It is hardly within the province of literary criticism to deal with hypothetical conditions in authors' lives; but it is at least a matter of some interest to conjecture whether Byron would have become a great poet if this stinging review had not been published. It is evident that the Hours of Idleness gave few signs of promise, and the poet, fully intent upon a political career, himself expressed his intention of abandoning the muse. Many an educated Englishman has published such a volume of Juvenilia and sinned no more. But a nature like Byron's could not overlook the effrontery of the Edinburgh Review. The proud-spirited poet was evidently far more incensed by the patronizing tone of the article than by its strictures: what could be more galling than the reiterated references to the "noble minor," or the withering contempt that characterized a particular poem as "the thing in page 79"? Many years later, Byron wrote to Shelley:—"I recollect the effect on me of the Edinburgh on my first poem; it was rage, and resistance, and redress—but not despondency nor despair." (Prothero, V, p. 267.)
There was method in Byron's "rage and resistance and redress." For more than a year he labored upon a satire which he had begun even before the appearance of the Edinburgh article. (See letter of October 26, 1807, in Letters, ed. Prothero, I, p. 147.) In the spring of 1809, English Bards and Scotch Reviewers was given anonymously to the world. The publication of this vigorous satire virtually decided Byron's career. Not only did he abuse Jeffrey, whom he believed responsible for the offending critique, but he flung defiance in the face of almost all his literary contemporaries. The authorship of the satire was soon apparent, and in a flippant note to the second edition, Byron became still more abusive toward Jeffrey and his "dirty pack," and declared that he was ready to give satisfaction to all who sought it. A few years later he regretted his rashness in assailing the authors of his time. He also learned of the injustice done to Jeffrey and had ample reason to feel embarrassed by the tone of the eight reviews of his poems that Jeffrey did write for the Edinburgh. (See the list in Prothero, II, p. 248.) In Don Juan (canto X, xvi), he made the following retraction:—
The other reviews of Hours of Idleness are of little interest. The Monthly and the Critical both praised the book; the Literary Panorama, III, p. 273, said the author was no imbecile, but an incautious writer.
98. θελο λεγειν,—Anacreon, Ode I. (θέλο λέγειν Ἀτρείδας, κ. τ. λ.)
98. μεσονυκτιοις, ποθ' ὁραις,—Anacreon, Ode III. (μεσονυκτίοις ποθ' ὥραις, κ. τ. λ.)
100. Sancho,—Sancho Panza in Don Quixote. The proverb is of ancient origin. See French, Latin, Italian and Spanish forms in Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable.
Shortly after the appearance of the second edition of English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, Byron left England and travelled through the East, at the same time leisurely composing the first two cantos of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. Their publication in 1812 placed him at the head of the popular poets of the day. Henceforth the reviews gave extensive notices to all his productions. (For references, see J.P. Anderson's bibliography appended to Hon. Roden Noel's Life of Byron.) Childe Harold was reviewed in the Edinburgh Rev., XIX (466-477), by Jeffrey; in the Quarterly, VII (180-200), by George Ellis; in the British Review, III (275-302); and Eclectic Review, XV (630-641).
The article here reprinted from the Christian Observer, XI (376-386), of June, 1812, is of special interest as an early protest from conservative, religious circles against the immoral and irreverent tone of Byron's poetry. As literary criticism, it is almost worthless, in spite of the elaborate allusions and quotations with which the critic—evidently a survivor of the old school—has interlarded his remarks. Little can be said in defense of an article which insists that the chief end of poetry is to be agreeably didactic and which (in 1812) cites Southey as the greatest of living poets. However, it probably represents the attitude of a large number of worthy people of the time, who recognized that Byron had genius, and wished to see him exercise his powers with due regard for the proprieties of civilized life. As Byron's offences grew more flagrant in his later poems, the criticisms in the conservative reviews became more vehement. For Byron's controversy with the British Review, which he facetiously dubbed "my grandmother's review" in Don Juan, see Prothero, IV, pp. (346-347), and Appendix VII. The ninth Appendix to the same volume is Byron's caustic reply to the brutal review of Don Juan in Blackwood's Magazine, V, p. 512 ff.
101. Lion of the north, Francis Jeffrey. The usual agnomen of Gustavus Adolphus. Cf. Walter Scott, the "Wizard of the North."
