and that, with the constant supply of workers and the apparently reduced demand for the best work as compared with quantity of work, it is likely to go down farther.

This is as it may be; and at any rate I see nothing improbable

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in it. For (and this is a point to which I have not yet come, and it is one on which I should be sorry to be silent) reviewing is very fascinating work, and its very fascination increases its perils of all kinds, not least those of which we have just been speaking. To a person who really loves literature and knows something of it, who bas a fairly wide range of tastes beyond mere books, and takes some interest in life likewise, I know no occupation more constantly delightful. I never myself got tired of it-with a slight exception, I must admit, in the case of the lower class of novel-in the course of twenty years' unceasing practice. The words of that locus classicus of reviewing, the middle part of Pendennis': "As for Pen, he had never been so delighted in his life; his hand trembled as he cut the string of the packet and beheld within a smart new set of neat calico-bound books-novels, and travels, and poems"-remain true (except, perhaps, as to the trembling of the hand) of some of us to the last. To find such a package by your table at breakfast; to be fortunate enough (which seldom happens to reviewing man) to remember that you have got no horrid fixed engagement to spoil the fair perspective of the day; to dip into the books before you settle which you will formally read first; to select that temporary sultana; to diverge from her and look along your shelves for an older favourite which may settle some point, or suggest a comparison, or fill up a gap in your memory; to ejaculate "What an ass the man is!" when you disagree with him; or nod approval when he puts your sentiments neatly; to find luncheon-time coming just when the books have given you an appetite for something else besides

VOL. CLXI.-NO. DCCCCLXXV.

authors, and to relapse upon them, not unaided by tobacco perhaps, when you have done, these are pleasant things and good. I do not say, Be it mine often so to spend my days, because change is good, and it is a mistake to reopen closed accounts. But I do say most heartily and sincerely that I have never in any kind of work enjoyed days more than such as these, and that a very large proportion of days of ostensible pleasure seem to me very dreary things in comparison.

Sometimes, too, these generally pleasing labours become something more than merely pleasing, and the reviewer, like Lockhart's Wandering Knight in his "ride from land to land," his "sail from sea to sea," finds fate more kind at last. He may, when scarcely out of his apprenticeship, open upon such a matchless stanza as

"As a star sees the sun and falters,

Touched to death by diviner eyes, As on the old Gods' untended altars The old fire of withered worship dies."

He may a little later discover in the "Voyage of Maeldune" how half a century of constant poetical production need impair neither a poet's mastery nor even his command of new measures and methods. He may, after for years delighting in another poet's verse, see how Mr William Morris, like Sir Walter Scott, though not with like welcome from the vulgar, could close the volume of poetic romance only to open that of romance in prose. He may hear almost simultaneously the raising of two such swan - songs as the prologue to 'Asolando' and "Crossing the Bar"; and he may discover, as at last in Catriona,' the only grace that had been missing to make perfect the work of the most brilliant of his younger contem

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poraries. These things are but a selection of the good fortunes that fell to the lot of one reviewer: and doubtless the lucky - bag is not closed for others.

I should therefore be sorryvery sorry indeed-if the occupation which has given me so much pleasure, in which I have learnt so much, which has helped me to pay, as it were, double debts, by doing a momentary duty and adding a little to more permanent stores of knowledge and habits of practice, should go out of fashion. I hope it may never cease to be one in which a man may engage without loss of selfrespect, and with that feeling which, though none but prigs parade it, necessarily accompanies all honourable occupations, that the work is of use to others as well as of honour and of decent profit to oneself. I can see no reason why any such evil day should come, even if prospects be at the moment a little downcast. There is still plenty of excellent reviewing to be found; and if it is rather more scattered than it should be, there is no reason to despair of seeing it once more concentrated. The general reviewing of England, after improving immensely between the beginning of the century and that fatal period of 1830 to 1835 which Wordsworth from another point of view celebrated in the very last effusion of his really great poetry, fell off astonishingly for some twenty years and more, and only began to improve again about the middle of the fifties. It has had vicissitudes since; and if it is not -I do not say that it is not-at its very best to-day, there is all the more reason for hoping that to-morrow may see it better.

That the disuse of reviewing, or its relegation to the sort of value

less réclame or puff to which it has sunk in more than one country, at more than one time, to a chorus of unintelligent exaltation of our noble selves, to a jangle of inconsequent snarls, merely intended to gratify spite and the appetite for spite, or, worst of all, to a Dead Sea of colourless writing "about it, and about it," with little outbreaks of temper or vanity or caprice diversifying it here and there,—that any such decline and fall would be in many ways a disastrous thing, I have no doubt. It would deprive authors-and let it be remembered that the author who is at no time a reviewer, or the reviewer who is at no time an author, is an almost unknown creature— not merely of occasionally valuable censorship, but of very commonly valuable practice. It would leave literature, to a far greater extent than is commonly understood

"Helmless in middle turn of tide

drifting about anyhow as the popular breeze chooses, without protest and without correction; and it would leave the public absolutely guideless. Reviewers, according to their unfriends, are but oneeyed guides; yet the one-eyed are kings in the kingdom of the blind, and it is inevitable that the public should be very nearly blind in the case of books, if not wholly so. It simply has not time, if it had the other necessaries, for reading everything; it wants to be told, and ought to be told, what to read, not perhaps without the addition of a few remarks how to read it. That is the function which a good review ought to perform.

Whether the review be good enough or not depends, I verily believe, more on the editor than on the reviewer, just as the triumphs of an army depend infin

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