Fifty years ago, in allusion to methods of reviewing, not even
now wholly obsolete, Carlyle wrote:--
The first and most convenient is for the reviewer to perch
himself resolutely, as it were, on the shoulder of his
author, and therefrom to show as if he commanded him and
looked down upon him by natural superiority of stature.
Whatsoever the great man says or does the little man shall
treat with an air of knowingness and light condescending
mockery, professing with much covert sarcasm that this or
that is beyond _his_ comprehension, and cunningly
asking his readers if _they_ comprehend it.
There is here perhaps some "covert sarcasm" directed against
contemporaries who forgot that their mission was to pronounce on the
merits of the books reviewed, and not to patronise their authors; it may
be set beside the objection to Jeffrey's fashion of saying, "I like this;
I do not like that," without giving the reason why. But in this instance
the writer did reck his own rede. The temptation of a smart critic is to
seek or select legitimate or illegitimate objects of attack; and that
Carlyle was well armed with the shafts of ridicule is apparent in his
essays as in his histories; superabundantly so in his letters and
conversation. His examination of the _German Playwrights_, of _Taylor's
German Literature_, and his inimitable sketch of Herr Doering, the hapless
biographer of Richter, are as amusing as is Macaulay's _coup de grace_ to
Robert Montgomery.
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