The successive retreating and beholding in this scene
is suggested to the reviewer by the fact that the last of these essays
by Mr. Lynch is devoted in part to reviews. So that the reviews review
books,--Mr. Lynch reviews the reviews, and the present Reviewer finds
himself (somewhat presumptuously, it may be) attempting to review Mr.
Lynch. In this, however, his office must be very different from that of
Schoppe (for there is a deeper and more real correspondence between the
position of the showman and the reviewer than that outward resemblance
which first caused the one to suggest the other). The latter's office,
in the present instance, was, by mockery, to destroy the false, the very
involution of the satire adding to the strength of the ridicule. His
glass case was simply a review uttered by shapes and wires instead of
words and handwriting. And the work of the true critic must sometimes be
to condemn, and, as far as his strength can reach, utterly to destroy
the false,--scorching and withering its seeming beauty, till it is
reduced to its essence and original groundwork of dust and ashes. It is
only, however, when it wears the form of beauty which is the garment of
truth, and so, like the Erl-maidens, has power to bewitch, that it is
worth the notice and attack of the critic.
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