No More Learning



## p. 135 (#159) ############################################

v]
Barton. James Montgomery. Elliott 135
by not unpleasant and genuine sentiment of a perfectly manly
kind and by other good qualities of general literature. The verse
is fluent and musical enough ; the diction neither too 'aureate,'
nor too 'vulgar,' nor too much loaded with actually dialectic
words. Whether, in the absence of special poetic intensity and
idiosyncrasy, the vesture of dialectic form repels or attracts, so
as to procure rejection, or so as to deserve acceptance, of the
'middle kind of poetry' offered, must depend to such a degree upon
individual taste that it seems unnecessary to speak positively or
copiously on the question.
Some verse-writers of earlier date, and, at one time or another,
of wider appeal, may now be mentioned, though they need not
occupy us long. The quaker poet Bernard Barton has so many
pleasant and certainly lasting literary associations—the friendship
of Lamb and of Southey and of FitzGerald, the presentation of
Byron in his most sensible, good-natured and un-Satanic aspect,
and, in fact, numerous other evidences of his having possessed
the rare and precious qualities which 'please many a man and
never vex one'—that it would be a pity if anyone (except at
the call of duty) ran the risk of vexation by reading his
verse. He wrote, it is said, ten volumes of it, and there is no
apparent reason, in what the present writer has read of them,
why he or any man should not have written a hundred such, if
he had had the time. Some of his hymns are among his least
insignificant work.
The same is the case with James Montgomery, whom we
might have mentioned with his unlucky namesake in the long-
poem division, for he wrote several epics or quasi-epics, which were
popular enough, entirely negligible, but not absurd. Some of his
hymns, also, such as Go to dark Gethsemane, Songs of praise the
angels sang and others, are still popular and not negligible,
while he could sometimes, also, write verses (not technically
'sacred,' but devoted to the affections and moral feelings) which
deserve some esteem. James Montgomery is one of the poets
who have no irrefragable reason for existing, but whom, as
existing, it is unnecessary to visit with any very damnatory
sentence.
The condition of Ebenezer Elliott is different. He had much
more poetical quality than Montgomery, and very much more than
Barton, but he chose, too frequently, to employ it in ways which
make the enjoyment of his poetry somewhat difficult. A man is
not necessarily the worse, any more than he is the better, poet for


## p. 136 (#160) ############################################

136
[CH.
Lesser Poets, 1790—1837
being 'a Corn Law Rhymer,' whether his riming takes the form
of defence or, as in Elliott's case, of denunciation. Dryden and
Canning are not unpalatable to intelligent liberals, nor Shelley
and Moore, in their political poems, to intelligent tories. But
Elliott seldom (he did sometimes, as in his Battle Song) put enough
pure poetic fire in his verse to burn up, or to convert into clear
poetic blaze, the rubbish of partisan abuse which feeds his furnace.
Still, he does, in this and one or two other instances even of the
political poems, establish his claim, which is fortunately reinforced
by a not inconsiderable number of poems sometimes lyrical, some-
times in other form, where a real love of nature finds expression
in really poetic numbers. He began to write before the end of
the eighteenth century, and, therefore, naturally enough, echoed
Thomson and Crabbe for some time; but Southey, that Providence
of poetical sparrows, took him in hand, and Elliott's later and
better verse shows no copying, either of Southey himself or of
any of the greater new poets, only a beneficial influence of the new
poetry itself. In few, if any, instances do locality and environment
provide more stimulating contrast than in the case of Sheffield
(Elliott's abode) and its neighbourhood; and it is fair to say that,
in very few instances, has a poet, not of the absolutely first class,
taken better advantage of this opportunity.
In writing of another and, in a way, the most famous of Southey's
protégés, Henry Kirke White, one has to remember not merely that
'Clio is a Muse,' but that, unlike some of her sisters, she has the
duty of a female Minos or Rhadamanthus cast upon her. A very
good young man, possessed of sound literary instincts, dying young,
after a life not exactly unfortunate or unhappy, but, until nearly
the last, not quite congenial and blameless always, he has been duly
embalmed in two different but precious kinds of amber-Southey's
perfect prose and Byron's fine verse-rhetoric. His biographer's
private letters to White's brother increase the interest and sympathy
which one is prepared to extend to the subject of so much good
nature and good writing from such strikingly different quarters.
But it is really impossible, after soberly reading Kirke White's
actual performances, to regard him—to quote Shelley once more-
as even a competitor for the inheritance of unfulfilled renown.
A hymn or two—The Star of Bethlehem and the in modern
hymnals) much altered Oft in danger, oft in woe-some smooth
eighteenth century couplets and a prettyish lyric or so on non-sacred
subjects are the best things that stand to his credit. It is, of
course, perfectly true that he died at twenty, and that, at twenty,
а


## p. 137 (#161) ############################################

v]
Kirke White. Cary
137
>
many great poets have done little or not at all better. But, to
draw any reasonable probability of real poetry in future from this
fact requires a logic and a calculus which the literary historian
should respectfully decline to practise. For, if the fact of not
having written good poetry up to the age of twenty were sufficient
to constitute a claim to poetical rank, mankind at large might
claim that position; and, even if the fact of the claim were
limited to having actually written bad or indifferent verse before
that age, the Corpus Poetarum would be insupportably enlarged.
It is no small relief to turn from indifferent performance and
undiscoverable promise to something, and that no small thing, not
merely attempted but definitely done. Henry Francis Cary wrote
some prose sketches of poets, not without merit, in continuation or
imitation of Johnson's Lives; and was a translator on a large scale;
but one of his efforts in this latter difficult and too often thankless
business has secured him the place (and, again, it is no scanty or
obscure one) which he occupies in English literature. It may be
impossible to translate Dante into English verse after a fashion
even nearly so satisfactory to those who can read the Italian
poet, and who can estimate English poetry, as is the prose of
J. A. Carlyle and A. J. Butler. But it may be very seriously
doubted whether, of the innumerable attempts in verse up to the
present day, any is so satisfactory to a jury composed of persons
who answer to the just given specifications as Cary's blank verse. It
is, no doubt, in a certain sense, a 'refusal”; but it is not in the
least, in the sense of the famous passage of its original, a rifiuto.
It is, on the contrary, a courageous, scholarly and almost fully
justified recognition that attempts directly to conquer the difficulty
by adopting rimed terza rima are doomed to failure; and that all
others, in stanza or rimed verse of any kind, are evasions to begin
with, and almost as certain failures to boot. It may even be said
to be a further, and a very largely successful, recognition of the
fact that blank verse, while 'nearest prose' in one sense, and,
therefore, sharing its advantages, is almost furthest from it in
another, in the peculiar qualities of rhythm which it demands.
Cary does not quite come up to this latter requisition, but, unless
Milton had translated Dante, nobody could have done so.
Meanwhile, Cary's verse translation has gone the furthest and
come the nearest. It is no slight achievement.
Two names famous in their way remain to be dealt with and the
dealing may with both, as with Cary, be pleasant. Probably no
“single-speech' poet has attracted more attention and has been
>


