SOURCE: "The Literary Criticism of Orestes A. Brownson," in The Review of Politics, Vol. 16, No. 3, July, 1954, pp. 334-51.

In the following essay, Soleta examines Brownson's views of nineteenth-century literature and his role as a literary critic

Literature was never central to Brownson's interests; indeed at times it was something he tolerated somewhat impatiently. He wrote about it regularly, however, and during his career filled over a thousand closely packed octavo pages on the subject. He could even use the cant of the journalist reviewer with professional facility. Of a novel called Thorneberry Abbey, for instance, he says, "It has one or two literary faults . . . efforts at fine writing, and wearisome descriptions of natural scenery, which . . . only interrupt the narrative." With variations in the details, this kind of formal gesture is repeated almost every time he reviews a novel. Moreover, the passage on Thorneberry Abbey appears towards the very...