Chapter VII: Part 7

Let it not be imagined, from any thing we have now said, that we think meanly of Mr. Maturin's genius and abilities. It is precisely because we hold both in respect that we are sincerely anxious to point out their misapplication; and we have extended our observations to a greater length than we contemplated, partly because we fear that his strong though unregulated imagination, and unlimited command of glowing language, may inflict upon us a herd of imitators who, "possessing the contortions of the Sybil without her inspiration," will deluge us with dull, turgid, and disgusting enormities;--and partly because we are not without hopes that our animadversions, offered in a spirit of sincerity, may induce the Author himself to abandon this new Apotheosis of the old Raw-head-and-bloody-bones, and assume a station in literature more consonant to his high endowments, and to that sacred profession to which, we understand, he does honour by the virtues of his private life.

THE QUARTERLY REVIEW

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

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

WILLIAM GIFFORD

(1757-1826)

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * *

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

The review of _Endymion_ called forth Byron's famous apostrophe to--

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

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

JOHN WILSON CROKER

(1780-1857)

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

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

* * * * *

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

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

JOHN GIBSON LOCKHART

(1794-1854)

It is to be regretted that Lockhart, who is so honourably remembered by his great _Life of Scott_, his "fine and animated translation" of Spanish Ballads, and his neglected--but powerful--_Adam Blair_, should be so intimately associated with the black record of the _Quarterly_. He was also a contributor to _Blackwood_ from October, 1817, succeeding Gifford in the editorial chair of Mr. Murray's Review in 1825 until 1853.

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

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

* * * * *

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

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

SIR WALTER SCOTT

(1771-1832)

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

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

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

RICHARD WHATELY

(1787-1863)

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

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

* * * * *

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

WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE

(1809-1898)

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

* * * * *

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

SAMUEL WILBERFORCE

(1805-1873)

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

* * * * *

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

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

ANONYMOUS

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

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

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

GIFFORD ON WEBER'S "FORD"

[From _The Quarterly Review_, December, 1811]

... When it is determined to reprint the writings of an ancient author, it is usual, we believe, to bestow a little labour in gratifying the natural desire of the reader to know something of his domestic circumstances. Ford had declared in the title-pages of his several plays, that he was of the Inner Temple; and, from his entry there, Mr. Malone, following up the inquiry, discovered that he was the second son of Thomas Ford, Esq., and that he was baptized at Ilsington, in Devonshire, the 17th of April, 1586. To this information Mr. Weber has added nothing; and he hopes that the meagreness of his biographical account will be readily excused by the reader who has examined the lives of his (Ford's) dramatical contemporaries, in which we are continually "led to lament that our knowledge respecting them amounts to little better than nothing." It would surely be unjust to appear dissatisfied at the imperfect account of an ancient author, when all the sources of information have been industriously explored. But, in the present case, we doubt whether Mr. Weber can safely "lay this flattering unction to his soul"; and we shall therefore give such a sketch of the poet's life, as an attentive examination of his writings has enabled us to compile....

Reversing the observation of Dryden on Shakespeare, it may be said of Ford that "he wrote laboriously, not luckily": always elegant, often elevated, never sublime, he accomplished by patient and careful industry what Shakespeare and Fletcher produced by the spontaneous exuberance of native genius. He seems to have acquired early in life, and to have retained to the last a softness of versification peculiar to himself. Without the majestic march of verse which distinguishes the poetry of Massinger, and with none of that playful gaiety which characterises the dialogue of Fletcher, he is still easy and harmonious. There is, however, a monotony in his poetry, which those who have perused his scenes long together must have inevitably perceived. His dialogue is declamatory and formal, and wants that quick chace of replication and rejoinder so necessary to effect in representation. If we could put out of our remembrance the singular merits of "The Lady's Trial," we should consider the genius of Ford as altogether inclined to tragedy; and even there so large a proportion of the pathetic pervades the drama, that it requires the "humours" of Guzman and Fulgoso, in addition to a happy catastrophe, to warrant the name of comedy. In the plots of his tragedies Ford is far from judicious; they are for the most part too full of the horrible, and he seems to have had recourse to an accumulation of terrific incidents, to obtain that effect which he despairs of producing by pathos of language. Another defect in Ford's poetry, proceeding from the same source, is the alloy of pedantry which pervades his scenes, at one time exhibited in the composition of uncouth phrases, at another in perplexity of language; and he frequently labours with a remote idea, which, rather than throw it away, he obtrudes upon his reader, involved in inextricable obscurity. We cannot agree with the editor in praising his delineation of the female character: less than women in their passions, they are more than masculine in their exploits and sufferings; but, excepting Spinella in "The Lady's Trial," and perhaps Penthea, we do not remember in Ford's plays, any example of that meekness and modesty which compose the charm of the female character....