## p. 138 (#162) ############################################

138
[CH.
Lesser Poets, 1790-1837
the subject of more writing than Charles Wolfe, several times
questioned but quite unquestionable author of The Burial of Sir
John Moore. The thing is one of those windfalls of the muses'
for which one can only give the muses thanks. That it seems to
have been originally a metrical paraphrase from Southey's admir-
able prose account of the facts in The Annual Register is not in
the least against it; that, not merely the at once flaming and
triumphant patriotism of the time (1817) but all competent
judgment since has accepted it as one of the very best things of
the kind is conclusive. It has been parodied not merely in one
famous instance by Barham, but again and again; it was made
the subject of a most ingenious mystification by father Prout;
it may be cavilled at by merely pedantic criticism as facile,
sentimental, claptrap and what not. But its facility is the facility
of at least temporary inspiration; its sentiment is of the sunt
lacrimae rerum and of no meaner description; if it appeals for the
plaudite, it is to those whose applause is worth having. It has the
rush and sweep of Campbell (no less a person than Shelley thought
it might be his) without Campbell's occasional flaws. There is
no doubt about it. But, when amiable persons, founding their
belief on some amiable things (To Mary and so forth) which are
included among Wolfe's Remains, suggest that we lost a major poet
by Wolfe’s death in consumption at the age of thirty-two, it is best
to let the reply be silence.
On the other hand, there are reasons for thinking that, if
Reginald Heber, bishop of Calcutta, had devoted himself entirely
to letters, he might have been a poet, if not exactly of first rank,
at least very high in the second. He has no 'rocket' piece like
Wolfe's Burial. But, though he died at forty-three, and, for the
last twenty years of his life, laboured faithfully at clerical work
(latterly of the most absorbing kind), he showed a range and variety
of talent in verse which should have taken him far. The story is
.
well known how, during a visit of Scott to Oxford, Heber added
impromptu on a remark from Sir Walter the best lines of the
rather famous Newdigate which he was about to recite. He added
to hymnology some dozen of the best and best known attempts
in that difficult art below its few masterpieces. He could write
serio-comic verse in a fashion which suggests not imitation,
but, in some cases, anticipation, of Moore, Praed and Barham at
The Spenserians of his Morte d'Arthur need only to have
been taken a little more seriously to be excellent; and the
1 But it was before his baronetcy.
once.


## p. 139 (#163) ############################################

v]
Heber
139
charming lines to his wife (If thou wert by my side, my love)
in the late Indian days, unpretentious and homely as they are,
remind one of the best side of the eighteenth century in that
vein as shown in Lewis's Winifreda.
For there was still a considerable eighteenth century touch in
Heber ; and the fact may conveniently introduce the few general
remarks which have been promised to end this chapter. It is safe
to say that all the poets here dealt with—major, minor, or minim,
in their own division-display, not merely in a fanciful chronological
classification but in real fact, the transition character which is very
important to the historical student of literature, and very inte-
resting to the reader of poetry who does not wilfully choose to shut
his ears and eyes to it. Some, to use the old figure, are Januses
of the backward face only; or with but a contorted and casual
vision forwards. Hardly one can be said to look steadily ahead,
though, in the group to which particular attention has been
devoted (that of Hood, Darley, Beddoes and others), the forward
velleity, however embarrassed and unknowing, is clear. Their
struggle does not avail much, but it avails something. In yet
others, new kinds of subject, and even of outward form, effect an
alteration which their treatment hardly keeps up.
Another point connected with this general aspect and itself of
some importance for the general study of literary history is this,
that, despite individual tendencies to imitation, all these poets show
a general air as of sheep without a shepherd. They have-except
Rogers, Bloomfield and one or two more among the minors and
Campbell as a kind of major in a half vain recalcitrance-lost the
catchwords and guiding rules of eighteenth century poetry, and they
have not fully discovered those of the nineteenth. Even their elder
contemporaries, from Wordsworth downwards, were fully compre-
hended by few of them; Shelley and Keats only dawn upon the
youngest and not fully even on them. Now, it has sometimes been
asserted that the complete dominance of any poet, poets or style of
poetry is a drawback to poetic progress; and particular applications
have been suggested in the case of the long ascendency of Tennyson
in the middle and later nineteenth century. A comparison of the
range of lesser poetry, as we have surveyed it, between 1800 and
1835, with that which appeared between 1840 and 1880, is not
very likely to bear out this suggestion.


## p. 140 (#164) ############################################

CHAPTER VI
REVIEWS AND MAGAZINES IN THE EARLY YEARS
OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
BEFORE the opening of the nineteenth century, the periodical
review, such as we now know it, can hardly be said to have
achieved a permanent place in general literature. There had,
nevertheless, for a considerable time, been in existence periodical
publications under the names reviews or magazines which served
partly as chronicles, or records, or registers of past events,
which conveyed information and which opened their pages, more
or less, to original contributions of poetry and prose. The Gentle-
man's Monthly Magazine, founded in 1731, lived till 1868. It
was rather in short-lived newspaper sheets, such as The Tatler
and The Spectator, in the early days of the eighteenth century, and
in their successors founded on the same lines, that (as has been
shown in an earlier volume of this work) are to be found any
adumbrations of the periodical essay and of the periodical fiction
which formed the bulk of the reviews and magazines of a later date.
In cases such as these, an author or authors of eminence had found
the means of addressing the general public. Apart from them, the
publication had no separate existence of its own, and, of course, it
came to an end when they ceased to write. At the end of the
eighteenth century, however, when political thoughts were stirring
in men's minds, various magazines and reviews intended to
promote sectional and party objects—high church, evangelical,
tory, whig and extremist-sprang up and had a short life; but
none of them achieved any authoritative position in the estimation
of the general public.
Between the review and the magazine there was a very real
distinction, and, though there has been a tendency on the part of
each to borrow occasionally the special characteristics of the
other, it has never been wholly left out of sight. The review made
it its business to discuss works of literature, art and science, to
i consider national policy and public events, to enlighten its readers


