186 Retrospective Criticism, 



Art. VI. Retrospective Criticism. 



Reply 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 j 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 broadly hinted that the review of the 

 Journal of a Naturalist, 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 2*. Sd. or 3^. 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 favour-able 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 ; 

 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 insensibility/ 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 iincoiudously 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 arid kind-hearted man** I 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 granted that they are tolerably comfortable too, 

 remain insensible to the misery around them j 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 bread," 

 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 j ourselves, 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 