105. Faiery Queen will not often be read through. Hume's History of England, Appendix III.
106. Qui, quid sit pulchrum, etc. Horace, Epis. II (3-4).
106. Rursum—quid virtus, etc. Horace, Epis. II (17-18).
107. Our sage serious Spenser, etc. Milton's Areopagitica, Works, ed. Mitford, IV, p. 412.
107. Quinctilian. See Quintilian, Book XII, Chap. I.
107. Longinus. On the Sublime, IX, XIII, etc.
108. Restoration of Learning in the East. A Cambridge prize poem (1805) by Charles Grant, Lord Glenelg (1778-1866).
109. Thersites. See Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida.
109. Caliban. See Shakespeare's The Tempest.
109. Heraclitus. The "weeping philosopher" (circa 500 B.C.).
109. Zeno. The founder (342-270 B.C.) of the Stoic School.
109. Zoilus. The ancient grammarian who assailed the works of Homer. The epithet Homeromastix is sometimes applied to him.
113. The philosophic Tully, etc. See the concluding paragraph of Cicero's De Senectute.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
It is doubtful whether any other poet was so widely and so continuously assailed in the reviews as Shelley. Circumstances have made certain critiques on Byron, Keats, and others more widely known, but nowhere else do we find the persistent stream of abuse that followed in the wake of Shelley's publications. The Blackwood articles were usually most scathing, and those of the Literary Gazette were not far behind. Fortunately, the poet spent most of his time in Italy and thus remained in ignorance of the great majority of these spiteful attacks in the less important periodicals.
Alastor, which appeared in 1816, attracted comparatively little attention. The tone of the brief notice reprinted from the Monthly Rev., LXXIX, n.s., p. 433, shows that the poet was as yet unknown to the critics. Blackwood's Magazine, VI (148-154), gave a longer and, on the whole, more favorable account of the poem. In the same year, Leigh Hunt published his Story of Rimini, most noteworthy for its graceful rhythmical structure in the unrestricted couplets of Chaucer. This departure from the polished heroics of Pope, which were ill-adapted to narrative subjects in spite of his successful translation of Homer, was hailed with delight by the younger poets. Shelley imitated the measure in his Julian and Maddalo, and Keats did likewise in Lamia and Endymion. Hunt was soon recognized by the critics as the leader of a group of liberals whom they conveniently classified as the Cockney School. Shelley's ill-treatment at the hands of the reviewers dates from his association with this coterie. His Revolt of Islam (1818) was assailed by John Taylor Coleridge in the Quarterly Review, XXI (460-471). The Cenci was condemned as a horrible literary monstrosity by the scandalized critics of the Monthly Rev., XCIV, n.s. (161-168); the Literary Gazette, 1820 (209-10); and the New Monthly Magazine, XIII (550-553). The review here reprinted from the London Mag., I (401-405), is comparatively mild in its censure.
One would naturally suppose that the death of Keats would have ensured at least a respectful consideration for Shelley's lament, Adonais (1821); but the callous critics were by no means abashed. The outrageous article in the Literary Gazette of December 8, 1821, pp. (772-773), is one of the unpardonable errors of literary criticism; but it sinks into insignificance beside the brutal, unquotable review which Blackwood's Magazine permitted to appear in its pages. In the same year Shelley's youthful poetical indiscretion, Queen Mab, which he himself called "villainous trash," was published under circumstances beyond his control, and forthwith the readers of the Literary Gazette were regaled with ten columns of foul abuse from the pen of a critic who declared that he was driven almost speechless by the sentiments expressed in the poem. Well could the heartless reviewer of Adonais write:—"If criticism killed the disciples of that [the Cockney] school, Shelley would not have been alive to write an elegy on another."
115. Eye in a fine phrenzy rolling. Shakespeare's Midsummer-Night's Dream, V, 1, 12.
115. Above this visible diurnal sphere. Milton's Paradise Lost, Book VII, 22.
116. Parcâ quod satis est manu. Horace, Odes, III, 16, 24.
116. Lord Fanny. A nickname bestowed upon Lord Hervey, an effeminate noble of the time of George II.
117. O! rus, quando ego te aspiciam. Horace, Satires, II, 6, 60.
117. Mordecai. See Book of Esther, V, 13.
118. Last of the Romans. Mark Antony in Shakespeare's Julius Cæsar, III, 2, 194.
120. Full fathom five. Shakespeare's The Tempest, I, 2, 396.
126. Ohé! jam satis est. Horace, Satires, I, 5, 12-13.
126. Tristram Shandy. The excommunication is in vol. III, chap. XI.
133. Put a girdle, etc. See Shakespeare's Midsummer-Night's Dream, II, 1, 175.
John Keats
The history of English poetry offers no more interesting case between poet and critic than that of John Keats. The imputed influence of a savage critique in hastening the death of the poet has given the Quarterly Review an unenviable notoriety which clings in spite of the efforts of scholars to establish the truth. To many students, Keats, Endymion, and Quarterly are practically connotative terms; and this is a direct result of the righteous but misguided indignation of Shelley—misguided because his information was incomplete and the more guilty party escaped, thus inflicting upon the Quarterly the brunt of the opprobrium of which far more than half should be accredited to Blackwood's Magazine.
