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itely more on the general than on the soldier. A bundle of even individually good criticisms will have little weight or authority if they be simply pitchforked together; if the principles enunciated on one page or in one week's issue be set at nought in another; if animus, mannerism, and other plagues be allowed to get the better of fair dealing and sober sanity. And it is very seldom that an editor will be able even to get such a bundle together unless he picks his men carefully, unless he keeps them as far as possible to himself by good pay and plenty of work, unless he manages to indoctrinate them with esprit de corps, and to get them, like other soldiers, to do what he wants and not what they want-the most absolute liberty of conscience being of course reserved. No man ever writes his best against his conscience unless he has got none at all-which is a bull, but of the nobler breed; and a man who has no conscience very seldom has much else that is worth having. And while a good editor will never wantonly or idly alter his contributor's work-while he will certainly not alter it from a childish fancy for writing everything into his own style, or adjusting everything to his own crotchet -no good editor will ever hesitate to alter, and no contributor who is worth much will ever object to seeing altered, things which do not suit the attitude or policy of the paper, which show signs of undue private grudge or excessive private favour.

Lastly, I may say that as a general rule a good editor will take care to allot books for review according to his own judgment, and not according to the requests of reviewers. Of course there are cases where the two coincide. But the

plan which I have known to be practised, and which is, I believe, even rather common, the plan of not "sending a book out," as the technical phrase goes, till somebody asks for it, seems to me an exceedingly bad one; and that which, if not common, certainly has existed, of letting contributors come and pick and choose at their pleasure from the review bookshelves, seems to me utterly suicidal.

The allotting of a book of

any consequence-there must always, of course, be a certain ruck to be left to the judgment, not of the office-boy, but of some reviewer of rather unusual trustworthiness and general knowledge-should be a matter of distinct deliberation, a deliberation from which the reviewer himself is, as a rule, better excluded, and from which, unless he is very unwise, he will certainly not resent his exclusion.

Fewer reviews; greater concentration of power and authority in those which are given; something like despotism, provided it be vigilant, intelligent, and benevolent, on the part of the editor; better training in the history and methods of criticism, in general literature and knowledge this may serve as a summary of the things which may be reasonably demanded in the review of the future. As for the reviews of the present and the past, in which I have taken a part, I think they have been not exactly perfect, perhaps in some cases rather far from perfection, but a good deal better than they have seemed to some, and bad, if bad at all, in ways rather different from those for which others have reproved them. That they have, as they most undoubtedly have, served as a staff to many stout aspirants, if also as a crutch to many useless cripples, in letters is,

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

itely more on the general than on the soldier. A bundle of even individually good criticisms will have little weight or authority if they be simply pitchforked together; if the principles enunciated on one page or in one week's issue be set at nought in another; if animus, mannerism, and other plagues be allowed to get the better of fair dealing and sober sanity. And it is very seldom that an editor will be able even to get such a bundle together unless he picks his men carefully, unless he keeps them as far as possible to himself by good pay and plenty of work, unless he manages to indoctrinate them with esprit de corps, and to get them, like other soldiers, to do what he wants and not what they want-the most absolute liberty of conscience being of course reserved. No man ever writes his best against his conscience unless he has got none at all-which is a bull, but of the nobler breed; and a man who has no conscience very seldom has much else that is worth having. And while a good editor will never wantonly or idly alter his contributor's work-while he will certainly not alter it from a childish fancy for writing every thing into his own style, or adjusting everything to his own crotchet - no good editor will ever hesitate to alter, and no contributor who is worth much will ever object to seeing altered, things which do not suit the attitude or policy of the paper, which show signs of undue private grudge or excessive private favour.

Lastly, I may say that as a general rule a good editor will take care to allot books for review according to his own judgment, and not according to the requests of reviewers. Of course there are cases where the two coincide. But the

plan which I have known to be practised, and which is, I believe, even rather common, the plan of not "sending a book out," as the technical phrase goes, till somebody asks for it, seems to me an exceedingly bad one; and that which, if not common, certainly has existed, of letting contributors come and pick and choose at their pleasure from the review bookshelves, seems to me utterly suicidal.

The allotting of a book of

any consequence-there must always, of course, be a certain ruck to be left to the judgment, not of the office-boy, but of some reviewer of rather unusual trustworthiness and general knowledge-should be a matter of distinct deliberation, a deliberation from which the reviewer himself is, as a rule, better excluded, and from which, unless he is very unwise, he will certainly not resent his exclusion.