Mr. Weber is known to the admirers of our antient literature by two publications which, although they may not be deemed of great importance in themselves, have yet a fair claim to notice. We speak of the battle of Flodden Field, and the Romances of the fourteenth century: which, as far as we have looked into them, appear very creditable to his industry and accuracy: his good genius, we sincerely regret to say, appears in a great measure to have forsaken him from the moment that he entered upon the task of editing a dramatic poet.

In the mechanical construction of his work Mr. Weber has followed the last edition of Massinger, with a servility which appears, in his mind, to have obviated all necessity of acknowledging the obligation: we will not stop to enquire whether he might not have found a better model; but proceed to the body of the work. As we feel a warm interest in everything which regards our ancient literature, on the sober cultivation of which the purity, copiousness, and even harmony of the English language must, in no small degree, depend, we shall notice some of the peculiarities of the volumes before us, in the earnest hope that while we relieve Ford from a few of the errors and misrepresentations with which he is here encumbered, we may convince Mr. Weber that something more is necessary to a faithful editor than the copying of printers' blunders, and to a judicious commentator, than a blind confidence in the notes of every collection of old plays.

Mr. Weber's attempts at explanation (for explanations it seems, there must be) are sometimes sufficiently humble. "Carriage," he tells us, "is behaviour." It is so; we remember it in our spelling-book, among the words of three syllables, we have therefore no doubt of it. But you must have, rejoins the editor; and accordingly, in every third or fourth page, he persists in affirming that "carriage is behaviour." In the same strain of thankless kindness, he assures us that "fond is foolish," "but, except," "content, contentment," and _vice versa_, "period [Transcriber's note: 'peroid' in original], end," "demur, delay," "ever, always," "sudden, quickly," "quick, suddenly," and so on through a long vocabulary of words of which a girl of six years old would blush to ask the meaning....

The confidence which Mr. Weber reposes in Steevens, not only on one but on every occasion, is quite exemplary: the name alone operates as a charm, and supersedes all necessity of examining into the truth of his assertions; and he gently reminds those who occasionally venture to question it, that "they are ignorant and superficial critics." Vol. ii, p. 256.--"I have seen Summer go up and down with _hot codlings!_ Mr. Steevens observes that a codling _antiently_ meant an immature apple, and the present passage _plainly_ proves it, as none but immature apples could be had in summer," all this wisdom is thrown away. We can assure Mr. Weber, on the authority of Ford himself, that "hot codlings" are _not_ apples, either mature or immature. Steevens is a dangerous guide for such as do not look well about them. His errors are specious: for he was a man of ingenuity: but he was often wantonly mischievous, and delighted to stumble for the mere gratification of dragging unsuspecting innocents into the mire with him. He was, in short, the very Puck of commentators....

No writer, in our remembrance, meets with so many "singular words" as the present editor. He conjectures, however, that _unvamp'd_ means _disclosed_. It means not stale, not patched up. We should have supposed it impossible to miss the sense of so trite an expression.... Mr. Weber's acquaintance with our dramatic writers extends, as the reader must have observed, very little beyond the indexes of Steevens and Reed. If he cannot find the word of which he is in quest, in them, he sets it down as an uncommon expression, or a coinage of his author....

