IV. Don't review a book with which you are out of sympathy. That is to
say, put yourself in the author's place, and try to see his work from
his point, of view, which is sure to be a coign of vantage.
V. Stick to the text. Review the book before you, and not the book some
other author might have written; _obiter dicta_ are as valueless from
the critic as from the judge. Don't go off on a tangent. And also don't
go round in a circle. Say what you have to say, and stop. Don't go on
writing about and about the subject, and merely weaving garlands of
flowers of rhetoric.
VI. Beware of the Sham Sample, as Charles Reade called it. Make sure
that the specimen bricks you select for quotation do not give a false
impression of the _facade_, and not only of the elevation merely, but of
the perspective also, and of the ground-plan.
VII. In reviewing a biography or a history, criticise the book before
you, and don't write a parallel essay, for which the volume you have in
hand serves only as a peg.
VIII. In reviewing a work of fiction, don't give away the plot. In the
eyes of the novelist this is the unpardonable sin. And, as it discounts
the pleasure of the reader also, it is almost equally unkind to him.
IX. Don't try to prove every successful author a plagiarist. It may be
that many a successful author has been a plagiarist, but no author ever
succeeded because of his plagiary.
X. Don't break a butterfly on a wheel. If a book is not worth much, it
is not worth reviewing.
XI. Don't review a book as an east wind would review an apple-tree--so
it was once said Douglas Jerrold was wont to do. Of what profit to any
one is mere bitterness and vexation of spirit?
XII. Remember that the critic's duty is to the reader mainly, and that
it is to guide him not only to what is good, but to what is best. Three
parts of what is contemporary must be temporary only.
Having in the past now and again fallen from grace myself and written
criticism, I know that on such occasions these Twelve Good Rules would
have been exceedingly helpful to me had I then possessed them; therefore
I offer them now hopefully to my fellow-critics. But I find myself in a
state of humility (to which few critics are accustomed), and I doubt how
far my good advice will be heeded. I remember that, after reporting the
speech in which Poor Richard's maxims were all massed together, Franklin
tells us that "thus the old gentleman ended his harangue. The people
heard it and approved the doctrine; and immediately practised the
contrary, just as if it had been a common sermon."
1890