me literary
editor of the journal, and, who, Godkin wrote in 1871, "has really
toiled for six years with the fidelity of a Christian martyr and upon
the pay of an oysterman."[210] I have often heard the literary criticism
of _The Nation_ called destructive like the political, but, it appears
to me, with less reason. Books for review were sent to experts in
different parts of the country, and the list of contributors included
many professors from various colleges. While the editor, I believe,
retained, and sometimes exercised, the right to omit parts of the review
and make some additions, yet writers drawn from so many sources must
have preserved their own individuality. I have heard it said that _The
Nation_ gave you the impression of having been entirely written by one
man; but whatever there is more than fanciful in that impression must
have arisen from the general agreement between the editor and the
contributors. Paul Leicester Ford once told me that, when he wrote a
criticism for _The Nation_, he unconsciously took on _The Nation's_
style, but he could write in that way for no other journal, nor did he
ever fall into it in his books. Garrison was much more tolerant than is
sometimes supposed. I know of his sending many books to two men, one of
whom differed from him radically on the negro question and the other on
socialism.

It is only after hearing much detraction of the literary department of
_The Nation_, and after considerable reflection, that I have arrived at
the conviction that it came somewhat near to realizing criticism as
defined by Matthew Arnold, thus: "A disinterested endeavor to learn and
propagate the best that is known and thought in the world."[211] I am
well aware that it was not always equal, and I remember two harsh
reviews which ought not to have been printed; but this simply proves
that the editor was human and _The Nation_ was not perfect. I feel safe,
however, in saying that if the best critical reviews of _The Nation_
were collected and printed in book form, they would show an aspiration
after the standard erected by Sainte-Beuve and Matthew Arnold.

Again I must appeal to my individual experience. The man who lived in
the middle West for the twenty-five years between 1865 and 1890 needed
the literary department of _The Nation_ more than one who lived in
Boston or New York. Most of the books written in America were by New
England, New York, and Philadelphia authors, and in those communiti