British readers are not unacquainted with the American newspaper press, as, not to mention the numerous extracts from transatlantic papers in the columns of London journals, the merits of that press formed, but a few years ago, a topic of controversy between two London Quarterlies. But of American magazines and reviews they seldom hear any thing. This is certainly in no degree owing to the scarcity of these publications, for they are as numerous, in comparison, as the newspapers, have a very respectable circulation, (in some cases nearly four thousand,) and that at the not remarkably low price of four or five dollars per annum. Neither is it to their insignificance at home, for their editors make a considerable figure in the literary world, and their contributors are sufficiently vain of themselves, as their practice of signing or heading articles with their names in full would alone show.[47] Indeed Willis's idea (so ridiculed by the Edinburgh,) of a magazine writer becoming a great lion in society, is not so very great an absurdity if applied to American society. Nor is this due to the fact that their topics are exclusively local; for there is scarcely a subject under heaven of which they do not treat, and a European might derive some very startling information from them. The Democratic Review, for example, has a habit of predicting twice or thrice a-year that England is on the point of exploding utterly, and going off into absolute chaos.[48]

"Perhaps," interrupts an impatient non-admirer of things American generally, "it is because they are not worth hearing any thing about." And this suggestion is not so far from truth as it is from politeness. Considering the great demand for periodical literature in the New World, one is surprised to find it so bad in point of quality. Not that the monthly and quarterly press is disfigured by the violence and exaggeration that too often deform the daily. Over-spiciness is the very last fault justly chargeable upon it. In slang language, it would rather be characterised by the terms "slow," "seedy," "remarkably mild," and the like. Crude essays filled with commonplaces, truisms, verses of the true non Di non homines cast, tales such as shop-boys and milliners' girls delight in, and "critical notices" all conceived in the same spirit of indiscriminating praise, make up the columns of the monthlies; while the one or two more pretending publications which now represent the quarterly press, are of a uniformly subdued and soporific character.

Now the first phenomenon worthy of notice is, that this has not always been the case. It was very different eight or nine years ago. The three leading cities of the north, New York, Boston, and Philadelphia, had each its Quarterly: the Knickerbocker, a New York magazine, boasted a brilliant list of contributors, headed by Irving and Cooper, and its articles were frequently copied (sometimes without acknowledgment,) into English periodicals. This change for the worse is worth investigating, at least as a matter of curiosity.

"I don't know that it is a change for the worse," says a prim personage in spectacles. "If your periodical literature dies out entirely, you need not be very sorry. I shouldn't be if ours did." And then come some murmurs of "light," "superficial," "unsound," and more to the same effect.

"My good sir, this in the face of Maga! not to mention the Quarterly and the Edinburgh. With such faits accomplis against you, what can you say?"

"I don't believe in faits accomplis. They are the excuse of the timid man, and the capital of the unprincipled man. Fait accompli means, in plain English, that 'because it is so, therefore it ought to be so'—a doctrine which I, for one, will never assent to."

"Well, there is something in that last position of yours. We will condescend, therefore, to argue the question. Let me ask you, then,

"First, Do you see any prim facie improbability in supposing that a man may write a very good essay, who could not write two good volumes octavo; or a racy and interesting sketch, who could not put together a readable novel; or a few graceful poems, without having matter enough for a volume of poetry?

"Secondly, Is a treatise necessarily profound, because it is long; or superficial, because it is of practicable dimensions?

"Thirdly, When you use the term 'superficial,' do you really believe and mean to imply that periodical writers are in the habit of discussing subjects which they do not understand? Would you say, for instance, that Macaulay's reviews denote a man ignorant of history, or that Sedgwick knows less geology than the man who wrote the Vestiges of Creation, or that Mitchell knew less Greek than Lord Brougham?

