A Memoir of the Right Hon. William Page Wood, Baron Hatherley, with Selections from His Correspondence Volume 2 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1883 Excerpt: ...you would attack the whole of that respectable body at once, and have to submit to unlimited pelting. If you are inclined to any such quixotic enterprise, let it be when your book is finished, or Bentley would have serious right to grumble. As regards yourself, I think you have singular reason to be satisfied. Were it otherwise, to say nothing of its being undignified to remonstrate with such judges, it would give them the most intense delight (I mean, of course, the malevolent critics), show them how susceptible you are, and place you at a great disadvantage in respect of any future comments. The' Saturday Eeview' happened to take you up; and if you are sore with the, you must read last Wednesday's article on ' Chichester Spire' (a leading article), which, both on public and personal grounds, you must accept as a mollifier. No one can despise the man more than I do, who can ever venture to give pain and conceal his name. He may be entitled to give pain by denouncing ignorance and presumption; but, then, we should know his name, as you say, to enable us to weigh the value of his judgment. 1 Dr. Hook was meditating a sharp reply to some unfavourable criticisms on the first volume of his Lives of the Archbishops, to be introduced into a preface to the second volume. But yet, after all, the fault is in the public; and your effort should be rather to instruct the public as to the value of criticism than to decry the critic. You should also, where immorality is, in your judgment, involved in the conduct of an anonymous publication, decline to take it in. You will say your preface does endeavour to instruct the public; but the instruction loses all its weight when it comes from an aggrieved author. I think that damage is done to public taste and feeling more than...