grounded suspicion of the connection between the business manager and the reviewer.56 This is indeed a veritable Homeric catalogue of the ships, but
it is far from being all that must be said in regard to the review as trustworthy historicalmaterial. The contemporaneous review ,
even the best, must fail to note the elements of a book that may have the greatest value for the historian . Dickens was read and
criticized by his contemporaries for the sake of the story, the descriptions, the interest in the characters, and the problemsof life that he presented. But the critic of Dickens to -day would be concerned with the priceless record that he unconsciously gives of the manners and customs, social and political, of his own day. The contemporaneous review and the later review must necessarily differ , not simply because the tastes of critics
and readers differ from generation to generation , but chiefly because of the varying values placed on different features . The contemporaneous review may or may not be better than the
subsequent one, but it is necessarily different.56 It is not neces sarily to the disadvantage of the historian that time changes the 65" No publishers'advertising,no book reviews, is the policy ofnearly every newspaper." -- R . C .Holliday ,Unpopular Review ,April, 1916 , 5 :379- 391. “ ' In the name of common sense, Mr. Pendennis,' Shandon asked , 'what have you been doing - praising one ofMr. Bacon 's books? Bungay has been
with me in a fury this morning, at seeing a laudatory article upon one of the works of the odious firm over the way.'
“ Pen 's eyes opened with wide astonishment. 'Do you mean to say ,' he
asked , 'that we are to praise no books that Bacon publishes: or that, if the books are good , we are to say they are bad ? '
“ 'My good young friend , for what do you suppose a benevolent pub lisher undertakes a critical journal, - to benefit his rival? ' Shandon inquired .
“ 'To benefit himself certainly, but to tell the truth , too,' Pen said , fruot coelum , to tell the truth .' ” — Thackeray, Pendennis, p . 344 .
66 Carl Becker draws an interesting comparison between M . Brunetière's criticism of Taine's Origins of Contemporary France written when the book first appeared and that of M . Aulard written twenty -five years later. This
intervening period gave M . Aulard opportunity relentlessly to catalogue presumably all of Taine's sins of commission , but the result is after all but a
caricature of Taine, - it is in M . Brunetière's essay that is found “ some comprehensive estimate of the work , some dispassionate yet profound and
searching criticism of it, which is at the same time an illuminating discussion of the Revolution itself and of its principles.” _ " The Reviewing of Historical
Books,” Annual Report of the American Historical Association for 1912 , pp . 127 - 136 . See also , Hilaire Belloc , “ Ten Pages of Taine," International Quarterly ,
January, 1906, 12: 255- 272.
