DEAR SIR,

Do you remember reading once on a time a review of Mr Wordsworth's poem, called the Excursion, in the Edinburgh? That admirable and profound critique came from the pen of that admirable and profound critic, Francis Jeffrey, and began with the following words" This will never do!"

Mr Jeffrey, knowing nothing of the real principles of poetry, and being on that as on most other subjects, very shallow and flippant, is to be excused for such an opening of even a mockcriticism of one of the finest poems in the world. But when I take up the task of review-dissecting, I cannot claim the protection of shallowness, flippancy, and ignorance, like Jeffrey, being pretty generally considered as a very passable hand in doing up such concerns; and therefore it is with grief I say, on the word of an old practitioner, on looking over your last Quarterly

MR JOHN MURRAY, THIS WILL NEVER DO.

It is a bad thing for any one to come after Gifford-still worse when the result of comparison with that old article

monger is as uncomplimentary as the process itself is proverbially odious.

It may seem to you, that the Quarterly is fixed on so firm a basis that no mismanagement can shake it. Believe me that is a dangerous mistake. The public, certainly, is long-suffering; but there is a point of reaction. Besides, many a collector of libraries will have just now a fair plausible excuse for discontinuing his set. He has thirty volumes of Mr Gifford's Review already on his shelves,-all that was superintended by the author of the Baviad and Mæviad-the translator of Juvenal-the commentator on Ben Jonson, &c. &c. He may say, I am content with this, so far is good;why should I tie it to the dead bo→ dies of Mr Murray? Now, I am not saying that your corpora will be of necessity dead-but the wind of such a word, such a joke, such a sneer, such a piece of mere scurrility or ill-nature, going afloat, will do no good. It will require no small degree of absolute vitality to counteract the impression it would make. Not even the former vigorous pace of the Quarterly review will do they must, as the song has it,

skip like a flea ;"-instead of

which, under your platooning, they lumber on with the heavy tread of dismounted dragoons.

You may say Why, the Edinburgh is still more stupid, and yet it subsists as flourishingly as ever. I allow the stupidity. I do not admit the flourishing state of the concern. They vapour about it, to be sure; but it is falling, and has been so these five or six years, in sale. But, my dear sir, you overlook one circumstance. Were the Edinburgh Review to become ten times more stupid, (if a lower deep than the lowest deep can be supposed to dip so far down into the realms of Bathos,) it must have still a sale. There is no chance, thank our happy stars, of the Whig party coming into power. They must, therefore, have some organ-some horn to cast down the truth, to grow and prosper under their favour. We shall always have Chancellors who will not reward brawling, insolence, sedition, and mediocrity with the recompence due to knowledge of law and decorous behaviour; and the victims of their own ill conduct will always be glad to heal the wounds of their smarting vanity by keeping up a work where they can bellow against the chieftain of their profession. There is no danger that the churches established in this island will fall at least in our time-and they will, of course, be marks for the venomous to abuse in wholesale and detail. Nor, besides open enemies, will there be wanting ever and anon a jack-pudding parson, who, having built his hopes of preferment on toad-eating, and writing political libels for a party, has found these hopes annihilated by the overthrow of the gang to which he sold his crawling services, to crack anile jokes against his brethren. It is probable, also, that no knot of Ministers will be so insane as to hand over our colonies to spoil and massacre; and, therefore, the people, who are hostile to the West Indians from a thousand reasons, honesty, zeal, fanaticism, ignorance, roguery, cant, East India sugar, gunpowder-jobbing, &c. &c. will patronize a work devoted to their views. Ireland-manage it what way you will, emancipate or not emancipate will always be a fine field for clamour. The patriots of that country, really wanting only a disunion from this country, and the establish

inent of a Roman Catholic Hierarchy, will never be satisfied under any do minion of England. They, then, will be constant auxiliaries in the same good cause. And, of course, the temporary pieces of folly with which every Opposition has it in its power to possess the vulgar mind, will always afford full matter for farther swelling the feculent contents, and securing the adherents, of a Whig Review.

