for this success to us, and us alone. Our predecessors can have nothing
to say to this question, however they may have anticipated us on others;
future ages, in all probability, will not trouble their heads about it;
we are the panel. How hard, then, not to avail ourselves of our
immediate privilege to give sentence of life or death--to seem in
ignorance of what every one else is full of--to be behind-hand with the
polite, the knowing, and fashionable part of mankind--to be at a loss
and dumb-founded, when all around us are in their glory, and figuring
away, on no other ground than that of having read a work that we have
not! Books that are to be written hereafter cannot be criticised by us;
those that were written formerly have been criticised long ago; but a
new book is the property, the prey of ephemeral criticism, which it
darts triumphantly upon; there is a raw thin air of ignorance and
uncertainty about it, not filled up by any recorded opinion; and
curiosity, impertinence, and vanity rush eagerly into the vacuum. A new
book is the fair field for petulance and coxcombry to gather laurels
in--the butt set up for roving opinion to aim at. Can we wonder, then,
that the circulating libraries are besieged by literary dowagers and
their grand-daughters, when a new novel is announced? That mail-coach
copies of the _Edinburgh Review_ are or were coveted? That the
manuscript of the _Waverley_ romances is sent abroad in time for the
French, German, or even Italian translation to appear on the same day as
the original work, so that the longing continental public may not be
kept waiting an instant longer than their fellow-readers in the English
metropolis, which would be as tantalizing and insupportable as a little
girl being kept without her new frock, when her sister's is just come
home, and is the talk and admiration of every one in the house? To be
sure, there is something in the taste of the times; a modern work is
expressly adapted to modern readers. It appeals to our direct
experience, and to well-known subjects; it is part and parcel of the