"
[Footnote: Quarterly Review, xxi. 460, &c.] For the credit of both
Reviews it must be said that it would be difficult to find another
instance of so foul a blow as this: [Footnote: Except in the infamous
insinuations, also a crime of the _Quarterly_,]
Non ragioniam di _lui_, ma guarda e passa.
[Footnote: against the character of Currer Bell. See also the scurrilous
attack on the character of Leigh Hunt in _Blackwood_, vol III 453]
Apart from their truculence, the early numbers of the _Edinburgh_ and
_Quarterly_ are memorable for two reasons in the history of English
literature. They mark the downfall of the absolute standard assumed
by Johnson and others to hold good in criticism. And they led the way,
slowly indeed but surely, to the formation of a general interest in
literature, which, sooner or later, could not but be fatal to their
own haphazard dogmatism. By their very nature they were an appeal to
the people; and, like other appeals of the kind, they ended in a
revolution.
Of the men who fixed the lines on which this revolution was to run,
four stand out taller from the shoulders upwards than their fellows.
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