X sea^13 - Villanova University Digital Library

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" These are the themes that claim our plandits now,
These are the bards to whom the muse must bow.''
Exchange columns are attracting more than
the usual attention in the world of college jour-
nalism. Some very sound principles of literary
criticism are being emphasized in the latest issues
of our contemporaries. That this is necessary,
one may readily see by a perusal of the exchange
columns in some of our college publications this
year. The spirit shown tends only to discourage
budding genius and to ridicule all attempt at
individual thinking. Just criticisms are always
welcome but trite, flippant "talk" is as harmful
and distasteful as it is small and cowardly. An
honest exchange editor will give a just apprecia-
tion of an author's attempt; he will make his
criticism be what every just criticism must be,
"the reaction of the reader's mind on the work
of the author." If his own thinking is not based
on the fundamental principles of justice and
manliness, his only alternative out of respect
due to his college is to resign. An editor who
goes so far as to base his adverse criticism on a
passage distorted by himself, and punctuated to
suit his own argument, followed by an array of
meaningless epithets hurled at the innocent victim
is unworthy of consideration and deserves
no refutation.
^'Take hackney'd jokes from Miller, got by rote,
With just enough of learning to misquote."
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