from our compassion:--Be it
_our_ care to suppress those greater nuisances who, infesting the high
ways of literature, would attempt, by a still more revolting exhibition,
to terrify or nauseate us out of those sympathies which they might not
have the power to awaken by any legitimate appeal.

Let it not be imagined, from any thing we have now said, that we think
meanly of Mr. Maturin's genius and abilities. It is precisely because we
hold both in respect that we are sincerely anxious to point out their
misapplication; and we have extended our observations to a greater
length than we contemplated, partly because we fear that his strong
though unregulated imagination, and unlimited command of glowing
language, may inflict upon us a herd of imitators who, "possessing the
contortions of the Sybil without her inspiration," will deluge us with
dull, turgid, and disgusting enormities;--and partly because we are not
without hopes that our animadversions, offered in a spirit of sincerity,
may induce the Author himself to abandon this new Apotheosis of the old
Raw-head-and-bloody-bones, and assume a station in literature more
consonant to his high endowments, and to that sacred profession to
which, we understand, he does honour by the virtues of his private life.

THE QUARTERLY REVIEW

If Macaulay represents a new _Edinburgh_ from the days of Jeffrey,
Brougham, and Sydney Smith, the variety of criticism embraced by the
_Quarterly_ is even more startling. There was more malice, and far
coarser personalities in the early days, and almost continuously while
Gifford, Croker, and Lockhart held the reins: it is--almost certainly--
among these three that the responsibility for our "anonymous" group of
onslaughts may be distributed. The two earliest appreciations of Jane
Austen (from Scott and Whately) offer an interlude--actually in the same
period--which positively startles us by the honesty of its attempt at
fair criticism and the entire freedom from personality.

Gladstone's interesting recognition of Tennyson, and the "Church in
Arms" against Darwin (so ably pleaded by Wilberforce), belong to yet
another school of criticism which comes much nearer to our day, though
retaining the solemnity, the prolixity, and the _ex cathedra_ assumption
of authority with which all the Reviews began their career; and is
singularly cautious in its independence.

WILLIAM GIFFORD

(1757-1826)

Gifford was the editor of the _Quarterl