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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Untitled Article
should be ; whether there is any result from it , save a . small and unjust gain to a robber caste who have arrogated to themselves the right to make laws ? It is to all these things that honest writers should constantly turn the attention of the public . It is not 3 . matter of politics for the day , a mere question who the rulers shall be , but whether the measures shall be such , whether the laws
shall be so constructed , that they may best conduce to humq , n happiness . There would seem to want a new system of reviewing , in order to qrmke it genuine and availing . At present , the causes before described have reduced it to one dead level of vapid dulness . There is one method which would probably regenerate it . Every writer should be required to put his signature to his article . This would remove all responsibility from the editor , and at the same time govern the moody , temper of the writer , * and oblige him
to adhere to the exact truth in all that he wrote , under the penalty of losing his reputation . If an author at present writes a book which does not square with the existing potions of the literary clique ; he is either not noticed , or he is wrjtten down , or he is furiously applauded by one side , and as furiously vituperated by the other . A foreigner , unacquainted with the state of parties , who happened to see two opposite reviews of the same book , would he somewhat astonished , for in truth the critics are
frequently merely anxious on each side , that their side should win , and care nothing whatever about the intrinsic merit of the work in question . Were their names to appear , they would be somewhat more cautious . To this state of things we must come , for ere a much longer time elapses , anonymous criticisrps will altogether cease to be regarded . It is meanwhile somewhat amusing , to observe how the principle of utility has come into play , in the mechanical construction of books . Time was , that it was held
disreputable to publish any thing beneath a folio , and the reader was alrhost in the predicament of Gulliver , needing a scaffold on his desk in order to accomplish its perusal . The inconvenience at last wrought its own cure , and quartos became the aristocratic form . Still they were too large , and for a long period octavos reigned unrivalled , till duodecimos became the favourite size , and there the fashion has stopped , for the purposes of the library ;
though even they have been reduced to half sue , for the convenience of travelling . How one of the aristocratic authors of the elder time would stare , could he come on earth again , and behold such degradation I Yet there is still sufficient room for the exercise of literary aristocracy . Political economists think scorn of
the writers of poetry . Rhyming poets disdain to look upon novel writers . Novel writers who sell their three volumes at a guinea and a half , edge away with contemptuous carefulness from him of twenty-four shillings ; who in turn , draws himself up to a dignified height as he overlooks the unfortunate wight of eighteen shillings . Periodicals again are excessively dignified . Six shillings
Untitled Article
On the Morality of Authors , £ 11
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), May 2, 1833, page 311, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2614/page/23/
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