Famous Reviews by Editor: R. Brimley Johnson

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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 rimes_; 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 _entrainement_ 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.