It becomes, therefore, an important question to one who would be an independent thinker, how the evil may be remedied in his own case. It may be answered in general, not chiefly by reading literary reviews. Much, doubtless, may be learned in this way about many books and their authors; so much indeed, so wide is the field opened, as to divert the mind from seeking an intimate acquaintance with any. Without question, the effect of this kind of reading often, and indeed usually is, to overload the mind with a multitude of opinions which speedily pass from it, leaving it advanced in no respect except in an opinion of its own knowledge. Even where something more than mere entertainment is sought, the result is much the same. We would ask those who are so busy in collecting the opinions of others, how often an attempt is made effectually to reproduce those opinions in their own minds, and to test them by a careful study of the author in hand. The comparatively light manner of hurrying over even the extracts, which critical kindness has pointed out, is a sufficient answer. The very object indeed of resorting to reviews is to avoid tasking the mind. It is indeed vastly easier to take from the review opinions ready made, than to struggle to bring up into the light one’s own dim conceptions of excellence or defect, and to summon the mind to make account to itself. But as the result we have an unformed and lifeless acquaintance, with works even of the highest order--an acquaintance consisting, for the most part, of half-remembered, and half-forgotten crude opinions _about_ them. For the mind itself there is a habit of dependence on something without, and not of itself, for the grounds of its opinions--a habit arising, almost necessarily, from being accustomed to submit to the absoluteness and dictatorship of the professed critic. There is liable to be created also, a habit of dependence for the _interest_ which is felt in literary works generally, novels excepted. It cannot be denied that the critic himself and his opinions, often form the main point of interest, and that the author is comparatively uninteresting; when it is not so, the critic is often depended upon to excite for the author an interest, which is to cease with the remembrance of the former. The sympathies are with the critic, not with the author. Besides this, reviews treat mostly of what is passing; the attention of the review reader is, therefore, in a great degree confined to that. Hence we have, in many of those who are thought to be acquainted with literature, a love for excitement, dependent on what is conventional and present, rather than a permanent interest resulting from broad and well grounded views.