If Macaulay represents a new Edinburgh from the days of Jeffrey, Brougham, and Sydney Smith, the variety of criticism embraced by the Quarterly is even more startling. There was more malice, and far coarser personalities in the early days, and almost continuously while Gifford, Croker, and Lockhart held the reins: it is—almost certainly— among these three that the responsibility for our "anonymous" group of onslaughts may be distributed. The two earliest appreciations of Jane Austen (from Scott and Whately) offer an interlude—actually in the same period—which positively startles us by the honesty of its attempt at fair criticism and the entire freedom from personality.

Gladstone's interesting recognition of Tennyson, and the "Church in Arms" against Darwin (so ably pleaded by Wilberforce), belong to yet another school of criticism which comes much nearer to our day, though retaining the solemnity, the prolixity, and the ex cathedra assumption of authority with which all the Reviews began their career; and is singularly cautious in its independence.

WILLIAM GIFFORD

(1757-1826)

Gifford was the editor of the Quarterly from its foundation in February, 1809, until September, 1824, and undoubtedly established its reputation for scurrility. It is probable that more reviews were written, or directly inspired, by him than have been actually traced to his pen; and, in any case, as Leigh Hunt puts it, he made it his business to

See that others
Misdeem and miscontrue, like miscreant brothers;
Misquote, and misplace, and mislead, and misstate,
Misapply, misinterpret, misreckon, misdate,
Missinform, misconjecture, misargue, in short
Miss all that is good, that ye miss not the court.

Gifford was hated even more than his associates; not only, we fear, for his venal sycophancy, but because he had been apprenticed to a shoemaker and never concealed the lowness of his origin. Moreover, "the little man, dumpled up together and so ill-made as to seem almost deformed," received from Fortune—

One eye not overgood,
Two sides that to their cost have stood
A ten years' hectic cough,
Aches, stitches, all the various ills
That swell the devilish doctor's bills,
And sweep poor mortals off.

Scott is almost alone in his generosity towards the learning and industry of an editor who helped to make infamous the title of critic. His original poems (The Baviad and The Moeviad) have a certain sledge-hammer merit; and he did yeoman service by suppressing the Della Cruscans.

It was Gifford also "who did the butchering business in the Anti-Jacobin." He was far heavier, in bludgeoning, than Jeffrey; while Hazlitt epitomized his principles of criticism with his accustomed vigour:—"He believes that modern literature should wear the fetters of classical antiquity; that truth is to be weighed in the scales of opinion and prejudice; that power is equivalent to right; that genius is dependent on rules; that taste and refinement of language consist in word-catching."

* * * * *

Gifford's review of Ford's Weber is, perhaps, no more than can be expected of the man who had edited Massinger six years before he wrote it; and produced a Ben Jonson in 1816 and a Ford in 1827. Of these works Thomas Moore exclaimed "What a canker'd carle it is! Strange that a man should be able to lash himself up into such a spiteful fury, not only against the living but the dead, with whom he engages in a sort of sciomachy in every page. Poor dull and dead Malone is the shadow at which he thrusts his 'Jonson,' as he did at poor Monck Mason, still duller and deader, in his Massinger." Mr. A.H. Bullen, again, remarks of his Ford, "Gifford was so intent on denouncing the inaccuracy of others that he frequently failed to secure accuracy himself…. In reading the old dramatists we do not want to be distracted by editorial invectives and diatribes."

The review of Endymion called forth Byron's famous apostrophe to—

John Keats, who was killed off by one critique
Just as he really promised something great,
If not intelligible, without Greek
Contrived to talk about the gods of late
Much as they might have been supposed to speak.
Poor fellow! his was an untoward fate;
'Tis strange the mind, that very fiery particle,
Should let itself be snuff'd out by one article.

It is but just to say, however, that the Blackwood review of the same poem, printed below, was scarcely less virulent; and later critics have scouted the notion of the poet not having more strength of mind than he is credited with by Byron. It is strange to notice that De Quincey found in Endymion "the very midsummer madness of affectation, of false vapoury sentiment, and of fantastic effeminacy"; while one is ashamed for the timidity of the publisher who chose to return all unsold copies to George Keats because of "the ridicule which has, time after time, been showered upon it."

