Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 368, June 1846Various
History
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 368, June 1846
Various
England -- Periodicals; Scotland -- Periodicals
"By envy eaten up, they _saw_
Me prosper; looking all _before_."
"And ever, when they walk'd _abroad_
Each arm'd with hunting-whip and _cord_."
If any of our readers doubt the authenticity of some of the rhymes above
set down, we are willing that they should buy the book, as we have done,
and ascertain for themselves.
Merciful as we are by nature, and growing more and more so every day by
age, we yet feel that the enormities we have now denounced are beyond
endurance. Such poetry as this, neither gods, men, nor booksellers
should tolerate; and with the highest respect for the very excellent
publishers who have assisted in the birth of this production, and to
whom we owe so many useful and admirable contributions to knowledge and
literature, we do venture humbly to submit, that their peculiar duty
makes them somewhat more responsible for what is thus brought forth,
than ordinary obstetrical practitioners can be for what they may help
into the world. There is no reason that such a bantling should be born
at all, and at least we would recommend the continuance of gestation for
nine times the Horatian period. Seriously speaking, we always regret to
miss the general security which the title-page should give us, that in
what we buy, we shall have something for our money. A bad or inferior
book may, inadvertently, issue from the most respectable quarter. But
when a work is ushered into the light with such pomp and pageantry of
paper, printing, and getting up, as are here lavished, we hold that the
public have a right to expect that it has received the imprimatur of
some discerning judge, and to enforce the implied warranty that the
inside, as well as the outside, is a merchantable commodity in the
market of Parnassus.
But the publisher's part of it is the least of the evil. It is obvious
that the natives of Cockneyland are forgetting themselves. A new
generation has sprung up that do not remember the castigations bestowed
on their fathers of yore, and which for a time kept them in tolerable
subjection. A young Londoner, who happens to have enthusiasm, or
industry, or information, on a particular subject, may deserve
commendation for the laudable direction of his private studies; but is
he, therefore, entitled to _haspire_ to write, and not to write merely,
but to write poetry, and to disfigure a venerable old poem under
pretence of reproducing it? That is a different question, which needs to
be seriously and decidedly dealt with. This is not the first time,
within a brief period, that we have been compelled to make an example of
similar delinquencies; and, as sure as the crutch is in yonder corner,
it shall not be the last, if the nuisance be not speedily and completely
abated.
THE AMERICANS AND THE ABORIGINES
A TALE OF THE SHORT WAR. PART II.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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