The English essayists have spent a good deal of time lately in discussing the question whether it is possible to tell a good contemporary book from a bad one.  Their hesitation is justified by a study of English criticism of new books in the quarterly, monthly, and weekly periodicals from the latter part of the eighteenth century to the last quarter of the nineteenth; or, to name a definite period, from the verse of the Lake poets, from Shelley and Byron, down to Tennyson, there is scarcely a poet who has attained world-wide assent to his position in the first or second rank who was not at the hands of the reviewers the subject of mockery and bitter detraction.  To be original in any degree was to be damned.  And there is scarcely one who was at first ranked as a great light during this period who is now known out of the biographical dictionary.  Nothing in modern literature is more amazing than the bulk of English criticism in the last three-quarters of a century, so far as it concerned individual writers, both in poetry and prose.  The literary rancor shown rose to the dignity almost of theological vituperation.

Is there any way to tell a good book from a bad one?  Yes.  As certainly as you can tell a good picture from a bad one, or a good egg from a bad one.  Because there are hosts who do not discriminate as to the eggs or the butter they eat, it does not follow that a normal taste should not know the difference.

Because there is a highly artistic nation that welcomes the flavor of garlic in everything, and another which claims to be the most civilized in the world that cannot tell coffee from chicory, or because the ancient Chinese love rancid sesame oil, or the Esquimaux like spoiled blubber and tainted fish, it does not follow that there is not in the world a wholesome taste for things natural and pure.

It is clear that the critic of contemporary literature is quite as likely to be wrong as right.  He is, for one thing, inevitably affected by the prevailing fashion of his little day.  And, worse still, he is apt to make his own tastes and prejudices the standard of his judgment.  His view is commonly provincial instead of cosmopolitan.  In the English period just referred to it is easy to see that most of the critical opinion was determined by political or theological animosity and prejudice.  The rule was for a Tory to hit a Whig or a Whig to hit a Tory, under whatever literary guise he appeared.  If the new writer was not orthodox in the view of his political or theological critic, he was not to be tolerated as poet or historian, Dr. Johnson had said everything he could say against an author when he declared that he was a vile Whig.  Macaulay, a Whig, always consulted his prejudices for his judgment, equally when he was reviewing Croker’s Boswell or the impeachment of Warren Hastings.  He hated Croker,—­a hateful man, to be sure,—­and when the latter published his edition of Boswell, Macaulay saw his opportunity, and exclaimed before