partisanship for the sincerity of the partisan."

* * * * *

Alexander Smith (1830-1867) was a poet and essayist of some distinction;
though A. H. Clough also criticises his exclusive devotion to the
"writers of his own immediate time"; and calls him "the latest disciple
of the school of Keats." The volume of essays entitled _Dreamthorp_
"entitles him to a place among the best writers of English prose."

ANONYMOUS

There is a similarity, and a difference, between this summary of
Christmas literature and Thackeray's. The personal criticism lacks his
special geniality, revealing rather a tone which would have perfectly
suited Blackwood or the _Quarterly_. Lytton was a favourite subject of
abuse to his contemporaries.

THACKERAY ON DICKENS

[From "A Box of Novels," _Fraser's Magazine_, February, 1844]

MR. TITMARSH, in Switzerland, to MR. YORKE

...This introduction, then, will have prepared you for an exceedingly
humane and laudatory notice of the packet of works which you were good
enough to send me, and which, though they doubtless contain a great deal
that the critic would not write (from the extreme delicacy of his taste
and the vast range of his learning) also contain, between ourselves, a
great deal that the critic _could_ not write if he would ever so; and
this is a truth which critics are sometimes apt to forget in their
judgments of works of fiction. As a rustical boy, hired at twopence a
week, may fling stones at the blackbirds and drive them off and possibly
hit one or two, yet if he get into the hedge and begin to sing, he will
make a wretched business of the music, and Labin and Colin and the
dullest swains of the village will laugh egregiously at his folly; so
the critic employed to assault the poet.... But the rest of the simile
is obvious, and will be apprehended at once by a person of your
experience.

The fact is, that the blackbirds of letters--the harmless, kind singing
creatures who line the hedge-sides and chirp and twitter as nature bade
them (they can no more help singing, these poets, than a flower can help
smelling sweet), have been treated much too ruthlessly by the watch-boys
of the press, who have a love for flinging stones at the little
innocents, and pretend that it is their duty, and that every wren or
sparrow is likely to destroy a whole field of wheat, or to turn out a
monstrous bird of prey. Leave we these vain sports and savage pastimes