Some Private Views | Page 8

case of collision or other serious extremity, he calls
it so: 'What the infernal regions are yer banging into my 'bus for?' etc.,
etc.,--I say, this being his exalted position, the injurious language of the
man on the step is, to say the least of it, disrespectful.
On the other hand, it is the conductor who fills the 'bus, and even
entices into it, by lures and wiles, persons who are not voluntarily
going his way at all. It is he who advertises its presence to the
passers-by, and spares neither lung nor limb in attracting passengers. If
the driver is lord and king, yet the conductor has a good deal to do with
the administration: just as the Mikado of Japan, who sits above the

thunder and is almost divine, is understood to be assisted and even
'conducted' by the Tycoon. The connection between those potentates is
perhaps the most exact reproduction of that between the 'bus driver and
his cad; but even in England there is a pretty close parallel to it in the
mutual relation of the author and the professional critic.
While the former is in his spring-time, the analogy is indeed almost
complete. For example, however much he may have plagiarised, the
book does belong to the author: he calls it, with pardonable pride (and
especially if anyone runs it down), 'my book.' He has written it, and
probably paid pretty handsomely for getting it published. Even the right
of translation, if you will look at the bottom of the title-page, is
somewhat superfluously reserved to him. Yet nothing can exceed the
patronage which he suffers at the hands of the critic, and is compelled
to submit to in sullen silence. When the book-trade is slack--that is, in
the summer season--the pair get on together pretty amicably. 'This
book,' says the critic, 'may be taken down to the seaside, and lounged
over not unprofitably;' or, 'Readers may do worse than peruse this
unpretending little volume of fugitive verse;' or even, 'We hail this new
aspirant to the laurels of Apollo.' But in the thick of the publishing
season, and when books pour into the reviewer by the cartful, nothing
can exceed the violence, and indeed sometimes the virulence, of his
language. That 'Now then, stoopid!' of the 'bus conductor pales beside
the lightnings of his scorn.
'Among the lovers of sensation, it is possible that some persons may be
found with tastes so utterly vitiated as to derive pleasure from this
monstrous production.' I cull these flowers of speech from a wreath
placed by a critic of the Slasher on my own early brow. Ye gods, how I
hated him! How I pursued him with more than Corsican vengeance;
traduced him in public and private; and only when I had thrust my
knife (metaphorically) into his detested carcase, discovered I had been
attacking the wrong man. It is a lesson I have never forgotten; and I
pray you, my younger brothers of the pen, to lay it to heart. Believe
rather that your unfriendly critic, like the bee who is fabled to sting and
die, has perished after his attempt on your reputation; and let the tomb
be his asylum. For even supposing you get the right sow by the ear--or
rather, the wild boar with the 'raging tooth'--what can it profit you? It is
not like that difference of opinion between yourself and twelve of your

fellow-countrymen which may have such fatal results. You are not an
Adonis (except in outward form, perhaps), that you can be ripped up
with his tusk. His hard words do not break your bones. If they are
uncalled for, their cruelty, believe me, can hurt only your vanity. While
it is just possible--though indeed in your case in the very highest degree
improbable--that the gentleman may have been right.
In the good old times we are told that a buffet from the hand of an
Edinburgh or Quarterly Reviewer would lay a young author dead at his
feet. If it was so, he must have been naturally very deficient in vitality.
It certainly did not kill Byron, though it was a knock-down blow; he
rose from that combat from earth, like Antæus, all the stronger for it.
The story of its having killed Keats, though embalmed in verse, is
apocryphal; and if such blows were not fatal in those times, still less so
are they nowadays. On the other hand, if authors are difficult to slay, it
is infinitely harder work to give them life by what the doctors term
'artificial respiration'--puffing. The amount of breath expended in the
days of 'the Quarterlies' in this hopeless task would have moved
windmills. Not a single favourite of those critics--selected, that is, from
favouritism, and apart from merit--now survives. They failed even