## p. 141 (#165) ############################################

CH. VI]
141
The Edinburgh Review
upon these subjects and to award praise or censure to authors and
statesmen. It did not publish original matter, but confined itself
to commenting upon or criticising the works and doings of others.
Its articles professed to be the serious consideration of specified
books, or of parliamentary or other speeches of public men. They
were not, at least in form, independent and original studies.
Even Macaulay's brilliant biographical essays appeared in The
Edinburgh Review in the form of literary criticisms of books
whose titles served him as the pegs upon which to hang his own
study of the life and work of some great historical figure.
The magazine, on the other hand, was a miscellany. Though
it contained reviews and criticisms of books, it did not confine
itself to reviewing. To its pages, authors and poets sent original
contributions. It admitted correspondence from the outside world;
and it aimed at the entertainment of its readers rather than at
the advocacy of views. Through the instrumentality of the
magazine, much valuable and permanent literary matter first
came before the public. In the first quarter of the nineteenth
century, the two great reviews-The Edinburgh and The
Quarterly—and two brilliant magazines— Blackwood's and The
London-sprang to life, and, on the whole, they have conformed
to the original distinctions of type.
With these reviews and magazines and their many imitators, a
substantially new form was originated and developed in which
literature of a high class was to find its opportunities. An aspiring
author, in this way, might, and did, obtain a hearing without
undergoing the risk and expense of publishing a book or a
pamphlet. From the reception given to the new reviews, it is
clear that, on the part of the general community, an intellectual
thirst, once confined to the very few, was now keenly felt. Men
wanted to know about books, and events, and to find them
discussed; yet, till the eighteenth century had struck, it is hardly
too much to say that able, honest and independent literary
criticism was unknown. The spurious criticism of periodicals,
notoriously kept alive by publishers to promote the sale of their
own books, was, virtually, all that existed. In all these respects,
a great and momentous change was at hand.
The system of anonymous reviewing in periodicals under the
guidance and control of responsible editors, themselves men of
strong individuality, soon led to the review acquiring a distinct
personality of its own. By ninety-nine out of every hundred
readers, the criticism expressed would be accepted as that of the
>


## p. 142 (#166) ############################################

142
[CH.
Reviews and Magazines
review-of The Edinburgh or The Quarterly—and they would
enquire no further. Among regular contributors, as, of course,
with the editor, the feeling prevailed that articles in the review
represented something more than the opinion, at the moment, of
the individual writer. They were intended, in some sort, to give
expression to the views of able and intelligent men who, gene-
rally speaking, had the same outlook on public affairs. Naturally,
some contributors would gravitate towards Jeffrey and The
Edinburgh, whilst others would turn to Gifford and The Quarterly.
Without the practice of anonymity, combined with responsible
and vigorous editorship, a lasting corporate personality could not
have been acquired; and the chief reviews, though they would
still have fulfilled a useful purpose, could not have become in-
fluential organs of public opinion.
The issue, in October 1802, of the first number of The Edin-
burgh Review and Critical Journal, published by Constable of
Edinburgh and Longman and Rees of London, was an event of
great significance, making a new departure in literary criticism,
and opening a pathway, much trodden since, whereby men of
ability and independence, of learning and of practical knowledge,
have been enabled to render services to their countrymen and to
literature, which it would be difficult to overestimate. To enlighten
the mind of the public, and to guide its judgments in matters of
literature, science and art, was the aspiration of the early Edin-
burgh reviewers; and, at the same time, in the region of politics,
to promote what seemed to them to be a more liberal and popular
system of government.
The name chosen for this contemplated organ of opinion was
not new. Nearly half a century earlier, an Edinburgh Review, 'to
be published every six months,' had made its appearance. It was
to give some account of all books published in Scotland in the
preceding half year, and of the most remarkable books published
in England and elsewhere in the same period. In its anonymous
pages, Robertson (afterwards principal Robertson), Adam Smith
and Alexander Wedderburn (afterwards lord chancellor Lough-
borough) first made their appearance in print; but, notwithstanding
the eminent ability of its contributors, The Edinburgh Review of
1755 lived through only two numbers, its liberal tone, in matters
of philosophy, and in matters considered to trench on theology,
proving distasteful to the prevailing narrow orthodoxy of that
day'.
i The Edinburgh Review for the year 1755, 2nd edition with preface, 1818.
1


## p. 143 (#167) ############################################

VI]
143
The Edinburgh Review
6
The Edinburgh Review, “to be continued quarterly,' of 1802,
which was to become famous and permanent as an exponent of
literary and political criticism, abandoned the idea of noticing all
the productions of the press, and proposed to confine its attentions
to the most important. The new journal, it was hoped, would be
distinguished for the selection rather than for the number of its
articles To three young men, then quite unknown to fame,
belongs the honour of originating The Edinburgh Review, and of
winning for it its high place in English literature, namely–Francis
Jeffrey, a Scottish advocate, still almost briefless, who had been
educated at the universities of Glasgow and Oxford ; Sydney
Smith, a distinguished Wykehamist and Oxonian, who, while
waiting for an English living, was in Edinburgh as the private
tutor of young Michael Hicks Beach, then attending classes in the
university; and Henry Brougham, the future lord chancellor, who
had only lately been called to the Scottish bar, and who, with
abundant leisure, was, like Jeffrey, still treading the floor of the
parliament house.
The history of the birth and early years of The Edinburgh is
well known. Nothing of the kind, with the exception of the dis-
couraging precedent already mentioned, had ever been attempted
in Scotland It was easy to say on the title page of the first
number that it was 'to be continued quarterly'; yet, Jeffrey
himself, who was to edit the Review for the next seven and twenty
years, was full of anxiety as to whether it would pay its expenses
for the one year for which he and his friends had bound them-
selves to the publishers. His apprehensions were quickly dispelled.
By all accounts, the effect on the public mind of the appearance
of the first number (10 October 1802) was electrical. ' The little
literary criticism then existing was lifeless-mere hackwork, sub-
sidised by publishers to puff their own wares. Here was a review
showing upon every page, whether the reader agreed with, or
differed from, its expressions of opinion, conspicuous ability, vigour
and independence. Succeeding numbers added to the popularity
and the fame of The Edinburgh. In half-a-dozen years, its
circulation rose from 800 to 9000; in ten years, it had grown to
about 10,000; and, by 1818, it had attained a circulation of nearly
14,000, which was never exceeded. Even these figures do not
show the number of copies ultimately bought by the public, for
each volume (containing two numbers) had 'a book value’; and
many volumes ran through a large number of editions. For
1 See advertisement to the first number of The Edinburgh Review, October 1802.


