ts to
The historian, for his final estimate of the value of present criticism in all its forms may well turn to Bliss Perry and read : “ Musical criticism in this country has made a steady advance, always a little ahead of the musical education of the public , but constantly gaining in authority and courage as the standard of public appreciation ofmusic has risen . The progress of archi
tectural and art criticism has likewise corresponded to the devel opment of public taste, always in advance of it, yet always being overtaken by it. Dramatic criticism has seemed to move in our day in a circle ; the criticism
of poetry and fiction seems just
now to be retrograding as the public taste for poetry and fiction has grown less refined.” 148 If it be true that the chief function of a newspaper is criticism , it is also true that there is a widespread skepticism as to the
trustworthiness of newspaper criticism and it is with this skepti cism that the historian is concerned . Is this all but universal doubt justified , is it grossly exaggerated , is it entirely negligible ? Itmust be recognized that there are certain general limitations on all criticism that must invalidate it for the historian . One
of the most important of these is the tendency of the public to take more kindly to censure than to praise and it is doubtless this that explains why the very word criticism has come to con
note adverse judgment. Lord Palmerston who, Sir Edward Cook says, " knew most things that are to be known about the Press ( except that here and there a paper may have a soul),” secure favorable criticism from Chorley . But “ alike to the bribery of managers, the venality of journalists and claqueurs, the extravagant assump tions of composers, and the insolent vanity of singers and instrumentalists, he showed himself a bitter , almost a remorseless enemy.” — Henry Fothergill
Chorley : Autobiography, Memoir, and Letters. Compiled by H . G . Hewlett, I, 289- 290.
In editing Chorley's Autobiography in 1873, Hewlett says that " it would
be affectation to assume that thirty or forty years ago the critical press , either in this country or the Continent, occupied the same honorable position in public estimation that it occupies now , or to ignore the discredit of
venality and sycophancy which then attached to organs of wide circulation C . A . Cooper notes that about 1850 the Pyne and Harrison Company ,
“ the chief exponents of English opera ” _ " carried their musical critic with them when they were on a provincial tour. Possibly this was a measure of self- protection .” — An Editor' s Retrospect, p . 61.
148 “ The American Reviewer," Yale Review , October, 1914, 4 : 3– 24.
