"Reviewer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... lecture in London and then said, gravely, that he "doubted many of the young man's statements"; and readers still remember Mark Twain's famous parody of the discussion of his book by a wooden-headed reviewer of an English review. ...
— My Discovery of England • Stephen Leacock
... of public schools from their old boards of trustees to the [140] State, the obligatory State-examination for schools, the obligatory State-examination for schoolmasters, and the foundation of the great State University of Berlin,—take their origin. This his English reviewer says not a word of. But, writing for a people whose dangers lie, as we have seen, on the side of their unchecked and unguided individual action, whose dangers none of them lie on the side of an over-reliance on the State, he quotes ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold
... substance of the achievement, and which reluctantly overlooked the crudeness of Walter Scott, in France where the best English novel seems a violation of established canons, Uncle Tom would seem to belong where some modern critics place it, with works of the heart, and not of the head. The reviewer is, however, candid: "For a long time we have striven in France against the prolix explanations of Walter Scott. We have cried out against those of Balzac, but on consideration have perceived that the painter of manners and character has never done ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... superb piece of imaginative literature of the realistic school: by others it has been anathematised as a libel on the great army that made Modern Germany. The truth about it is probably best summarised in the words of a reviewer of the "Daily Mail": ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... degree of human felicity and moral development necessarily unattainable by the race, provided time enough had been allowed for its evolution from the present chaotic state of society. In failing to allow this, the reviewer thinks that the author has made an absurd mistake, which seriously detracts from the value of the book as a work of realistic imagination. Instead of placing the realization of the ideal social state a scant fifty years ahead, it is ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... by other reviews equally enthusiastic or nearly so. Many papers failed to do more than include it in the List of Books Received. The Times Literary Supplement gave six lines of small type to a cold account of it. The reviewer declared that "this first novel is not without merit" but either had not been able to discover the merit or had not enough space in which to describe it, for he omitted to say what it was. John had paid a visit to ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... events, taking the risk of consequences, we have entered on an era of almost complete literary impunity; the bonfire is as extinct as the pillory; the only fiery ordeal is that of criticism, and dread of the reviewer has taken the place of all fear of ...
— Books Condemned to be Burnt • James Anson Farrer
... are To last month's Quarterly Reviewer, Who proves by arguments so clear (One sees how much he holds per year) That England's Church, tho' out of date, Must still be left to lie in state, As dead, as rotten and as grand as The mummy of King Osymandyas, All pickled ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... After the dissertation we were gratified by a few recitations. "Lord Ullin's Daughter," the "Razor Seller," and "My Name is Norval," were given in great force. And then came the critique. "Ladies and gentlemen," said the reviewer, "we cannot expect much from a journeyman mason in the poetry line. Right poetry needs teaching. No man can be a proper poet unless he be an elocutionist; for, unless he be an elocutionist, how can he make his verses emphatic in the right places, or manage the harmonic inflexes, or deal ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... fail, by giving a bad idea of their works. You will, of course, never read the books you review, and you will be exhaustively ignorant of the subjects which they treat. But you can always find fault with the title of the story which comes into your hands, a stupid reviewer never fails to do this. You can also copy out as much of the preface as will fill your eighth of a column, and add, that the performance is not equal to the promise. You must never feel nor shew the faintest interest in the ...
— How to Fail in Literature • Andrew Lang
... A reviewer, who has since made his name known, has pointed to the preceding remarks, as indicative of my deficiency in imagination and my tendency to romance. My dear friend is undoubtedly right in the former point; I am destitute of (creative) poetical imagination: and as to ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... and his nose is cut to the bone. ... The second generation of the statesmen of this reign, were worthy of the schools in which they had been trained, of the gaming table of Grammont, and the tiring room of Nell ——." This is but a small portion of the good set terms in which the reviewer illustrates the licentiousness of the times. Speaking of Clarendon, he says, "Mr. Hallam scarcely makes sufficient allowance for the wear and tear which honesty almost necessarily sustains in the friction of political life, and which in times so rough as those through ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 342, November 22, 1828 • Various