These inadvertences, and many others which might be noticed, being chiefly confined to the notes, do not, perhaps, detract much from the value of the text: we now turn to some of a different kind, which bear hard on the editor, and prove that his want of knowledge is not compensated by any extraordinary degree of attention. It is not sufficient for Mr. Weber to say that many of the errors which we shall point out are found in the old copy. It was his duty to reform them. A facsimile of blunders no one requires. Modern editions of our old poets are purchased upon the faith of a corrected text: this is their only claim to notice; and, if defective here, they become at once little better than waste-paper....

There is something extremely capricious in Mr. Weber's mode of proceeding: words are tampered with which are necessary to the right understanding of the text, while others, which reduce it to absolute jargon, are left unmolested....

We might carry this part of our examination to an immense extent; but we forbear. Enough, and more than enough, is done to show that a strict revision of the text is indispensible; and, if it should fall to the lot of the present editor to undertake it, we trust that he will evince somewhat more care than he manifests in the conclusion of the work before us. It will scarcely be credited that Mr. Weber should travel through such a volume as we have just passed, in quest of errata, and find only one. "Vol. ii (he says), p. 321, line 12, for satiromastrix read satiromastix!"

We could be well content to rest here; but we have a more serious charge to bring against the editor, than the omission of points, or the misapprehension of words. He has polluted his pages with the blasphemies of a poor maniac, who, it seems, once published some detached scenes of the "Broken Heart." For this unfortunate creature, every feeling mind will find an apology in his calamitous situation; but--for Mr. Weber, we know not where the warmest of his friends will seek either palliation or excuse.

ON KEATS

[From _The Quarterly Review_, April, 1818]

Reviewers have sometimes been accused of not reading the works which they affected to criticise. On the present occasion we shall anticipate the author's complaint, and honestly confess that we have not read his work. Not that we have been wanting in our duty--far from it--indeed, we have made efforts almost as superhuman as the story itself appears to be, to get through it; but with the fullest stretch of our perseverence, we are forced to confess that we have not been able to struggle beyond the first of the four books[1] of which this Poetic Romance consists. We should extremely lament this want of energy, or whatever it may be, on our parts, were it not for one consolation--namely, that we are no better acquainted with the meaning of that book through which we have so painfully toiled than we are with that of the three which we have not looked into.

[1] _Endymion: A Poetic Romance_. By John Keats. London, 1818.

It is not that Mr. Keats (if that be his real name, for we almost doubt that any man in his senses would put his real name to such a rhapsody) it is not, we say, that the author has not powers of language, rays of fancy, and gleams of genius--he has all these; but he is unhappily a disciple of the new school of what has been somewhere called Cockney poetry; which may be defined to consist of the most incongruous ideas in the most uncouth language.

Of this school Mr. Leigh Hunt, as we observed in a former number, aspires to be the hierophant. Our readers will recollect the pleasant recipes for harmonious and sublime poetry which he gave us in his preface to _Rimini_, and the still more facetious instances of his harmony and sublimity in the verses themselves; and they will recollect above all the contempt of Pope, Johnson, and such like poetasters and pseudo-critics, which so forcibly contrasted itself with Mr. Leigh Hunt's approbation of

--All the things itself had wrote,
Of special merit though of little note.

The author is a copyist of Mr. Hunt, but he is more unintelligible, almost as rugged, twice as diffuse, and ten times more tiresome and absurd than his prototype, who, though he impudently presumed to seat himself in the chair of criticism, and to measure his own poetry by his own standard, yet generally had a meaning. But Mr. Keats had advanced no dogmas which he was bound to support by examples, his nonsense therefore is quite gratuitous; he writes it for its own sake, and being bitten by Mr. Leigh Hunt's insane criticism, more than rivals the insanity of his poetry.

Mr. Keats's preface hints that his poem was produced under peculiar circumstances....

