THE EPOCH OF THE MAMMOTH

Abstract

BOOKS may be divided into three classes from the point of view offered by criticism, and apart from all considerations of style. There are carefully-written books, the natural fruit of much thought and labour by men who have special knowledge of their subject and who spare no pains to avoid using faulty materials which afterwards may have to be removed, as is generally the case, with much trouble and annoyance. The second class consists of books written without care and very generally the outcome of ignorance or vanity, full of errors, and worse than useless; and lastly, there are some books containing much useful information, but so grouped around views which are utterly wrong that they are worthless for any purpose in which exact knowledge is required. In this class very generally the true is so mingled with the false that it requires the eye of an expert to tell the one from the other. With the first and second of these classes it is easy for a reviewer to deal. It is his duty to welcome the first, not without pointing out (if he can, and we know from experience that very frequently he cannot) the mistakes inseparable from all books, just as he is bound to rebuke sternly the second, and to warn the reader that he is on dangerous ground. It is, however, hard to do justice to the third; for while the information may be useful per se, in its position in the book it may be mischievous because it is worked into a wrong hypothesis, thus fulfilling Lord Palmerston's definition of dirt as “matter in the wrong place.”

The Epoch of the Mammoth.

By G. James C. Southwell 8vo. (London: Trübner, 1878.)