We laugh at the idea of any
denial of our assertions upon this topic; they are infamously true. In
the charge of general corruption, there are undoubtedly many noble
exceptions to be made. There are, indeed, some very few editors,
who, maintaining an entire independence, will receive no books from
publishers at all, or who receive them with a perfect understanding,
on the part of these latter, that an unbiassed critique will be given.
But these cases are insufficient to have much effect on the popular
mistrust; a mistrust heightened by late exposure of the machinations
of coteries in New York-coteries which, at the bidding of leading
booksellers, manufacture, as required from time to time, a
pseudo-public opinion by wholesale, for the benefit of any little
hanger-on of the party, or pettifogging protector of the firm.
We speak of these things in the bitterness of scorn. It is
unnecessary to cite instances, where one is found in almost every
issue of a book. It is needless to call to mind the desperate case
of Fay- a case where the pertinacity of the effort to gull- where
the obviousness of the attempt at forestalling a judgment- where the
wofully overdone bemirrorment of that man-of-straw, together with
the pitiable platitude of his production, proved a dose somewhat too
potent for even the well-prepared stomach of the mob.
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