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ject than the particular matter immediately before him. The personality and bitterness of a Dennis, and the philosophy and dignity of a Warburton and a Johnson, could no longer

be traced in the meagre and manifold articles of the monthly press. The spirit of the art was at once stale and acrid on particular topics, insipid and odious with respect to others. No at

The controversy between the English Universities and the Edinburgh Review, it is now unnecessary to notice. The ignorance of "the associates," was completely exposed, and the result is known to so many of those who were filially interested in the discussion, that it is needless almost to refer to it. But, independent of the general question, there were particular topics intruded that ought to be noticed, as they serve to prove the ignorance of the Reviewers on the very subjects which they affected to discuss most learnedly. For some of these I would refer to the Rev. Mr S. Butler's letter to the Rev. Mr C. J. Blomfieldpublished at Shrewsbury, in 1810.-The letter respects the Cambridge Eschylus, and the Oxford Strabo.

"The Edinburgh Review," says Mr Butler, "observes, that there is reason, however, to believe, that some of the libraries on the continent conceal manuscripts, more valuable than any which have yet been collated by any editor; one in particular, of venerable antiquity, is preserved in the Medicean library at Florence; unless, as it is most probable, it has been conveyed with the other treasures of that city, to the vast museum of learning and arts at Paris.""" Now from hence," says Mr Butler, “we must infer that the Medicean MS. has never been collated. The contrary is the fact; I have now two very accurate collations of that MS. lying before me, one of which is transcribed from the book already mentioned, [a book which the Reviewer saw,] and was made for Dr Nedham, by Salvini, &c.-I put it therefore to you, my dear sir, whether the Reviewer, in this instance, is not guilty of a most unfair and illiberal insinuation? He could not be ignorant of what must have stared him in the face in every note; he must, therefore, have been silent through the basest and most malevolent design."-P. 13.

Mr R. Wharton, we ought to have mentioned, in 1809, published "Remarks on the jacobinical tendency of the Edinburgh Review, in a letter to the Earl of Lonsdale," which may, perhaps, account for the violence which has subsequently been expressed by some of the Reviewers against the noble Lord and his family; but it is not my object, nor the design of these brief and cursory sketches, to notice matters of this sort. There is, however, an amusing letter by a personage who styles himself Senex, published by Hatchard about the same time, that deserves some attention. Pages 5th and 6th are, indeed, particularly entertaining, wherein the writer alludes to certain physiognomical peculiarities of the writers in the Review, as indicatory of their character; but I cannot afford to quote such passages, and it would destroy their effect to abridge them.

In 1809, an Expostulatory Letter was addressed to the Editor of the Edinburgh Review, published by Longman. It seems to have been called forth by the want of critical discernment in the review of the works of Miss Baillie.

"You have uniformly," says the author, "treated all feminine attempts in literature as King Lear's fool describes the cook-maid to have treated the live cels that she was putting in a pye. Whenever they lifted their heads, she rapped them on the coxcombs with a stick, and cried, Down, wantons, down.” ***** "Witness the unmanly and illiberal treatment of your fair and ingenious countrywomen, Mrs H. and Miss B. The pretensions of the first to poetical elegance, in the very limited department which she has modestly chosen, have been already acknowleged by the public, to whom you, as well as she, must finally submit, as your ultimate judge." *** “Miss B. without pretensions to learning, and too much occupied by the duties of a life singularly useful and innocent, even to find leisure for extensive reading, has been urged, by the irresistible impulse of a daring and truly original genius, to throw into a dramatic form the noble conceptions of her untutored mind. Thus circumstanced, and thus impelled, she certainly claims every indulgence." P. 20.

But the author, in a subsequent paragraph, says,—

"It is not altogether the matter, but the caustic harshness of the manner, to an author so modest, defenceless, and respectable, that produced general disgust.'

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It was about 1808-9, that the Edinburgh Review reached the acme of insolence. It had then become fearless and infatuated, and the cry began to rise from all sides against it. Among others who attacked it at that time, the

tempt was made to govern or direct public taste, or public opinion, but only to puff to palling the works of the trade-hacks, and to sentence, in a single sentence, the labours of uncon

nected students, to ridicule and con tempt. The persons concerned in the inglorious profession of a London re viewer of that period, were unknown and the ignorance of the world, which

deadliest wound it received was from a pamphlet entitled, "The Dangers of the Edinburgh Review; or a brief Exposure of its Principles in Religion, Mo rals, and Politics." The writer accused it "of infidelity in religion, licen tiousness in morals; and seditious and revolutionary principles in politics." P. 4 And, with considerable ability and great temper, substantiates the first of these grave accusations. "As these Reviewers," says he, "recommend infidel books, in perfect consistency, they despise the Scriptures."