The two first books, and indeed the two last, are not of such
completion as to warrant their passing the press. p. vii.

Thus, "the two first books" are, even in his own judgment, unfit to appear, and "the two last" are, it seems, in the same condition--and as two and two make four, and as that is the whole number of books, we have a clear and, we believe, a very just estimate of the entire work.

Mr. Keats, however, deprecates criticism on this "immature and feverish" work in terms which are themselves sufficiently feverish; and we confess that we should have abstained from inflicting upon him any of the tortures of the "_fierce hell_" of criticism, which terrify his imagination, if he had not begged to be spared in order that he might write more; if we had not observed in him a certain degree of talent which deserves to be put in the right way, or which, at least, ought to be warned of the wrong; and if, finally, he had not told us that he is of an age and temper which imperiously require mental discipline.

Of the story we have been able to make out but little; it seems to be mythological, and probably relates to the loves of Diana and Endymion; but of this, as the scope of the work has altogether escaped us, we cannot speak with any degree of certainty: and must therefore content ourselves with giving some instances of its diction and versification.-- And here again we are perplexed and puzzled.--At first it appeared to us, that Mr. Keats had been amusing himself and wearying his readers with an immeasurable game at _bouts rimés_; but, if we recollect rightly, it is an indispensable condition at this play, that the rhymes when filled up shall have a meaning; and our author, as we have already hinted, has no meaning. He seems to us to write a line at random, and then he follows not the thought excited by this line, but that suggested by the _rhyme_ with which it concludes. There is hardly a complete couplet inclosing a complete idea in the whole book. He wanders from one subject to another, from the association, not of ideas, but of sounds, and the work is composed of hemistichs which, it is quite evident, have forced themselves upon the author by the mere force of the catchwords on which they turn....

Be still the unimaginable lodge
For solitary thinkings; such as dodge
Conception to the very bourne of heaven,
Then leave the naked brain: be still the leaven,
That spreading in this dull and clodded earth
Gives it a touch ethereal--a new birth. p. 17.

_Lodge, dodge--heaven, leaven--earth, birth_; such, in six words, is the sum and substance of six lines.

We come now to the author's taste in versification. He cannot indeed write a sentence, but perhaps he may be able to spin a line. Let us see. The following are specimens of his prosodial notions of our English heroic metre.

Dear as the temple's self, so does the moon,
The passion poesy, glories infinite, p. 4.

So plenteously all weed-hidden roots, p. 6.

... By this time our readers must be pretty well satisfied as to the meaning of his sentences and the structures of his lines: we now present them with some of the new words with which, in imitation of Mr. Leigh Hunt, he adorns our language.

We are told that "turtles _passion_ their voices" (p. 15); that "an arbour was _nested_" (p. 23); and a lady's locks "_gordian'd_" up (p. 32); and to supply the place of nouns thus verbalised Mr. Keats, with great fecundity, spawns new ones; such as "men-slugs and human _serpentry_" (p. 14); "_honey-feel_ of bliss" (p. 45); "wives prepare _needments_" (p. 13)--and so forth.

Then he has formed new verbs by the process of cutting off their tails, the adverbs, and affixing them to their foreheads; thus "the wine out-sparkled" (p. 10); the "multitude up-follow'd" (p. 11); and "night up-took" (p. 29). "The wind up-blows" (p. 32); and the "hours are down-sunken" (p. 36).

But if he sinks some adverbs in the verbs he compensates the language with adverbs and adjectives which he separates from the parent stock. Thus, a lady "whispers _pantingly_ and close," makes "_hushing_ signs," and steers her skiff into a "_ripply_ cove" (p. 23); a shower falls "_refreshfully_" (p. 45); and a vulture has a "_spreaded_ tail" (p. 44).

But enough of Mr. Leigh Hunt and his simple neophite.--If anyone should be bold enough to purchase this "Poetic Romance," and so much more patient than ourselves, as to get beyond the first book, and so much more fortunate as to find a meaning, we entreat him to make us acquainted with his success; we shall then return to the task which we now abandon in despair, and endeavour to make all due amends to Mr. Keats and to our readers.

