Probably he is not like either of them, and may have a genuine though
modest virtue of his own; but these names will certainly kill him,
and he will never be anybody in the popular estimation. The public
finds out speedily that he is not Sydney Smith, and it resents the
extravagant claim for him as if he were an impudent pretender. How
many authors of fair ability to interest the world have we known in
our own day who have been thus sky-rocketed into notoriety by the
lazy indiscrimination of the critic-by-comparison, and then have sunk
into a popular contempt as undeserved! I never see a young aspirant
injudiciously compared to a great and resplendent name in literature,
but I feel like saying, My poor fellow, your days are few and full of
trouble; you begin life handicapped, and you cannot possibly run a
creditable race.
I think this sort of critical eulogy is more damaging even than that
which kills by a different assumption, and one which is equally
common, namely, that the author has not done what he probably never
intended to do. It is well known that most of the trouble in life
comes from our inability to compel other people to do what we think
they ought, and it is true in criticism that we are unwilling to take
a book for what it is, and credit the author with that.
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