"We shall leave it," (say they, No. 13, p. 99.) "to others to decide, whether the taste of that critic be very good, who prefers the harp of the Jews to the lyre of the Greeks; and who plucks the laurel from the brow of Homer, to place it on the head of good King David."

P. 6.

And as the Edinburgh Reviewers despise the Scriptures, so of course they reject their doctrines.

"We do not," (say they, No. 14, p. 418 and 419,) “know the designs of the Crea tor in the construction of the universe, or the ultimate destination of man. The idea of its being our duty to co-operate with the designs of Providence, we think the most impious presumption !” “ Ñow, Christians do know the ultimate destination of man; they know that he will arise at the last day from the dead, and will be either eternally happy or eternally miserable. Infidels do not know this." &c. P. 8.

In No. 24, p. 357, they scruple not to call Plato, Zeno, and Leibnitz, the "sublimest teachers of moral wisdom." "Now believers in the Gospel think that Jesus Christ is the sublimest teacher of moral wisdom," &c. P. 10.

The writer of the pamphlet, after shewing the infidel spirit that pervaded the Review, proceeds with the proofs of its licentiousness.

"Now," says he, "no man of strict moral principles can speak of vicious and lewd books but with reprehension; but the Edinburgh Reviewers speak of Voltaire's Candide, one of the most obscene books, as a work which afforded them much pleasure."

***"A work, whose great object it was to ridicule a Providence, and which abounds with the most lewd and licentious incidents and descriptions." P. 16.

Upon the subject of its seditious tendency I shall say nothing. Party spirit at the time ran high,-the Whigs had been expelled from office by the late King, and they were still, like the outcast devils of the Paradise Lost, weltering in the torments of mortified ambition, fallen from such a height.

I have already said that it is unnecessary to notice the controversy respecting" The Calumnies of the Edinburgh Review against the University of Oxford;" but I have before me an Edinburgh pamphlet, written by Mr H. Home Drummond, in which it appears that the Reviewers were ignorant of the subject on which they had written; and that their observations, instead of applying to the then state of the University, referred to a period long prior. "It is strange," says Mr Drummond, "that while these authors can set at defiance the anti-commercial decrees of Buonaparte, and present their readers with such ingenious and interesting pictures of foreign literature; that while Paris, and Petersburgh, and Turkey, the East and West Indies, and the whole continent of America, are open to their researches, their supplies of information from the West of England should be so miserably scanty, that ten long years shall elapse before they are perfectly aware' that a new system of education is established at Oxford." P. 71.

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The Reviewers probably knew as little of the state of literature in other countries as they did of the University of Oxford. But these notes have already extended to such a length that I must conclude them. They are sufficient to shew that a work, which failed so essentially in all the rules of just criticism, could not possibly endure long. Smartness and pertness for a time may amuse; but qualities of a more solid kind are requisite to preserve the public approbation.

It was my intention to have mentioned the conduct of the Review towards the late amiable Mr Grahame's beautiful poem of the "Sabbath;" but as Mr Jeffrey personally expressed his grief and contrition for the spleen he indulged on that occasion, it is unnecessary,

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ir vulgar conceptions of taste and nners constantly betrayed, shewed t their condition was as obscure as ir names. Now and then an amar article, of a better kind, the efion of college friendship to recomnd some abstruse illustration of e unread classic, did appear among congregation of trade articles, like a uce divine in the crowd of Cheap e. But even in those learned essays, which the London Reviews, in their age, were so proud, there was nong that came home to men's business bosoms; they had all a scholastic I unpractical character. They might ve been ornamental in the ponderstomes of Scaligerian erudition; haps have merited the approbation a Dacier, or a Porson; but they ther instructed the age, nor exaded the horizon of knowledge. A rk, therefore, which assumed a chater the reverse of the London Rews, and which undertook to treat things as they are, and to consider ssing events and existing opinions, affecting the comfort and condion of the living world, could not t, on its first appearance, be hailwith preference and respect, by at new and numerous class of reads, whom the spreading taste for liteture, and the more generous educaon of recent times had raised in the tions;—a class, who, without any etensions to the literary character, rried into the seats and haunts of siness, a degree of critical acumen, knowledge, and sometimes even of ence, which qualified them to estiate the merits of authors, while it larged the sphere of their profesnal pursuits. Nor will the fact disputed, that, at the time when Edinburgh Review made its aparance, there existed, among all ranks d orders in this country, a general tellectualization, if the expression ay be used, on every subject, not onon those which affected agriculture, anufactures and commerce, but the joyments of taste and art; in a word, all with which the feelings and the asoning are interested. The merchant d become, by his wealth, qualified associate with princes, and, by his complishments, to entertain philosoers. The maxims of national polity ere as familiar to the physician as to e statesman; and the lawyer judged the productions of genius with the

