内容简介：
Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CURIOSITIES OF CRITICISM. There is a growing tendency on the part of literary men to resent what they are pleased to consider the unwarrantable interference of the critic. His ministrations have probably never been sincerely gratifying to their recipients; Marsyas could hardly have enjoyed being flayed by Apollo, even though he knew his music was bad; and worse, far worse, than the most caustic severity are the few careless words that dismiss our cherished aspirations as not even worthy the rueful dignity of punishment. But in former days the victim, if he resented such treatment at all, resented it in the spirit of Lord Byron, who, roused to a healthy and vigorous wrath, '' expressed his royal views In language such as gentlemen are seldom known to use," and by a comprehensive and impartial attack on all the writers of his time proved himself both able and willing to handle the weapons that had wounded him. On the other aide, those authors whose defensive powers were of a less prompt and efficient character ventured no nearer to a quarrel than to borrow a simile of George Eliot's a water-fowl that puts out its leg in a deprecating manner can be said to quarrel with a boy who throws stones. Southey, who of all men entertained the most comfortable opinion of his own merits, must have been deeply angered by the treatment Thalaba and Madoc received from theEdinburgh Review; yet we cannot see that either he or his admirers looked upon Jeffrey in any other light than that of a tyrannical but perfectly legitimate authority. Far nobler victims suffered from the same bitter sting, and they too nursed their wounds in a decorous silence. But it is very different to-day, when every injured aspirant to the Temple of Fame assures himself and a sympathizing public, not that...