Endymion was published in April, 1818. One of the publishers (Taylor and Hessey) requested Gifford, then editor of the Quarterly Review, to treat the poem with indulgence. This indiscreet move probably actuated Gifford to provide a severe critique; at any rate, in the belated April number of the Quarterly, XIX (204-208), which was not issued until September, appeared the famous review. A persistent error, which has crept into W.M. Rossetti's Life of Keats, into Anderson's bibliography, and even into the article on Gifford in the Dictionary of National Biography, attributes this article to Gifford himself; but it is known to be the work of John Wilson Croker. (See the article on Croker in Dict. Nat. Biog. From the article on John Murray (ibid.) we learn that Gifford was not wholly responsible for a single article in the Quarterly.)
Meanwhile, Blackwood's Magazine, III (519-524) had made Endymion the text of its fourth infamous tirade against the Cockney School of Poetry. The signature "Z" was appended to all the articles, but the critic's identity has not yet been discovered. Leigh Hunt thought it was Walter Scott, Haydon suspected the actor Terry, but it is more probable that the honor belongs to John Gibson Lockhart. One account attributes the entire series to Lockhart; another attributes the series to Wilson, but holds Lockhart responsible for the Endymion article. Mr. Andrew Lang, in his Life and Letters of Lockhart, dismissed the matter by saying that he did not know who wrote the article.
The Quarterly critique was reprinted in Stevenson's Early Reviews, in Rossetti's Life of Keats, in Buxton Forman's edition of Keats' Poetical Works (Appendix V) and elsewhere. From a critical point of view, it is, as Forman terms it, a "curiously unimportant production." The student will at once question its power to cause distress in the mind of the poet; as for malignant severity, there are several reviews among the present reprints that put the brief Quarterly article to shame. When we turn to what Swinburne calls the "obscener insolence" of the Blackwood article, we find an unrestrained torrent of abuse against both Hunt and Keats that amply justified Landor's subsequent allusions to the Blackguard's Magazine. The Quarterly critique was captious and ill-tempered; but the Blackwood article was a personal insult.
It is impossible to consider in detail the vexed question of the influence which these reviews had upon Keats. In Mr. W.M. Rossetti's Life of Keats, pp. (83-106) there is a full discussion of the evidence on the subject. Within a few months after the appearance of the articles, Keats wrote:—"Praise or blame has but a momentary effect on the man whose love of beauty in the abstract makes him a severe critic of his own works. My own domestic criticism has given me pain without comparison beyond what Blackwood or The Quarterly could possibly inflict." Some weeks later he wrote that the Quarterly article had only served to make him more prominent among bookmen. After some time he expressed himself less confidently and deprecated the growing power of the reviews, but there is no evidence that he fretted over the critiques. Haydon tells us that Keats was morbid and silent for hours at a time; but it is quite likely that the consciousness of his physical affliction—hereditary consumption—was oppressing his mind. His death occurred on February 23, 1821—about two and a half years after the appearance of the Endymion critiques.
Shelley had gone to Italy before the reviews were published. He heard of the Quarterly article, but knew nothing of Blackwood's while writing Adonais; hence in both poem and preface, the former review is charged with having caused Keats' death. Shelley declared that Keats' agitation over the review ended in the rupture of a blood vessel in the lungs with an ensuing rapid consumption. These statements, which Shelley must have had indirectly, have not been substantiated. We are forced to the conclusion now generally accepted—that Keats, although sensitive to personal ridicule, was superior to the stings of review criticism and that the distressing events of the last year of his life were sufficient to assure the early triumph of the inherent and unconquerable disease.
141. Miss Baillie. Joanna Baillie (1762-1851) authoress of numerous forgotten plays and poems which enjoyed great popularity in their day.
142. Land of Cockaigne. Here means London, and refers specifically to the Cockney poets. An old French poem on the Land of Cockaigne described it as an ideal land of luxury and ease. The best authorities do not accept Cockney as a derivative form. The Cockney School was composed of Londoners of the middle-class, supposedly ill-bred and imperfectly educated. The critics took special delight in dwelling upon the humble origin of the Cockneys, their lack of university training, and especially their dependence on translations for their knowledge of the classics.
