Art. I.—CRITICISM.
"Thucydides was the inventor of an art which before him had been almost unknown, the art of historic criticism, without being conscious of the infinite value of his invention. For he did not apply it to all branches of knowledge, but only to his subject, because it was a natural consequence of that subject. The historic Muse had made him acquainted with it: no one before or after him has drawn the line more clearly between history and tradition. And what is this but to draw the distinction between the historic culture of the East and West, and—if we recognize how much depended on this historic culture—between the whole scientific culture of the East and West? For, to repeat a remark which has been already cursorily made, the great difference between the two consists in this: in the West, the free spirit of criticism was developed; in the East, never."
The above well-known passage of Heeren will serve as a suitable introduction to the few remarks we have to make on the same subject;—a subject which, in this short extract, is made to take so imposing a form.
A Review is, or is supposed to be, an embodiment of this important element; exercising itself always with reference to the leading interests of the age, holding a middle place between the buzz of the newspapers and the mature judgment of the historian, less subject to the influences of passion or party than the former, and held to less strict account for severe attention to justice than the latter. Our current literary ideas and forms are of English growth. The violence of party spirit, the universal interest in politics, have in England made the great Reviews into political organs. By this means, political passions have been made a touchstone of literary merit, and a spirit of unfairness has prevailed, of which, though the good sense of the English has lately led them to better things, the effects will long be visible in English literature.
Our American defect lies in the opposite extreme. Grave men gravely vaunt American productions in a way that, to
