“I dissent from Mr. Rossetti’s views concerning Dante; but I have a high opinion of his talents and acquirements; I respect them too much to be virulent when speaking of his works, which I do not incessantly attack. The contrary assertion made by the reviewer is a wilful and deliberate falsehood, charitably invented and propagated to cause mischief and strife between Mr. Rossetti and myself. I _once_ stated freely my reasons for differing from Mr. Rossetti’s system concerning Dante; but I then said, that I knew him to be _a very clever man_, and I added that his writings on the subject do _much honour to his ingenuity, and his very mistakes indicate a lively imagination._ Is this the language of ‘_a virulent assailant_’?” In treating another passage in the article our author displays, as well he may, more of contempt than anger. His reviewer, one Mr. Keightley, drew a comparison between Panizzi’s literary merits and his own—by no means in favour of the former, a practice, though decidedly blameable, not so rare as to call for lengthy notice here. A couple of sonnets translated from Bojardo by this same Mr. Keightley are actually inserted in the review. Examples are to be found, both in early and late history, of an author praising his own works anonymously, and if by means of self-laudation he can smite his enemies secretly his acuteness has been thought all the more deserving of admiration. To what motive can the savage tone and evident personal rancour of this article be imputed? The office of the critic has for a long time past been discharged fairly enough; if not with an undue excess of leniency and generosity, at least (from the critic’s own point of view) with justice and honour. Politics, and such other matters as may be taken to be the common property of the public, have, it is true, been known to infuse something of what might at first sight be called acerbity into his style; but as he who in fair and open fight, complaining of blows, would meet with scant pity, so the “benighted Tory” or the “reckless and destructive Radical,” or possibly the propounder of some latest theory in literature, science, or art, must put up smilingly with the rubs which it may please his adverse judge to give him, remembering always that the office of that judge is to suppress the ignorant, to repress the arrogant, and occasionally, though of course but very rarely, to oppress those who are neither the one nor the other. Still, that the gall of personal animosity should mix itself with the ink and infect the pen of the reviewer is plainly a thing so utterly monstrous as to astonish us on hearing of its occurrence more than once in an ordinary lifetime. There is, unfortunately, too clear evidence that, not uninfluenced by some such dark motive, the critic now under notice perpetrated the article in question. It seems that about two years before the review appeared either Panizzi made Mr. Keightley’s acquaintance or Mr. Keightley Panizzi’s.