## p. 144 (#168) ############################################

144
Reviews and Magazines [CH.
example, in the years 1814 and 1815, there were published
the tenth and seventh editions of volume I and volume II
respectively.
The first number contained no fewer than 29 articles, and 252
pages. Nine articles were written by Sydney Smith, six by
Jeffrey, four by Francis Horner, three by Brougham and others
by Thomson, Murray and Hamilton. Some of the contributions
were so short that they were rather notices of books than
serious and critical reviews. During the first three years,
the list of contributors was increased by the names of Walter
Scott, Playfair, John Allen, George Ellis, Henry Hallam and
others. Jeffrey and his friends did not long maintain their
original intention of declining all remuneration for their
contributions; and only the first two numbers were written
without reward. As a matter of fact, Sydney Smith had
edited the first number; and he quickly saw that, if permanency
was sought, the Review would have to be conducted on business
principles. Thus, he assured Constable the publisher that a pay-
ment of £200 a year to the editor and ten guineas a sheet for
contributions would render him the possessor of the best Review
in Europe. The system of 'all gentlemen and no pay' thus
quickly came to an end, for, though the publisher considered the
rate of pay suggested was unprecedented, he recognised that so,
too, was the success of the Review, and, in later days, it was very
largely increased. In the twentieth century, it is not easy to
understand the coyness with which, a hundred years ago, men
accepted payment for literary services. Jeffrey, who became
editor under the new arrangement, satisfied himself by enquiry
that none of his men would reject the £10 honorarium, and,
under the sanction of their example,' he thought he might him-
self accept the offered salary 'without being supposed to have
suffered any degradation? '
The first three or four numbers indicated clearly enough the
political and literary tendencies which were to characterise the
Review. The first article of all, written by Jeffrey, reviewed a
book by Mounier, late president of the French national assembly,
on the causes of the revolution. Jeffrey held what were called
popular principles, but he was no revolutionist, and he looked
forward to the time when men on both sides would be able to
take calmer views of that great convulsion than was possible to
most Englishmen in 1802. Francis Horner, in later years regarded
* Jeffrey to Horner, May 1803.
>
6
6


## p. 145 (#169) ############################################

VI]
145
The Edinburgh Review
6
as one of the greatest authorities on political economy, wrote on
“The Paper Credit of Great Britain,' whilst Brougham discussed
'The Crisis in the Sugar Colonies. ' The literary article in the first
number—on Southey's Thalaba-indicated the spirit of much of
the future literary criticism of the Review. Jeffrey seems anxious
to show that the stern motto of The Edinburgh-Judex damnatur
cum nocens absolvitur-had, in the eyes of its editor, a very real
meaning.
Those who look back to the earlier numbers of The Edinburgh
will perceive, not without amusement, that nothing so greatly
roused the ire of these advanced reformers in the world political
as the slightest new departure from ancient ways in the world of
letters. Southey, it was urged, was nothing less than a cham-
pion and apostle' of a new sect of poets. They were all of them
dissenters from the established system in poetry and criticism. . . . Southey is
the first of these brought before us for judgment, and we cannot discharge
our inquisitorial office conscientiously without pronouncing a few words upon
the nature and tendency of the tenets he has helped to propagate.
The Review protested against the representation of vulgar
manners in vulgar language,' and would recall its generation to
'the vigilance and labour which sustained the loftiness of Milton,
and gave energy and directness to the pointed and fine propriety
of Pope. ' The article, however, was by no means entirely con-
demnatory; but enough has been quoted to show that already the
note of battle had been sounded in that long war with the lakers'
whom, half a generation later, the Review was still denouncing as
'a puling and self-admiring race? . '
The literary judgments of The Edinburgh Review have, in a
large number of instances, not been confirmed by the judgment of
posterity. In many other instances, on the other hand, their
criticisms have been amply vindicated. Jeffrey and his friends, in
short, were not infallible, though they arrogated to themselves an
authority hardly less than pontifical. Still, there was always
something robust and manly in the tone they adopted. They
were men of the world, engaged in the active occupations of life ;
of wide reading, it is true, and gifted with great literary acumen;
but, perhaps, with too little leisure to appreciate contemplative
poetry at its true value. They were prone to despise those whom
they considered mere penmen and nothing else, and they were
exasperated at the notion that any small literary coterie, holding
itself aloof from the active world, should lay down laws for the
>
1 Article on Childe Harold, December 1816.
E. L, XII.
CH. VI.
10