... the Drama,' which is replete with wisdom, and evinces a thorough mastery of the theme. In alluding to the appeals which are now made to the eye by elaborate scenery, machinery, etc., less than to the mind and imagination by superior intellectual personation, the reviewer in effect remarks, that the first attempt at positive reality is fatal to pleasurable illusion. Every person in the pit is aware that the stage is a stage, 'and all the men and women merely players.' In 'As you Like It,' at Drury-Lane, an attempt ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... with some of the greatest minds of the country during the distraction and alarm of the French Revolution. Coleridge conducted a newspaper; Sir James Mackintosh wrote for one; Canning contributed to the Anti-Jacobin; Robert Hall of Leicester became a reviewer; Southey, Jeffrey, Brougham, Scott, Giffard, all men in the first rank, appeared in the character ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... intensely refractory person, liable to go out and to go wrong at inconvenient moments, and with incendiary possibilities. These are the faults of my qualities; and I assure you that I sometimes dislike myself so much that when some irritable reviewer chances at that moment to pitch into me with zest, I feel unspeakably relieved and obliged. But I never dream of reforming, knowing that I must take myself as I am and get what work I can out of myself. All this you will understand; for there is community of material ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... life is not mine." The solemn declaration does not seem to me to be so annihilating to the said "view" (really a series of fugitive impressions which I have never tried to co-ordinate) as is complacently assumed. Surely it embodies a too human fallacy quite familiar in logic. Next, a knowing reviewer, apparently a Roman Catholic young man, speaks, with some rather gross instances of the suggestio falsi in his article, of "Mr. Hardy refusing consolation," the "dark gravity of his ideas," and so on. When a Positivist and a Catholic agree there must be something wonderful ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... its tendency to narrow the openings for the writer by profession. If an article is to be signed, the editor will naturally seek the name of an expert of special weight and competence on the matter in hand. A reviewer on the staff of a famous journal once received for his week's task, General Hamley on the Art of War, a three-volume novel, a work on dainty dishes, and a translation of Pindar. This was perhaps ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... Christendom (ALLEN AND UNWIN) is somewhat embarrassing to a reviewer, for it has the theme of a great book with the manner of a trivial one. It is the history of a very much smaller nation, Ethuria, left despoiled and starving at the end of a nine-years' war, in which its great neighbours have ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, February 11, 1920 • Various
... lot of the young Goethe, then an unknown reviewer, to write for the Frankfurter Gelehrte Anzeigen in November, 1772, a notice of some of Buerger's early poems. "The 'Minnelied' of Mr. Buerger," he says, "is worthy of a better age; and if he has more such happy moments, these efforts of his will be among the most ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... determined character, was unusually talkative and decided, both as respects the criticisms and encomiums he uttered on the various performances, making as light of his own peculiar qualifications to deal with the subject, as if he were a common hack-reviewer of our own times, who is known to keep in view the quantity rather than the quality of his remarks, and the stipulated price he is to receive per line. Indeed the parallel would hold good in more respects than ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... help us with the dinner. But she was hardly equal, single-handed, to the superintendence of such dishes as we had to set before Herr Grosse. It was high time I relieved Zillah if we were to pass successfully through the ordeal of the great surgeon's criticism, as reviewer of all the sauces. ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... reviewer should finish his study of the assembled biographies of twenty-four fallen heroes of this War with a feeling of disappointment and some annoyance argues a fault in the biographer or in the reviewer. I invite the reader to be the judge between ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 28, 1919. • Various
... they have wholly passed away.[34] These last are indeed to the author of the critique of the sects not wholly heterodox. They are only too emphatic, in worshipping their peculiar divinity, to suit the more modern conceptions of the Hindu reviewer. But such sects are of the highest importance, for they show that despite all the bizarre bigotry of the Pur[a]nas the old Vedic gods (as in the epic) still continue to hold their own, and had their own idols and temples apart from other ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... inexhaustible, I am not sure that I can see any limit to the number of volumes I shall be compelled to issue. Pray accept this author's copy with his best and hopefullest wishes. One other copy has been sent to the book reviewer of the Arcady Lyre, in the hope that he, at least, will have the wit to perceive in it that ultimate and ideal perfection for which the humbler bards ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... by public admiration without possessing in a high degree some species of sterling excellence." Does it thence follow that it possesses in the highest degree every species of sterling excellence? "Yet thus," says the sapient reviewer, "he admits the fact against which he mainly argues,—namely, the superiority of these time-honored productions." As if the possession of an abstract excellence of some kind necessarily implied the possession of an incomparable excellence of ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... asked a reviewer to dinner in his life. I have told him over and over again that this is madness, and find that this is the only thing I can say to him which ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... understand any subject whatever, read the best book upon it you can hear of; not a review of the book. If you don't like the first book you try, seek for another; but do not hope ever to understand the subject without pains, by a reviewer's help. Avoid especially that class of literature which has a knowing tone; it is the most poisonous of all. Every good book, or piece of book, is full of admiration and awe; it may contain firm assertion or stern satire, but it never ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... orders us to do something; Reason (the balance of faculties) directs; and the strongest motive controls. Modern Science, by the discovery of Radiant Matter, a fourth condition, seems to conciliate the two schools. "La decouverte d'un quatrieme etat de la matiere," says a Reviewer, "c'est la porte ouverte a l'infini de ses transformations; c'est l'homme invisible et impalpable de meme possible sans cesser d'etre substantiel; c'est le monde des esprits entrant sans absurdite dans la domaine des hypotheses scientifiques; c'est la possibilite pour ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... unnecessarily, he would reply that "he could not be hard on the sex." But though "bang went saxpence" is a notable Punch joke—and it may be remarked that it is not less beloved of the political economist than of the Saturday Reviewer—it is not quite the best known. That position is easily attained by what is undoubtedly the most successful (that is to say, the most popular) mot of its kind ever ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... employ myself in doing? was solved; and an ample public career was opened to him. When, after five years, he passes from Edinburgh to London, he is not only a poor clergyman, but a famous Edinburgh reviewer. He becomes popular in society and as a preacher, and delivers pictures on Moral Philosophy to crowded houses of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... privations to which it subjects them. Their anxious inquiry regarding every particular relating to the treatment, is a strong manifestation of their uneasiness on this subject. Yet Mr. Wontner and Mr. Wakefield (says the Quarterly reviewer) think neither transportation nor the hulks have any terrors for them. How they come to this opinion, I cannot imagine. If they draw their inference from the noise and apparent mirth of the prisoners when they leave Newgate for the hulks, I think ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 551, June 9, 1832 • Various
... there is something to be said in favor of the existence of some book of nonsense at that time. The Boston "News Letter" for April 12-19, 1739, contained a criticism of Tate and Brady's version of the Psalms, in which the reviewer wrote that in Psalm VI the translators used the phrase, "a wretch forlorn." He added: "(1) There is nothing of this in the original or the English Psalter. (2) 'Tis a low expression and to add a low one is the less allowable. But (3) what I am most concerned for is, that it will be apt to make ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey
... had a "knack at hoping," which led frequently to their undoing; neither could subscribe easily to the "decent formalities of rigid virtue"; and, as of the latter we may also say of the former, in the language of a reviewer, "He had lights and shadows, virtues and foibles—vices you cannot call them, be you ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin
... defects which both point out are, I presume, but too completely explained by the preceding statement of the rapidity with which this, the last of those great performances, had been thrown off; nor do I see that either Reviewer has failed to do sufficient justice to the beauties which redeem the imperfections of The Lord of the Isles—except as regards the whole character of Bruce, its real hero, and the picture of the battle of Bannockburn, ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... interest in the hero and heroine is not divided with subordinate characters. But the poem of Jack Horner possesses this excellence in a more eminent degree; in the former the interest, is divided between two, in the latter it is concentrated in one; and, notwithstanding the ingenuity of the reviewer, it must be confessed that so little is indicated by the poet, as to the character of Jack and Jill, that we feel no more interest in their fate, tragical as it is, than if they were designated by the letters X and Y of algebraical ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 545, May 5, 1832 • Various
... as penetrated with raptures of fierce joy at having shaken himself free from the world and its puling insincerities to dwell amid "Unpitying shapes of death's dread twin despair," where "Rapine and slaughter raged, and none rebuked." Another reviewer observed that "The soul of ARCHER's, the tavern-brawler's glorious victim, KIT MARLOWE, has taken again a habitation of clay. She speaks trumpet-tongued by the mouth of Mr. CHEPSTOWE. We note in these outpourings of dramatic passion an audacity, an energy, an enthusiasm, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 17, 1892 • Various
... carried on in his own peculiar and inimitable style, it is an onslaught into the camp of the enemy. Speaking of the prize-fighters, whom a reviewer condemned as blackguards, he exclaims defiantly, "Can the rolls of the English aristocracy exhibit names belonging to more noble, more heroic men than those who were called respectively Pearce, Cribb, and ...
— George Borrow in East Anglia • William A. Dutt
... the philosophical and theological objections which have been elaborately urged, almost exclusively by the American reviewers. The North British reviewer, indeed, roundly denounces the book as atheistical, but evidently deems the case too clear for argument. The Edinburgh reviewer, on the contrary, scouts all such objections—as well he may, since he records his belief ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... such extreme views so ably maintained on either hand, and say how much of truth there may be in each? The present reviewer has not the presumption to undertake such a task. Having no prepossession in favor of naturalistic theories, but struck with the eminent ability of Mr. Darwin's work, and charmed with its fairness, our humbler duty will be performed if, laying aside prejudice ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... "The task of the reviewer becomes a pleasant one when such works as the one before us is forced upon his perusal. We must once more commend the taste and talent of the author of 'Lewis ...
