shall be neither inflammatory, nor enervating, nor perversive of sound knowledge, nor injurious to the taste, but, on the contrary, shall have a rectifying tendency in all these respects; this, as it is one of the leading purposes of the work, so it is in our estimation beyond all comparison the most important; and it is for the sake of this that we have thought the Retrospective Review worthy of recommendation to our readers. It is this which renders it more instructive, and, to a healthy and well-judging mind, even more entertaining than any of its contemporaries; not to mention the permanent interest which it hence acquires, as a repository of thoughts, words, and facts, of which no change of circumstances can impair the value. And such an end, from the nature of the case, must be more or less served, whatever may be the skill or diligence of the compiler. In the present case, indeed, although on the whole we have good reason to be satisfied with the manner in which the reviewers have executed their task, we think that they have in several of their selections, sinned against good judgmentthat is, against our judgment; and that although we know of no instance in which the quotations can be justly considered as too numerous, there are many in which the collector has incurred the opposite charge of scantiness, from a fear, no doubt, of overcharging the delicate digestion of the polite reader*. So highly, indeed, do we value this part of the work, that we could wish that the analecta were left more to themselves: we allude to the officious notes of preparation by which they are ushered in. “These lines are fanciful and elegant."—"We conclude with the following animated picture."-" The following Epigram is very good."" A gentle and tender melancholy is diffused over the following reflections."" Nothing can be sweeter than this image," &c. We do not want to be told beforehand what to approve, and in what kind and degree to approve it. We do not like to see the critic pat a fine passage on the back by way of encouragement, as he introduces it to the reader. This is sheer impertinence; it is encroaching on our cherished right of private judgment; it is dictating to our perceptions, and overlaying them

*Were we to mention any articles as particularly happy in this respect, we should specify that on Dryden's Plays, one of the most perfect specimens of anthology we are acquainted with; the series of articles on the Early English Drama; those on Glover's Athenaid, Sir William Davenant's Gondibert, Brown's Pastorals, and the Poems of Southwell, Crashaw, Donne, and Daniel; on Bergerac's Satyrical Characters, the Travels of Sir Anthony Sherley, Cavendish's Life of Wolsey, Luther's Table-Talk, and Defoe's History of the Plague.

As examples of skilful abstracts, comprehensive without being prolix, we might name the papers on North's Lives of Lord Guildford and of Sir Dudley North, &c., Burnet's History of his own times, and the Life of Bishop Latimer.

in their infancy with the featherbed of another man's opinion. If the reviewer wishes the passage to make the same impression on us which it did on himself, let him present it to us as he found it, unencumbered with these head-pieces of commendation. And yet we know not whether we ought to find fault with this practice; it originated undoubtedly in a tender consideration for the public obtuseness of perception; perhaps, too, the critic was unable to restrain the expression of his admiration : we have only noticed it on account of the annoyance which it occasioned ourselves.

With regard to the amount of information shewn in these volumes, we must speak with great qualification. It would be unjust to deny that the historical notices, as far as they go, contain much useful illustration: still there is a rawness about them, indicative of hasty and imperfect inquiry, undertaken for a temporary purpose. It would be difficult to name any one article as demonstrating profound research. There is also a want of collateral information; of that general knowledge, which, though its influence is more efficient than palpable, is uniformly found to throw a light upon individual subjects, which a more narrow and confined investigation had failed to bestow. In classical scholarship, among other things, the writers are greatly defective; and here we may take occasion to notice the want of typographical accuracy which pervades the work, and which is more especially visible in the Latin quotations*.

Of the style of criticism adopted in this work, it may be said in general that it exhibits, both in its merits and defects, the marks of the new school; a school which, originating in Germany, and naturalized in this country by the influence of a few eminent writers, has given a tone more or less decided to almost the whole of our periodical literature. Its chief fault, as exemplified here and in many similar works, is a certain vagueness, and a want of recurrence to fixed principles. This is, indeed, an error into which the critics of the school in question are much more liable to fall than their opponents, inasmuch as the code of the one being founded on temporary opinion and conventional rules, while that of the other has its origin in the eternal laws of nature and the human mind, the application of the latter requires inferior faculties to that of the former, and from its limited range, is less liable to error; in the same manner as (to use an illustration which we

*We give some curious instances, obviously the result of carelessness, or at least of a very inobservant sight. Vol. V., p. 318, "I tell thee, Love is Nature's second son," for 66 sun." Ib., p. 325,"guilts and conducts," for "gulfs and conduits." In Vol., VI. p. 362, worthy old Isaac Walton is represented as" zealously hoping that all others may be exterminated;" a wish worthy of Caligula. Read “otters." Vol. VI., p. 187, in a line from the Absalom and Achitophel, "A church vermilion, and a More's face;" for Moses,"

