Pro

one

(e) Can a man of secondgenius view more than point at a time? It is a

appeared. But, first, a word or two on the vicissitudes this review has undergone. jected by the late Mr. Gifford, in imitation of the Edinburgh, but ultra-Tory in politics, and supported with all the vigour, virulence, and partizanship of that critic's pen, it attained its maximum of circulation with great rapidity. (d) This was, in some degree, owing (d) We believe that it did to its becoming the organ of the aristocratic no such thing. The Quarterly had existed for some time, and faction of the country; but it was also unwithout much success; and commonly well managed. Mr. Gifford was the publisher had begun to not a man of genius, nor an original writer; despair, when the acquisition but he was an acute scholar, possessed of of Mr. Barrow, and more sound judgment, the result of long years of abundant means, enabled him to give the work the benefit experience-subtle-splenetic--acute-gifted of a longer trial.—ED. with tact, and that knowledge of minutiæ in conducting a work of this nature, which, in the aggregate, is of infinite importance. A writer of first-rate genius and talent is rarely equal to such a task; his attention is generally concentrated on one point, and he is unable to view more at a time. (e) No man of this class who attempts it will meet with Mr. rate Gifford's success: a wriggling, shrewd, per- vulgar error to suppose that a severing, unsensitive mind is best adapted for man of genius must be unfit it. Mr. Gifford saw a writer's weaknesses at for every thing. That which a glance he knew how to gloss over strong at present would most espetruths, or to distort them, so that the reader cially tend to make a good editor of a Quarterly Review, could scarcely suspect the deception practised is sound judgment, extensive upon him. He was well acquainted with the information, and a warm indisposition of mankind, and had the power of terest in the progress and admultiplying the fears of the timid for his own vancement of knowledge. If uses, and of marshalling all his readers' pre-tility of mind, a graceful wit, these were joined with ferjudices on his side, to promote the end of his and a well stored memory, we party, and torture the victim of his political presume that it would be all dedignation. Mr. Gifford had no powers of the better; and this is not a humour-the most vulgar was too polished a probably he cannot look two second-rate person, though weapon for his coarse hands; his satire was ways at once.-ED. "horse-play," as Dryden terms it; the lapstone and hammer of his early years were his favourite weapons to the end of his career. His unflinching obduracy of purpose, and sacrifice even of reason herself, to serve his political views, were rarely before equalled, and never will be surpassed. These were the best qualifications for supporting such a work as the Quarterly Review. Mr. Gifford, too, was invulnerable where most of his party were defenceless. He was no renegade in politics; chance threw Tory-bread in his way in early life, and gratitude was his subsequent principle of action.(ƒ) He must have been amused ticles in his own review.-ED. MAY, 1827.

C

(f) Mr. Gifford never wrote more than three or four ar

at being ultimately assisted by contributors to the Quarterly Review, furious in their new-fledged politics, whom he had badgered unsparingly in the Anti-Jacobin for their revolutionary enthusiasm. Of these, Mr. Southey was one. The present editor, such as he is, is said also to be a deserted Whig. -But to our subject. On Mr. Gifford's retirement, Mr. Murray beat about for a substitute; and, with a peculiar felicity of selection, picked up a harmless barrister, who itinerated the circuit, having the contributions of the Quarterly in a blue bag with his briefs-if, indeed, the said limb of the law (g) We believe this to be were not briefless. (g) From town to town an ill-natured and unjust traversed the unlucky articles of the consketch of Mr. Coleridge. If tributors, like goods in a pedlar's pack, on he had been briefless, his law which might have been marked not inapprohis literature. It is very pos- priately, "Wares for the Quarterly." This sible that Mr. Coleridge was "incestuous connexion" of literature and not peculiarly qualified for the law could not last long; its offspring was editorship of the Quarterly; abortive. The readers of the review soon but we believe it true that it was he that abandoned the detected the operations of legal dulness after Review, and not the review the narcotic dose which had been adminishim.-ED. tered. Another hand must be tried.