"But perhaps it is the literary criticism to which you object. You are an author yourself, perhaps, though we have not the pleasure of recollecting you. You have written a good-sized volume of Something, and Other Poems, and cannot bear that your thoughts and rhymes should be scrutinised and found fault with by a reviewer—that your immortal fire should be tested in so earthy a crucible. In that case you will find many more or less distinguished names to sympathise with and encourage you. There is Bulwer, with whom the word critic is an exponent of every thing that is low, and mean, and contemptible; and on our side of the water (sorry are we to say it) a much milder man than Bulwer—Washington Irving—has spoken of the critical tribe as having little real influence, and not deserving more influence than they have; while of the small fry of authorlings, there is no end of those who are ready to rate the reviewer roundly for 'finding fault with his betters.' One cannot even condemn an epic of impracticable length and hopeless mediocrity—nay, not so much as hint that verses are not necessarily poetry—without being assailed by an unceremonious argumentum ad hominem—'You couldn't make better.'[49] And perhaps the critic could not. It is more reasonable to suppose that he wouldn't if he could, entertaining the commendable conviction, that to spend a day, much more a month or a year, in writing middling verse, is an awful waste of time. But what an absurd irrelevancy of counter-charge! Suppose Brummell had found fault with the (Nug ee?) or Buckmaster of his day for misfitting him, and the schneider had replied, 'Mr Brummell, you couldn't make as good a coat in a year.' 'Very probably not,' the beau might have retorted; 'but my business is to wear the coat, and yours to make it.' Must a man be able to concoct a bisque d'Écrevisse himself, before he can venture to hazard an opinion on the respective merits of the Trois FrÈres and the CafÉ Anglais? Or shall he be denied the right of giving a decided vote and holding a decided opinion in politics, because he has not ability or opportunity to become a cabinet minister to-morrow? In seeking to put down, or affecting to despise criticism, the author makes a claim which no other distinguished character ventures. The artist does not insist on controlling the judgment of his contemporaries,[50] still less the statesman. Did a premier fulminate his dictum to the effect that no journalist had a right to find fault with his measures, he would raise a pretty swarm of hornets about his ears. By what precedent or analogy, then, can the poet, or novelist, or historian, set himself up as autocrat in that realm of letters, which is proverbially a republic?

"Besides, suppose for a moment that all professional critics were Sir-Peter-Lauried in the most complete manner, who should help to guide the popular mind in determining on the merits of a work? Are we to trust the written puffs of the author's publisher, or the spoken puffs of his friends? Or are authors only to judge of authors, and is it quite certain that in this way we shall always obtain unprejudiced and competent judgments? Or shall we make an ultimate appeal to the public themselves, and decide a book's merits by its sale—a test that would put Jim Crow infinitely before Philip Van Artevelde? No doubt a bad critic is a very bad thing; but it is not a remarkably equitable proceeding to judge of any class by the worst specimens of it; and surely it is no fairer to condemn critics en masse, because some of them have formed erroneous judgments or uttered predictions which time has falsified, than it would be to condemn authors en masse, because many of them have written stupid or dangerous books. Let us ask ourselves soberly what a critic is—not the caricature of one that Bulwer would draw, but such an idea of one as any dispassionate and well-informed man would conceive. In the first place, criticism depends very much on taste, and taste is of all faculties that which is founded on and supported by education and cultivation. Therefore the critic must be a liberally educated man in the highest sense of the term. And as he has to be conversant with niceties of thought and expression, philology and the classics should have formed a prominent element in his education. We should be very suspicious of that man's critical capacity, who had not thoroughly studied (by which we do not mean being able to speak) at least one language besides his own. Then, as a matter of course, before beginning to write about books, he must have read many books of all sorts, and not only read, but studied and comprehended them. All which will help us to see why the professional critic is likely to be a better judge of books than the professional author, because the preparation of the former renders him eminently eclectic; while the latter is apt to have a bias toward peculiarities of his own, and thus to judge of others by a partial standard.

