gh in them to engage my attention. I don't want
my blood curdled, but I like it stirred. Miss Austen strikes me as
milk-and-watery, and, to say truth, as dull.'

This opinion she has, in effect, repeated in her published writings,
but I had only heard her verbal expression of it; and I admired her
courage. If she had been a man, struggling, as she then was, for a
position in literature, she would not have dared to say half as much.
For, what is very curious, the advocates of the classic authors--those
I mean whom antiquity has more or less hallowed--instead of pitying
those unhappy wights who confess their want of appreciation of them,
fly at them with bludgeons, and dance upon their prostrate bodies with
clogs.

'For who would rush on a benighted man,
And give him two black eyes for being blind?'

inquires the poet. I answer, 'lots of people,' and especially those who
worship the pagan divinities of literature. The same thing happens--but
_their_ fury is more excusable, because they have less natural
intelligence--with the lovers of music. Instead of being sorry for the
poor folks who have 'no ear,' and whom 'a little music in the evening'
bores to extremity, they overwhelm them with reproaches for what is in
fact a natural infirmity. 'You Goth! you Vandal!' they exclaim, 'how
contemptible is the creature who has no music in his soul!' Which is
really very rude. Even persons who are not musical have their feelings.
'Hath not a Jew ears?'--that is to say, though they have 'no ear,' they
understand what is abusive language and resent it.

I am not saying one word against established reputations in literature.
The very fact of their being established (even the 'Rambler,' for
example, has its merits) is in their favour; and, indeed, some of the
works I shall refer to are masterpieces. My objection is to the sham
admiration of them, which does their authors no good (for their
circulation is now of no consequence to them), and is injurious not
only to modern writers (who are generally made the subject of base
comparison), but especially to the utterers of this false coin
themselves. One cannot tell falsehoods, even about one's views in
literature, without injury to one's morals, yet to 'tell the truth and
shame the devil' is easy, as it would seem, compared with telling the
truth and defying the critics.

I have alluded to the intrepidity of Miss Bronte in this matter; and,
curiously enough, it is women who hav