None of these Reviewers, certainly, wrote for separate publication; but perhaps it is only of Jeffrey that any such systematic plan can be predicated. Not only had the occasional contributors to the Review the advantage, for the most part, of choosing their own subject, and their own time, which an editor could not enjoy; but, in general, their writings partake much more of the nature of fugitive essays than of disquisitions connected by any common object, or tending collectively to any specific result. Macaulay's Reviews, for instance, are not criticisms, and might often more appropriately have had men than books for their subject. They are philosophical discourses-gorgeous descriptions-picturesque reflections on history and literature; but they have seldom any claim to a place in the pages of a Review beyond the use of it as the vehicle of their communication to the public. With Jeffrey's criticisms it is altogether different. They are occupied much more with the work immediately in hand, and treat it as a subject for analysis more than as a mere text for discourse. The dissertations which occur in them are always brought directly to bear upon the peculiar task of the Reviewer. No man, indeed, who reads these volumes can fail to admire the vast range of subject which this selection embraces, and the wonderful versatility which has so successfully compassed so wide a circuit of literature and philosophy. But these are not their greatest triumphs. They are to be regarded not merely as the types or indications, but as, in a great measure, the instruments of a great intellectual progress of a change which, for its extent, might almost be called a revolution-in the tone of thought prevalent in this country both in politics and letters.

At no time in our history, perhaps, had originality or manliness of thought sunk so low as at the end of last century. On all subjects, independence of action or opinion seems to have been renounced by the great mass of the people. Men had ceased to think for themselves, either on matters of public policy, or on the lighter subjects of literature and taste. Terrified by the horrors of the French Revolution, the great majority of the nation abandoned all concern about their liberty, and trusted blindly to their rulers for freedom and safety; and the universal feeling which absorbed nearly all the enthusiasm of the age, was dread and detestation of revolutionary principles. It is difficult, indeed, to look back without a smile to the childish panic which appears to have possessed the country, of which more than one indication may be found, even in the calm and philosophical pages now before us. In the crisis of the imaginary danger, everything venerable and sacred to British liberty was forgotten. Even its first principles became suspected, if a Jacobin taint could be discovered in them; and all were laid, with the confi

dence of infatuation, at the foot of the Crown, or the Minister of the day.

It cannot be denied, that however unenlightened these sentiments may now appear, they entirely occupied the minds, not merely of the majority of the Houses of Parliament, and of the aristocracy, but the great body of the people. On the other hand, there was another, an infinitely smaller class, whose opinions, though very different, were hardly more conducive to the health or vigour of public feeling. These were the disciples of the French Revolution-men who, looking to that great event as the harbinger of a renovated state of society, regarded the name of antiquity as equivalent to tyranny-seeing nothing august or wise in any established institution, and searching for the foundation of liberty in the dispersion of all acknowledged axioms of religion or government. There was a foppery about these men and their opinions, which, even if they had not been distracted by the turmoil of the times, and the danger to which the minority in which they stood exposed them, was as fatal to the freedom of thought, or the generous action of the mind, as the blind zeal of their opponents. Between these two sections there stood, indeed, a middle party, which, with all its faults, kept alive the flame which has since burnt so brightly, under a leader, who may well be regarded as the impersonation of broad, manly intellect. But, great in talent, it was a band of little weight with the country. The stain of the Coalition, and the personal enmity of the Sovereign, had left Fox, during the remainder of his political career, without the means of public influence—a star too far removed from the political orbit, to warm by its beams, even while it dazzled by its brilliancy. It was one, and not the least of the calamities of the time, that England's greatest statesman was excluded from her service, and his vast endowments of mind, exercised for half a century in his country's service, produced no result so great, as has that legacy he left her, in the lessons of masculine philosophy, and the burning love of freedom, which breathe through the disjected remains of his eloquence, and will last while the constitution endures.

That such a state of public sentiment should have chilled and repressed all independent efforts of genius, is not wonderful. But the poverty of the land in literature, at the time we speak of, can hardly be traced to any cause so recent. Indeed, speculations on the causes which lead to that constant ebb and flow of literary talent, which may be observed in the history of all countries, are at the best unsatisfactory. The contingencies from which they spring are generally too intricate, and their causes too remote, to admit of accurate deduction on the subject. We might theorize long and learnedly enough on the dreary interval

between Pope and Cowper, without discovering any satisfactory solution of it in the state of the community, public or social, during the latter half of the eighteenth century. Looking at it in the mass, from whatever causes the result may be supposed to arise, no similar period of British history, since the age of Elizabeth, was so little respectable in learning or in fancy. The earlier portion of it, no doubt, produced Hume, Gibbon, and Robertson-names as great in their own sphere, as any of which our country can boast. Bolingbroke, their superior in power as in acquirement, was a giant of a former age. Burke, his pupil, belonged rather to politics than literature; and his writings, ardent and enthusiastic as they were, rather served to scathe and wither up independence of spirit in the nation. The great historians, on the contrary, alike in the florid delineations of the English and the classic accuracy of the Scottish authors, are marked by an artificial coldness and indifference, which was one of the features of the time. No natural passion, no heart-born enthusiasm or forgetfulness of art, find place in their great and elaborate works. In poetry, the retrospect is still more barren. To a few, indeed, who flourished during the commencement of the period, it is impossible to deny a respectable place among British authors. Goldsmith, Gray, and Collins, were all, individually, poets of no mean order; and although none of them entitled to rank in the first, may be considered as high in the second class. But whatever their individual power or merits may be, and these cannot be denied or undervalued, they not only did not rise to the highest walks of the art, but they eminently failed in producing effect on the public taste, or stamping their genius on the character of the times. The fetters which Pope had worn so gracefully, remained as an heirloom to his poetical descendants, till all the fancy and elegance of the first master had disappeared, and nothing remained but a certain smooth and empty monotony, without music or strength, and full of exolete tropes, and insipid extravagance. This slavish adherence to the artificial rules of a school which it required all the genius of its author to reconcile with vigour or energy, completely degraded the poetry of the age. The whimsical humours of the Rolliad, or Peter Pindar, or the Anti-Jacobin, do infinitely more credit to its originality, than many volumes of what, in those days, passed for the inspired efforts of a more ambitious muse. The hermit-voice of Cowper, speaking from his solitude, in rough and nervous English, and the impassioned strains of Burns, couched in a language all but foreign to ordinary readers, were among the first examples of emancipation from this ancient thraldom, and the assertion of the genuine power of vigorous and unfettered fancy. But they were no