"Next, the critic must be a courageous and independent man. His judgment upon a book must be entirely irrespective of any popular outcry for or against it. If he is at all apt to float with the opinions of others, he cannot be the adviser and assistant of the public, but will only encourage accidental error or premeditated deception. For a similar reason, he will keep all personal and private considerations out of view. He must not be supposed to know the author, except as exhibited in his works. But while personality is the bane of criticism, partisanship, moral or political, is so far from being a hinderance to the critic, that it is actually an aid to him. If he has legitimate grounds for praising a coadjutor or condemning an opponent, he will write all the better for his partisanship; for, indulging that partisanship, he feels himself, if he be an honest partisan, to be also serving the public. We do not pretend to have enumerated all the requisites for a critic. There are some natural qualities, which, if not indispensable, are at least a great assistance. Thus we find men who have the same immediate perception of styles that portrait painters have of countenances, and can immediately assign to any anonymous writing its author, though the peculiarities which distinguish that author be so slight that it is not easy to illustrate, much less to explain them. And thus, if you ask such a man, 'How do you know that —— wrote this? What turn of expression or traits of style can you point to?' He will reply, 'I can't give you any reason, only I am sure it is so;' and so you will find it to be. He knows it, as it were, by intuition." But we have already said quite enough on the general question; so let us leave our friend to wipe his spectacles, and come back to our particular case.

In examining the causes of the inferiority of American periodical literature, the most readily assignable, and generally applicable is, that its contributors are mostly unpaid. It is pretty safe to enunciate as a general rule, that, when you want a good thing, you must pay for it. Now the reprints of English magazines can be sold for two dollars per annum, whereas a properly supported home magazine or review cannot be afforded for less than four or five. Hence no one will embark a large capital in so doubtful an undertaking; and periodical editorship is generally a last resource or a desperate speculation. One of the leading magazines in New York—perhaps, on the whole, the most respectable and best conducted—was started with a borrowed capital of 300 dollars, (say £65.) But it is hardly necessary to remark that the proprietors of a periodical should have a fair sum in hand to begin with, that they may secure the services of able and eminent men to make a good start. The syllogistic conclusion is obvious. At the same time, the editor finds at his disposal a most tempting array (so far as quantity and variety are concerned) of gratuitous contributions; for there is in America a mob of—not "gentlemen" altogether—men and women who "write with ease," and whose "easy writing" seldom escapes the correlative proverbially attached to easy writing. This is, in a great measure, owing to the system of school and collegiate education, which, by working boys and girls of fourteen and upwards at "compositions" and "orations" about as assiduously as Etonians are worked at "longs and shorts," makes them "writers" before they know how to read, and gives them a manner before they can have acquired or originated matter. Most of these people are content to write for nothing; they are sufficiently paid by the glory of appearing in print; many of them could write no better if they were paid. And it certainly is a temptation to be offered a choice gratis among a variety of articles not absolutely unreadable, while you would be compelled to pay handsomely for one good one.

But the specific evils of such a system are numerous. In the first place, it prevents the editor from standing on a proper footing towards his contributors. Many a man who is not so engrossed with business but that he can afford to write for nothing, would nevertheless find an occasional payment of forty or fifty dollars a very timely addition to his income, and would prefer that way of making money to many others. But, in comparison with the editor, he appears positively a rich man, and as such is ashamed to ask for any pecuniary recompense. He feels, therefore, as if he were doing a charitable and patronising, or at least a very friendly act, in contributing, and will be apt to take less and less trouble with his contributions, and write chiefly for his own amusement; while the editor, on his part, does not like to run the chance of offending a man who can write him good articles occasionally, and feels a delicacy about declining to insert whatever the other writes.

Next, it often stands in the way of honest criticism. Men can be paid in flattery as well as in dollars, and the former commodity is more easily procurable than the latter. If the editor eulogises the author of "—— and other Poems," as at least equal to Tennyson, there is a chance that some of the "other poems," may come his way occasionally. Of course, if he were able and willing to pay for good articles, he could always command the services of good contributors, and need not stoop to so unworthy a practice.

