University of Virginia Library

“Of all the cants which are canted in this canting world, though the cant of hypocrites may be the worst, the cant of criticism is the most torturing.” What would Sterne say, if he lived in these days of venalism. Literature is now degraded far below a trade. Every body pretends to a moiety of lettered wisdom; every fool can write; and every ass is a critic. Even women, such as are only born—

are blues in some shape. If criticism performed its honourable functions, authors would be fewer, and learning saved from its present attached stigma; but it is exactly the contrary. Authors spring up faster and thicker than weeds in the “deserted village;” while each one has a critic “who comes hobbling after.” Those who live at a distance from London, are apt to pay an implicit credit to the metropolitan reviews; but a month's residence in London, and an acquaintance with the literary coteries, will teach them to laugh at most of the criticisms, and consider nearly all the reviewers as a despicable, prostituted herd of quill-drivers. This is not bravado, but simple fact. You can scarcely mention a magazine or a paper, that has not a certain publisher and certain critic, who play a literary shuttlecock, most admirably. Besides all this perfidious venalism, there are party rancour, envy, malice, pique, and all the concomitants of little minds, constantly affecting the critics. This was, I am aware, always the case to a certain degree;—but our's is the Brazen age of Impudence, and the Golden one of Pedantry.