— The Manual of Heraldry; Fifth Edition • Anonymous
... the "Fogey's" article on "The Young Men" in a recent Contemporary Review. What a chance for a much-needed onslaught on our minor prophets! It might have been "English bards and Scotch reviewers" over again. But no! the Scotch reviewer's weapon is merely a rose-water squirt. The only thing that perturbates him (as Mr. Francis Thompson would say) is my assertion that a ray of hopefulness is stealing again into English poetry. Since the days of Jeffrey we have only had one really "first-class fighting ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... young man who had been received on trial at the late Conference (1825). We read again, and then devoutly thanked God for having put it into the heart of some one to defend the Church publicly against such mischievous statements, and give the world the benefit of the facts of the case. The "Reviewer" proved to be Mr. Egerton Ryerson, then on the Yonge Street Circuit. This was the commencement of the war for religious liberty, pp. 83, 84. (See also page 143 of Dr. Ryerson's "Epochs ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... cost to the form of the work, I managed to get through it without compromise, and so it was put into type. There is no need to add that my ideational abstinence went unrecognized and unrewarded. In fact, not a single American reviewer noticed it, and most of them slated the book violently as a mass of heresies and contumacies, a deliberate attack upon all the known and revered truths about the woman question, a headlong assault upon the national decencies. In the South, where the suspicion of ideas goes to extraordinary lengths, ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... another writer of the time ready to defend her against a reviewer who had brought a charge of “accumulating in her dramatic characters glaring metaphors,” and of aiming “to ...
— Anna Seward - and Classic Lichfield • Stapleton Martin
... renewed 1946 by Thornton W. Burgess All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review. Republished in 1987 Printed and ...
— The Adventures of Jimmy Skunk • Thornton W. Burgess
... John Allen and Lieutenant Thomas Allen, both of whom were officers in the navy. The younger of these, Thomas, was married on the 2d of October 1792 to Catherine Manning, the daughter of the Vicar of Godalming. In this gentleman, Lieutenant Thomas Allen, the reviewer declares the prototype of the mysterious "Red Eagle" may clearly be recognised; and he works his case out in this way:—The "Red Eagle" calls himself captain, and is seen in the story in connection with a man-of-war, and displaying ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous
... career," says he, "Field's inclinations led him to the society of the green-room. Of western critics and reviewers he was the first favorite among dramatic people. Helpful, kind, and enthusiastic, he was rarely severe and never captious. Though in no sense an analyst, he was an amusing reviewer and a great advertiser. Once he conceived an attachment for an actor or actress, his generous mind set about bringing such fortunate person more conspicuously into public notice. Emma Abbott's baby, which she never had, and of whose invented existence he wrote at least a bookful of startling ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... jargon,' said my orthodox reviewer, 'might be excused in an alderman of London, but not in a Fellow elect of Oriel,' or something to the same purpose, evidently designing to recall to memory the most painful passage of a life not over happy. But perhaps it is as well to let it alone. The writer might be ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... Annabel, talking with Mrs. Ormonde at the latter's hotel in the last week of July. 'Mr. Lanyard—the poet, you know—will be there; I am curious to see him. Father remembers him a 'scrubby starveling'—to use his phrase—a reviewer of novels for some literary paper. He has just married Lady Emily Quell—you heard of it? How paltry it is for people to laugh and sneer whenever a poor man marries a rich woman. I know nothing of him except from his poetry, but that convinces ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... now," growled Tipping. (Boys hate long words as much as even a Saturday Reviewer.) "Why ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... especially being printed by the Reviewer of that Country, that the Lord of the Isles could make nothing of his Design whenever he talk'd of the good Design of the Party; he was only laugh'd at, and bid remember his Grandfathers Hangman; so ...
— Atalantis Major • Daniel Defoe
... pen: having vindicated his friend's ability and good faith, her right to speak and to be heard attentively, he left the survey of her views, with which he probably disagreed, to the originally assigned reviewer. The article, Madame Novikoff tells us in the "Nouvelle Revue," was received avec une stupefaction unanime. It formed the general talk for many days, was attributed to Lord Salisbury, was supposed to have been inspired by Prince Gortschakoff. The name standing against it in Messrs. Murray's ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell
... said Roundjacket; "the publisher, editor, or reviewer who does not send sheets to the author for correction, will inevitably perish, in the end, from the ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... would be no bad similitude, to liken the pleasure which we take in seeing one of these fine plays acted, compared with that quiet delight which we find in the reading of it, to the different feelings with which a reviewer, and a man that is not a reviewer, reads a fine poem. The accursed critical habit—the being called upon to judge and pronounce, must make it quite a different thing to the former. In seeing these plays acted, we are affected ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... thumb, his opinion carries weight. Day's capital work, the Parliament of Bees, is incomparably more workmanlike than the Maydes Metamorphosis; but the latter, it should be remembered, is beyond all doubt a very juvenile performance. Turning over some old numbers of a magazine, I found a reviewer of Mr. Tennyson's Princess complaining "that we could have borne rather more polish!" How the fledgling poet of the Maydes Metamorphosis would have fared at the reviewer's hands I tremble to think. But though his rhymes are occasionally slipshod, and the general texture ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... independent the rich man may suffer for it. 'It won't do,' said one wise lady, 'to make them too independent; they go and join trade-unions, and a friend of mine lost quite a lot of money because his workmen joined a trade-union.' This is quite in the vein of the old Quarterly Reviewer, who summed up the current objections to the Owenite schemes of cooperation as 'the fear that the working classes might become so independent that the unworking classes would not have sufficient control over them, and would be ultimately obliged to ...