would not have interfered with

The next step taken was considered a master-piece of bibliopolic acuteness, and was expected to be overpowering. Because the transcendant talents of the once "Great Unknown," unrivalled in his line of subject, were universally confessed-ergo, Sir Walter Scott must excel in every other department of literature; and not only Sir Walter, but (h) We have no love for Mr. Lockhart; but if the novel of all ever so remotely connected with him by Valerius is here meant, the relationship, and who sat under his shadow, writer has either not read it, must partake of his inspiration! This happy or prefers to say a severe notion of Mr. Murray's (brilliant as the thing in preference to a just one. Mr. Lockhart we believe Utopian scheme of the Representative newsto be a man of a fertile ima- paper) was instantly carried into execution. gination, when warmed; pos- The next supervisor of the Quarterly, theresessed of some scholastic in- fore, was a person said to be a relative of formation, but utterly destitute of critical taste. His gall may Sir Walter Scott's by marriage, and who, serve to mix up well the from having been a contributor (if not someQuarterly twaddle; but under thing more) to "Blackwood's Magazine," at his management it can never least laid claim to literary character. He was author of a novel, which, if it ever crossed to suit the wants of the great the Tweed, is at present slumbering on bookmass of its readers. Mr. seller's shelves, or gone to supply covers for Murray should contrive a dull "defrauded pies." (h) The rumour of the piece of gentlemanly correct- coadjutorship of Sir Walter himself was also ness, which should neither. offend nor delight any body. insinuated; and thus the falling periodical mounted higher than ever in Mr. Murray's

be either the sober or the infallible oracle it ought to be,

ED.

parental anticipations. The town was to be astonished at the new display. The beau idéal of a provincial litterato was to crush the London men of letters into obscurity. The resuscitation of the work from the puling feebleness it had acquired in the arms of its forensic nurse, was to be effected at once for more than the vigour of a prize-fighter's condition. An aurora borealis was to illumine its re-glorified pages; and even its dun covers were in future to dazzle the beholder's vision with a halo, like the radiance round the head of one of Raphael's Holy Marias. But the coal-fire smoke of the metropolis casts shadows which at times resist even the sun's power. The self-opinionated ones of the provinces, who think to carry things here with a high hand, find their level. "Pert, prim praters of the northern race," here pass unnoticed in the crowd. The Scottish peer, who inherits half a county of irreclaimable land, beggarly pride and a title, for which the income of his acres will not find decent trappings, but who is a demi-god among his thistles, is here jostled by a porter, or mistaken for a city grocer. In short, there is nothing more humiliating than this reflection to provincial self-inflation. But can it be otherwise, when the focus of every thing great, wise, learned, and noble is here; and, to attain consideration above the crowd, diligence, time, and skill are indisputable essentials? The noontide hopes of Mr. Murray are again clouded. The learning, judgment, tact, and experience of Mr. Gifford have left not a wreck behind the present editor has presumptuously grasped the thunderbolt he is incompetent to wield. No gleam of the anticipated aurora appears. Thick darkness encompasses the margin of the ultra-apostolic Review of England. "The age of reviewing is over! The Quarterly is said to have lost more than a thousand readers. public too is beginning to feel a distaste for its Muscovite doctrines, now that free constitutions are patronized at court, and liberal principles in politics by that part of the cabinet which is neither in the intellectual obscurity of age, nor owes its station to intolerance and intrigue. In place of Gifford's learning, vigour of pen, and bold sarcasm, intermingled with instructive observations, and the fruits of

The

long and laborious research, we have a conceited flippant work, full of unfounded pretensions-self-consequential in tone-jesuitical in religion-vain in fashion-austere in political creed-and over all this, an air of foppishness a lawyer's clerk's dandyism, strutting in the pride of intellectual poverty, and inflated with ignorant self-consequence. Under the present Hyperborean management, most of the old contributors write in the review no longer. Of these, Mr. Southey is reported to be one. Indeed, it is impossible that a writer of his standing and experience, can feel proper spirit if he submit to the degra dation of having his articles judged by any one whom chance and Mr. Murray may call from the provinces to eke out their livelihood by editing the Quarterly. But if he have returned again as a contributor, we are convinced he stipulates independence of such control for himself.