## p. 146 (#170) ############################################

146
[CH.
Reviews and Magazines
>
regulation of poetry and taste, and give itself airs of superiority
even towards the great masters of the English language. In his
later life, Jeffrey, in republishing a selection of his articles in the
Review, admits that the manner in which he treated the lake
poets was not such as commended itself to his matured judgment
and taste. It is not likely that his famous article of 1814 on
Wordsworth's Escursion, opening with the words, This will
never do,' can have been altogether pleasant reading to its author
in his old age. There was, however, in Wordsworth's poetry,
much for which Jeffrey had always felt and expressed admiration,
and he has declared that, though he repented of the vivacities'
of manner in this much censured paper, with the substance of his
articles on the poetry of the lake school (taking account of both
praise and censure) he had little fault to find.
Far the most eminent of Jeffrey's contributors was Walter
Scott, for whose patronage, though he had not yet published
The Lay of the Last Minstrel, or written a page of fiction,
Scottish and English publishers were eagerly striving.
The
first number of the second year of The Edinburgh contained
two articles from his pen; and, before the end of 1806, he had
contributed ten more. Among these were papers on Ellis's Early
English Poets, on Godwin's Life of Chaucer, on Chatterton's
Works and on Froissart's Chronicles. After that year, he with-
drew his countenance and support from The Edinburgh, though,
throughout his life, he remained on terms of friendship and
intimacy with Jeffrey. Indeed, in 1818, he once more returned to
its pages, publishing, in the June number, an elaborate review of
a novel by Maturin, Women, or Pour et Contre, a tale by the
author of Bertram.
It was impossible that hearty cooperation in what was becom-
ing more and more an organ of political party should long continue
between the whiggism of Jeffrey, Brougham and Sydney Smith,
and the toryism of Walter Scott. The latter had already re-
monstrated with the editor on the excessive partisanship which
now marked every issue of the Review. "The Edinburgh,' Jeffrey
had replied, 'has but two legs to stand on. Literature is one
of them, but its right leg is politics. Next to Jeffrey himself,
the Review, from its origin for a quarter of a century onward,
was mainly dependent on Sydney Smith and Henry Brougham,
each of whom contributed a marvellous number of articles on a
vast variety of subjects. Sydney Smith, the only Englishman
1 Jeffrey's Contributions to the Edinburgh Review, vol. II, p. 233.
1
6
1
1
1


## p. 147 (#171) ############################################

vi]
Brougham
147
among the founders of the Review, and famous throughout his life
as the most brilliant of humourists, knew how to utilise his great
gifts in the forwarding of many a good cause and serious reform.
Some who delighted in the clever jesting and rollicking high
spirits which distinguished him, alike in social intercourse and in
the written page, failed to recognise, as did his real intimates, the
thoroughness and sincerity of his character, and his genuine
desire to leave the world a better place than he found it. Henry
Brougham, the youngest of the three, was to become, in a few
years and for a time, by dint of extraordinary energy and ability,
one of the most powerful political leaders in England. His services
to the Review, in its early days, had been quite invaluable.
Hardly any public man of the nineteenth century approached
more nearly to the possession of genius. But his great gifts were
weighted with very serious faults of character and temper; and, as
the years went on, he earned for himself universal distrust among
his fellow-workers-editors of, and contributors to, The Edin-
burgh, or statesmen engaged in the wider field of British politics.
It was long a tradition among Edinburgh reviewers that, on one
occasion, a complete number of the Review, with its dozen or
more of articles, was, from cover to cover, written by the pen
of
Brougham, and the story, whether true or not, is illustrative of the
universality of capacity generally attributed to him.
Many years afterwards, when Jeffrey had retired from The
Edinburgh, Brougham was to make the life of his successor,
Macvey Napier, burdensome by persistent efforts to run the
Review as his own organ—to make it the instrument of his
personal ambitions and interests, of his personal prejudices and
dislikes. He did not recognise that times had changed, and that
he, and his position in the country, had changed with them.
It was an article by Brougham that, in very early days, had
brought Byron into the field with his fierce attack upon critics in
general and The Edinburgh Review in particular. According to
Sir Mountstuart Grant Duff, Brougham, in later days, confessed
to the authorship of the article on Hours of Idleness in the
January number for 1808—the moving cause of that most brilliant
of satires-English Bards and Scotch Reviewers. The poet with
equal zeal scourged both his critics and his rivals—indeed, so
far as criticism goes, he was as severe on contemporary poets
and on 'lakers' as were Edinburgh reviewers themselves. Like
them, also, while shaking his head over the poetry of Scott and
Wordsworth and Coleridge, he was ready to bow before the
10_2


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148
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poetical genius of Campbell and Rogers. It certainly is a singular
circumstance that Jeffrey, by general acknowledgment, in his own
day, the first of literary critics, should have made so strange a
selection of the poetry which deserved to achieve immortality.
A man must serve his time to every trade
Save Censure-critics all are ready made.
a
Assuredly, the history of literature abounds with the mistakes
of critics. An author, possibly a man of genius, very probably one
who has toiled for years to make himself master of his subject, a
man whose merits a later age will freely acknowledge, is brought
up for judgment,' as Jeffrey would say, before some clever writer
whose youth and inexperience are hidden from the author and the
public by the veil of anonymity. Can hurried judgments so
pronounced tend to good results as regards progress in the
appreciation of literature and art ? On the other hand, all criti-
cism would be at an end if the statesman, the poet, the author, the
painter were only to be 'brought up for judgment' before a wiser
statesman, a truer poet, a greater author or artist than himself.
The experience of the world surely goes to show that any criticism
better than none. It may be that critics are often mistaken;
but, so long as criticism is honest and able and independent, it
can hardly be that it will not, in the long run, serve a useful
purpose in enlightening the public mind. Edinburgh reviewers, in
Jeffrey's day, doubtless thought, in their conceit, that it was their
business to 'place' contemporary authors and poets, i. e. to deter-
mine their claim to immortality and their order of merit for all
time in the judgment of the world. And, in this, they often
failed. Their true function was, however, not this ; but, rather,
by their ability and acumen to stir the minds of men on those
multifarious subjects with which the Review dealt, to provoke
discussion and to enlist in it the most capable men of the day.
This work, the great reviews of the early nineteenth century
nobly performed. Their criticisms were written for their own
age, and dealt, and were intended to deal for the benefit of con-
temporaries, with passing subjects of interest. As Sir Leslie
Stephen has rightly said, 'Criticism is a still more perishable
commodity than Poetry? Time, and time alone, can establish
the claim of any author or of any artist to take rank among
the immortals.
It was the strong distaste of a large portion of the public, not
1 Half Hours in a Library, 1909 edn, vol. , p. 237.
6
4