— Friendly Visiting among the Poor - A Handbook for Charity Workers • Mary Ellen Richmond
... the reviewer, 'is an inflated jargon, composed of terms picked up in all countries, and wholly irreducible to any ordinary rules of grammar and sense. The sentiments are mischievous in tendency, profligate in principle, licentious and irreverent in the highest ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... reader of one of Thomas Moore's beautiful old "Irish Melodies." That Mrs. Haughton's talent has descended to the second generation is well proven by Edna M. Haughton's "Review of the Literary Work of the Quarter." Miss Haughton is a polished and scholarly reviewer, and her criticisms are in every instance just and helpful. The editorial on "Miss United" is very well written, and should be carefully perused by those in danger of succumbing to the autumnal advances of that sour old maid, ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... Bent, the government printer, published a pamphlet in 1818, entitled, "Michael Howe: the last and worst of the Bushrangers." This pamphlet was reviewed by the Quarterly; "it is," observes the reviewer, "the greatest literary curiosity that has come before us—the first child of the press of a state only fifteen years old. It would, of course, be re-printed here; but our copy, penes nos, is a genuine Caxton. This little book ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... who had given their lives to the study of fiction, bending anxiously over the tome and seeking with conscientious care the precise phrases in which most accurately to express their expert appreciation of it. He dreamt much of the reviewer of the Daily Tribune, his favourite morning paper, whom he pictured as a man of forty-five or so, with gold-rimmed spectacles and an air of generous enthusiasm. He hoped great things from the article ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... adultery on the husband's part furnishes a plea to the wife. Ill-treatment or gross insult, such as renders living together impracticable, or desertion, constitutes a reason for divorce from the wife's point of view." The English reviewer here adds that "since no treatment can be worse nor any insult grosser than open inconstancy on the part of a husband, it is conceivable that a judge might consider that such conduct renders living together impracticable. ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... and his taste has little in common with that which cannot tolerate the hardy details of a prize-fight, but which luxuriates on descriptions of the murder dens of modern England. But prize-fighters and pugilists are blackguards, a reviewer has said; and blackguards they would be provided they employed their skill and their prowess for purposes of brutality and oppression; but prize-fighters and pugilists are seldom friends to brutality and oppression; and which is the blackguard, ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... good a chance of life as that of the other individuals, yet the chances would be strongly against its survival. Supposing it to survive and to breed, and that half its young inherited the favourable variation; still, as the Reviewer goes onto show, the young would have only a slightly better chance of surviving and breeding; and this chance would go on decreasing in the succeeding generations. The justice of these remarks cannot, I think, be disputed. If, for instance, a bird of some kind could ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... have been a reviewer. In 1807, in a Magazine called "Monthly Literary Recreations," I reviewed Wordsworth's trash of that time. In the Monthly Review I wrote some articles which were inserted. This was in the latter part ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... the best she has yet put forth, and quite too deliciously torturing to the reviewer, whose only garden is in Spain.... The delightful humor which pervaded the earlier books, and without which Barbara would not be Barbara, has ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... have ended by saying that the work is a good and useful one, and by awarding credit to Mr. Gage for his fidelity, industry, and accuracy in his part of the work. So that, perhaps, the fault-finding was thrown in only as a necessary part of the duty of the reviewer; for fault-finding is, ex officio, his expected function. A judge ought always to be seated above the criminal, and every author before his reviewer is only a culprit. The author may have given years to the study of the subject to which his ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... and personal bitterness, which frequently appear after a quarrelsome and paltry fashion in his attacks upon the superficial or even venal Greek and the uncritical Roman historians, so that he degenerates from the tone of the historian to that of the reviewer. Polybius is not an attractive author; but as truth and truthfulness are of more value than all ornament and elegance, no other author of antiquity perhaps can be named to whom we are indebted for so much real ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... have been omitted,) it will be seen that Heliodorus had a tolerably numerous progeny, even in his own language, to answer for; though we fear we must concur in the sweeping censure of a Quarterly Reviewer, (vol. x. p. 301,) who condemns then en masse, with the single exception of the "Ethiopics" of the last-named author, as "a few tiresome stories, absolutely void of taste, invention, or interest; without influence ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... * A reviewer who wanted to find some fault with this work has hit the truth better, perhaps, than he thought, when he says that no new principle of morality is set forth in it, but only a new formula. But who would think of introducing a ...