CROKER ON SYDNEY SMITH

[From _The Quarterly Review_, February, 1810]

This sermon[1] is written on the characters and duties of the clergy. Perhaps it would have produced more effect upon the Yorkshire divines had it come from one who had lived longer among them, and of the correspondence of whose life with his doctrines, they had better opportunities of judging; one whom, from long experience, they knew to be neither sullied by the little "affectations," nor "agitated by the little vanities of the world," whose strict observance of "those decencies and proprieties," which persons in their profession "owe to their situation in society," they had remarked through a long course of years. Whether the life of Mr. Smith would form an illustration of his own precepts remains to be proved. But, if we rightly recollect dates, he is still to his neighbours a sort of unknown person, and hardly yet tried in his new situation of a parish priest. We therefore think, in spite of all the apologies with which he has prefaced his advice, that a more judicious topic might easily have been selected.

[1] A sermon preached before His Grace the Archbishop of York, and the
clergy, at Malton, at the Visitation, Aug., 1809. By the Rev. Sydney
Smith, A.M., Rector of Foston, in Yorkshire, and late Fellow of New
College, Oxford. Carpenter, 1809.

In the execution of this sermon there is little to commend. As a system of duties for any body of clergy, it is wretchedly deficient:--and really, when we call to mind the rich, the full, the vigorous, eloquent, and impassioned manner in which these duties are recommended and inforced in the writings of our old divines, we are mortified beyond measure at the absolute poverty, crudeness, and meanness of the present attempt to mimic them. As a composition, it is very imperfect: it has nearly the same merits, and rather more than the same defects, which characterise his former publications. Mr. Smith never writes but in a loose declamatory way. He is careless of connection, and not very anxious about argument. His sole object is to produce an effect at the moment, a strong first impression upon an audience, and if that can be done he is very indifferent as to what may be the result of examination and reflection....

If Mr. Smith is not only not a Socinian, but if in his heart he doubts as to the least important point of the most abstruce and controverted subject on which our articles have decided, if, in short, he is not one of the most rigorously orthodox divines that exists, he has been guilty of the grossest and most disgusting hypocrisy--he has pronounced in the face of the public to which he appeals, and of the church to which he belongs, in the most solemn manner, and on the most solemn subject, a direct, intentional, and scandalous falsehood--he has acted in a way utterly subversive of all confidence among men; and the greater part of the wretches who retire from a course of justice degraded for perjury rank higher in the scale of morality, than an educated man holding a respectable place in society, who could thus trifle with the most sacred obligations. He could be induced to this base action only by a base motive, that of obviating any difficulties which a suspicion of his holding opinions different from those avowed by the establishment, might throw in the way of his preferment: and of rendering himself a possible object of the bounty of "his worthy masters and mistresses," whenever the golden days arrive, in which they shall again dispense the favours of the crown. Such must be the case, if Mr. Smith is not sincere. There is no alternative. Now this is scarcely to be believed of any gentleman of tolerably fair character, still less of a teacher of morality and religion, who holds forth in all his writings the most refined sentiments of honour and disinterestedness.

The style of his profession of faith, however, partakes very much of the most offensive peculiarities of his manner. It is abrupt and violent to a degree which not only shocks good taste, but detracts considerably from the appearance of sincerity. It seems as if he considered his creed as a sort of nauseous medicine which could only be taken off at a draught, and he looks round for applause at the heroic effort by which he has drained the cup to its very dregs.

