186 Retrospective Criticism. 
Art. VI. Retrospective Criticism. 
Repty to the Strictures of “ A Friend to Fair Criticism.” (p. 84.) — Sir, 
Had I seen Fair Criticism in company with him who professes to be his 
friend, I should not have requested your permission to occupy some space 
of your Magazine in replying to his observations upon me ; but as he appears 
to have introduced Unfair Criticism by that name, I must beg leave a little 
to put aside the mask worn on the occasion, and to convince your readers 
that this personage appears “ under the suspicious denomination of an 
alias.’ But I fear I am flippant again. I must contract my brow, and 
resume my dignity. This gentleman ‘(whom, to spare space, I will designate 
by two of his initials, A. F.) has pretty bro adly hinted that the review of the 
Journal of a Watipe ee, in a former Number of your Magazine, was not 
fair criticism. Let me ‘ask him, where is the unfairness of that criticism 
which, quoting word for word the passages which call forth its animadver- 
sions, leaves the reader full powers to form his own opinion, and, should 
he think the censure unmerited, to return that censure upon the writer ? 
Had your “ indignant”? correspondent quoted as fairly as I have done, he 
would not have given his readers to understand that the poor stone-breakers 
were represented as earning 2s. 8d. or 3s. a day, by the united exertions of 
four persons, “ in the worst of times, and under the least favourable circum- 
stances ;”” but, under the most favourable circumstances of the winter season, 
the weather being good, and the whole family in health. In the few lines 
which the writer has actually quoted from this part of the journal (inde- 
pendently of his own observations upon them), there is, it is true, little to 
call forth the remarks which have excited his indignation. That I admit 3 
but why is this? Because this “ friend to fair criticism” has cited from those 
remarks a few sentences, of which the import is materially changed by their 
separation from the context, and has, at the same time, omitted the passages to 
which they refer. “ The reviewer,” says A. F., “ falls foul of the author (who, 
if he be not an errant hypocrite, must be an amiable and kind-hearted man), 
and accuses him — of what ? — why, ‘ of utter insensibiliiy to the misery he 
describes, ’ viz. of the poor ; and, moreover, attributes this want of feeling to 
© a habit “of enjoying his own ease, without thinking of others; and of looking 
upon the poor (perhaps unconsciously to himself) as an inferior race of beings? 
He does not add, that I speak of the naturalist, in the same page, as “ appa- 
rently an amiable and kind-hearted man.’ 1 believe him to be such; but I 
also believe (and this is by no means incompatible) that he is one of the 
many who, living, day after day, a life of ease, accustomed to the sight of 
the poor, and taking it for cranted that they are tolerably comfortable too, 
remain insensible to the misery around them; not from heartlessness, but 
from want of due reflection. One says, “ If the poor cannot get bread, why 
don’t they eat cakes?” Another observes that they have a “little bre ad,” 
and plenty of potatoes ; and calls this well-doing. Which of us would think 
it well-doing, if we ourselves were reduced to a diet of potatoes, with “ the 
aid of a little bread?” Not one. How, then, can we think it good living 
for the poor (the appetite sharpened, too, by hard labour), unless we con- 
sider them as an inferior race? Cats and dogs are to be fed with meat ; 
horses, upon hay and corn; our selves, upon all the dainties of land and sea ; 
pigs and the labouring poor upon potatoes! 
Had the author of this pleasant little work been less accustomed to wit- 
ness the wretched condition of the poor labourers, I am persuaded he would 
have spoken of them in a very different manner, Instead of boasting of 
their well-doing, he would probably have been shocked to think that, to 
obtain the mere necessaries of a comfortless existence, many a poor 
mother (to the utter neglect of all maternal duties) should be compelled 