— The Critique of Practical Reason • Immanuel Kant
... it is still fairly accurate in its recognition of Miss Austen's supreme merit, as contrasted with her contemporaries—to wit, her skill in investing the fortunes of ordinary characters and the narrative of common occurrences with all the sustained excitement of romance. The Reviewer points out very justly that this kind of work, 'being deprived of all that, according to Bayes, goes "to elevate and surprise," must make amends by displaying depth of knowledge and dexterity of execution.' And in these qualities, even ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... often recurs in D.F. and the Brutus Graecia desideret so all Halm's MSS., except G, which has Graeca. Halm (and after him Baiter) adopts the conj. of Aldus the younger, Graeca desideres. A reviewer of Halm, in Schneidewin's Philologus XXIV. 483, approves the reading on the curious ground that Brutus was not anxious to satisfy Greek requirements, but rather to render it unnecessary for Romans to have recourse to Greece ...
— Academica • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... your eyes to what really went on. At the time of writing slave-dealing on the west coast of Africa was, due to the efforts of the British, almost extinct, but this was not the case on the east coast. Your reviewer ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... on which we do not propose to dogmatise, whether the ideal of a reviewer should be critical or explanatory: whether, in other words, he should attempt final judgment or offer comment and analysis from which we may each form our own opinion. Probably no hard and fast line can be drawn between the review and ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... of a lullaby heard in a dream. Perhaps it came from that long partnership when mother and son held the siege against poverty, and the kitchen-table served them as a writing-desk, and the patient old mother was his sole reviewer, critic, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... and make good his footing there, and were a decently pleasant fellow to boot, Barty would soon get over his aversion—utterly forget he was being interviewed—and talk as to an old friend; especially if the reviewer were a Frenchman or ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... January 1908, The Blue Lagoon was an immediate success, both with reviewers and the public. "[This] tale of the discovery of love, and innocent mating, is as fresh as the ozone that made them strong," declared one reviewer. Another claimed that "for once the title of 'romance,' found in so many modern stories, is really justified." The novel was reprinted more than twenty times in the next twelve years and remained popular in other forms for more than eighty years. Norman MacOwen ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... taken he does not tell us. Perhaps the hunters will station themselves round a table with a drop of preserved water on its centre, made large and luminous by means of a ray of magnifying light. When that time comes the amoeba—that "wandering Jew," as an irreverent Quarterly Reviewer has called it—will lose its immortality, and the spry rotifer will fall a victim to the infinitesimal fine bright arrows of the chase. A strange quarry for men whose paeliolithic progenitors hunted the woolly mastodon and many-horned ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... which references occur in the "Life and Letters," II., page 300. The amende to the "Vestiges" is not so full as the author felt it to be; but it was clearly in place in a paper intended to belittle the "Origin"; it also gave the reviewer (page 511) an opportunity for a hit at Sedgwick and his ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... way of retaliation, however just, upon so obdurate and rapacious an enemy—but as an indispensable condition of her own safety and existence." The letters were reviewed under the heading of "Illustrations of Vetus," in the Morning Chronicle, December 2, 10, 16, 18; 1813. The reviewer and Byron did not take the patriotic ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... considerably in the dark; but, if it is Mr. Gifford that I am addressing, I am persuaded that, in an appeal to his humanity and justice, he will acknowledge the fas ab hoste doceri. I am aware that the first duty of a reviewer is towards the public; and I am willing to confess that the Endymion is a poem considerably defective, and that perhaps it deserved as much censure as the pages of your Review record against it. But, not to mention that there is a certain ...
— Adonais • Shelley
... cold in my sleep I dream of people.... I happened to have read a criticism in which the reviewer blames you for introducing a man who is "almost a minister," and thus spoiling the generally dignified tone of the story. I don't agree with him. What spoils the tone is not the people but your characterization of them, which in some places interrupts the ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... for devoting a number of our pages to "France in 1829-30," could we for a moment be persuaded that our readers would credit the assertion. It seems to us, that we already behold every one of them smiling in derision, and giving an incredulous shake of the head, at the bare idea of a cold-blooded reviewer being actuated by indignant feelings to place his critical lance in rest, and run a course against an unfortunate author. We must, nevertheless, be permitted to protest, that we do feel a considerable quantity of very honest and virtuous indignation against the ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... which the legends of the Saints formerly enjoyed is considered it becomes matter of surprise that they should not have been more frequently consulted for illustrations of our folk-lore and popular observances. The Edinburgh Reviewer of Mrs. Jameson's Sacred and Legendary Art has, with great judgement, extracted from that work a legend, in which, as he shows very clearly[A], we have the real, although hitherto unnoticed, origin of the Three Balls which still form the recognised ...
— Notes And Queries,(Series 1, Vol. 2, Issue 1), - Saturday, November 3, 1849. • Various
... almost every new piece and to the actors who interpret it? Criticism, if it is to be worth anything, should surely be criticism, but nowadays the writing of a picturesque article, replete with eulogy, or the reverse, seems to be the aim of the theatrical reviewer. Of course, the influence of the Press upon the stage is very powerful, but it will cease to be so if playgoers find that their mentors, the critics, are not trustworthy guides. The public must, after all, decide the fate of a new play. If it be bad, the Englishman of to-day will ...