Thirdly, it destroys all homogenousness and unity of tone in the periodical, by preventing it from having any permanent corps of writers. The editors must furnish good articles now and then, to carry off their ordinary vapid matter; and, accordingly, they are sometimes under the disagreeable necessity of paying for them;[51] but not sufficiently often to make it worth the while of a writer to whom the pecuniary consideration is an object, to attach himself permanently to any of their concerns. Hence, those men who expect to derive any appreciable part of their income from writing in periodicals, are continually changing their colours, and essentially migratory. And as the principal attraction of the unpaid writers is their variety, which is best provided for by frequently changing the supply of them, while one great inducement to themselves is the gratification of their vanity, which is best promoted by their appearing in the greatest number of periodicals, they also become migratory and without permanent connexion. Accordingly it is not uncommon for a periodical to change its opinions on men and things three or four times a-year. Frequently, too, these changes are accompanied by disputes about unsettled accounts and other private matters, which have an awkward tendency to influence the subsequent critical and editorial opinions of both parties. Now and then they lead to libel suits,—sometimes to still greater extremities. Mr Colton, editor of the American Review, had occasion to dispense with the services of a young Kentuckian with whom he was at first connected. (It is but justice to the former gentleman to say, that there were no short-comings on his part; his only error seems to have been entangling himself with an unworthy assistant in the first place.) The discharged assistant forthwith issued a pamphlet against Mr Colton, of which that gentleman had the good sense to take not the slightest notice, and his example was pretty generally followed. Furious at this contempt, the Southerner attacked his late principal in the street with a life-preserver. Fortunately Mr Colton possessed a fair share of what never comes amiss with an editor, especially an American editor,—personal prowess. In the scuffle which ensued, he upset his assailant, and carried off the spolia opima in the shape of the bludgeon aforesaid.

But the worst consequence of all is, the suspicion cast upon all offers from periodicals to really eminent writers, by the failure of editors, (through bad faith, or inability, or both,) to fulfil promises made to their contributors. Some of these cases are positively startling. In one instance a distinguished author was promised, or given to understand, that he would have as much as one thousand dollars a-year. He wrote for two years steadily, and never received two cents. Another case occurred very recently. A comic or would-be-comic, periodical was started in imitation of Punch, and the proprietors offered ten dollars a page for all accepted articles. This they paid for a few weeks, and then, having secured on credit a supply for some time longer, deliberately broke their word, and would at this very time, if solvent, owe to a number of small litterateurs in New York, small sums of five and ten dollars. In this case, retribution was speedy, for the whole affair broke down in less than a year.

We see, then, one great radical cause of inferiority in American periodical literature, affecting it in all its departments. But there are other influences which especially conspire to pervert and impede criticism. Some of these will be obvious, on referring back to our hints at the requisites for a critic. We said that he should be in the highest sense of the term a liberally educated man. Now this is what very few of the American periodical writers, professed or occasional, are. The popular object of education in the new world is to make men speak fluently and write readily about any thing and every thing—speaking and writing which, from their very fluency and readiness, tend to platitude and commonplace. Those studies which depend on and form a taste for verbal criticism, are pursued in a very slovenly and unsatisfactory manner; the penchant being for mathematics, from their supposed practical tendencies.[52] Men read much, but they do not "mark, learn, and inwardly digest." Their reading is chiefly of new books, a most uncritical style of reading, to which the words reference, comparison, illustration, are altogether foreign. Again, we said that our critic must not only be able to form, but ready to express his own opinion—in short, that he must be bold and independent. Now this is no easy or common thing in America, not so much from want of spirit and fear of the majority as from want of habit; the democratic influence moulding all minds to think alike. At the same time, it must be admitted that a spurious public opinion does often exercise a directly repressing influence. Cooper says, in his last novel, that the government of the United States ought to be called the Gossipian, and certainly Mrs Grundy is a very important estate in the republic. Then there are many powerful interests all ready to take offence and cry out. The strongest editor is afraid of some of these. Thus the Courier and Enquirer, which, all things considered, must be said to stand at the head of the New York daily press, is completely under the dictation of John Hughes and the Papist faction in that city. By under the dictation, we mean that it never inserts any thing in favour of Protestantism, nor omits any opportunity of saying something in favour of Romanism.[53] And if these influences have such power over a newspaper which has mercantile intelligence, advertisements, and other great sources of support, much more must they affect a magazine or review. One great aim of an American magazine, therefore, is to tread on nobody's moral toes, or, as their circulars phrase it, "to contain nothing which shall offend the most fastidious"—be the same Irish renegade, repudiator, or Fourierite. Accordingly, nearly all the magazines and reviews profess and practise political neutrality; and the two or three exceptions depend almost entirely on their political articles and partisan circulation. It was once mentioned to us by the editor of a Whig (Conservative) Review, that he had one Democratic subscriber. And we know another editor who is continually apologising to his subscribers, and one half of his correspondents, for what the other half write. This has not always been the case. The Southern Literary Messenger was established to write up "the peculiar institution," and therefore only suited to and intended for the southern market; but there was a time when, under the management of Mr E. A. Poe, an erratic and unequal, but occasionally very brilliant writer, it had considerable circulation in the north. And the "Democratic Review," while it contained and paid for good articles, was subscribed to and even written for by many Whigs.

