number of men do not form a
judgment on their own responsibility, but merely take it on authority.
For what sort of criticism should we have on Plato and Kant, Homer,
Shakespeare and Goethe, if every man were to form his opinion by what
he really has and enjoys of these writers, instead of being forced by
authority to speak of them in a fit and proper way, however little
he may really feel what he says. Unless something of this kind took
place, it would be impossible for true merit, in any high sphere, to
attain fame at all. At the same time it is also fortunate that every
man has just so much critical power of his own as is necessary for
recognizing the superiority of those who are placed immediately over
him, and for following their lead. This means that the many come in
the end to submit to the authority of the few; and there results that
hierarchy of critical judgments on which is based the possibility of a
steady, and eventually wide-reaching, fame.

The lowest class in the community is quite impervious to the merits
of a great genius; and for these people there is nothing left but the
monument raised to him, which, by the impression it produces on their
senses, awakes in them a dim idea of the man's greatness.

Literary journals should be a dam against the unconscionable
scribbling of the age, and the ever-increasing deluge of bad and
useless books. Their judgments should be uncorrupted, just and
rigorous; and every piece of bad work done by an incapable person;
every device by which the empty head tries to come to the assistance
of the empty purse, that is to say, about nine-tenths of all existing
books, should be mercilessly scourged. Literary journals would then
perform their duty, which is to keep down the craving for writing and
put a check upon the deception of the public, instead of furthering
these evils by a miserable toleration, which plays into the hands of
author and publisher, and robs the reader of his time and his money.

If there were such a paper as I mean, every bad writer, every
brainless compiler, every plagiarist from other's books, every hollow
and incapable place-hunter, every sham-philosopher, every vain and
languishing poetaster, would shudder at the prospect of the pillory
in which his bad work would inevitably have to stand soon after
publication. This would paralyze his twitching fingers, to the true
welfare of literature, in which what is bad is not only useless but
positively perni