him as an author-Sir R. Wilson is a ninny and Alderman Wood never seemed to us to stand, as a man of letters, much higher than the present Jeremy Bentham. The English Whigs are almost all naturally stupid, which is more a misfortune than a crime; but they are also almost all artificially illiterate, which is more a crime than a misfortune. In short, look where you may, over England and Scotland, and you will see clever Tories and dull Whigs-and we are informed that it is just the same in Ireland-for Whiggery can dull the faculties even of an Hibernian. Should any one of our readers doubt the truth of what we now say, let him shut the Magazine, and if he is in a public room, let him cast his eyes around him, and look steadily on the first gentleman whom he sees reading the Morning Chronicle, and if he is not an established blockhead, he must, you may depend upon it, have mistaken that paper for the New Times or the Courier. Nay, let any man just run over the list of his common acquaintances, and what great, heavy, stupid faces, or what small, mean, shrivelled ones, rise up from among the Whiggery! And what fine jolly, intelligent countenances beam up from the Toryism of his native land! It is very laughable to find the sole opposition one meets with in this world, is from a set of poor, fusionless, feckless creatures, that can with difficulty stand when supported, much less oppose any body of ordinary strength. They belong to the Opposition forsooth! So have we seen a brisk party of windle-straes in a barren-field, with their empty heads all nodding away in opposition-but the first gust of wind that came made them turn to the right-about in a twinkling, though they still kept opposing, no doubt, whatever happened to be near them.

Secondly, Akin to this our merit of murdering the Whigs, is that of changing the whole character of the Edinburgh Review, in so far as it is possible to change the character of an extremely aged person. We have been accused of using the Edinburgh Review ill. Now, that is not the case. We use nothing ill. We should be convicted of flattery, were we to tell half the pleasure we have had in reading many of the ingenious and elegant dissertations of the editor, on literature, and morals, and philosophy,

for all of which he hath an exceeding fine genie; the masterly disquisitions of Mr Horner on subjects of political economy; Mr Brougham's dashing, slashing, mashing articles on domestic and foreign polity, and many laudable papers of nameless auxiliaries. We have no recollection, at this moment, of having denied the occasional great merit of Numbers of the Edinburgh Review, that appeared some years ago. But the objections we have urged against that work, forcibly but temperately, are of the following kind. That it, all along, has been, in regard to the Christian Religion, either cold, sceptical, or impious; that its political opinions, especially concerning our foreign relations, have been base, foolish, cowardly, and unpatriotic; and concerning our domestic affairs, too frequently false and factious; that, in criticism, even the very best papers have shewn a lamentable ignorance of the true principles of poetry, and that though the editor's fancy and feeling have often exhibited themselves beautifully in detached remarks and vivid illustrations, he has, through the influence which his Review once possessed over the public taste, done more than all the other critics of the age, to blind men's eyes, and deaden men's hearts to the genuine works of imagination— that in all learning, erudition, and general knowledge-with the exception, perhaps, of pure mathematics-the Edinburgh Review has ever been miserably deficient and absurdly proud of its deficiences-that it created and diffused a vile spirit of captious criticism and conceited coxcombry over the youth of Britain, which is still ludicrously apparent in thousands of heavy gentlemen, now middle-aged; and that it was the first, to set an example of that insolent and reckless personality which has since become a leading feature of almost all periodical works but our own-and for the introduction of which, into the formerly quiet and serene walks of literature, it is impossible for the Edinburgh Review ever to make sufficient amends to the public, or to receive sufficient punishment at our hands. In addition to these truths, now universally admitted to be self-evident, we have occasionally observed, that within these few years Mr Jeffrey has got tired of the Review-as he well might-having written so much, and so well, and so

ill, on so many different subjects, and on the same subjects for twenty years —and being, as he deserves, from his great learning, boundless ingenuity, and unequalled eloquence, at the head of the Scotch bar;-that in this manifest ennui, or rather disgust with the work, he has felt himself driven to the necessity of soliciting assistance from all manner of dolts and drivellersto say no worse- -the thought of which must, at times, sorely distress his mind; that, in this way, the stupidity of the Edinburgh Review has now become quite proverbial; and people who wish to be thought clever are very shy of reading it: and that, finally, its sale is so reduced as to render it now an injudicious and unproductive concern, which Mr Constable would act wisely to give up altogether, and so leave the Periodical Literature of Scotland entirely in the hands of us younger and abler men.