JOHN WILSON CROKER

(1780-1857)

Croker was certainly unfortunate in his enemies, though they have given him immortality. The contemptible Rigby in Disraeli's Coningsby (admittedly drawn from him) is scarcely more damaging to his reputation than the sound, if prejudiced, onslaught of Macaulay's review, of which we find echoes, after twelve years, in the same essayist's Madame D'Arblay. Dr. Hill tells us that he "added considerably to our knowledge of Johnson," yet he was a thoroughly bad editor and had no real sympathy with either the subject or the author of that incomparable "Life": through his essentially low mind. He was not a scholar, and he was inaccurate.

Croker was intimately associated with the Quarterly from its foundation until 1857, retaining his bitterness and spite to the year of his death. But he was a born fighter, and never happier than in the heat of controversy. That he secured the friendship of Scott, Peel, and Wellington must go to prove that his political, and literary prejudices, had not destroyed altogether his private character. He is credited with being the first writer to use the word "conservatives" in the Quarterly, January, 1830. He was a member of the Irish Bar, M.P. for Dublin, Acting Chief Secretary for Ireland, Secretary of the Admiralty (where his best work was accomplished), and a Privy Councillor.

* * * * *

The veiled sarcasm of his attack on Sydney Smith was only to be expected from a Tory reviewer, and was probably inflamed by that heated loyalty to the Church which characterised his paper.

Macaulay had certainly provoked his retaliation, and we may notice here the same eager partisanship of Church and State, pervading even his personal malice.

JOHN GIBSON LOCKHART

(1794-1854)

It is to be regretted that Lockhart, who is so honourably remembered by his great Life of Scott, his "fine and animated translation" of Spanish Ballads, and his neglected—but powerful—Adam Blair, should be so intimately associated with the black record of the Quarterly. He was also a contributor to Blackwood from October, 1817, succeeding Gifford in the editorial chair of Mr. Murray's Review in 1825 until 1853.

But Lockhart was "more than a satirist and a snarler." His polished jibes were more mischievous than brutal. "This reticent, sensitive, attractive, yet dangerous youth … slew his victims mostly by the midnight oil, not by any blaze of gaiety, or in the accumulative fervour of social sarcasm. From him came most of those sharp things which the victims could not forget…. Lockhart put in his sting in a moment, inveterate, instantaneous, with the effect of a barbed dart, yet almost, as it seemed, with the mere intention of giving point to his sentences, and no particular feeling at all."

Carlyle describes him as "a precise, brief, active person of considerable faculty, which however, had shaped itself gigmanically only. Fond of quizzing, yet not very maliciously. Has a broad, black brow, indicating force and penetration, but the lower half of the face diminishing into the character at best of distinctness, almost of triviality."

* * * * *

There is certainly a good deal of perversity about the abuse of Vathek, so startlingly combined with almost immoderate eulogy: to which the discriminating enthusiasm of his Coleridge affords a pleasing contrast.

It should be noticed that Lockhart has also been credited with the bitter critical part of the Jane Eyre review, printed below—of which any man ought to have been ashamed—as Miss Rigby (afterwards Lady Eastlake) is believed to have written "the part about the governess." He probably had a hand in the Blackwood series on "The Cockney School of Poetry" (see below); and, in some ways, those reviews are more characteristic.

SIR WALTER SCOTT

(1771-1832)

It would be out of place here to enter upon any biography or criticism of the author of Waverley, or for that matter of Jane Austen. It is sufficient to notice that Scott has found something generous to say (in diaries, letters, or formal criticism) on every writer he had occasion to mention, and that in his somewhat neglected, but frequently quoted, Lives of the Novelists, a striking pre-eminence was given to women; particularly Mrs. Radcliffe and Clara Reeve. Indeed, the essay on Mrs. Radcliffe, a "very novel and rather heretical revelation" is "probably the best in the whole set."

We remember, too, the famous passage in his General Preface to the Waverley Novels:—"without being so presumptuous as to hope to emulate the rich humour, pathetic tenderness and admirable tact of my accomplished friend, I felt that something might be attempted for my own country, of the same kind with that which Miss Edgeworth so fortunately achieved for Ireland";—an ambition of which the modesty only equals the success achieved.

In "appreciating" Jane Austen, indeed, Scott is far more cautious, if not apologetic, than any critic of to-day would dream of being; but, when we remember the prejudices then existing against women writers (despite the popularity of Madame D'Arblay) and the well-nigh universal neglect accorded the author of Pride and Prejudice, we should perhaps rather marvel at the independent sincerity of his pronounced praise. The article, at any rate, has historic significance, as the first serious recognition of her immortal work.

