Review : “ You have yet to learn the magic virtue of calling yourself we. I never knew the emphatic force of the pronoun till I became a reviewer, and then I no longer wondered at its
being a royalattribute.” 106 On the other hand, Schopenhauer was even more emphatic
in denouncing anonymity as “ the refuge for all journalistic rascality, ” — a remark to have been anticipated from one who
had written that his " remarks on the critical faculty are chiefly intended to show that, for the most part, there is no such thing." “ Every article,” he goes on to say, " even in a newspaper should
be accompanied by the name of its author ; and the editor should bemade strictly responsible for theaccuracy of the signature.” 107 Harriet Martineau felt that Croker “ carried the license of
anonymous criticism to the last extreme.” 108 Edward Bulwer explained that without signature “ the critic can thus take certain liberties with the author with impunity ; that he may be
witty or severe without the penalty of being shot,” that he can review books more on their merit and without personal feeling, but on the whole he apparently favors signature.109 Howells, in recalling the remorseless criticism in the early English quarterlies , of Keats, Wordsworth, and other writers, is indignant that “ this savage condition still persists in the tolera
tion of anonymous criticism , an abuse that ought to be as extinct as the torture of witnesses.” 110 Brander Matthews finds that “ anonymous reviewing might readily put it in the power of a
personal enemy to attack a writer from the ambush of half-a dozen journals.” 111 106 Letters from and to Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, I, 351, 353. 107 “ On Criticism ,” Essays, Translated by T . B . Saunders , pp. 337– 347. 108 “ John Wilson Croker," Biographical Sketches, 60-69. 109 “ View of the Intellectual Spirit of the Time," England and the English, II, 7 – 76 .
'110 W . D . Howells, Criticism and Fiction , p . 50. 111 He draws his conclusion from what may be an exceptional case. He gives an account of a favorable review in the Academy of a book on the epic songs of Russia signed by “ the leading British authority on Russian literature," and equally favorable unsigned reviews of the book in the
Athenaeum and in the Saturday Review . The critic stated he had written all three, but did so because the book was good and no one in England but
himself was interested in Russian literature, and the book would have gone without notice if he had not written these reviews. - These Many Years, pp. 297 – 298 .