On these accounts, Mr John Murray, the Edinburgh Review is always sure of a sale-let its literary articles be as dull as its political articles are base. You have not these external muniments. You must recollect the vast difference between a triumphant and a persecuted sect. The Whigs stick to one another like so many burs. The Tories have not the same inducement. You remember the old Æsopic fable of the Wind and the Sun. They, in the storm of adversity, cling to everything around them-we, in the sunshine of prosperity, are not particularly anxious about any external defence to keep off the weather. They cannot support more than one such periodical as the Edinburgh Review-they will support that one. We could support fifty, if it so pleased us

and there is no necessity imposed on us of bestowing undue patronage on any. You may take my word for it, that if your Review went to the shades of Erebus-the deepest shades of Erebus and profound night-we could find within the land five hundred good as it. This, for a preface. I am sure, from your well-known moderation and quiet temper, you take everything I say to you in good part.

You cater for us this quarter, 1st, Church of England Missions by the Doctor. It is a paper full of his usual faults and merits;-the former, now impossible to be cured, and useless to be complained of-the latter, universally recognized. His late controversies with Butler have, I perceive, rendered him more than usually acrimonious against the "Romanists," as he calls them; but they will find it hard to defend their humbug missions against a person so thoroughly armed with all the controversial weapons as Southey is. It gave me great delight, I own, to read his note on J. K. L.,the great Irish ecclesiastical champion. Of the actual ignorance of this person, every educated man who had con

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demned himself to wade through his ferocious writings was of course persuaded; but in Ireland, among the literati of that learned country, there are no bounds to his panegyric. The resplendent talents,' the "transcendent learning," the "powerful reading," of that poor scribbler-are there the theme of all the speaking men. Shiel was quite awe-struck with his productions, and extolled him in the New Monthly in one of his Whiteboy articles as a second Bentley. Is it not delicious to see Southey extinguish the learning in this quiet way?

I am happy to hear Southey talking common sense about converting the Hindoos. I did not expect it from him, and therefore it is doubly agreeable. For the sake of it, I forgive him his emptying his note-book all over us; his wit (by the by, Mr John Murray, Southey ought never to be allowed to attempt wit on any consideration)-his discussions on the strong names of Dahomey-his philological dissertation on the talkee-talkee tongue, and the other absurdities brought in so unceremoniously by the head and shoulders. Besides, they are only what I look for from the Doctor. They are his mark-his monogram; we should not know him if he did not set it to his performances.

In brief, the opening paper has but two defects; it has nothing to do with the present quarter any more than it had with this time five years, or will have to do with the month of June 1830, and that is a defect in a paper heading our actual, living, flourishing review; and, in the second place, it is too long. Forty-two pages, Mr John Murray-depend upon it, this is talkee-talkee far too much. It will be a bad name if they think fit to call your opening articles, Twaddle: Marshal the troops better in the next Number.

An Essay on Palladian Architecture is the next. Very good, I presumebut as I know nothing about the science, the less I say about it the better. Is this an article of pressing importance? Is it an article in place at all in your Review? Let me say, that I doubt. I have no doubt as to its not being worth the space of twenty-four pages immediately after Southey.Bad tactics again.