RICHARD WHATELY

(1787-1863)

The "dogmatical and crotchety" Archbishop of Dublin was looked at askance by the extreme Evangelicals of his day (though Thomas Arnold has eulogised his holiness), and there is no doubt that his theology, however able and sincere, was mainly inspired by the "daylight of ordinary reason and of historical fact," opposed to the dogmas of tradition. He combated sceptical criticism by an ingenious parody entitled "Historical Doubts relative to Napoleon Buonaparte," and his epigram on the majority of preachers—that "they aim at nothing and they hit it," proves his freedom from any touch of sacerdotalism. His "Rhetoric," his "Logic," and his "Political Economy" were praised by so eminent a judge as John Stuart Mill, though criticised by Hamilton; and Lecky remarks on the "admirable lucidity of his style."

His work, however, was as a whole too fragmentary to become standard, and he regarded it himself as "the mission of his life to make up cartridges for others to fire."

* * * * *

We may notice that in writing of Jane Austen, only six years after Scott, though still measured and judicial, he permits himself a much more assured attitude of applause; and the article affords most valuable indication of the steady progress by which her masterpieces achieved the supremacy now acknowledged by all.

WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE

(1809-1898)

It would be no less impertinent, and unnecessary, to dwell in these pages upon the political, or literary, work of the greatest of modern premiers. It is sufficient to recall the certainty which used to follow a notice by Gladstone of a large and immediate rise in sales. Mr. John Morley remarking that Gladstone's "place is not in literary or critical history, but elsewhere," reminds us that his style was sometimes called Johnsonian, though without good ground…. Some critics charged him in 1840 with "prolix clearness." "The old charge," says Mr. Gladstone upon this, was obscure compression. I do not doubt that both may be true, and the former may have been the result of a well-meant effort to escape from the latter.

* * * * *

Mr. Morley, again, selects the essay on Tennyson for especial praise. Though one is apt to forget it, the Laureate did not meet with anything like immediate recognition; and, though coming twenty-eight years after the appreciation by J.S. Mill, this article does not assume the supremacy afterwards accorded the poet by common consent.

SAMUEL WILBERFORCE

(1805-1873)

"One of the most conspicuous and remarkable figures" of his generation the versatile Bishop of Oxford is said to have come "next to Gladstone as a man of inexhaustible powers of work." Known from his Oxford days as Soapy Sam, he was involved through no fault of his own, in some of the odium attached to the "Essays and Reviews" and "Colenso" cases: his private life was embittered by the secession to Rome of his two brothers, his brother-in-law, his only daughter, and his son-in-law. "He was an unwearied ecclesiastical politician, always involved in discussions and controversies, sometimes, it was thought, in intrigues; without whom nothing was done in convocation, nor, where Church interests were involved, in the House of Lords." The energy with which he governed his diocese for twenty-four years earned for him the title of "Romodeller [Transcriber's note: sic] of the Episcopate."

* * * * *

The attempt, by a man whose "relaxations" were botany and ornithology, but who had no claims to be called an expert, to defeat Darwin on his own ground—and the dignified horror of a Churchman at some deductions from evolution—is eminently characteristic of the period.

The earnest criticism of Newman's conversion to Rome concerns one of the most striking events of his generation, and illustrates the "church" attitude on such questions.

ANONYMOUS

We have hinted already that the responsibility for this group of ill-mannered recriminations may probably be distributed between Gifford, Croker, and Lockhart. It is curious to notice that the second attack on Scott appeared after his admission to the ranks of contributors; and the author of Waverley is perhaps the one man said to have friends both on the Edinburgh and the Quarterly. That on Leigh Hunt, always the pet topic of Toryism, from whom he certainly provoked some retaliation, is only paralleled in Blackwood. We have included the Shakespeare and the Moxon as attractively brief samples on the approved model of savage banter, and the Jane Eyre as perhaps the most flagrant example of bad taste to be found in these merciless pages. It was George Henry Lewis, by the way, who so much offended Charlotte BrontË by the greeting, "There ought to be a bond between us, for we have both written naughty books."

It is interesting to find Thackeray among those it was permitted to praise: though the "moral" objection to his "realism" reveals a strange attitude.

We may notice, with some surprise, that the attitude towards George
Eliot is nearly as hostile as towards Charlotte BrontË.