142. When Leigh Hunt left prison. Hunt had been imprisoned for libel on the Prince Regent (1812).
146. Vauxhall. The Gardens were a favorite resort for Londoners early in the eighteenth century and remained popular for a long time. See Thackeray's Vanity Fair (chap. VI). The implication in the present passage is that the Cockney poet gets his ideas of nature from the immediate vicinity of London.
147. East of Temple-bar. That is, living in the City of London.
150. Young Sangrado. An allusion to Doctor Sangrado, in Le Sage's Gil Blas (1715).
Alfred Lord Tennyson
Tennyson's first poetical efforts, which appeared in Poems by Two Brothers (1827) attracted little critical attention. His prize-poem, Timbuctoo (1829) received the interesting notice here reprinted from the Athenæum (p. 456) of July 22, 1829. Timbuctoo was printed in the Cambridge Chronicle (July 10, 1829); in the Prolusiones Academicæ (1829); and several times in Cambridge Prize-Poems. The use of heroic metre in prize-poems was traditional; hence the award was an enviable tribute to the blank-verse of Timbuctoo.
Tennyson's success was emphasized by the remarkable series of reviews that greeted his earliest volumes of poems. The Poems, chiefly Lyrical (1830) were welcomed by Sir John Bowring in the Westminster Review, by Leigh Hunt in the Tatler, by Arthur Hallam in the Englishman's Magazine, and by John Wilson in Blackwood's Magazine. The Poems (1833) were reviewed by W.J. Fox in the Monthly Repository, and by John Stuart Mill in the Westminster Review. This array of names was indeed a tribute to the poet; but the unfavorable review, was, as usual, most significant. The article written by Lockhart for the Quarterly Rev., XLIX (81-97), has been characterized as "silly and brutal," but it was neither. Tennyson's fame is secure; we can at least be just to his early reviewer. It is true that the poet winced under the lash and that ten years elapsed before his next volume of collected poems appeared; but Canon Ainger is surely in error when he holds the Quarterly Review mainly responsible for this long silence. The rich measure of praise elsewhere bestowed upon the volume would leave us no alternative but the conclusion that Tennyson was childish enough to maintain his silence for a decade because Lockhart took liberties with his poems instead of joining the chorus of adulation. We know that there were other and stronger reasons for Tennyson's silence and we also know that the effect of Lockhart's article was decidedly salutary. When the next collection of Poems (1842) did appear, the shorter pieces ridiculed by Lockhart were omitted, and the derided passages in the longer poems were altered.
We may, without conscientious scruples, take Mr. Andrew Lang's advice, and enjoy a laugh over Lockhart's performance. Its mock appreciations are, perhaps, far-fetched at times; but there are enough effective passages to give zest to the article. It has been said in all seriousness that Lockhart failed to appreciate the beauty of most of Tennyson's lines, and that he confined his remarks to the most assailable passages. Surely, when a critic undertakes to write a mock-appreciation, he will not quote the best verses, to the detriment of his plan. The poet must see to it that his volume does not contain enough absurdities to form a sufficient basis for such an article. There is a striking contrast to the humor of Lockhart in the little-known review of the same volume by the Literary Gazette, 1833, pp. (772-774). The latter seized upon some crudities that had escaped the Quarterly's notice, and, with characteristic brutality, decided that the poet was insane and needed a low diet and a cell.
Although the reception accorded to Poems (1842) was generally favorable, the publication of The Princess in 1847 afforded the critics another opportunity to lament Tennyson's inequalities. The spirit of the review of The Princess here reprinted from the Literary Gazette of August 8, 1848, is practically identical with that of the Athenæum on January 6, 1848, but specifies more clearly the critic's objections to the medley. It is noteworthy that Lord Tennyson made extensive changes in subsequent editions of The Princess, but left unaltered all of the passages to which the Literary Gazette took exception. The beautiful threnody In Memoriam (1850) and Tennyson's elevation to the laureateship in the same year established his position as the leading poet of the time; but the appearance of Maud in 1856 proved to be a temporary check to his popularity. A few personal friends admired it and praised its fine lyrics; but as a dramatic narrative it failed to please the reviews. The most interesting of the critiques (unfortunately too long to be reprinted here) appeared in Blackwood's Magazine, XLI (311-321), of September, 1855,—a forcible, well-written article, which, incidentally, shows how much the magazine had improved in respectability since the days of the lampooners of Byron, Shelley, and Keats. The authorship of the article has not been disclosed, but we know that W.E. Aytoun asked permission of the proprietor to review Tennyson's Maud. (See Mrs. Oliphant's William Blackwood and his Sons.) The publication of the Idylls of the King (1859), turned the tide more strongly than before in Tennyson's favor, and subsequent fault-finding on the part of the critics was confined largely to his dramas.
