1827 [ 473 ] 



CANONS OF CUITICISM. 



" Avec quolque talent qu'on puisse etre n, 1'art d'ficrire ne s'apprcnd pas tout d'un coup." 

 Confess, de J. J. Routseau. 



WHEN I look around me on the world (as the writers of sermons are 

 wont to say at the opening of their discourses), and behold the infinite 

 number of all sorts and conditions of persons, who start up,, like the soldiers 

 of Cadmus, armed to the teeth with pens, ink, paste, and scissors, with 

 indexes and common-place books, to burst upon society in quartos, octavos, 

 and duodecimos, I do not so much wonder at the prevalence of an opinion 

 that authorship is no art ; and that criticism, with its dogmas and maxims, is 

 no better than medicine, and the other solemn plausibilities of which society 

 is the dupe. Cela non obstant, Rousseau is right ; and books were never 

 written with more art than at present. Whatever may be the unpractised 

 simplicity of some authors (and we have more reason than ever for saying 

 with Horace, " scribimus indocti doctique"} from however humble and 

 uneducated classes they are taken (and many of them can scarcely sign 

 their name or spell) yet the publishers are all, if not theoretically pro- 

 found, at least practically experienced ; and it is in their obstetric hands 

 that books, for the most part, receive their form, and are fitted to meet the 

 public eye. It is to the critical acumen of the booksellers that authors are 

 chiefly indebted, not only for the greater excellencies of their works, but 

 for their very existence. In a vast many instances, the publisher takes the 

 initiative, and bespeaks books to be " done according to sample ;" and when 

 this is not the case, his judgment is generally decisive as to the appearance or 

 non-appearance of a MS. Without his aid, learning, research, wit, science, 

 and invention go for little or nothing : and never were they more in need 

 of his solitary guidance than in this present 1827 which God preserve ! 



But while all other arts are in progress while the " march of mind" is 

 advancing in quick step time in all the other departments of science 

 criticism stands pretty much where it did. While Benthani is throwing a 

 blaze of illumination on the science of legislation, and while even Mr. 

 Peel thinks it decorous to light his farthing candle at the flame, the Jeffries 

 and the Giffards have not condescended to reduce their art to first prin- 

 ciples ; but suffer others to write, and themselves to review, without method 

 and without compass, by the rule of thumb ! Even the most experienced 

 publisher cannot explain the principle of his decisions ; and when he has 

 told you, your book " is not at all the sort of thing," that " it wont do," 

 he would be terribly posed, if you insisted on knowing why. I shall make, 

 therefore, no farther apology for my attempt to supply this desideratum, 

 but proceed at once to a revision of the canons of criticism, in order ta 

 place the institutes of literature " au niveau dujour." 



It has been falsely supposed by a few old-fashioned pedants, " con la 

 veduta corf a a'una spanna," that the laws of criticism, like those of nature, 

 are eternal ; and that what was true in the time of Aristotle and Longinus 

 must be so in the days of Nares, Lockhart, and Southey. That this is not 

 true can be proved, not only by an appeal to fact, but by the more satis- 

 factory argument of d priori necessity. In criticism, as in every thing else, 

 it is " autres terns, autres mceurs." Did Aristotle know any thing of 

 Romanticism ? or could Longinus have satisfied a German critic on any 

 point of the doctrine of oesthetics ? Can anybody nowadays sit out a 

 tragedy that preserves the unities ? and is not the code of Boileau and of 

 Horace as obsolete as the laws of the Brehons, or those of Lewark Hen? 



M.M. New Series. VOL. IV. No. 23. 3 P 



