_Castigat auditque dolos subigitque fateri._
It was the custom of the Roman _Prætor Urbanus_ when entering upon his
duties to post up in plain view of the public a brief exposition of the
principles which were to guide him in passing judgment during his year of
office. It seems fit that the PHILISTINE should likewise issue its own
EDICTVM PERPETVVM setting forth the scope and ultimate purpose of such
literary criticisms as may appear from time to time in its pages.
It is offenders only who are to be deemed worthy of Reviews in these
columns and as the worst possible offence of which they can be guilty,
since it includes all specific or lesser faults, is the bare fact of
their existence in type, it will be our aim to hold up to the merited
scorn of an outraged world the responsible progenitors of such unblessed
offspring, the Publisher, and his partner in sin, the Author of the book.
In thus reversing that order in criminality which has hitherto obtained
in the assizes of criticism we are moved by the consideration among
others: the writing of any book, good or bad, is a matter of concern
to its author alone so long as it remains in manuscript. Its merits or
demerits have alike no existence to the public; however shameless its
morals, feeble its plot or intolerable its dullness these are all equally
powerless for mischief so long as it has not been put into type and
launched upon a much suffering, helpless world. Then its career of evil
begins. For this the Publisher is solely responsible; he and he alone is
able to remedy the abuses which have long been calling out to heaven for
suppression, by setting up some sort of standard as to the minimum of
those defects which shall bar any manuscript whatever from his favorable
consideration. What this minimum ought to be we shall take pleasure in
enlightening him from time to time in these pages.
It may be urged that the weapon of scorn has been used and abused time
out of mind; we reply that the objector is in error in one essential.
The dart is an old one indeed, but its point has been blunted, not in
the fattening tissues of this chief offender but on the scantily clad
bones of his weaker accomplice, the much-abused author. In issuing an
illegitimate book the Author is the victim of the sweetest and most
pathetic fallacy known to men: _he believes his work is good_; while the
publisher knows better. One is animated by love and nature, the other
has only a lust for dollars. In such offenses as we are discussing, no
less than in certain others needing no more explicit designation, it is
not the deed itself but its exposure which calls forth the protests of a
PHILISTINE public. Those Little Sisters in Sin, _A Superfluous Woman_ and
_Bessie Costrell_ might have faded to oblivion in their swaddling clothes
had no publisher been found to expose them to daylight.
It will be understood therefore that our column of Reviews exists, not
to aid struggling authors or enterprising publishers to launch their
craft upon the already crowded ocean of Literature, but as the Pillory
where manifest culprits are exposed to the jibes of the crowd, to the end
that others who are meditating like deeds may be warned by such penalty
to desist. Nor need the idle stocks ever yawn in emptiness so long as
upon his right hand and his left a man beholds such a richness of backs
itching for the lash.
And since we have promised that instruction shall go hand in hand with
castigation we will not close until we have pointed out for the future
guidance of those who may wish to avoid one at least of the many by-paths
of reprobation, that in any novel we regard the existence of page Four
Hundred of readable type as confession on the part of both Publisher and
Author that neither of them has yet learned the foremost and greatest of
the arts of their trade—the art to blot.
_De confessis sicuti de manifestis—supplicium sumendum est._