]
The ill-fame of these Reviews, as they were in their pride of youth,
is now so great that doubts may sometimes suggest themselves whether
it can possibly be deserved. No one who feels such doubts can do better
than turn to the earlier numbers; he will be forced to the conclusion
that, whatever their services as the journeymen of letters and of party
politics, few critics could have been so incompetent to judge of genius
as the men who enlisted under the standard of Jeffrey or of Gifford.
There is not, doubtless, in either Review the same iron wall of reasoned
prejudice that has been noted in Johnson, but there is a plentiful
lack of the clear vision and the openness to new impressions which are
the first necessity of the critic. What Carlyle says of Jeffrey and
the _Edinburgh_ may be taken as the substantial truth also about Gifford
and the _Quarterly_, and it is the most pregnant judgment that has yet
been passed upon them.
"Jeffrey may be said to have begun the rash, reckless style of
criticising everything in heaven and earth by appeal to Moliere's maid:
'Do _you_ like it?' '_Don't_ you like it?' a style which, in hands
more and more inferior to that sound-hearted old lady and him, has
since grown gradually to such immeasurable length among us; and he
himself is one of the first that suffers by it.
Pages:
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104