Sigourney, of Miss Gould, of Mrs. Bllet and of Halleck praise slightly prevails. In five, viz.: in those of Clinton Bradshaw, "The Partisan," "Elkswatawa," "Lafitte" and the Po-Drake, censure is greatly predominant; while the only reviews decidedly and harshly condemnatory are those of "Norman Leslie," "Paul Ulric" and "Ups and Downs." The "Ups and Downs" alone is unexceptionably condemned. Of these facts you may at any moment satisfy yourself by reference. In such case the difficulty you will find in classing these notices, as I have here done, according to the predominance of censure, or commendation, will afford you sufficient evidence that it can not justly be called "indiscriminate."
But this charge of "indiscriminate cutting and slashing" has never been adduced, except in four instances, while the rigid justice and impartiality of our Journal have been lauded, even ad nauseam, in more than four times four hundred. You should not, therefore, have assumed that the Messenger had obtained a reputation for this "cutting and slashing"—for the asserting a thing to be famous is a well known method of rendering it so. The four instances to which I allude are the Newbern Spectator, to which thing I replied in July; The Commercial Advertiser, of Colonel Stone, whose "Ups and Downs" I had occasion (pardon me) to "use up;" the New York Mirror, whose editor's "Norman Leslie" did not please me, and the Philadelphia Gazette, which, being conducted by one of the subeditors of the Knickerbocker, thinks it is its duty to abuse all rival magazines.
(c.) I have only to add that the inaccuracy of your expression in the words: "The August number of the Southern Literary Messenger has been well received by most of the editorial corps who have noticed it," is of a mischievous tendency in regard to the Messenger. You have seen, I presume, no notices which have not been seen by myself,—and you must be aware that there is not one, so far, which has not spoken in the highest terms of the August number.
