297.
made the vehicle of personal ill will and even spite ;50 it is dis credited because “ the ordinary editor is blameworthy (in ) that he takes no care to keep out of his paper the personal element. He allows the log-roller to praise his own friends and the spiteful and envious failure to abuse his enemies;" 61 it is discredited because many able journalists refuse to write reviews;52 it is
discredited because of the presence on the press of “ sham critics ” who use their position to serve their own ends; 6s it is discredited
because , in the general press, book reviews tend to be the work of hack reviewers rather than of specialists as in the case of music
or of sports;54 it is discredited because of the somewhat well 49 " He (Delane) would complain if a review were full only of small points of detail and contained 'no such general summing up of the book as the public would naturally expect.' He thought that the business of a daily newspaper was to give news ; that a book was a form of news; that a notice of it should give the views of the author as well as those of his reviewer. He had no use , in The Times at least, for the kind of review which aims
primarily at displaying the airs and graces of the critic.” — Sir Edward Cook ,
Delane of“ The Times," p . 186 . 50 Harriet Martineau says of Croker 's virulence : " That malignant ulcer of the mind , engendered by political disappointment, at length absorbed his better qualities . It is necessary to speak thus frankly of the temper of the
man , because his statements must in justice be discredited ; and because
justice requires that the due discrimination bemade between the honorable and generous-minded men who ennoble the function of criticism by the spirit they throw into it, and one who, like Croker , employed it at last for the gratification of his own morbid inclination to inflict pain .” He declared , when Lord Grey came into office, . . . that he should make
his income by “ tomahawking” liberal authors in the Quarterly. “ He wrote articles about them , but also interpolated other persons' articles with his own sarcasms and slanders, so as to compel the real reviewers, in repeated
instances to demand the republication of their articles in a genuine state and
a separate form .” — Harriet Martineau, “ John Wilson Croker,” Biographical 61 Sir Walter Besant, Autobiography, p . 194. 62 Francis Power Cobbe writes: " The pain and deadly injury I have seen inflicted by a severe review is a form of cruelty for which I have no predilec
tion . It is necessary, no doubt, in the literary community that there should be warders and executioners at the public command to
birch juvenile
offenders, and flog garrotters, and hang anarchists ; but I have never felt any vocation for those disagreeable offices.” — Life , II , 400 . 63 “ The difference between the sham critic and the real critic is that the latter shows the reader how to look first for the intention of the book , and next how to examine into the method employed in carrying out that inten
tion.” — Sir Walter Besant, Autobiography, p . 182. The general subject of
“ Critics and Criticasters " is considered , ib., pp. 180– 197. 54 R . C. Holliday, " The Hack Reviewer," The Unpopular Review , April June, 1916 , 5 : 379 - 391.
