"Criticism" - читать интересную книгу автора (Poe Edgar Allan)

to descant."*

* In addition to these things we observe, in the New York Mirror,
what follows: "Those who have read the Notices of American books in
a certain Southern Monthly, which is striving to gain notoriety by the
loudness of its abuse, may find amusement in the sketch on another
page, entitled "The Successful Novel." The Southern Literary Messenger
knows by experience what it is to write a successless novel." We have,
in this case, only to deny, flatly, the assertion of the Mirror. The
Editor of the Messenger never in his life wrote or published, or
attempted to publish, a novel either successful or successless.

In the paragraph from the Philadelphia Gazette, (which is edited
by Mr. Willis Gaylord Clark, one of the editors of the
Knickerbocker) we find nothing at which we have any desire to take
exception. Mr. C. has a right to think us quacky if he pleases, and we
do not remember having assumed for a moment that we could write a
single line of the works we have reviewed. But there is something
equivocal, to say the least, in the remarks of Col. Stone. He
acknowledges that "some of our notices have been judicious, fair,
and candid bestowing praise and censure with judgment and
impartiality." This being the case, how can he reconcile his total
dissent from the public verdict in our favor, with the dictates of
justice? We are accused too of bestowing "opprobrious epithets" upon
writers whom we review and in the paragraphs so accusing us are called
nothing less than "flippant, unjust and uncritical."
But there is another point of which we disapprove. While in our
reviews we have at all times been particularly careful not to deal
in generalities, and have never, if we remember aright, advanced in
any single instance an unsupported assertion, our accuser has
forgotten to give us any better evidence of our flippancy,
injustice, personality, and gross blundering, than the solitary dictum
of Col. Stone. We call upon the Colonel for assistance in this
dilemma. We wish to be shown our blunders that we may correct them- to
be made aware of our flippancy that we may avoid it hereafter- and
above all to have our personalities pointed out that we may proceed
forthwith with a repentant spirit, to make the amende honorable. In
default of this aid from the Editor of the Commercial we shall take it
for granted that we are neither blunderers, flippant, personal, nor
unjust.
Who will deny that in regard to individual poems no definitive
opinions can exist, so long as to Poetry in the abstract we attach
no definitive idea? Yet it is a common thing to hear our critics,
day after day, pronounce, with a positive air, laudatory or
condemnatory sentences, en masse, upon material works of whose
merits or demerits they have, in the first place, virtually
confessed an utter ignorance, in confessing it ignorance of all
determinate principles by which to regulate a decision. Poetry has
never been defined to the satisfaction of all parties. Perhaps, in the
present condition of language it never will be. Words cannot hem it