indications of a purer tone of public sentiment. Thrown on their own resources, and drawing from the deep spring of their own thoughts, the English recluse, and the Scottish peasant, spoke the language of nature, because in them it had not been corrupted by constant contact with a vitiated standard of taste.

But towards the end of the century, the waters were being stirred. When society is moved to its depths, powers otherwise dormant are called forth; and thus great public convulsions are always found to produce unusual manifestations of intellectual vigour. So the Augustan age followed the wars of the Republic; and all our own great masters of literature burst into a blaze, from the struggles of the Reformation and the Commonwealth. The singular agitations of the public mind, produced by the political convulsions of the Continent, while their first effect in this country was, as we have seen, rather to banish than to stimulate independence of intellect, could not fail ultimately to promote it. It is easy to discern at that period the dawning efforts of our national genius to free itself from its long-imposed restraints, and to give itself natural vent, through unaccustomed channels. But, as might have been anticipated, in its first exertions, it strayed into all devious paths, and, while endeavouring to shake off its old chains, was in danger of aspiring after a license equally at variance with the just rules of taste. Originality and novelty were sought for, from sources as far as possible removed from the authorised models which had so long sustained their supremacy. "Ignotas accedere fontes," seemed to be the common object. William Taylor was exploring the newly found mine of German literature; Wordsworth courted nature and simplicity in lyrical ballads; Southey alternated between sapphics and dithyrambics, and Scott was searching for an unexhausted theme among the lays and romances of the Troubadours. The feeling of disgust and weariness at the threadbare topics and flat style of the preceding age was so intense, that the most palpable solecisms of taste and metre were likely to come into fashion as a mere relief. It was at this juncture, happily, that a CENSOR suddenly arose—a tribunal was erected-singularly exempt from extravagant excitement-professing to seek its canon of criticism from the pure fountain of nature, and the deep wells of our ancient literatureand administering its self-created laws with all the cold severity and calm determination of an acknowledged judge.

The object of "The Edinburgh Review" was not only to establish a higher standard of merit, but a purer, bolder, and simpler taste, and to induce on the public mind habits of calm and just thinking, and a spirit of unprejudiced inquiry after truth and justice in politics. How far it succeeded in applying true normal rules of judgment in the discharge of its judicial functions,

we may inquire immediately. What it did accomplish was astonishing. Without patronage, without name, under the tutelage of no great man, and uncaressed as yet by any fashionable circle, propounding heresies of all sorts against the ruling fancies of the day, whether political, poetical, or social, by sheer vigour of mind, resolution of purpose, and an unexampled combination of mental qualities, five or six young men in our somewhat provincial metropolis, laid the foundation of an empire, to which, in the course of a few years, the intellect of Europe did homage. For the time no despotisın could be more complete. The "Review" was the mirror by which men of taste adjusted their thoughts, and poets adorned their numbers. The young aspirant after fame looked fearfully to the dreaded oracle, while he waited for the response which was to fix his literary destiny. The believers in the virtue of all existing things stood aghast at the unconsecrated hands which were laid on the objects of their idolatry, but they too learned to fear its power, and to smart under its lash. Merciless in chastisement, and fearless in opinion, it rudely dispersed the dull tribe who for years had sung and said to a drowsy public the praises of the King and Constitution, and cleared the ground for worthier and manlier occupants. The device which they bore upon their shield, "Judex damnatur dum nocens absolvitur," carried as much terror as ever a war-cry did over a field of chivalry. Spurred by the defying challenge, men of might buckled on their armour and tasked their utmost strength, and were considered to have acquired renown if they only kept their seat against so formidable a foe.

Å periodical work on such a scale, entirely devoted to criticism, was a happy thought, and much of its first effect upon the public undoubtedly was derived from the novelty and propriety of the design, as well as from the vigour of its execution. It was a step in advance in the science of criticism, reducing it to a more systematic form, and affording more enlarged opportunities for its exercise. Since the days of Johnson there had been nothing vigorous or efficient in the shape of criticism. The sturdy old moralist himself no doubt wielded his mace with great effect, and, although to modern taste his language is oppressively redundant, and his principles of judgment sometimes capricious, and oftener minute and desultory, his writings afford a rich vein of sound appreciation of the true elements of genius, and the peculiar beauties and powers of the English language. Since his time, although critics formed themselves on the models he had left behind him, the art had gradually degenerated, and had entirely ceased to produce any influence in the correction or chastisement of offences against sound taste. The monthly periodicals of the day to which, in general, critical dissertations were confined,

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