But the passage about the verse in St. John is yet more extraordinary. Has Mr. Smith really gone through the controversy upon this subject? And even if he has, is this the light way in which a man wholly unknown in the learned world, is entitled to contradict the opinion of some of the greatest scholars of Europe? We have, however, the mere word of the facetious rector of Foston, opposite to the authority and the arguments of a Porson and a Griesbach. It is at his command, unsupported by the smallest attempt at reasoning, that we are to set aside the opinion of men whose lives have been spent in the study of the Greek language, and of biblical criticism, and which has been acquiesced in by many of the most competent judges both here and abroad. Such audacity (to call it by no coarser name) is in itself only calculated to excite laughter and contempt: coupled as it is with a most unprovoked and unwarrantable mention of the name of the Bishop of Lincoln, it excites indignation. We feel no morbid sensibility for the character of a mitred divine: but we cannot see a blow aimed at the head of one of the chiefs of the church, a pious, learned, and laborious man, by the hand of ignorance and presumption, without interposing, not to heal the wound, for no wound has been made, but to chastise the assailant. The Bishop of Lincoln gives up these verses, not carelessly, and unadvisedly, but doubtless because he is persuaded that the cause of true Religion can never be so much injured as by resting its defence upon passages liable to so much suspicion; and because he knows, that the doctrine of the Trinity by no means depends upon that particular passage, but may be satisfactorily deduced from various other expressions, and from the general tenor of holy writ. Indeed, if we were not prevented from harbouring any such suspicion by Mr. Smith's flaming profession of the _iotal_ accuracy of his creed; and if we could doubt the orthodoxy of the divine, without impugning the honesty of the man, we should be inclined to suspect that his defence of the verses proceeded from a concealed enemy. We are not unaware that the question cannot even yet be regarded as finally and incontrovertibly settled, but we apprehend the truth to be that Mr. Smith, not having read one syllable upon the subject, but having accidentally heard that there was a disputed verse in St. John relative to the doctrine of the Trinity, and that it had been given up by the Bishop of Lincoln, thought he could not do better than by one dash of the pen, to show his knowledge of controversy, and the orthodoxy of his belief, at the expense of that prelate's character for discretion and zeal....

The next note is mere political, an ebullition of party rage, in which Mr. Smith abuses the present ministry with great bitterness, talks of "wickedness," "weakness," "ignorance," "temerity," after the usual fashion of opposition pamphlets, and clamours loudly against what, with an obstinacy of misrepresentation hardly to be credited, he persists in terming the "persecuting laws" against the Roman Catholics.... He is very anxious that his political friends should not desist from urging the question--an act of tergiversation and unconsistency which, he thinks, would ruin them in the estimation of the public. Yet, if we mistake not, these gentlemen, at least that portion of them with which Mr. Smith (as we are told) is most closely connected, gave up, without a blush, India, Reform, and Peace, all of which they taught us to believe were vital questions in which the honour or the security of the country was involved. But Catholic emancipation has some peculiar recommendations. It is odious to the people, and painful to the King, and therefore it cannot be delayed, without an utter sacrifice of character....

Now we are by no means so eager on Mr. Smith in what he would term the cause of _religious freedom_. We belong to that vulgar school of timid churchmen, to whom the elevation of a vast body of sectaries to a level with the establishment, is a matter of very grave consideration, if not of alarm. We think that something is due to the prejudices (supposing them to be no more than prejudices) of nine-tenths of the people of England; and we are even so childish (for which we crave Mr. Smith's pardon) as to pay some regard to the feelings of the King, in whose personal mortification, we fairly own, we should not take the smallest pleasure....

We now take leave of the sermon and its notes. But, before we conclude, we are desirous ... to convey to Mr. Smith a little salutary advice ... to remind him that unmeasured severity of invective against others, will naturally produce, at the first favourable opportunity, a retort of similar harshness upon himself; and that unless he feels himself completely invulnerable, the conduct which he has hitherto pursued, is not only uncharitable and violent, but foolish. He should be told that, although he possesses some talents, they are by no means, as he supposes, of the first order. He writes in a tone of superiority which would hardly be justifiable at the close of a long and successful literary career. His acquirements are very moderate, though he wants neither boldness nor dexterity in displaying them to the best advantage; and he is far, very far indeed, from being endowed with that powerful, disciplined, and comprehensive mind, which should entitle him to decide authoritatively and at once upon the most difficult parts of subjects so far removed from one another as biblical criticism and legislation. His style is rapid and lively, but hasty and inaccurate; and he either despises or is incapable of regular and finished composition.