153. Catullus. See Catullus, II and III—(Passer, deliciæ meæ puellæ, and Lugete, O Veneres Cupidinesque).
153. Είθε λύρη, κ. τ. λ. Usually found in the remains of Alcæus. Thomas Moore translates it with his Odes of Anacreon (LXXVII), beginning "Would that I were a tuneful lyre," etc. Lockhart proceeds to ridicule Tennyson for wishing to be a river, which is not what the quoted lines state. Nor does Tennyson "ambition a bolder metamorphosis" than his predecessors. Anacreon (Ode XXII) wishes to be a stream, as well as a mirror, a robe, a pair of sandals and sundry other articles. See Moore's interesting note.
155. Non omnis moriar. Horace, Odes, III, 30, 6.
156. Tongues in trees, etc. Shakespeare's As You Like It, II, 1, 17.
157. Aristæus. A minor Grecian divinity, worshipped as the first to introduce the culture of bees.
164. Dionysius Periegetes. Author of περιήγησις τῆς γῆς, a description of the earth in hexameters, usually published with the scholia of Eustathius and the Latin paraphrases of Avienus and Priscian. For the account of Æthiopia, see also Pausanias, I, 33, 4.
167. The Rovers. The Rovers was a parody on the German drama of the day, published in the Anti-Jacobin (1798) and written by Frere, Canning and others. It is reprinted in Charles Edmund's Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin. The chorus of conspirators is at the end of Act IV.
169. The Groves of Blarney. An old Irish song. A version may be seen in the Antiquary, I, p. 199. The quotation by Lockhart differs somewhat from the corresponding stanza of the cited version.
170. Corporal Trim. In Sterne's Tristram Shandy.
173. Christopher North. John Wilson, of Blackwood's Magazine.
Robert Browning
The reviews of Browning's poems are singularly uninteresting from a historical standpoint. There is usually a protest against the obscurity of the poetry and a plea that the author should make better use of his manifest genius. For details concerning these reviews, see the bibliography of Browning in Nicoll and Wise's Literary Anecdotes of the Nineteenth Century. The list there given is extensive, but does not include several of the reviews mentioned below.
The early poems were so abstruse that the critics were unable to make sport of them as they did in the case of Wordsworth, Byron, Tennyson, and the rest; and when Browning finally deigned to write within range of the average human intellect, that particular style of reviewing had lost favor. His earliest publication, Pauline (1832) was well received by W.J. Fox in Monthly Repository, and in the Athenæum. Tait's Edinburgh Magazine called it a "piece of pure bewilderment." See also the brief notice in the Literary Gazette, 1833, p. 183. Paracelsus (1835) had a similar experience; the reprint from the Athenæum, 1835, p. 640, is fairly characteristic of the rest, among which are the articles in the Monthly Repository, 1835, p. 716; the Christian Remembrancer, XX, p. 346, and the reviews written by John Forster for the Examiner, 1835, p. 563, and the New Monthly Magazine, XLVI (289-308).
Neither the favorable review of Sordello (1840) in the Monthly Rev., 1840, II, p. 149, nor the partly appreciative article in the Athenæum, 1840, p. 431, seems to warrant the well-known anecdotes relating the difficulties of Douglas Jerrold and Tennyson in attempting to understand that poem. The Athenæum gave the poet sound advice, especially in regard to the intentional obscurity of his meaning. That this admonition was futile may be gathered from the Saturday Review's article (I, p. 69) on Men and Women (1855) published fifteen years after Sordello. The critic reverted to the earlier style, and produced one of the most readable reviews of Browning. Whatever may be the final verdict yet to be passed upon Browning's poetic achievement, the fact remains that the contemporary reviews from first to last deplored in his work a deliberate obscurity which was wholly unwarranted and which precluded the universal appeal that is essential to a poet's greatness.
189. Della Crusca of Sentimentalism. Robert Merry (1755-1798) under the name Della Crusca became the leader of a set of poetasters who flourished during the poetic dearth at the end of the eighteenth century and poured forth their rubbish until William Gifford exposed their follies in his satires The Baviad (1794) and The Mæviad (1795).
189. Alexander Smith. A Scotch poet (1830-1867).
189. Mystic of Bailey. Philip James Bailey (1816-1902), best known as the author of Festus, published The Mystic in 1855.
192. Hudibras Butler, etc. Samuel Butler, author of Hudibras (1663-78); Richard H. Barham, author of the Ingoldsby Legends (1840); and Thomas Hood, author of Whims and Oddities (1826-27). These poets are cited by the reviewer for their skill with unusual metres and difficult rhymes.