VOL. X.

liberality and discernment of the gentleman and connoiseur. The great political events that were so loudly resounding on all sides, had awakened a universal curiosity, the gratification of which rapidly increased the intelligence of the people, even down to the very artizans.

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The inference, therefore, to be drawn from all this; from the previous susceptibility arising from the rejection of the insane dogmas of the democrats; from the state of periodical criticism in London, and from the improved intelligence and literary taste of the age, ensured to such an undertaking as the Edinburgh Review the most splendid and unprecedented success.

Having thus stated the causes and circumstances which contributed to the rise of that celebrated journal, it may now be proper to take a view of its progress; the last is more invidious, because it may be supposed to involve the necessity of estimating the talents and powers of particular individuals; but the brief limits to which this sketch is restricted, obviates that necessity in a great degree, and confines the disquisition to the general characteristics and features of the book alone.

Besides those universal motives which induced the public to receive with no ordinary welcome the first appearance of the Edinburgh Review, the work, by addressing itself to the patronage of the Whigs, at that time strong and formidable by their implied union with the democratical faction, secured at once the personal interest and applauses of a numerous and most loquacious association. Delighted with a work on their side, in which so much more talent and practical sense appeared than in any other of the kind, they were loud and vehement in their plaudits, and the genius of the writers was magnified to the skies-the Tories, too, were pleased to see a work which left at such an immeasurable distance the raving nonsense of the anarchy press; and though they disliked its anti-national principles and prejudices, they joined in regarding it as a meritorious publication, calculated in the main to assist in the restoration of those ancient feelings and venerable affections which had been so outrageously violated and broken. The consequence was immediate. The circulation of the Review rapidly exceeded the most sanguine

4 Q

hopes of the projectors, and all the honours and homages of a premature immortality were bestowed on the contributors. They were allowed a pontifical authority in taste, a prophetical, in politics; the fates of authors and of kingdoms were alike committed to their decision and foresight and Jeffrey and Brougham became the Minos and Rhadamanthus of literature. But this prodigality of praise, this superstitious admiration, was soon discovered to be excessive. The spirit of the publication was certainly less irrational than that of its predecessors in the democratic interest, but it possessed a full measure of Jacobin antipathy against the political adversaries of the Whig party. Doubts also arose as to the soundness of many of its opinions in matters of taste, in consequence of authors, whom it consigned to derision,growing up in to fame, and overshadowing, with a vast luxuriance of vigour in bough and blos

som, the stateliest of all the ancien bay-trees of literature, Events, to began to falsify the brave arrogance c its political predictions, and the perse verance and constancy with which th Tory administration adhered to th principles on which the war had bee undertaken, seemed to partake of som nobler quality than the obstinacy an folly with which they were charge by the Whig orators and their echoe in the Review. It was also discovered that the Reviewers wrote rather of than to, the public mind; that thei pages were but so many mirrors, which only reflected opinions that already existed.

But nothing so effectually arrested the progress of the Edinburgh Review as the establishment in London of the Quarterly. The northern work hac become so intolerant; success had made it so insolent, that it could ne longer be endured by the moderate To ries; (c) and they longed for another,

(c) It is perhaps difficult to point out any particular cause in the conduct of the Edinburgh Review, which completed the disgust of the Tories with the intolerant party character of the work; we are, however, inclined to think, that Number XXXI., published in April, 1810, occasioned their decision. The despicable spirit in which the Review of Lord Erskine's speeches was drawn up, to say nothing of its literary incongruities, not only roused their indignation, but was viewed as something partaking of the rabia of insanity and infatuation by many, even of the most sensible Whigs themselves.-Cobbet, himself, appears a gentleman when speaking of the living, compared to the manner in which the frantic reviewer speaks of the deceased Mr Pitt, and the abhorrence which the article produced at the time, was sharpened by the report that it was from the pen of one who had sneaked to earn his favour; who had not only traduced Lord Lauderdale's pamphlet, as his Lordship said, to ingratiate himself with that statesman, but was understood to have accepted from Mr Pitt himself a non-descript mission to Portugal, almost as base as that of a spy-we say almost, because it may be possible that there are secret diplomatic appointments which do not partake of such an odious character, and the one alluded to may have been one of them. The Whigs, of late, have been making a clamorous outcry against the personality of the Tory press; but since the death of Mr Fox, has any thing appeared from it reflecting on his character to compare with the following?