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have seen applied to another subject) the traveller who journeys over an immense plain is liable to mistake the forms of objects at a distance, while to the captive, pacing the narrow and high-walled court-yard of his prison, all objects appear equally distinct. Hence frequent obscurity and inconsistency; and hence the veterans of the old mechanical regime, whose weapons are more easily wielded, and who employ more dexterity in using them, are sometimes able to reduce their opponents to a perplexity, from which a more thorough knowledge of the subject would have saved them. In this, too, as in other respects, we trace the results of hasty writing, in a half-formed judgment and an exaggerated tone of expression. Another occasional fault is a sentimental mawkishness, and a morbid cast of thought and expression, which, by some fatality, appears most glaring in some of the best articles; we allude particularly to that on Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia, the work certainly of no ordinary mind; full of enthusiasm, and indicating a deep perception of the beautiful-and which, on the whole, may be regarded as the finest piece of criticism in the collection; and the performances, in general, of a writer whose hand is frequently visible in the earlier numbers-the reviewer of Rymer and John Dennis, and the author of the anomalous article calling itself a review of Wallace's Prospects of Mankind, but which in reality embraces all subjects, past, present, and future-a writer whose forte seems to be acuteness, but who has been betrayed into this false taste by his exuberant wealth of words; his flaccid style appearing rather a superinduced disease, than the natural efflux of his vigorous and well-constituted mind. We might add, that they are sometimes guilty of the sin of affectation; that their attempts at sprightliness now and then remind us of that most melancholy of mirth-makers, Leigh Hunt; that they allow themselves to be tied down too much by the official forms and statutable style of a review; and that like other reviewers, they sometimes contradict themselves; which is the less excusable, as they at least have no temptation to forge extemporary canons of criticism for the purpose of extolling or depreciating a contemporary performance. But what compensates for many defects in these observations, is the honest and hearty spirit of admiration with which they are animated; the love of beauty for its own sake, and the disdain of petty cavils. It is impossible not to perceive that they are written con amore, and from a genuine, though very often indistinct and exaggerated, sense of the excellencies of the original; and we feel ourselves at ease, as in the company of one who has no design upon our applause, but who is contented with expressing his own feelings, no matter how inartificially, if by so doing he may excite others to love what he loves himself.

One other feature of the Retrospective Review remains to be no

ticed; the perpetual introduction of the writer's personal opinions on politics and other subjects. This would appear, at first sight, to be a violation of the promise of neutrality made in the preface.. The truth, we believe to be, that the reviewers (as is always the case with persons strongly prepossessed with their own notions, and of partial experience) fancy that in expressing these opinions, they are advancing what no one denies-except, perhaps, a few antiquated bigots. They mistake their own controverted doctrines for part and parcel of the common faith of Englishmen; so that the promulgation of them is no more an encroachment upon the common ground, than the utterance of the most ordinary truism. And with regard to the obtrusion of such subjects in a situation where they appear irrelevant, this, though a fault, is in some degree an inevitable one. There is a certain natural link of connexion among all highly-interesting subjects; so that no one of them can be surveyed in a state of perfect detachment from the rest. Whoever writes feelingly on serious subjects, will find it difficult to avoid (in the modern phrase) compromising himself. His opinions will exude in some way or other; and the more so, in proportion to his earnestness in the cause. For it is the indifferent only who find the suppression of their sentiments easy. With others, what touches one moral nerve awakens a corresponding sensation in the rest; with them, all the pulses are alike dead. Their opinions are mere inoperative notions, which may subsist as well in separation as united; like the limbs of a withered tree, which, although in their living state, union was necessary to their existence, as pieces of dry wood may exist just as well in a detached state-and, for some purposes, more conveniently. Our reviewers are not of this cast; their heart is full, and their mouth speaketh. This propensity, however, is in some respects an unfortunate one. By the offence it gives to the prejudices of one class of readers, it may impede the popularity of a work which ought to be hailed with the general approbation of the public. The references to modern politics, too, produce a discordant effect in a work professedly devoted to the recollections of the past. Such a work ought to preserve, with regard to the petty disputes of the day, something like the calmness of the grave; something like the dispassionate tone in which we might imagine the illustrious dead themselves would treat the affairs of the world they had left behind them:

Their toils, their little triumphs o'er,
Their human passions now no more,

Save Charity, that glows beyond the tomb.

Besides the exclusiveness of their sympathies prevents them from entering into a great part of the feeling of their originals; thus destroying the charm of unity-the heart-warm text appearing to be

bound reluctantly to the cold corpse of a comment. The chivalrous loyalty of our ancestors, their zealous churchmanship, and orthodox piety, seek in vain for a conducting medium in the breast of the reviewer. We respect the honest zeal in which this originates; and we allow that it requires extraordinary charity, or extraordinary enlargement of mind, to appreciate fully upright intention, and sympathize heartily with virtuous feeling in whatever cause they may be displayed; and to recognise and worship truth, in whatever combination it may be found with error. Sometimes, also, the writer thinks it necessary to indulge in a sneer at the absurdities of opinion contained in the passage before him; apparently not from any scoffing propensity in the abstract, but for form sake, and by way of quit-rent to the prejudices of his readers, or perhaps through fear lest he should himself be suspected of entertaining the exploded heresy. This is in bad taste; for (taking it for granted, which is not always clear, that the supposed error was really such) the sentiment implied in the remark of the critic is not the sentiment which the perusal of the passage itself creates, imbued as it is with undoubting faith and sincerity, and therefore incapable of exciting unmixed ridicule; it is the result of after reflection, and ought not to be obtruded on us in our first perusal. Finally, their political predilections, and their propensity always to favour the weaker side; a propensity, doubtless, far preferable to that which sequitur fortunam semper, et odit

Damnatos,

give an occasional tinge of partiality to their historical details. Thus in the memoir of Southwell the poet, the writer notices some harshness which was exercised towards Southwell by the English government in the time of Elizabeth, and proceeds to inveigh in the fashionable style against Protestant intolerance; forgetting that the severities in question, as far as they were matter of precaution, were fully justified by the machinations of the Pope and the intrigues of the Jesuits.

These, however, are minor blemishes; and we should be unpardonable, if, after the above enumeration of defects, we were to omit noticing the most honourable characteristic of this Review, the tone of good feeling and honest intention which pervades it throughout. It is refreshing to turn from the cant, the personality, the petty squabbles, the dishonest artifices, and the pandering to mischievous prejudices, which (with all proper exceptions) characterize our popular critical journals, to the high and generous views of the writers before us, their disinterested love of departed worth and intellectual greatness, their sympathy with every thing worthy in action or noble in sentiment, their zeal in the cause of humanity, and their true English spirit. It is this which makes amends for a thousand errors; it is this which induces us to overlook the crudeness of their