I H a / ' O O lill^ g e S B ^ Y y'H E V IE iy IJii EK G LHE I LIJSR^JUHB. V Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Preface. In attempting to trace the history of the Contemporary Book Eeview through its varied course in English Literature I have been constrained, as must be evident, to treat only those writers who have been successful and have made for themselves a name famous in literature. An effort to make an intensive study of the a££hods of every writer who undertook to do any reviewing would be, as is easily perceived, a task beyond the limits of such a work as this pretends to be. Every appraisal or evaluation that I have made in these pages is the result of a careful study and reading of the works under discussion and an honest effort to draw the correct inference. I readily recognize the presumption of which a student must be guilty when he attempts to relegate Pryden or Matthew Arnold to subordinate positions and to give Croker and Jeffrey, and even Macaulay, a status more or less ad­ vanced. But it must be remembered that in this work the critical abil­ ity of the man is not of so great value as the concrete judgments he may have rendered. I have purposely refrained from any attempt to study here the work of any present day reviewer, for I recognize the dangerous ground on which one treads when such a study is undertaken. For that reason I decided to bring this treatment to a close with the final years of the nineteenth century. I wish to take this occasion to express my deepest thanks and appreciation to Pr. John Calvin Metcalf, under whose guidance I have pussued my work in the English Pepartment, for the kindly advice he has Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. so often rendered me and the personal interest he has manifested in the progress of this dissertation. University of Virginia, July 17, li>£l. g. Rogers. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. T^BLE OP CORTEHTS. CHAPTER CHE Introduction Page 1 CRAP HER Tv70 Precursors of the Contemporary Review............................Page 7 CHAPTER THREE The Great Classicists..............................................EAge 34 CHAPTER POOR The Turn of the Tide.................................................Page 58 CHAPTER PIVE Coleridge and Southey............................................... Page 73 I CHAPTER SIX Scott, Hazlitt, and Leigh Hunt Page 88 | j CEn.P TER SEVER i Sydney Smith, Jeffrey, Gifford, 7/ilson, and Croker.............Page 100 li * !I CHAPTER EIGHT j The Great Kevievrers................ * ...Page 113 \i CHAPTER LIRE Arnold, George Eliot, Thackeray, Svrihhurne, and Meredith... .Page 131 CHAPTER TER Minor Reviewers of the nineteenth Century...................... Page 139 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER CRH Introauction. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTEB OHE Introduction* Matthew Arnold's definition of literary criticism is "the art of seeing the object as in itself it really is". An ex­ pansion of this definition gives us the idea that literary criticism is a phase of literature, a choosing of some work of other days that has seemed to st$nd the test of time, and an examination with keen discernment into the excellences and weaknesses of that work with an occasional addition of another tenet to the laws of criticism. As a matter of fact a vast quantity of true literary criticism consists entirely in the laying down of laws governing the writing of poetry or prose without bringing into the discussion a single work of a single author. This is especially true of the criticism of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. On the other hand the book review is what its name signi­ fies -the review of a book. There is a vast difference between the book review and the normal literary criticism. The reviewer appraises a contemporary production, one that is just out of the hands | | of the publishers, and writes his review for the benefit of the read- I j ing public. The critic chooses a tried and tested work of an old author and criticizes it from the standpoint of literature. 3^s seems to be the present distinction. Five olasses of people are benefited by the present- day book review; first, the public, which is enabled thereby to dis­ card unrecommended books and thus narrow the difficulty of choosing good books to read; second, the critic, who of course is paid for his contribution; third, the publisher, who profits from the advertisement offered by the review; fourth, the publisher of the review who thus Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 1 (2) secures an article for his magazine; and last, hut not least, the au­ thor, who profits financially and personally hy the advertisement of his book. Without douht the hook review is the finest possible advertisement for a hook unless the public becomes satisfied with reading the review and leaves the hook unopened. -ftejcaaar, "/fchere is a vast differenee^be^ween a good review and a poor. A good critic must possess literary judgment, and litersjy judgment depends largely on a full knowledge of the masters of the past and an ability to expand, to grasp something new, and still to remain unbiassed. In Prance criticism and current book reviewing are very much one and the same thing. Hew8VQ>,~Vhe ^viewer holds absolute sway in that country and it is oblivion not to be mentioned by one of their great critics, such as AnatAle Prance, Saint-Beuve, or lemaitre= A great -faulv of thio condition, however, is the fact that French reviews are often simply acts of courtesy from one man of letters to a colleague. In America the duty of the reviewer is to the public which expects of him honest and sound judgment and correct in­ formation, whether personal or benevolent, without thought of the author of the book. ^ nd then we must consider what books should be reviewed. Certainly not all, for "of making many books there is no end". Paul Elmore More, in the days when he reviewed books, had a system all his own. He, according to his publishers, would heap up a pile of books in the center of the floor and "sick his pup on them". The dog chewed tp what he did not like, and More reviewed what was left. All reviewers, however, do not possess canines of such marvelous acumen, and other methods have to be resorted to. A writer7 in the Independent asserts that only ten per cent of present day books are worth reviewing^ but such judgements are arbitrary and must be so considered. Common­ e r . P.W.Halsey in Independent 52:992 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. (z) m sense tells us that only a small percentage of productions deserve true consideration, and these should receive ahle and conscientious attention. The question may he ashed with due propriety, "What effect upon the author does the review have?" The answer as given hy most authorities today is none absolutely none, except for the adver— tising he gets out of it. _ How different what it in in Prance/ 'dr And how different-from what it waa» in the old days when Dr. Johnson held sway/ Macaulay in his "Life of Johnson" tells us that Johnson's "Club" could by a verdict on a book"selloff a whole edition in a day, or condemn the sheets to the service of the trunkmaker and the pastry / cook". There were no professional reviewers then, and all judgments were spontaneous, sincere, truthful, and withal powerful. Today the a.r<£2— reviewezS v-«aE&=i6- legion and every m o d e m daily has its weekly book review section, not to mention all the present day magazines and re­ views. Tho publio-ooaroely knowo whore to turn for sound roviowiag and— f-indo itoolf in~a chaotic state-. The first years of the eighteenth century mark the be- i ginning of the real review. A writer in the Atlantic Monthly says: "Previous to the eighteenth century criticism was either purely specu­ lative, that is, it was a merely theoretical analysis of the nature and conditions of the beautiful, akin to any other scientific investi- gat ion, or it was undertaken for the benefit of authors." The same writer says that poets and dramatists do not usually change their views or theories in deference to critics, but that authors are bene­ f i t ^ by the inflation they receive because of a favorable review. 'Macaulay, Life of Samuel Johnson.ed. Matthew Arnold, p.xxsiii ‘'Gamaliel Bradford, Jr..in Atlantic Monthly, 94:541, Oct.1904. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. (4) Two things are necessary for an honest appraisal of a Fork. First, the reviewer must love literature for its own sake. He must find in literature a treasure trove that is never exhausted, a widow's cruse of perpetual delight, that causes him to he wide awake and ever on the watch for any new gem that he might add to his collec­ tion. The second requisite is the honest desire to share his treasure, I*J,t4 cT-tcrr. rife. f/<zas<rir*— to divide She pleasure-.^ath othore which he finds in literature, to dif- rect others to the hidden beauties that have been revealed to him.With these two qualities, the first to make him an honest investigator and the second to make him a philanthropist, a man is equipped to become a critic.