“Mr Frost had been a reformer too, and had even held a high office among the members of Mr Pitt's society. In this capacity, he had constant communications with that distinguished personage; and at his trial, could even produce the most cordial and respectful letters on the interests of their "great and common cause." The canting visage of Harrison, or the steady virtue of Hutchison, were not more hateful to Cromwell-Danton and Brissot were not more formidable to Robespierre-Sieyes is less odious to Buonaparte a catholic petition to Lord Castlereagh-or, to come nearer to the point, the question of the abolition to the same Mr Pitt himself, after his periods had been turned on the slave traffic; than such men as Frost, Hardy, Thelwall, and Holcroft, were to that convicted reformer of the Parliament. After he had once forsworn the error of his way, and said to corruption, " thou art my brother," and called power, or rather place, his God, (for he truckled too much for the sake of keeping in he was too mean in his official propensities to deserve the name of ambitious,)—the sight of a reformer was a spectre to his eyes--he detested it as the wicked do the light as tyrants do the history of their own times, which haunts their repose even after the conscience

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in public estimation. But on all sides, events began to arise which confounded and mortified its most strenuous admirers. The whole of its political predictions were falsified, not only with respect to the war, and the changes in operation on the feelings of the world, but with regard to the views which it had taken of individual character, and of human nature, in relation to the chief actors in French affairs. The triumphs of the Peninsular war overwhelmed and finished its pretensions to political sagacity. Never in the history of literature was any thing so complete and perfect as the demonstration of the political insagacity of the Edinburgh Review. Its inferiority and inability with respect to the estimates of genius also, about the same time, received an equal exposure. From the publication of Childe Harold, the author of which it had so merrily ridiculed for being no poet, all confidence was lost for ever in its dicta in taste; and Jeffrey will hereafter be chiefly recollected as the Zoilus

has ceased to sting their souls. We must be pardoned for using this language--WE

KNOW OF NO EPITHET TOO HARSH FOR HIM WHO WAS PROFLIGATE ENOUGH TO THIRST FOR THE BLOOD OF HIS FORMER ASSOCIATES IN REFORM-of the very men whom his own eloquence, and the protection of his high station, had seduced into popular courses and not content with deserting them, to use the power with which he had mounted on their backs for the purpose of their destruction !"""

The absurdity of this passage is almost as ridiculous as the fustian of the composition. Did Mr Pitt mount into power on the backs of Frost, Hardy, Thelwall, and Holcroft? But the nonsense is nothing to the rhodomontade that follows.

"When the wars and the taxes which we owe to the lamentable policy of this rash statesman shall be forgotten and the turmoils of this factious age shall live only in historical record;-when those venal crowds shall be no more, who now subsist on the spoil of the myriads, whom he has undone the passage of this great orator's life, which will excite the most lively emotions, will be that where his apostacies are enrolled-where the case of the African slave, and of the Irish catholic, stand black in the sight; but most of all, will his heart shudder at his persecutions of the reformers-and his attempt to naturalize in England a system of proscriptions, which nothing but the trial by jury and by English judges could have prevented from sinking the whole land in infamy and blood." Ed. Review, No. XXXI, page 120.

But, after all this rant and bouncing, we would ask the Reviewer, was Mr Pitt the only persecutor of the said reformers? and did he persecute them for being reformers after his own kind, or after the Reviewer's kind?-because the Reformers may have changed their opinion of Parliamentary reform, and because there are certain dark passages in Thelwall's Letter to Jeffrey, already quoted, which we would gladly see expounded-"You must be well aware, Mr Jeffrey," says the derided reformer and lecturer, "that YOUR FORMER HISTORY, and that of SOME OF YOUR MOST INTIMATE COLLEAGUES, can be no secret in Edinburgh ;-that you could have no public pretence for volunteering yourselves as my opponents, or as my prejudicators.' Now, in the historical distance in which we are placed, we should be glad to know what is here meant, and why Mr Thelwall inquires" By what strange and sinister motive" Mr Jeffrey was induced to render" himself an instrument of "calumny, malignity, and injustice," against that then poor persecuted individual.

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