" The Southern Literary Messenger
knows by experience what it is to write a successless novel." We have,
in this case, only to deny, flatly, the assertion of the Mirror. The
Editor of the Messenger never in his life wrote or published, or
attempted to publish, a novel either successful or successless.
In the paragraph from the Philadelphia Gazette, (which is edited
by Mr. Willis Gaylord Clark, one of the editors of the
Knickerbocker) we find nothing at which we have any desire to take
exception. Mr. C. has a right to think us quacky if he pleases, and we
do not remember having assumed for a moment that we could write a
single line of the works we have reviewed. But there is something
equivocal, to say the least, in the remarks of Col. Stone. He
acknowledges that "some of our notices have been judicious, fair,
and candid bestowing praise and censure with judgment and
impartiality." This being the case, how can he reconcile his total
dissent from the public verdict in our favor, with the dictates of
justice? We are accused too of bestowing "opprobrious epithets" upon
writers whom we review and in the paragraphs so accusing us are called
nothing less than "flippant, unjust and uncritical."
But there is another point of which we disapprove. While in our
reviews we have at all times been particularly careful not to deal
in generalities, and have never, if we remember aright, advanced in
any single instance an unsupported assertion, our accuser has
forgotten to give us any better evidence of our flippancy,
injustice, personality, and gross blundering, than the solitary dictum
of Col.
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