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A Collecton of Speeches by Charles Phillips, Esq
A Collecton of Speeches by Charles Phillips Esq Author:Charles Phillips Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: IRISH ORATORY AND SCOTCH REVIEWING, A LETTER IN DEFENCE OP Mr. PHILLIPS s SPEECH, GUTHRIE v. STERNE, FROM THE ATTACK OF THE EDINBURGH REVIEW, ' BY... more » AN IRISHMAN. SIR, - Among the many short-lived productions which onr prolific press is ever delivering, and indeed they are many, there is none, perhaps, more valuable or hurtful than a Review—with more life and weight in it than most of its periodical brethren, it falls the heavier on the public mind, at all times highly impressible; its stamp lasts longer, its sting sinks deeper ; its praise more warms, its censure more wounds ; it is every way more formidable; its progress should be watched: if it rids us of vermin, eats away rubbish, and throws around light, let it live and flourish; if this food be not enough, and if, in the voraciousness of its appetite, it attempts to swallow up our feelings and our taste, in the name of Truth let it be choaked and perish ! That our Literary Atmosphere is pestered and polluted with some such creatures as the latter, is too notorious ; beings who only live on mangled Authorship, first bathing in its blood, then crawling in its carrion; seeking in their flight whom to devour and whom to wound; marking the wretched victim whose fame is to be sacrificed, whose feelings are to be gored ; and dropping their venom in the finest springs of our intelligence. Fortunately, however, there is a worthy class in the tribe—a class which, where it moves, it gives light, where it touches it adorns; a class which improves our habits of taste, refines our habits of reason, and gives currency and ready value to our common stock of knowledge. In the latter of these classes I should wish to rank the formidable creature 1 am about to describe; unfortunately, it attaches itself to neither, mixes ...« less