consigned to an early grave. In short, the treatment
of this heedless candidate for poetical fame might
serve as a warning, and was intended to serve as a
warning to all unfledged tyros, how they venture upon
any such doubtful experiments, except under the auspices
of some lord of the bedchamber or Government Aristarchus,
and how they imprudently associate themselves with
men of mere popular talent or independence of feeling!—It
is the same in prose works. The Editor scorns
to enter the lists of argument with any proscribed
writer of the opposite party. He does not refute,
but denounces him. He makes no concessions to
an adversary, lest they should in some way be turned
against him. He only feels himself safe in the
fancied insignificance of others: he only feels
himself superior to those whom he stigmatizes as the
lowest of mankind. All persons are without common-sense
and honesty who do not believe implicitly (with him)
in the immaculateness of Ministers and the divine origin
of Kings. Thus he informed the world that the
author of TABLE-TALK was a person who could not write
a sentence of common English and could hardly spell
his own name, because he was not a friend to the restoration
of the Bourbons, and had the assurance to write Characters
of Shakespears Plays in a style of criticism somewhat
different from Mr. Gifford’s. He charged
this writer with imposing on the public by a flowery
style; and when the latter ventured to refer to a
work of his, called An Essay on the Principles
of Human Action, which has not a single ornament
in it, as a specimen of his original studies and the
proper bias of his mind, the learned critic, with
a shrug of great self-satisfaction, said, “It
was amusing to see this person, sitting like one of
Brouwer’s Dutch boors over his gin and tobacco-pipes,
and fancying himself a Leibnitz!” The question
was, whether the subject of Mr. Gifford’s censure
had ever written such a work or not; for if he had,
he had amused himself with something besides gin and
tobacco-pipes. But our Editor, by virtue of the
situation he holds, is superior to facts or arguments:
he is accountable neither to the public nor to authors
for what he says of them, but owes it to his employers
to prejudice the work and vilify the writer, if the
latter is not avowedly ready to range himself on the
stronger side.—The Quarterly Review,
besides the political tirades and denunciations
of suspected writers, intended for the guidance of
the heads of families, is filled up with accounts
of books of Voyages and Travels for the amusement
of the younger branches. The poetical department
is almost a sinecure, consisting of mere summary decisions
and a list of quotations. Mr. Croker is understood
to contribute the St. Helena articles and the liberality,
Mr. Canning the practical good sense, Mr. D’Israeli
the good-nature, Mr. Jacob the modesty, Mr. Southey
the consistency, and the Editor himself the chivalrous
spirit and the attacks on Lady Morgan. It is