William James Linton:

48) Some practical Hints on Wood Engraving,

Boston 1879

What comes in the guise of an amiable decorated instruction book is in fact a first means of fortification against the wave of indignation, which his polemics in The Atlantic Monthly had stirred. In his preface he declares, that “the object of the following treatise is to help the general public toward some accuracy of judgment as to what is good and what is bad in Engraving on Wood. (...) The remarks interspersed for the special benefit of Reviewers whose ignorance evaded the Atlantic teaching will not perhaps acquire for me their spontaneous thanks.” The batch of bitter polemics is dedicated to his old friend Richard Hengist Horne, whose first work, An Exposition of the False Medium, a legendary reckoning with literary criticism, seems to have served as a primary example.