This seems to be the sum and substance of what we have, at various times, with more or less expense of thought, written about the Edinburgh Review, and if there be any mistake in the items of the bill, they need only to be pointed out to be immediately corrected. One thing we feel perfectly confident of, that is, impartiality. While so many thousands have been giving up the work, we still continue to take it, partly from habit, we believe, and partly from a nameless and undefinable pleasurewhich still breathes upon us from its blue cover and yellow back-and which is not always dispelled, for some minutes, by opening the work. It delights us to see the Editor occasionally ogling again the old work—and we always, on such occasions, exclaim, "Well done, Mr Jeffrey, people may say what they choose, but after all, Dr Morris is right in calling thee the prince of Reviewers."

It was only t'other day that we felt all our admiration of the excellent editor revive when we saw his two amiable and ingenious articles on the Edgeworth Memoirs and Geoffrey Crayon, the one preceding and the other following that wretched abortion on the Jacobite Relics. Sometimes, in a drawing-room, when the company are assembling to dinner, the door opens, and in comes a well-dressed gentlemanly person, with a smile on his face, and with a bow indicative of good society'; Mr Jeffrey, himself, we shall VOL. VIII.

suppose. No sooner has he taken his seat, and begun to spread animation around him, by his cheerful and polite demeanour, than the door again opens, and in comes a heavy, sulky, vulgar clown, the Scotsman we shall suppose, who, with the lounging gait of a clod-hopper, lours round the company, with a dogged down-cast countenance-then puts his arms a-kimbo, in awkward insolence striving to he genteel-and bangs himself down in mingled pride and dismay, with a sudden thud, upon a sofa, as if upon a wooden bench at an evening book-sale. The effect on the company is not removed for some time, even by the subsequent entrance of a gentleman.

About a dozen years ago, when the Edinburgh Review was in its glory, the day of publication was a great day in this city. If it did not appear in the forenoon, gentlemen, who were dining out, left orders, with the lass of their lodging, to bring their Number to Mr such or such a one, advocate or W. S. fifth door up such and such a common-stair. No sooner had the party sat down to their corned beef and greens, and Jenny been ever and anon extending her red fiery arm close by the ear of some leading member of the Speculative Society, with a barmy black bottle of gurgling smallbeer-than one heavy rap after another fell upon the outer door, as lass after lass assembled on the stair-head with her master's Number. Jenny, at once cook, waiter, and chamber-maid, went out and came in, in a flurry, with a decad of the Review in her apron-and all the party rushing upon her, each ravished a treasure from her lap, and then, heedless of the promised and approaching how-towdy, and seemingly resolv ed to forget even the hot whisky-toddy with brown sugar, at that time the universal drink of our first-rate literary and legal characters, all grasped their knives unwiped of their fat and mustard, and got, at once, into the heart of the Review. There might be seen one small yellow-faced gentleman, with pig-eyes, and a bald sconce, putting the work close to his nose, as if he were smelling out an article on parliamentary reform, and mumbling, "Aye, aye Frank Horner I see' -set himself to perusal, as if it were as great and as glorious a feat to read a good article as to write one. Next to him pored, haply, a writer's clerk, ambitious, perhaps,

M

of stuttering, some future day, at the side bar, under the smiles of some patronizing judge, and of exchanging his then ignoble lot for the enviable renown of fourth-rate drudgery, doomed to dwindle, year after year, into unfeed peripateticism in the outer-house, without

"One brief memorial, still erected nigh." But,

"We bridle in our struggling muse with pain,

That longs to launch into a nobler strain," and leave the imagination of our readers to bring before them the lofty bliss of that intellectual afternoon; when the red herring lay unheeded on the mahogany, and no noise was heard from the flower of the Edinburgh youth, but an occasional grunt of delight from that pig-eyed Speculator, or the crack of a rotten filbert which some student, during a perplexing passage on the price of corn, ventured half-unconsciously to introduce for useless mastication into his defrauded and defeated jaws. These, my pensive Public, were the bright, and dewy, and laughing morning years of the Edinburgh Review! It was then that the genius and character was formed of those many splendid barristers, enlightened senators, and profound philosophers, with whom Scotland now overflows. Alas! for the fifth stories of well-peopled tenements now! Go mourn for the Speculative, and take up a weeping for the Select! Give a groan for the Academic, and for the Eclectic set no bounds to your grief; sigh for the young men of medicine, bedew with brine the cheek of the stripling student of Scotch Law, in the general sorrow let not the writer's apprentice be forgotten, think on the rising clergy with pity, commiserate the doom of literary men-milliners, and pause to drop a pearly tear over the heirs of small entailed estates! The Edinburgh Review is fallen, like Babel, or Babylon, the hanging gardens are no more, and there is a confusion of tongues among the ungodly.

Thirdly, We deserve well of our country for having, during dangerous times, upheld and encouraged a true British spirit. We have never allowed ourselves to rail about the ruin of our country, to talk of taxes like old women, to drivel about the national debt, to defame the soil that gave us birth.