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vi] The Quarterly Review 149
for the literary, but for the political, criticisms of The Edinburgh,
that, in February 1809, brought a new and most powerful rival
into the field. The article on 'Don Cevallos, and the French
Usurpation in Spain' was written by Jeffrey himself, and it had,
undoubtedly, an exasperating effect on his political opponents.
Anyone who chooses to read the article today will probably
wonder that this should have been so; and he will certainly not
find in it any traces of the unpatriotic feeling with which the
writer was charged. The expression of what were considered
popular sentiments' in days when the French revolution was very
recent history was always sure to rouse warm indignation. Lord
Buchan, the eccentric elder brother of those eminent whigs Tom?
and Harry' Erskine, solemnly kicked the offending number of the
Review from his hall door into the middle of George street. More
sober men, with Walter Scott at the head of them, were genuinely
scandalised. It is said, moreover, that the personal hostility of
Scott had been stimulated by the article, six months earlier, on
Marmion, which was also written by Jeffrey; though it is probable
that it was the poet's worshippers, resenting the disparagement of
their hero, rather than the poet himself, who were offended by a
review which, while criticising the poem sharply enough in parts
and not always wisely, after all placed Scott on a very high
pedestal among the great poets of the world.
The true causes that brought The Quarterly Review into!
existence are clear enough. The time had come, and the man,
to challenge and dispute vigorously the domination of the great
Scottish whig organ. Scott had good reason to fear that whig
politics, by its instrumentality, were being disseminated in the
most jealously guarded of tory preserves. “No genteel family,'
he writes to George Ellis, 'can pretend to be without the Edin-
burgh Review ; because, independent of its politics, it gives the
only valuable literary criticisms that can be met with. ' It was,
indeed, high time, in the public interest, that the arrogant dicta-
torship of The Edinburgh, on all subjects literary and political,
should be disputed by some able antagonist worthy of its steel.
Thus, it happened that The Quarterly, unlike The Edinburgh,
was founded with a distinctly political object and by party
politicians of high standing, to avert the dangers, threatened by
the spread of the doctrines of whigs and reformers, to church
and state. The first move had already been made by John
Murray the publisher, who, in September 1807, had written to
1 In later days, respectively, lord chancellor and lord advocate.
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## p. 150 (#174) ############################################

150
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$
Canning that the time was favourable for starting a new political
organ. Canning, at that time, made no reply. Now, however,
Scott made a strong appeal to Canning and George Ellis and
Croker to give their direct assistance to the new venture and to
gain for it the countenance and help of other party leaders
in London. Scott was himself much pressed to undertake the
editorship. This he declined, successfully pressing its acceptance
on Gifford, who, with Canning and Ellis, at the end of the
century, had been a main supporter of The Anti-Jacobin. "The
real reason,' wrote Scott to Gifford, in October 1808, 'for institu-
}
ting the new publication is the disgusting and deleterious doctrines
with which the most popular of our Reviews disgraces its pages. '
But Scott, though a strong tory, could never have become a
narrow or servile partisan ; and he adjured the new editor to
remember that they were fighting for principles they held dear, and
against doctrines they disapproved ; and that their ends would
not be best promoted by mere political subserviency to any
administration or party.
Indeed, Scott, writing to George Ellis, went so far as to say
that he did not wish the projected review to be principally or
exclusively political. That might even tend to defeat its purpose.
What he wanted was to institute a review in London, conducted
totally independent of book-selling influence, on a plan as liberal
as that of The Edinburgh, its literature as well supported and its
principles English and constitutional? Scott worked assiduously
to make the first number a success, writing himself four articles,
making nearly a third of the whole, and recruiting to the
standard of The Quarterly, Southey, Kirkpatrick Sharpe, Rogers,
Moore and others whose reputations Jeffrey had murdered, and
who are rising to cry woe upon him, like the ghosts in King
Richard? ' Southey, the poet laureate, was a most voluminous
contributor, and Gifford suffered much from him for having
to compress his essays within the necessary limits, giving, thereby,
no little offence to one whom, nevertheless, he regarded as the
sheet anchor of the Review. '
There could be no question from the first as to the ability of
the new journal. Yet, its first number (February 1809) met no
such reception as had greeted the birth of The Edinburgh. Its
tone was literary rather than political. It contained much that
was well worth reading, little to dazzle or startle the world. The
1 2 November 1808.
? Walter Scott to Kirkpatrick Sharpe. See Memoir of John Murray, vol. I, p. 104.
6


## p. 151 (#175) ############################################

VI]
Gifford and Scott
151
publisher was not without anxiety for the future; and his editor
Gifford, great as was his literary ability, was certainly one of the
least businesslike and most unpunctual of men. The second number
was not ready till the end of May, the third till the end of August,
when it was found by Ellis (a very candid friend and supporter)
to be, though profound, notoriously and unequivocally dull. '
Murray asserted that The Quarterly was not yet paying its
expenses; and it was not till the fourth number (which was some
six weeks behind time) that an article appeared which excited
general admiration, and which, in the publisher's opinion, largely in-
creased the demand for the Review. This, strangely enough, was an
article, and by no means a condemnatory one, on the character
of Charles James Fox. Henceforward, the circulation grew
steadily, and, in the years 1818 and 1819, when it appears that
each of the great reviews reached its maximum circulation, The
Edinburgh and The Quarterly sold almost the same number of
copies, namely, 14,000.
The editorship of Gifford lasted till 1824. During those fifteen
years, he wrote few articles himself, but he dealt strenuously with
the papers sent him by contributors, in the way of compression,
addition and amendment, to the no small dissatisfaction of the
writers. It is interesting to know that Jane Austen derived her
first real encouragement as a writer of fiction from an article on
Emma in The Quarterly by Walter Scott, who remarked with
approval on the introduction of a new class of novel, drawing the
characters and incidents from the current of ordinary life, as
contrasted with the adventures and improbabilities of the old
school of romance. Still more interesting is it to be told that
Walter Scott himself reviewed Tales of my Landlord in The
Quarterly Review for January 1817, venturing to attribute them
to the author of Waverley and Guy Mannering and The Anti-
quary !
Whilst wishing their author every success, he was
solemnly warned that he must correct certain very evident defects
in his romances if he expected his fame as a writer of fiction to
endure.
A leading fault in these novels is the total want of interest felt by the
reader in the character of the hero. Waverley, Bertram, etc. , are all brethren
of a family-very amiable and very insipid sort of young men.
Few critics are, in truth, so competent to discuss the merits
and defects of books as the authors who produce them. Many an
author has felt, when reading a criticism of his work, whether


