Just as it is necessary not merely that justice should
be done but that it should appear to be done, so in the reviewing of books it is not enough for bias or preconception to be absent ; there must be no excuse for any suspicion of its being present. There has been too much, in certain quarters in the past, of little cliques of writers assiduously eulogising one another's books in the review columns of various journals, and I doubt whether today • enough trouble is always taken to select reviewers not only with no actual but also with no apparent interest in the author of a particular work ; all literary editors are familiar 'with reviewers who, offer their services in respect of a particular book because " the author is a friend of mine "—a quite decisive reason for sending the book elsewhere. When I see a book by a Fellow of All Souls reviewed in a London paper of repute by another Fellow of All Souls I cannot help feeling that a sound principle has been regrettably ignored. Of course, I do not question the reviewer's honesty and sincerity for a moment ; a Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin, would no doubt have treated the book just as favourably ; and the reviewer presumably did not choose himself. But, I repeat, this is a field in which appearances count as well as realities.
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