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Various

"English literary criticism"

" In other words, the _Edinburgh_ takes
up the work of the _Anti-Jacobin_; with no very good grace Jeffrey
affects to sit in the seat of Canning and of Frere.
So much for the "principles" of the new venture; principles, it will
be seen, which appear to rest rather upon a hatred of innovation in
general than upon any reasoned code, such as that of Johnson or the
"Aristotelian laws", in particular. On that point, it must be clearly
realized, Carlyle was in the right. It is that which marks the essential
difference of the Reviewers--we can hardly say their advance--as against
Johnson.
We may now turn to watch the Reviewers, knife in hand, at the
dissecting-table. For the twenty-five years that followed the foundation
of the _Edinburgh_, England was more full of literary genius than it
had been at any time since the age of Elizabeth. And it is not too
much to say that during that period there was not one of the men, now
accepted as among the chief glories of English literature, who did not
fall under the lash of one, or both, of the Reviews.


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