have the opposite effect in producing damning faint praise , or
undue commendation, and abusive censure.” 18 The quarterly , the monthly , and the weekly were the accepted mediums for the review and it was apparently long before it found a permanent place in the daily press. Jerdan writes of “ commencing a regular literary review of new publications in the pages of the 'Sun ' (a pattern at length followed in every quarter),”
and that “ the war (with Napoleon] being again over, the 'Sun' Literary Reviews recommenced with increased energy " and he complacently hopes that his readers will not deny him the praise
to which he aspires “ of having most unequivocally led the way
to these combinations in the periodical press, commingling the arts and literature with the news and politics of the hour . . .
which [has) been the fruitful source of the universal newspaper system of the present day.” 19 Even half a century later Catling,
entrusted with the reviewing department of the Daily Chronicle, wrote that at first publishers were so shy that he " had to go round and ask for new books ; some even then declined to send
any but cheap publications.” 20
The first distinction that the historian must make is therefore between the characteristics of the reviews as found in the dailies, the weeklies , the monthlies, and the quarterlies.
Downey writes that in the early “ eighties,” the daily papers thought themselves fairly generous if they gave a column or two a week to notices of current literature. “ 'Reviewing' (as a branch of journalism ) used to be almost the last infirmity of
noble mind.” 2
The tendency to -day is for the dailies to give
brief publishers' notices, not criticism in any true sense.
“ The role of a weekly critic," The Nation in its early days found, " is, after all a very humble one. It is to examine the 18 William Jerdan , Autobiography, IV, 82. This complaint also will not down. Admiral Maxse says that Kinglake
wrote him “ a glowing tribute in a letter which I have by me," but that he himself “ for one who sought distinction ” did a foolish thing, — he criticized
Kinglake's first two volumes rather severely in a magazine. “ When he had
occasion to mention me in his fourth volume the tribute had cooled down to a very commonplace reference. Of such stuff are historians made !” — “ The
War Correspondent at Bay,” National Review , April, 1899, 33: 246–253. 19 Autobiography, II, 22, 51- 52. 20 My Life's Pilgrimage , pp . 143- 144.
A Edmund Downey, Twenty Years Ago, p . 279.
