Books
A Letter to the Editor
and an Offer of a Prize
Sir: In London, if one is placed sufficiently low in the social hierarchy—or if, high placed, one is sufficiently fond of low life—to frequent houses in which Literature as a subject of conversation is not inhibited, one may occasionally hear it said of this or that recently published book that it has just been "reviewed" in the Athenæum: or "noticed" in the Academy, "praised" by the Spectator or "slated" by the Saturday Review. I don’t know whether you will agree with me in deeming it significant that one almost never hears of a book nowadays that it has been criticised. People who run as they talk are not commonly precisians in their choice of words, but the fact that the verb to criticise, as governing the accusative case of the substantive book, has virtually dropped out of use, seems to me a happy example of right instinct. Books (books in belles lettres, at any rate, novels, poems, essays, what you will, not to include scientific, historical, or technical works), books in belles lettres are almost never criticised in the professedly critical journals of our period in England. They are reviewed, noticed, praised, slated, but almost never criticised.