It is now time we proceed to analyze the contents of No. LXX. The first article is a review of the "Report of Ulloa and Juan on the Provinces of South America ;" and the "Collection of Spanish Voyages, published by the authority of the Spanish Government at Madrid in 1825."-This article is very carelessly executed: it bears singular marks of editorial slovenliness. We are pompously informed, that the value of books of travels depends upon the characters of the writers; that Ulloa and Juan were sent by the king of Spain to Quito, to measure a degree of the meridian; that. Ulloa and Juan were not "smugglers," nor wily traders," but true men. What school-boy, or boarding-school girl, who has been taught geography, did not know this? Pseudo(i) There is some truth in metaphors, endless repetitions of words, odd this allegation; the successors phraseologies-as, " touches of a traveller's of Mr. Gifford might have feelings dropping,"-"selfishness engrained with some advantage. From on the part of the Madre Patria," SOthe time of his retirement cieties destitute of all right principle of from the Quarterly, the cor- cohesion,"- "the wickedness of climate; rectness of its phraseology surgical similies such as, "dislocations declined. At present, in every number, and especially in the from animosities, and "unsparing amputalast, vulgarisms and Scotti- tions; inversions of language, and " precisms (perhaps they are, for cisely downright" inelegancies and confusions they are not English) abound. of all sorts abound. (i) We could quote more glaring But though the instances than are recorded reviewer is thus reckless of the English tongue, he lets us know enough to prove that

studied his art of polishing

in the text.-ED.

the book he is noticing is a most important one, and deserved to be treated better. Mr. Gifford would have had this article re-written. It is wonderfully liberal for the Quarterly, with which the South Americans were lately "insurgents;" but the Quarterly reviewers change their opinions with each new ministerial arrangement. This is a "fundamental feature" of their conduct, as Castlereagh would express it.

The next article is "Milman's Anna Boleyn," which, as well as that on "Histo

rical Romance," is, we imagine, manufac- (k) The manner in which tured by the editor himself: it is a lecture the writer speaks of Wordson Shakspeare, at Mr. Milman's expense. worth, shows him either utWordsworth and Milton, and Wilson and terly unacquainted with his Dryden, are, in his mind, on a poetical perceiving and feeling the works, or utterly incapable of equality. This pleasant arrangement of the beauties of poetry. Neither poet of Paradise Lost with the river Son- the partizans of Mr. Wordsneteer, (k) Dryden with cat-baptism, (1) is a worth, nor any intelligent and lucid discovery of the Quarterly editors able critic, can hold such lanquite "refreshing!" as Theodore Hook says, (1) This, perhaps, alludes and a proof of his superior talent in cri- to some piece of scandal with ticism and adaptation to his post. It reminds which we are unacquainted. us of a stanza of comparisons by the merry. ED.

Wolcot:

The critic has wisely contrived to say as little as possible about Mr. Milman's play. He laments every poet's misfortune who is born after Shakspeare, whom he quotes and disserts upon by wholesale. He shows that Mr. Milman has given one couple of "natural touches " to a character in his play (Angelo); compares his heroes to Shakspeare's, yet still insinuates that he is but an "artificial poet;" and, after a remark on a hacknied subjectthe dearth of good dramatic productionscloses by damning Mr. Milman with "faint praise;" having made the title of Anna Boleyn a peg on which to hang his profound observations upon the drama. Mr. Milman is a respectable clergyman, and has denied seeing the copy of a play on the same subject, which was put by the author into Mr. Murray's hand before his own appeared, and in which there were passages which strongly resembled someof the reverend gentleman's. We are in fairness bound to believe that the simi

guage concerning him.-Ep.