— Mary Anderson • J. M. Farrar
... in the last Quarterly and Edinburgh Reviews, is one which replies to certain criticisms on a work. One of these criticisms was a stricture upon its title. The author states that the reviewer had a presentation copy, and ought to have inquired into the title under which the book was sold to the public before he animaverted upon the connexion between the title and the work. It seems then that, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 51, October 19, 1850 • Various
... slave-trading have enjoyed the special and fostering care of the Federal Government. As to the quid pro quo—the taxation that was to be connected with the representation of "three-fifths of all other persons," that has been almost entirely evaded. "There has not been," says a New England Reviewer, "if we mistake not, but in one instance, and then in a very light degree, ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... had been imported; but it is quite a mistake to suppose it so in regard to this country, in which there are now found ten persons for every one ever imported, and all advancing by gradual steps toward civilization and freedom; and yet were the reviewer discoursing of the conduct of the Spanish settlers of Hispaniola, he could scarcely speak more disparagingly of them than he does in regard to a people that alone has so treated the negro race as to enable it to increase in numbers, and improve in its physical, moral, and ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... but were quite satisfied with their success in it; not only sought for causes which should carry in their mere statement evidence of their efficiency, but fully believed that they had found such causes. The reviewer can see plainly that this was an error, because he does not believe that there exist any relations between material phenomena which can account for their producing one another; but the very fact of the persistency of the Greeks ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... not a little force. We were mysterious. Hitherto a Freshman had been the greenest of the green, a creature created for ridicule, a sort of "leathery fox" or mere tyro (ty—not a ty-pographical error—pace my kind and courteous reviewer in the Saturday)—and here were Freshmen of a new kind rising in ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... [6] A reviewer in the Literary Gazette observes that, in these lines, Mr. Coleridge has misapprehended the meaning of the word "Zug," a team, translating it as "Anzug," a suit of clothes. The following version, as ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... door was thrown open. "Ah yes, here's your reviewer!" Drayton Deane was there with his long legs and his tall forehead: he had come to see what she thought of "The Right of Way," and to bring news which was singularly relevant. The evening papers were just out with a telegram on the author of that work, who, in Rome, had been ill for some ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... different matter with the submerged reputation—down in the deep water; once a favorite there, always a favorite; once beloved, always beloved; once respected, always respected, honored, and believed in. For, what the reviewer says never finds its way down into those placid deeps; nor the newspaper sneers, nor any breath of the winds of slander blowing above. Down there they never hear of these things. Their idol may be painted clay, up then at the surface, and fade and waste and crumble and blow ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... appearance of Mr. Hood's first work—Odes and Addresses to Great People; and many a reviewer and printer rejoiced in the light columns which it furnished them by way of extract. They made up very prettily beside a theological critique, a somewhat lumbering book on political economy, or a volume of deep speculations on geology. Hood's little book, a mere thin pocket size, soon grew into ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 393, October 10, 1829 • Various
... Philadelphia, 1871. Left college without a degree. Honorary higher degrees. In 1889 became a newspaper man, and since 1891 has been connected as reviewer, editorial writer, and "columnist" with Philadelphia newspapers; associate editor of the Evening ...
— Contemporary American Literature - Bibliographies and Study Outlines • John Matthews Manly and Edith Rickert
... and Scotch Reviewers, he had alluded, with provoking pleasantry, to a meeting which had taken place at Chalk Farm some years before, between Mr Jeffrey, the Edinburgh reviewer, and Mr Moore, without recollecting, indeed without having heard, that Mr Moore had explained, through the newspapers, what was alleged to have been ridiculous in the affair. This revival of the subject, especially as it called in question the truth of Mr Moore's statement, obliged that ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... their evil purpose (if any) unfulfilled. I am wrong, though, in recalling Mary as invariably passive. She was once roused to the action of destroying the manuscript of a novel, in which the writer, the man who didn't propose, had too faithfully revealed his perception of herself. But though, as a reviewer, I may applaud this achievement on general grounds, it provided no kind of solution for the problem of her existence. This was left to be settled, very much offhand, by a detached iceberg, which sank the ship in which Mary was emigrating. I thought that iceberg rather an evasion on ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 11, 1919 • Various
... I am quite glad to find you here," said Mr. Cayenne, a celebrated reviewer, to Mr. Partenopex Puff, a small author and smaller wit. "Have you seen Middle ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... and most convenient is for the reviewer to perch himself resolutely, as it were, on the shoulder of his author, and therefrom to show as if he commanded him and looked down upon him by natural superiority of stature. Whatsoever the great man says ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... resemblance—this it is that is at the bottom of the sudden decadence into which the writings of one or two of our more prolific romancers have fallen, past all redemption; and this is the great fault of Mr. JAMES. 'To be successful in the exact delineation of character,' says the reviewer, 'requires a rare combination of powers—a large heart and a comprehensive mind. It is the attribute of universality; it can be obtained only by outward as well as inward observation; not by that habit of intense brooding over individual consciousness, ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... Mr. Editor,—The Edinburgh Reviewer, cited by your correspondent Mr. W.J. Thoms, seems to have sought rather too far for the origin of a pawnbroker's ...