We have always known that the people of Britain are sprung,

"From Earth's first blood, have titles manifold,"

and that the light of liberty, dark as the air may be over other lands, shines and will ever shine, from the cliffs of Albion. We should have felt ashamed to lift up our heads, had we, like the great Whig Journal, irrationally degraded ourselves, by declaring that England was no longer a country worth living in, even after the battle of Waterloo. Had we ever so spoken, we should not have dared to look on "the silver cross to Scotland dear," or the standard of England flying at the main of one of Nelson's old victorious ships. We have ever spoken with love of the throne, and reverence of the altar, with unmitigable scorn and contempt of all traitors and infidels, be they who they may, who would assail the one by abuse of the king, and the other by abuse of the ministers, or the creed of religion. No man can continue to think of his country, as he ought to think, who accus toms himself to rail against her spirit, and to deny her greatness and her glory. It is right that a truly noble people, should think nobly of themselves; it is right that each individual should support his own virtue, by holding inviolate in his imagination the virtue of the state. Can this be done by him whose eloquence is confined to errors, whose ability is exerted only against abuse, and who ranges round and round the magnificent structure of the British Constitution, only to spy out some time-rent stone, or some crumbling piece of mortar, which he foolishly or basely exagger ates into general decay and dilapidation, while the wicked are endeavouring to drive their mines beneath the rockfoundation, in the hope of levelling all its battlements with the dust? This is the anti-British spirit of which we have so often expressed our contempt, and which, we know, we have in many instances depressed and destroyed. It is a spirit either detestably wicked, or utterly foolish. They who cherish it are objects either of hate or laughter, or of both. Living under the purest government that ever existed, they walk about, lifting up their legs from the ground as if they were shackledpermitted to open their asinine jaws,

whenever they choose, either for abuse or panegyric, they call out with a loud voice that their mouths are pad-locked-they cry against crowded prisons, while they themselves are suffered to go at large; and declaim against the ignorance of their rulers in bad grammar, and orthoepy beyond the correction of the press. Themselves at once scum and sediment, they complain of the stream of virtue being polluted; as if a bottle of wine might not exhibit pieces of floating cork, and much downward dregs, and yet be excell ent port. Hopping about, like birds in a town-aviary, with ragged feathers and peevish chirp, they forget that there are nobler birds winging their way through the skies, or sitting amid the golden fruitage of happy groves; or marching to and fro over their own dunghills, and through their own dirty courts, either like little bantams, with their feathered leggikins bestudded with globular mud diamonds, or large dunghill fowl, with immense comb and wattles, and no tail, who keep or chuckling, and crowing, and scraping among the soil, and looking fierce at all passers-by; they absolutely come at last to conceive that they are your only fowl; and when an egg is laid by one of the fraternity, a cackling is forthwith heard far and wide, from all the circumjacent and responsive poultry, as if every dunghill were sending forth to parliament its wing-clapping, strutting, and crowing representative.

Fourthly, We have done more than all the periodical works that have ever existed since the beginning of time (moderately speaking) to spread the empire of genius and imagination upon earth. There is no single man of genius whom we have not delighted to honour. Of all the present living poets we have uniformly spoken with love, and gratitude, and reverence. We have explained their principles more philosophically than ever they themselves were able to do. We have gathered up the flowers that dropped from the garlands of poetry-wiped from them the dust scattered on them by the hoof of vulgar criticism-restored them to their bright companion ship-and hung the whole dazzling glory upon the temple of Fame. (hear, hear!) The editor of Baldwin's Ma gazine, a periodical, startled about three months ago, lately stated, if we rightly understood him, that he had been the means of directing the attention, and

awakening the delighted sympathies of the best critics, to the merits of the Scotch Novels, then almost unknown -we humbly beg to share in this praise But to us exclusively be longs the merit of obliging the people of Scotland to read Wordsworth. We have made him popular here, in spite of the Edinburgh Review, and all the Whigs that whine in chorus. Their low and unprincipled abuse of that great man we exposed and punished; and we have spread Wordsworth's fame o'er earth and seas,

"Whatever clime our work's bright circle warms."

