Philadelphia Gazette.'
"We are entirely of opinion with the Philadelphia Gazette in
relation to the Southern Literary Messenger, and take this occasion to
express our total dissent from the numerous and lavish encomiums we
have seen bestowed upon its critical notices. Some few of them have
been judicious, fair and candid; bestowing praise and censure with
judgement and impartiality; but by far the greater number of those
we have read, have been flippant, unjust, untenable and uncritical.
The duty of the critic is to act as judge, not as enemy, of the writer
whom he reviews; a distinction of which the Zoilus of the Messenger
seems not to be aware. It is possible to review a book sincerely,
without bestowing opprobrious epithets upon the writer, to condemn
with courtesy, if not with kindness. The critic of the Messenger has
been eulogized for his scorching and scarifying abilities, and he
thinks it incumbent upon him to keep up his reputation in that line,
by sneers, sarcasm and downright abuse; by straining his vision with
microscopic intensity in search of faults, and shutting his eyes, with
all his might to beauties. Moreover, we have detected him, more than
once, in blunders quite as gross as those on which it was his pleasure
to descant."*
* In addition to these things we observe, in the New York Mirror,
what follows: "Those who have read the Notices of American books in
a certain Southern Monthly, which is striving to gain notoriety by the
loudness of its abuse, may find amusement in the sketch on another
page, entitled "The Successful Novel.
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