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152
[ch.
Reviews and Magazines
1
favourable or the reverse, how much more tellingly he could
himself have administered the praise or the blame. The centenary
number of The Quarterly Review—April 1909-attributes, no
doubt correctly, the concluding laudatory paragraphs of this
article, not to Scott himself, but to the editorial activities of
Gifford
The two great literary and critical journals had now become
the recognised standard-bearers of their respective political parties.
Neither entirely excluded from its pages occasional contributions
from the opposite camp; but, as a general rule, writers on any
subject who were in sympathy with the political objects of liberal-
ism or conservatism rallied respectively to The Edinburgh or The
Quarterly Review. As might have been expected, the recognised
position that each now held and its close connection with states-
men—the responsible leaders of parties served to strengthen
strict party-ties whilst, perhaps, lessening political independence.
As the years went on, the change that had come over the character
of The Edinburgh_was strongly marked. “It is odd to hear,'
wrote Walter Bagehot in 1855, ‘that the Edinburgh Review was
once thought an incendiary publication. ' After half-a-century of
existence, the belief had become general, he says jokingly, that it
was written by privy councillors only? . It had long been engaged
not only in fighting political conservatism, but in a scarcely less
fierce struggle against the extreme men, as it considered those
who formed the left wing of the liberal party. In its first half
century, Jeffrey and Macaulay were the two men whose character
was most deeply impressed both upon the political and literary
habits of thought of The Edinburgh Review. It now stood for
moderate reform : Macaulay being equally happy in pouring
broadsides (1829) into the radical philosophers headed by Bentham
and James Mill and their organ The Westminster Review, and in
turning his fire, ten years later, against the obscurantist views of
the ultra-tory party represented by Gladstone's book on church
and state.
Contributions, of course, were always anonymous; but there
was not, nor could there be, any concealment of the authorship of
such papers as Macaulay, for a series of years, sent to the Review
essays which have taken their permanent place in English
literature. In many other cases, the veil of anonymity was a
,
thin one.
In 1846, just before Lord John Russell formed his
1 Literary Studies, Walter Bagehot, The First Edinburgh Reviewers. '


## p. 153 (#177) ############################################

vi] Editors of the Reviews 153
first administration, the whig orthodoxy of the Review was
unimpeachable, as may be seen from the list of subjects and
authors in the April number. It was as follows:
1. Parliament and the Courts, by Lord Denman.
2. Shakespeare in Paris, by Mrs Austin.
3. Legislation for the Working Class, by Sir George C. Lewis.
4. The Religious Movement in Germany, by Henry Rogers.
5. Lyall's Travels in North America, by Herman Merivale.
6. European and American State Confederacies, by Nassau Senior.
7. Scottish Criminal Jurisprudence, by Lord Cockburn.
8. The Political State of Prussia, by R. M. Milnes (afterwards Lord
Houghton).
9. Earls Grey and Spencer, by Lord John Russell.
As regards matters of political, ecclesiastical and religious
interest, the tendency of The Edinburgh was consistently in favour
of broad and liberal views. Jeffrey and Macaulay, Thomas Arnold,
Henry Rogers, Sir James Stephen and, later in the century,
Arthur Stanley and Henry Reeve, were among those who, over
a long course of years, represented the thoughts and sentiments
of the Review.
Neither The Edinburgh nor The Quarterly was at any time
carried on by what could be called a regular staff. Each was under
the control of its editor, who selected his contributors, and made
up each number as he thought best. Jeffrey and his successor
Macvey Napier held the editorship of The Edinburgh till close
upon the middle of the century; while, during the first fifty years
of The Quarterly, Gifford and Lockhart ruled, save for the couple
of years (1824-6) during which Sir J. T. Coleridge, nephew of
the poet, and friend of Keble, occupied the editorial chair. It
was not till October 1853 that Lockhart resigned in favour of an
old contributor, Whitwell Elwin, the scholarly rector of a parish
in Norfolk where he continued to reside. The hot youth of The
Quarterly was now a thing of the past. The Edinburgh had
ceased to be a firebrand; Maga had long added respectability to
its other strong claims upon the public; and, under the new
editorship, 'moderation' became the distinguishing mark of The
Quarterly. Elwin was a high church rector, but a moderate one ;
a tory but with whiggish leanings. 'He had not a drop of party
feeling in him,' he said of himself in 1854, nor any political
antipathies. Literature had been through life ‘his first and only
love’; and many admirable essays he himself contributed to the
Review. His taste, however, had been formed and stereotyped in
his youth ; and he had little appreciation for rising genius, or any
>
a


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6
inclination to welcome, or even to try to understand, modern
thought
'He could not read, so The Quarterly centenary article tells us, ‘Brown-
ing or George Eliot, and he thought little of Tennyson. Matthew
Arnold, Swinburne, and Rossetti were mere names to him. He knew little
and read less of modern French and German authors, and he disliked the
Preraphaelite school of painting. He considered Darwinism a wild and
discredited hypothesis; he believed in Paley, condemned Ecce Homo, and
dismissed the “Higher Criticism” with scorn l';
but this lack of appreciation for the sentiments of his own age did
not prevent his enjoying the friendship and intimacy of the
principal literary and scientific men of his day.
Gifford and Lockhart had both been fighting men, who were
not open to the reproach (as they would have thought it) of a
deficiency of party zeal, or of lukewarmness in their political
antipathies. Still, Lockhart, the editor of The Quarterly, was a
different man from the Lockhart of the early days of Blackwood.
The passing years and the intimate life of Abbotsford had done
much to soften and widen the character of the brilliant and
mischief-loving freelance of Maga. Andrew Lang has done good
service in greatly modifying the severe estimate formed by many
of his contemporaries of the character of 'The Scorpion’; and has
shown that he possessed a far more generous and more genial
temperament than posterity had given him credit for. In the
editorial chair, he ruled as a constitutional monarch, advised by
his chief ministers Croker and Southey and Barrow? ; while
Murray himself—the publisher and owner of The Quarterly—took
no small part in the direction of its energies. Lockhart's own
political instincts were far less inclined to the older toryism than
were those of Southey and Croker, to whose vehemence should be
mainly ascribed the violent opposition of the Review to catholic
emancipation and reform. Doubtless, it was Lockhart's own wiser
temperament that led The Quarterly to support the liberal con-
servatism of the Tamworth manifesto, and to uphold Peel till the
general bouleversement of tory politics which followed his repeal of
the corn laws.
From its very birth, John Wilson Croker, then a young member
of parliament, and already a friend of Sir Arthur Wellesley, gave
strenuous support to The Quarterly, and, by constant contributions,
down to the time of the Crimean war, did much to impress upon it
1 Centenary article, The Quarterly Review, July 1909.
* Sir John Barrow, for forty years second secretary to the admiralty. He con-
tributed nearly 200 articles to The Quarterly, between 1809 and his death in 1848.