Humour, indeed (we speak now generally, of all these performances which have been ascribed to him by common consent), is his strong point; and here he is often successful; but even from this praise many deductions must be made. His jokes are broad and coarse; he is altogether a mannerist, and never knows where to stop. The [Greek: _Paedenagan_] seems quite unknown to him. His pleasantry does not proceed from keen and well-supported irony; just, but unexpected comparisons; but depends, for effect, chiefly upon strange polysyllabic epithets, and the endless enumeration of minute circumstances. In this he, no doubt, displays considerable ingenuity, and a strong sense of what is ludicrous; but his good things are almost all prepared after one receipt. There is some talent, but more trick, in their composition. The thing is well done, but it is of a low order; we meet with nothing graceful, nothing exquisite, nothing that pleases upon repetition and reflection. In everything that Mr. Smith attempts, in all his "bravura" passages, serious or comic, one is always shocked by some affectation or absurdity; something in direct defiance of all those principles which have been established by the authority of the best critics, and the example of the best writers: indeed, bad taste seems to be Mr. Smith's evil genius, both as to sentiment and expression. It is always hovering near him, and, like one of the harpies, is sure to pounce down before the end of the feast, and spoil the banquet, and disgust the guests.

The present publication is by far the worst of all his performances, avowed or imputed. Literary merit it has none; but in arrogance, presumption, and absurdity, it far outdoes all his former outdoings. Indeed, we regard it as one of the most deplorable mistakes that has ever been committed by a man of supposed talents....

ON MACAULAY

[From _The Quarterly Review_, March, 1849]

_The History of England from the Accession of James II_. By THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. 2 vols. 8vo. 1849.

The reading world will not need our testimony, though we willingly give it, that Mr. Macaulay possesses great talents and extraordinary acquirements. He unites powers and has achieved successes, not only various, but different in their character, and seldom indeed conjoined in one individual. He was while in Parliament, though not quite an orator, and still less a debater, the most brilliant rhetorician of the House. His Roman ballads (as we said in an article on their first appearance) exhibit a novel idea worked out with a rare felicity, so as to combine the spirit of the ancient minstrels with the regularity of construction and sweetness of versification which modern taste requires; and his critical Essays exhibit a wide variety of knowledge with a great fertility of illustration, and enough of the salt of pleasantry and sarcasm to flavour and in some degree disguise a somewhat declamatory and pretentious dogmatism. It may seem too epigrammatic, but it is, in our serious judgment, strictly true, to say that his History seems to be a kind of combination and exaggeration of the peculiarities of all his former efforts. It is as full of political prejudice and partisan advocacy as any of his parliamentary speeches. It makes the facts of English History as fabulous as his Lays do those of Roman tradition; and it is written with as captious, as dogmatical, and as cynical a spirit as the bitterest of his Reviews. That upon so serious an undertaking he has lavished uncommon exertion, is not to be doubted; nor can any one during the first reading escape the _entraînement_ of his picturesque, vivid, and pregnant execution: but we have fairly stated the impression left on ourselves by a more calm and leisurely perusal. We have been so long the opponents of the political party to which Mr. Macaulay belongs that we welcomed the prospect of again meeting him on the neutral ground of literature. We are of that class of Tories--Protestant Tories, as they were called--that have no sympathy with the Jacobites. We are as strongly convinced as Mr. Macaulay can be of the necessity of the Revolution of 1688--of the general prudence and expediency of the steps taken by our Whig and Tory ancestors of the Convention Parliament, and of the happiness, for a century and a half, of the constitutional results. We were, therefore, not without hope that at least in these two volumes, almost entirely occupied with the progress and accomplishment of that Revolution, we might without any sacrifice of our political feelings enjoy unalloyed the pleasures reasonably to be expected from Mr. Macaulay's high powers both of research and illustration. That hope has been deceived: Mr. Macaulay's historical narrative is poisoned with a rancour more violent than even the passions of the time; and the literary qualities of the work, though in some respects very remarkable, are far from redeeming its substantial defects. There is hardly a page-- we speak literally, hardly a page--that does not contain something objectionable either in substance or in colour: and the whole of the brilliant and at first captivating narrative is perceived on examination to be impregnated to a really marvellous degree with bad taste, bad feeling, and, we are under the painful necessity of adding--bad faith.