Fewer reviews; greater concentration of power and authority in those which are given; something like despotism, provided it be vigilant, intelligent, and benevolent, on the part of the editor; better training in the history and methods of criticism, in general literature and knowledge-this may serve as a summary of the things which may be reasonably demanded in the review of the future. As for the reviews of the present and the past, in which I have taken a part, I think they have been not exactly perfect, perhaps in some cases rather far from perfection, but a good deal better than they have seemed to some, and bad, if bad at all, in ways rather different from those for which others have reproved them. That they have, as they most undoubtedly have, served as a staff to many stout aspirants, if also as a crutch to many useless cripples, in letters is,

both as a plea and as a reproach, rather apart from the merits; but the good side of it cannot be quite ignored. That without them the public, which does not know too much of literature as it is, would know a great deal less is, I think, undeniable. And, as has been seen, I am even rash enough to think that they have in strict criticism done some good; that they have as a rule set their faces against prevalent follies and faults; that their strictures, even when harsh, have been wholesome in particulars. I admit that the work they undertake to do is exceedingly difficult work; that it demands qualities not very often found in the workman, and perhaps qualities rarer still in his captains of industry. I think there might be improvement in these respects. But the great merit of even the worst review that retains some

shred of honesty-and with others, as I have said, it is unnecessary to deal-is, that however blunderingly, however unsuccessfully, it at least upholds the principle that there is a good and a bad in literature, that mere good intentions will not make up for bad performances. In short, the review in its very nature, and inevitably, insists that Literature is an Art, and the man of letters an Artist; that to admire bad art is a disastrous and terrible thing, almost worse than the production of bad art itself; and that while to produce the good falls not to all— falls perhaps to few-to admire it, to understand it, to rejoice in it, is the portion of every one who chooses to take a very small amount of trouble, and the exceeding great reward of trouble itself.

that

GEORGE SAINTSBURY.

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THEY were days of grinding Kant? And was not our firma

poverty.

I don't mean to say that, as a rule, we were short of food, or that our shabby homespun garments were actually out of repair; I don't mean to say that we did not have outbursts of wild extravagance when we indulged in adventures the cost of which would have scared our betters; but many a time it was all we could do to buy stamps singly and bootlaces by the pair; and indeed our life in those halcyon days was a life of grinding sordid poverty.

Sordid, did I say? No, thank God; not sordid; never that! As well apply the word to the inhabitants of Dove Cottage when great-souled Dorothy made the tea in the tiny spotless kitchen. We

were not great at all, my brother and I; but what the insight of genius did for the Wordsworths, exuberant youth did for him and me-raised us on the sweep of its pinions, till

-was uns Alle bändigt, das Gemeine," dropt into its true perspective, and then was lost in the mists below.

Were we not heirs of the universe? And had life ever before been such a treasure cavern as it was then? Wherever we struck the rock, living water poured forth; wherever we dug, lay a vein of gold. Our "poverty was such a kingship"! Having nothing, we perforce took hold of all things. Was not Shakespere ours, and Carlyle, and Browning? Who could rob us of Wagner and Berlioz, Turner and Ruskin, Hegel and

ment aglow with lesser lights,— some of which have long since found their way into the text-books as stars, while others—and not always the least brilliant-have gone out with a flicker into the darkness.

And all this about a Highland boy and girl who came from their moors to a college life in Glasgow !

It was odd, was it not, that the girl was allowed to come? But there never was such a brother as Ian. Most boys, brought up in a narrow groove, would have been only too glad to shake off all fetters when the momentous day arrived; but he, with all his faults, had a strong theoretical sense of justice, which he was fain to see extended to women,-even to his own sister. He had not many pretty ways such as some boys have; I often had to carry a parcel myself, and even sometimes to walk humbly into a railway carriage at his heels; but in all essentials what a giant of chivalry he was!

I remember one day-before we left our moorland home-we had been tramping over the heather, discussing all things in heaven and earth with the fervent zeal of budding adolescence, and when evening came we sat together in the rose-scented, candle-lit manse parlour, he deep in a stray volume of Fors while I bent toilsomely over the mighty darning basket. had an irritating habit of chuckling over the good things he read, and at last I said quietly in real desperation,

He

"Isn't it the irony of fate that you should be eating the bread of life while I am darning your socks?"

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