at no small sacrifice , some publishers refusing to sell the paper and others refusing to send it advertisements.73 The stern Saturday Review went even farther and a foot-note to its prospectus states that the conductors “ decline to receive books, prints , & c ., gratuitously for review , as the limits of no periodical admit of a proper notice of all new publications.
The conductors will provide for themselves the works which
they may select for criticism .” 74 Yet publishers and editors might well hesitate to interfere
with the sale of books through adverse criticism , were all to meet Hazlitt and thus " stopped the sale of his writings for a timeand
blighted his credit with his publishers." It led to Hazlitt's “ Letter to Gifford,” 75 in which he showed himself even more abusive and malignant than his critic has been . To-day the added suspicion comes that not only does the
publisher demand favorable reviews in return for books sent, but that the publisher of reviews looks still farther ahead and
publishes favorable reviews in return for the anticipated adver tising of the favored firms. “ No man,” says Bliss Perry, " can prompt and humiliating contact with the system
of control
which the advertiser of books tends to exercise over the literary columnsof the periodicals which print his advertising and review advertisements. This great fraud upon the public was to be put an end to , or, failing sufficient support, the journal should be abandoned . There should be no attempt at any compromise with the unclean thing. In justice
to those then engaged in the publishing trade it must be remembered that they were merely continuing an old -established system . There had never been a newspaper started upon the principles of free and independent literary
criticism . Authors had always been accustomed to laudatory notices, and resented strongly anything like fault-finding, considering, when they handed
a work to a publisher , that it was a part of his business to secure it favorable reviews.” — J. C . Francis, John Francis, I, 35- 36 . 73 “ This principle is now so fully recognized that it is difficult to believe what a hard -fought struggle was required to establish it, and that it was only owing to the thorough independence ofall connected with the Athenaeum that this position was attained . It is pleasant to record that the public press gave most generous and efficient support, and warmly and zealously came forward to serve the cause.” — Ib ., I, 36 – 37, 41. 74 J . C . Francis, Notes by the Way, p . 201. 75 Collected Works of William Hazlitt, I, 365 -411.