These are grave charges: but we make them in sincerity, and we think that we shall be able to prove them; and if, here or hereafter, we should seem to our readers to use harsher terms than good taste might approve, we beg in excuse to plead that it is impossible to fix one's attention on, and to transcribe large portions of a work, without being in some degree infected with its spirit; and Mr. Macaulay's pages, whatever may be their other characteristics, are as copious a repertorium of vituperative eloquence as, we believe, our language can produce, and especially against everything in which he chooses (whether right or wrong) to recognise the shibboleth of Toryism. We shall endeavour, however, in the expression of our opinions, to remember the respect we owe to our readers and to Mr. Macaulay's general character and standing in the world of letters, rather than the provocations and examples of the volumes immediately before us.

Mr. Macaulay announces his intention of bringing down the history of England almost to our own times; but these two volumes are complete in themselves, and we may fairly consider them as a history of the Revolution; and in that light the first question that presents itself to us is why Mr. Macaulay has been induced to re-write what had already been so often and even so recently written--among others, by Dalrymple, a strenuous but honest Whig, and by Mr. Macaulay's own oracles, Fox and Mackintosh? It may be answered that both Fox and Mackintosh left their works imperfect. Fox got no farther than Monmouth's death; but Mackintosh came down to the Orange invasion, and covered full nine-tenths of the period as yet occupied by Mr. Macaulay. Why then did Mr. Macaulay not content himself with beginning where Mackintosh left off-- that is, with the Revolution? and it would have been the more natural, because, as our readers know, it is there that Hume's history terminates.

What reason does he give for this work of supererogation? None. He does not (as we shall see more fully by and by) take the slightest notice of Mackintosh's history, no more than if it had never existed. Has he produced a new fact? Not one. Has he discovered any new materials? None, as far as we can judge, but the collections of Fox and Mackintosh, confided to him by their families.[1] It seems to us a novelty in literary practice that a writer raised far by fame and fortune above the vulgar temptations of the craft should undertake to tell a story already frequently and recently told by masters of the highest authority and most extensive information, without having, or even professing to have, any additional means or special motive to account for the attempt.

[1] It appears from two notes of acknowledgments to M. Guizot and the
keepers of the archives at The Hague, that Mr. Macaulay obtained
some additions to the copies which Mackintosh already had of the
letters of Ronquillo the Spanish and Citters the Dutch minister at
the court of James. We may conjecture that these additions were
insignificant, since Mr. Macaulay has nowhere, that we have
observed, specially noticed them; but except these, whatever they
may be, we find no trace of anything that Fox and Mackintosh had not
already examined and classed.

We suspect, however, that we can trace Mr. Macaulay's design to its true source--the example and success of the author of Waverley. The historical novel, if not invented, at least first developed and illustrated by the happy genius of Scott, took a sudden and extensive hold of the public taste; he himself, in most of his subsequent novels, availed himself largely of the historical element which had contributed so much to the popularity of Waverley. The press has since that time groaned with his imitators. We have had historical novels of all classes and grades. We have had served up in this form the Norman Conquest and the Wars of the Roses, the Gunpowder Plot and the Fire of London, Darnley and Richelieu--and almost at the same moment with Mr. Macaulay's appeared a professed romance of Mr. Ainsworth's on the same subject-- James II. Nay, on a novelist of this popular order has been conferred the office of _Historiographer_ to the Queen.