Then, look at our own poetry! How tender, pathetic, and sublime, our serious and how biting and caustic our humorous song? Who can sufficiently laud old Wastle? Does not the voice of the Standard-bearer rouse the soul like the sound of a trumpet? Who can read our Irish correspondent's epic poetry without aching sides? And till taste, genius, and sensibility are no more, the world will delight in A. Is not Mr Dowden of Cork a pretty poet? and Mr Jennings, the great founder of the Soda-water School? Why, we have as much poetry-real, genuine, unadulterated poetry, that might hold Mr Accum at defiance, as actually fills Timothy Tickler's back parlour, a snug room of twelve feet square. There are elegies that would draw iron tears down Pluto's cheeks-epithalamia that would make the virgin rose drop from the stalk of single blessedness-epigrams "gleg as ony wombwell"-and extemporaneous effusions, polished to the last pitch of artificial refinement! In the space between the window and the door, we have piled up our dramas-comedy and tragedy, in alternate rows. the left side of the fire-place are our portions, and parts of portions, of philosophical poems in blank verse-and on the right, all cur epics. In the middle of the room stands a noble pile of Occasional Poetry, which, numerous

On

as the occasions are on which it is employed, still reaches to within two feet of the roof-Many effusions of both sexes are there! What a body of respectful and constant readers of our Magazine! There they all lie, one above the other, all waiting their day of doom! Many a romantic name is sacrificed. Laura Maria follows Jenny Freebairn-and the place of Peter

Nimmo is supplied by Orlando or Maximilian Pugh. Oh! let our poetical contributors take warning by their fate! We devoutly trust that some of the other Magazines will take a sack or two of occasional poetry off our hands. Has the Lady's Magazine no bowels? Must we look in vain to La Belle Assemblee? What is become of the old benignity of the European? And does Sir Richard hear us plead in vain? We offer to contract-gratis-nay, we will give a premium, for the poet's corners in all the newspapers in Britain. Werather think we shall hire a sharp lad for the express purpose, and make him "Clerk of the Occasional Poetry"-that shall be his sole department, with a good salary— he shall never be made to audit his accounts, and if he but keep down stock, we will settle an annuity upon him in his old age.

Fifthly, With respect to general literature, we surely are not saying too much when we affirm, that we have delighted and instructed the reading public on many subjects that, but for us, would, in all probability, have remained in oblivion during many centuries, perhaps for ever. Mr Jeffrey says that he has mainly contributed to the existing love and admiration of the Old English Drama. We surely may be permitted to doubt this. The first paper in the Edinburgh Review, as far as we recollect, in which any thing was said of the Old English Drama, was a critique on Charles Lamb's John Woodville. That little composition glistens with the most vivid and beautiful poetry-nature keeps giving hints of herself throughout all its scenesnow in all that quaintness which, at that period of human life, she more peculiarly loved-and now in that universal language in which, without reference to time or place, she wantons forth in her strong and rejoicing existence there, passion is simple as the light of day, or various as the coruscations of the northern lights-there, truths so obvious as to common eyes even to seem dull and trivial, become affecting-even sublime, by their connexion with profoundest reflections, and most woful catastrophes There, character apparently artless and unformed, yet rises up like what we see conflicting, suffering, enjoying, dying, in this our every-day world so that when all is shut up unostenta

tiously at last, we feel the grandeur of the powers, and the awfulness of the destinies of our human nature, in that simple picture of humble but high humanity, more mournfully and also more majestically than when the cur tain falls before the dead bodies of conquerors or of kings. What was said of this drama, so true to nature, and so true to the thoughts of nature, cherished by the great men of old England? That it was childish, puerile, foolish, barbarous, founded upon wretched mo dels-and a disgrace to the literature of a civilized people! All the old dramatists were, at the same time, spoken of with scorn and contempt-and the reader was left in derision of Charles Lamb, and of those great spirits whom he worshipped, and whose very names seemed to have been unknown to the Reviewer. Such a critique could not have been written by Mr Jeffrey-but there it was-in the work that has done so much for the old dramatists of England. When Miss Baillie's noble plays were review. ed-true, that praise was bestowed on the old dramatists. What then? Can we suppose such an incredible absurdity as Mr Jeffrey to despise the contemporaries of Shakspeare? Surely not. But what was said of them? Any thing discriminative, or enthu siastic, or passionate? Nothing at all

but some wit against Miss Baillie for injudiciously imitating their lan guage. In the Review of Chenevix's plays-by the way, productions of great power-there were some good remarks on the strength, and originality, and passion, of the elder men ;--but, most assuredly, not a word that entitled the writer to class himself among the strong admirers of the old drama. A few years ago, some fine and philogophic discussion-but noways original, as every one knows who knows any thing of the age of Elizabeth and James-appeared in the Edinburgh Review, in a paper on Ford's plays. Ford himself, however, was somewhat thoughtlessly said to be by no means one of the best of the old Dramatists. And we believe that Mr Jeffrey has, since that time, occasionally spoken with spirited commendation of our old dramatic literature; though Massinger was denied to have genius in a critique, which Mr Gifford afterwards shewed to be one tissue of ignorance and malignity. This, we believe, is the sum