The pleasure of imparting opinions in print is by no means confined to professionals, to people who are assumed to know something about a subject because they have been more or less occupied with it for years. On the contrary, the most lively and spirited discussions are those to which the general public lends a willing hand. Almost any topic will serve to arouse the argumentative zeal of the average reader, who rushes to the fray with that joyous alacrity which is so exhilarating to the peaceful looker-on. The disputed pronunciation or spelling of a word, if ventilated with spirit in a literary journal, will call forth dozens of letters, all written in the most serious and urgent manner, and all apparently emanating from people of rigorous views and limitless leisure. If a letter here or there--a _u_, perhaps, or an _l_--can only be elevated to the dignity of a national issue, then the combatants don their coats of mail, unfurl their countries’ flags, and wrangle merrily and oft to the sounds of martial music. If, on the other hand, the subject of contention be a somewhat obvious statement, as, for example, that the work of women in art, science, and literature is inferior to the work of men, it is amazing and gratifying to see the number of disputants who promptly prepare to deny the undeniable, and lead a forlorn hope to failure. The impassive reader who first encounters a remark of this order is apt to ask himself if it be worth while to state so explicitly what everybody already knows; and behold! a week has not passed over his head before a dozen angry protestations are hurled into print. These meet with sarcastic rejoinders. The editor of the journal, who is naturally pleased to secure copy on such easy terms, adroitly stirs up slumbering sentiment; and time, temper, and ink are wasted without stint by people who are the only converts of their own eloquence. “Embrace not the blind side of opinions,” says Sir Thomas Browne, who, born in a contentious age, with “no genius to disputes,” preached mellifluously of the joys of toleration, and of the discomforts of inordinate zeal.
Not very long ago, I was asked by a sprightly little paper to please say in its columns whether I thought new books or old books better worth the reading. It was the kind of question which an ordinary lifetime spent in hard study would barely enable one to answer; but I found, on examining some back numbers of the journal, that it had been answered a great many times already, and apparently without the smallest hesitation. Correspondents had come forward to overturn our ancient idols, with no sense of insecurity or misgiving. One breezy reformer from Nebraska sturdily maintained that Mrs. Hodgson Burnett wrote much better stories than did Jane Austen; while another intrepid person, a Virginian, pronounced “The Vicar of Wakefield” “dull and namby-pamby,” declaring that “one half the reading world would agree with him if they dared.” Perhaps they would,--who knows?--but it is a privilege of that half of the reading world to be silent on the subject. Simple preference is a good and sufficient motive in determining one’s choice of books, but it does not warrant a reader in conferring his impressions upon the world. Even the involuntary humor of such disclosures cannot win them forgiveness; for the tendency to permit the individual spirit to run amuck through criticism is resulting in a lower standard of correctness. “The true value of souls,” says Mr. Pater, “is in proportion to what they can admire;” and the popular notion that everything is a matter of opinion, and that one opinion is pretty nearly as good as another, is immeasurably hurtful to that higher law by which we seek to rise steadily to an appreciation of whatever is best in the world. Nor can we acquit our modern critics of fostering this self-assertive ignorance, when they so lightly ignore those indestructible standards by which alone we are able to measure the difference between big and little things. It seems a clever and a daring feat to set up models of our own; but it is in reality much easier than toiling after the old unapproachable models of our forefathers. The originality which dispenses so blithely with the past is powerless to give us a correct estimate of anything that we enjoy in the present.