Another enemy of true criticism in America is provincialism. There is no literary metropolis which can give decisive opinions, and the country is parcelled out among small cliques, who settle things their own way in their own particular districts. Thus, there are shining lights in Boston, who are "small potatoes" in New York; and "most remarkable men" in the West, whom no one has remarked in the East. Sometimes, indeed, these cliques continue to ramify and extend their influence into other places. This is effected by a regular system of flattery,—"tickle me and I'll tickle you;" nor is there even an endeavour to conceal this. For instance, when the classical lion of a certain clique had been favourably reviewed by a gentleman in another city, whose opinion was supposed to be worth something, the periodical organ of the clique publicly expressed its thanks for the favour, and in return, dug up a buried novel of the critic's, and did its best to resuscitate it by a vigorous puff. Here was a fair business transaction with prompt payment. We have observed that the tendency of American reviewing is to indiscriminate praise. The exceptions to this, (setting aside some rare extravagances which resemble the efforts of a bashful man to appear at ease, attempts to annihilate Cooper, or Warren, or Tennyson, for instance) usually spring from some of the private misunderstandings we have alluded to; e.g. two litterateurs quarrel, one of them is kicked out of doors, and then they begin to criticise each other's writings. And the consequence is, that it is next to impossible to pass an unfavourable opinion upon any thing, without having personal motives attributed to you, and getting into a personal squabble about it. When an author, or an artist,[54] or an institution is condemned, the first step is to find out, if possible, the writer of the review, and the next to assail him on private grounds. Indeed, the author's friends do not always stop at pen and paper. Some years ago, an English magazinist charged a fair versifier of the West with having "realised" some of his inspirations,—a very absurd claim by the way, as there was nothing in the disputed stanzas which would have done any man much credit. Soon after, the Kentucky papers announced that a friend of the lady had gone out express by the last steamer, for the purpose of "regulating" the Englishman. What the result was we have never heard.

Such are some of the causes which militate against the attainment of a high standard in American periodical literature. For some years it went on very swimmingly on credit; but it is exceedingly doubtful, to say the least, if the experiment could be successfully repeated. We have seen that many of these obstacles are directly referable to the fact that the editorship of Monthlies and Quarterlies does not tempt men of capital into it; and it is not difficult to perceive that such of the others as are surmountable, can be most readily overcome by remunerating those engaged in the business. If good critics are well paid, it will be worth men's while to study to become good critics; and if a periodical is supported with real ability, it will make its way in spite of sectional or party prejudices, as we have seen was the case in some instances. And since it is plain that the republication of English magazines must interfere with the home article, the conclusion seems inevitable that the passing of an International Copyright Law would be the greatest benefit that could be conferred on American periodical literature.