— Notes & Queries 1849.11.17 • Various
... Byron; think how very much besides poetical merit contributed to the surprising reputation of Tennyson. There was a time when the first series of Poems and Ballads was read for what seemed startling in its subject-matter; but that time has long since passed, and it is not probable that any reviewer of the new edition now reprinted verbatim from the edition of 1866 will so much as allude to the timid shrieks which went up from the reviewers of that year, except perhaps as one ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... Emigration—the notable Conspiration de Babeuf—the West India Question—and last, though not least, "the Bill" itself. We have endeavoured to adopt from the first paper, some particulars of a spot which bears high interest for every lover of adventure; the reviewer's observations connecting the extracts from Captain Beechey's ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 492 - Vol. 17, No. 492. Saturday, June 4, 1831 • Various
... but the prices he can command are much lower, and the two branches of the novelist's trade are not to be compared in a business way. As for the essayist, the poet, the traveller, the popular scientist, they are nowhere in the competition for the favor of readers. The reviewer, indeed, has a pretty steady call for his work, but I fancy the reviewers who get a hundred dollars a thousand words could all stand upon the point of a needle without crowding one another; I should rather like to see them doing it. Another gratifying ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... may therefore believe, was heartily delighted when, some months after Dennis's attack, a notice of his Essay upon Criticism appeared in the Spectator, December 20, 1711. The reviewer censured some attacks upon contemporaries—a reference obviously to the lines upon Dennis—which the author had admitted into his "very fine poem;" but there were compliments enough to overbalance this slight reproof. Pope ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... to a translated work by an alien author practically unknown even to the critics. A noticeable feature was the frankness with which experienced bookmen laid aside stock phrases, and dealt with this book as in response to a strong personal appeal. To the reviewer, aged with much knowledge, hardened by much handling of mediocrity, it is a relief to meet with a book that can and must be ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... A Quarterly Reviewer, in discussing an objection to the Copyright Bill of Mr. Sergeant Talfourd, which was taken by Sir Edward Sugden, gives some curious particulars of the progeny of literary men. "We are not," says the writer, "going ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous
... had been unable to recover. This suggests the Query, Has it ever yet been recovered? DR. RIMBAULT'S inquiry regarding Thomas Hearne has been answered by Dr. Dibdin (Bibliomania, London, 1811, p.381.) who informs Dr. Peckard, Dr. Wordsworth, and his Quarterly Reviewer (p. 93), that Hearne, in the Supplement to his Thom. Caii Vind. Ant. Oxon., 1730, 8vo., vol. ii., "had previously published a copious and curious account of the monastery at Little Gidding," which he says "does not appear to have been known to this latter editor," meaning Dr. Wordsworth. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 57, November 30, 1850 • Various
... of "Critical Notices" kindly at the advent of humbler merit, treated "Merry-Mount" with the distinction implied in a review of nearly twenty pages. This was a great contrast to the brief and slighting notice of "Morton's Hope." The reviewer thinks the author's descriptive power wholly exceeds his conception of character and invention ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... fact, utterly failed to comprehend the first principles of the doctrine which he assails so rudely. His objections to details are of the old sort, so battered and hackneyed on this side of the Channel, that not even a Quarterly Reviewer could be induced to pick them up for the purpose of pelting Mr. Darwin over again. We have Cuvier and the mummies; M. Roulin and the domesticated animals of America; the difficulties presented by hybridism and by Palaeontology; Darwinism a 'rifacciamento' ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... this piece our literary reviewer has expressed himself unable to unravel. We are in the same condition; all we can promise is some account of the scenes as they followed each other; of the characters, the sentiments, the poetry, and the rest ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 5, 1841 • Various
... Miss Evans of Coventry, and ten years after, when a zealous reviewer proclaimed her the greatest novelist in England, the sage of Concord said something that sounded ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... plot, the reviewer might say, you have hidden it rather successfully. I have certainly done my best to hide it. For although the personalities of the villain and his legal spouse crop up periodically, with ominous insistence, from the first chapter onwards, they are ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... in the Legend will make my meaning clear. A reviewer of my small Quest of the Holy Grail volume remarked that I appeared to be ignorant of Miss Peebles's study The Legend of Longinus "which materially strengthens the evidence for the Christian origin."[2] Now this ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston
... Mr. Saturday Reviewer—you censor morum, you who pique yourself (and justly and honorably in the main) upon your character of gentleman, as well as of writer, suppose, not that you yourself invent and indite absurd twaddle about gentlemen's ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray |
