All
possible encouragement, therefore, should be given to the growth of
critics, good or bad. But I fear all will be in vain; let criticism do
what it may, writers will write, printers will print, and the world
will inevitably be overstocked with good books. It will soon be the
employment of a lifetime merely to learn their names. Many a man of
passable information, at the present day, reads scarcely any thing but
reviews; and before long a man of erudition will be little better than
a mere walking catalogue.
"My very good sir," said the little quarto, yawning most drearily in
my face, "excuse my interrupting you, but I perceive you are rather
given to prose. I would ask the fate of an author who was making
some noise just as I left the world. His reputation, however, was
considered quite temporary. The learned shook their heads at him,
for he was a poor half-educated varlet, that knew little of Latin, and
nothing of Greek, and had been obliged to run the country for
deer-stealing. I think his name was Shakspeare. I presume he soon sunk
into oblivion."
"On the contrary," said I, "it is owing to that very man that the
literature of his period has experienced a duration beyond the
ordinary term of English literature. There rise authors now and
then, who seem proof against the mutability of language, because
they have rooted themselves in the unchanging principles of human
nature.
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