## p. 155 (#179) ############################################

vi]
Blackwood's Magazine 155
his own strong spirit of toryism. It may well be that he does not
deserve that reputation for the worst political self-seeking which
was the result of Lord Macaulay's vigorous denunciation, and of
the fact that it was from Croker that Disraeli, in Coningsby, drew
the portrait of Rigby. The Quarterly itself has recently defended
him, and not unsuccessfully, against such an extreme charge. That
he was a prejudiced, a bitter and a violent, political partisan is
beyond dispute.
The later political developments of the two great Reviews,
however interesting, when W. E. Gladstone was an occasional
contributor to The Edinburgh and The Quarterly (his topics
being by no means exclusively political), and when Lord Salisbury
was lending his brilliant and polemical pen to the conservative
cause in The Quarterly, do not concern us here, though they seem
to deserve passing mention.
The birth and early growth of The Quarterly Review were, as
we have seen, the direct result of the political animosities called
forth by the reforming, and, as was then considered, the dangerous,
doctrines, which, for the previous half dozen years, The Edinburgh
had been spreading through the land. The rise of Blackwood's
Magazine was mainly due to a quite different cause, though a
conservative or tory spirit (to use the then current expression)
animated its principal supporters as strongly as it did those whom
Scott and Canning had summoned to the launch of The Quarterly
on its distinguished career. Constable was the publisher, not the
real founder, of The Edinburgh; Murray stood in the same rela-
tion to The Quarterly. But the new magazine which appeared in
1817 was brought into life by the energy, ability and acumen of
the spirited publisher whose name it bore. In 1802, The Edin-
burgh-a new departure in this class of literature resulted from
the association, at that time, in Edinburgh, for the purpose of
literary and political criticism, of a group of gifted and ardent and
independent young men, none of whom was then known to fame.
In 1809, its great rival, The Quarterly, had, in a less adventurous
fashion, taken the field. It had behind it, from the beginning, the
patronage and support of the leading statesmen of the prevailing
political party in the state, and it was assisted by some of the most
distinguished literary men of the day. Both these reviews had
prospered. Their circulation was believed to be, and was, very
large. The great position and prosperity of Constable, especially,
known in Edinburgh as 'the Crafty,' largely due to the wonderful
success of The Edinburgh, naturally attracted the attention of


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156
[CH.
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aspiring rivals in the trade. At this time, moreover, Blackwood
was feeling keenly the defeat of a well-grounded hope that he
had established a lasting connection with Scott by the publica-
tion of The Black Dwarf, which, however, after the fourth
edition, had been, somewhat roughly, transferred to Constable.
His feelings, as a high tory in politics, and as a rival in trade,
concurred in stirring him to make a great effort to lower whig
ascendency, tackle The Edinburgh Review and establish and
promote the publishing fame of the house of Blackwood.
In Blackwood's opinion, The Quarterly, however sound its
principles, was too ponderous and dignified and middle-aged to
counteract the mischief done by the brilliant and dashing organ
of Jeffrey. He was in search of something lighter-an Edinburgh
magazine ‘more nimble, more frequent, more familiar. His first
start was disappointing, and, by the time that the third number of
his monthly had been published, its insipidity, want of spirit and
lack of party zeal had determined him to place its management in
new hands. He saw the necessity of making a sensation. To
begin with, at all events, it would be better to startle, and even to
shock, the public than merely to win its respectful applause. And
the three, in their different ways very gifted men, to whom he now
turned were admirably suited for his purpose-Lockhart, in later
days to become famous as editor of The Quarterly Review, and
the biographer of Scott; Wilson, afterwards professor of moral
philosophy and destined to live in English literature as 'Christo-
pher North’; and Hogg, the Ettrick shepherd. The result of their
joint lucubrations was the famous ‘Chaldee MS. ,' which, in
language parodied from Scripture, overwhelmed, with scathing
satire and personal ridicule, the best known and most respected
notabilities of the Scottish metropolis. Blackwood was reckoning
upon the outrageousness of his new number to advertise it. And
he had not reckoned in vain, for its bitter personalities and strong
flavour of irreverence at once roused a storm, and offended the
literary world of Edinburgh. It is surprising that the excitement
should have spread far beyond the bounds of Edinburgh and
Scotland, where, alone, the personal and local allusions of this
famous satire could have been appreciated. Blackwood and his
friends had, in their immediate object, succeeded magnificently,
for the October number had made Maga, as its supporters loved
to call it, famous throughout the land.
Still, notoriety and fame, thus achieved, brought down upon
the heads of Blackwood and his coadjutors no little trouble.
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VI]
157
Lockhart
Libel actions and challenges to mortal combat filled the air. No
one would own to being responsible editor; and, as to the
Chaldee MS. ,' it would seem to have slipped in almost unawares,
if we can believe the account which Blackwood gave to those who
threatened him. After a large number of copies had been sold,
the magazine was suppressed, and future copies were published
without the famous paper. In the eyes of readers of a century later,
there are two articles in the same number that deserve even more
serious condemnation: namely, the violent attack on Coleridge and
his Biographia Literaria, written by Wilson, and the still more
virulent attack on Leigh Hunt and the Cockney school of poetry,
written by Lockhart. With Blackwoods Magazine, hatred of the
school,' giving it an extended signification, became an obsession.
Leigh Hunt, editor of the radical Examiner, was, doubtless, a red
rag to the young tory writers of Maga; but they must have been
blind indeed when they threatened with their wrath the 'minor
adherents' of the school—the Shelleys, the Keats's and the
Webbes. '
The only excuse Lockhart could make for himself in later years
was his extreme youth at the time when he first entered the service
of Maga. He had fallen under the influence of Wilson-a dozen
years his senior-whose enthusiastic temperament and social charm,
united with literary ability of a very high order, had, from the
beginning, greatly impressed him.