harm in this, for he was himself a reviewer of no very gentle pen, was well able to defend himself, and besides, unlike Keats, was a belligerent radical in politics. When Gifford had made this the excuse to damn his work on Shakespeare, Hazlitt turned upon his assailant in one of the most satisfying pieces of vituperation in the English tongue, to be found in his Letter to William Gifford, Esq. (1819). "There cannot be a greater nuisance," he wrote, "than a dull, envious, pragmatical, low-bred man, who is placed as you are in the situation of the editor of such a work as the Quarterly Review. . . . He insults over unsuccessful authors; he hates successful ones. He is angry at the faults of a work, more angry at its excellences. . . . Grown old in the service of corruption, he drivels on to the last with prostituted impotence and shameless effrontery; salves a meagre reputation for wit by venting the driblets of his spleen and impertinence on others; answers their arguments by confuting himself; mistakes habitual obtuseness of intellect for a particular acuteness, unprincipled rancor for zealous loyalty, and the irritable, discontented, vindictive, peevish effusions of bodily pain and mental imbecility for proofs of refinement of taste and strength of understanding." This was how the Quarterly appeared in the circles of those who had felt its lash. Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, founded 1817, was primarily, as its name indicates, not a review, and did not devote its columns to criticism in any large measure. But its publisher and chief contributors were Tories, and young John Lockhart in particular (a Blackwood seneschal until he assumed the editorship of the Quarterly in 1825) was always eager to castigate the follies of those of other schools. It is probably to Lockhart's pen that we are to attribute the disgraceful series of papers on "The Cockney School," 31 which without provocation maligned the group of London poets of which Leigh Hunt was at the time the leading spirit. Hunt and his brother were notorious radicals, and Blackwood's was pleased to find in his poetry-and that of his friends-the moral and literary faults which were to be expected of such rascals. One sentence gives the clue to the attack: "His 31 See page 165. works exhibit no reverence either for God or man; neither altar nor throne have any dignity in his eyes." Hunt would perhaps have acknowledged the truth of the second clause, but did not view God and altar, or man and throne, as synonyms. The Endymion paper, in this series, is a continuation of that on Hunt, and it will be seen that it was Keats's friendship for the older poet that brought him within range of Lockhart's blows. His chief poetic offense may have been found not in Endymion, but in the verses called "Sleep and Poetry," published a year earlier, in which he had declared war on the schools of Pope and Boileau. This was enough in itself to ally him with the enemies of altar and throne. Critical violence of this sort seems now strangelyand happily-far away. Modern reviewing leaves much to be desired; but it would be difficult now to find a journal of position which should deliberately damn a young poet because of his political friendships, or undertake in general to mingle social, personal, and literary considerations in the blustering confusion displayed by the Quarterly and Blackwood's. Nor is there any critic living who, by calling names and uttering sound and fury, can seriously injure the prospects of any promising writer, howsoever obscure or humble he may be. It remains to note that the further development of the magazine, in both Scotland and England, gave increased opportunity for the growth of the critical essay of a type more popular than that developed by the reviews. The London Magazine, founded 1820, had a particularly brilliant list of contributors, among whom easily the chief were DeQuincey and Lamb. Both these writers were aloof from the controversies that darkened the air in more worldly regions than those where their minds dwelt, and at their best they showed the possibilities of disinterested criticism-criticism which sometimes exhibits the imaginative merits of poetry-in ways that led forward to the finest work of the next age. RAYMOND M. ALDEN. CRITICAL ESSAYS OF THE CENTURY PREFACE TO THE LYRICAL BALLADS WILLIAM WORDSWORTH [The first edition of the Lyrical Ballads appeared in 1798, but the Preface was written for that of 1800. In later volumes of Wordsworth's poems it appeared in the Appendix. For comments on the controversies to which it gave rise, see Coleridge's remarks, pages 112-13, and De Quincey's, page 328.] The first volume of these poems has already been submitted to general perusal. It was published as an exļ periment, which I hoped might be of some use to ascertain how far, by fitting to metrical arrangement a selection of the real language of men in a state of vivid sensation, that sort of pleasure and that quantity of pleasure may be imparted, which a poet may rationally endeavor to impart. I had formed no very inaccurate estimate of the probable effect of those poems: I flattered myself that they who should be pleased with them would read them with more than common pleasure: and, on the other hand, I was well aware that by those who should dislike them they would be read with more than common dislike. The result has differed from my expectation in this only, that a greater number have been pleased than I ventured to hope I should please. Several of my friends are anxious for the success of these poems, from a belief that, if the views with which they were composed were indeed realized, a class of poetry would be produced, well adapted to interest mankind permanently, and not unimportant in the quality and in the multiplicity of its moral relations: and on this account they have advised me to prefix a systematic defence of the theory upon which the poems were written. But I was unwilling to undertake the task, knowing that on this occasion the reader would look coldly upon my arguments, since I might be suspected of having been principally influenced by the selfish and foolish hope of reasoning him into an approbation of these particular poems; and I was still more unwilling to undertake the task, because adequately to display the opinions, and fully to enforce the arguments, would require a space wholly disproportionate to a preface. For to treat the subject with the clearness and coherence of which it is susceptible, it would be necessary to give a full account of the present state of the public taste in this country, and to determine how far this taste is healthy or depraved; which, again, could not be determined, without pointing out in what manner language and the human mind act and re-act on each other, and without retracing the revolutions, not of literature alone, but likewise of society itself. I have therefore altogether declined to enter regularly upon this defence; yet I am sensible that there would be something like impropriety in abruptly obtruding upon the public, without a few words of introduction, poems so materially different from those upon which general approbation is at present bestowed. It is supposed that by the act of writing in verse an author makes a formal engagement that he will gratify certain known habits of association; that he not only thus apprises the reader that certain classes of ideas and expressions will be found in his book, but that others will be carefully excluded. This exponent or symbol held forth by metrical language must in different eras of literature have excited very different expectations: for example, in the age of Catullus, Terence, and Lucretius, and that of Statius or Claudian; and in our own country, in the age of Shakespeare and Beaumont and Fletcher, and that of Donne and Cowley, or Dryden, or Pope. I will not take upon me to determine the exact import of the promise which, by the act of writing in verse, an author in the present day makes to his reader; but it will undoubtedly |