The third article, on Early Roman History, does justice to the great Ger

man scholars who have been employed on that interesting subject. You much mistake, however, if you think they were unknown to our scholars. The Early Roman History requires to be re-written. I have not, however, so low an opinion of Hooke as the reviewer appears to entertain. I am quite aware of his defects; but he carries into that period of history one great requisite, viz. total disregard for the Roman vapouring. It is evident that he has little respect for the history of the seven kings and their immediate successors in the government. I own, were I writing a history of Rome, I should pay Niebuhr's authorities far less respect than he does. I should have little scruple in casting overboard the whole early story as legendary as the tale of Brutus and Troynovant, or else of condensing it as rapidly as I should do the Saxon heptarchy. I look with a feeling, not very far from contempt, on disquisitions as to the motives, views, and policy of Servius Tullius. I laugh at such sentences as, "It was in the reign of Servius Tullius that the exclusive aristocracy of the earliest times was first mitigated at Rome,"-9. v. p. 79,-knowing, as I do, that the man must have been not two degrees above a savage. What did he know about aristocracy, or democracy? He was a leader of a banditti inside a rudely fortified town, and if he made classes, it was purely in a military, not a civil, point of view. The fault of historians in general is attributing the ideas of succeeding ages to those of the times of which they write. In English history, had Simon De Montfort, when he called in the burghers, any idea that he was changing the face of all the governments in the world, by commencing the representative system? Not he, in good sooth. And if the institutes of Servius made any alteration in the civil government of after ages in Rome, such alteration was as completely unlooked for by that venerable and enlightened monarch. A man of common sense is sadly wanted on the History of Rome. I should not trust a German. He would refine too much.

In saying this, I should be sorry if I were thought to cast any reflections on that great country. I have a high and unfeigned respect for the intellect of Germany; but owing to the way in which they have been governed, I

I

should not set much value on the practical remarks of the cleverest men of any party in Germany, on government. agree with your reviewer on the nonsense of bawling about "German folly and infidelity." There are few greater theologians than the German commentators; but, my dear Mr Murray will you be so good as to recollect who it was that raised the cry against "German" reading. Let me whisper in your ear-the Anti-Jacobin !-and let me say it out aloud, that the cry was raised in sheer ignorance. Men who knew German literature, never joined in it. Schlegel expresses as low an opinion of the writers quizzed in that witty journal, as Mr Canning could have done; and after all, poor Kotzebue, who was the chief butt, fell a victim to his zeal for Anti-Jacobinism. Some of the conclusion of this paper is such mere inanity, that I suspect the admixture of a different hand. Is it not so?-If you wish to drop me a note on this important subject, by sending to Mr Hume you will save me postage, as he franks all my letters.

I suppose, by way of novelty, after the light papers on Palladio and Servius Tullius, you have concocted the fourth article on the Origin of Equitable Jurisdiction. It is indeed very pretty summer reading, and important withal. My dear sir, instead of poking into these musty legal antiquities, you would have been much better employed in defending the great man at the head of equity against the filthy at tacks made on him every day these last two months. It is such things that we expect from the Quarterly.* It should be as ready to answer all the slanders against the Earl of Eldon, as the Edinburgh and its coadjutors are to attack him. I confess I was so sure, from the words put at the head of the article, that we should have had something of the kind, that when I found I was called on to read dull disquisitions on antiquated jurisdictions, I could hardly refrain from throwing the book out of my hand. This will not do, Mr John Murray.

As I happen to have read Caldcleugh's South America, I can join in the praises of it in your fifth article. It is indeed an interesting book, and your

We must apologize to a valuable Number his article on Lord Eldon. before the 12th, or they will not do.

reviewer has made a pleasant review out of it. I am happy to see that the Quarterly, notwithstanding some of its defections, retains its geographical hands. But it is amazingly cowardly in Barrow, who, I suppose, is the reviewer, to shrink from noticing the pamphlet which demolished his mining article. Perhaps he judged silence best; it may be prudent, but it is not brave. We shall not in a hurry forget the pretty exposure of the critic who made Mexico a South American State, and talked of the Mine of Real del Monte with the same savoir du pays which would distinguish a gentleman talking of the Mine of Cornwall. He evidently is beaten; and, what is worse, everybody knows it. Such an article as his Rail-Roads, and the reply it drew forth, was not a very well-omened affair for our friend's com mencement, my dear sir.

His

The Library Companion, by that immeasurable ass Dibdin, is, I see, your next. He is abused, of course; how could it be otherwise? I am sorry to see that there is no information brought to bear upon him. Carping at the style of such a creature is nothing. real, solid, downright total ignorance ought to have been shown. I am afraid that your reviewer knew as little about the subject as Dibdin does. Have the goodness to compare the article in the Westminster Review, on the same subject, with your own, and you will just see the difference between a pretender to knowledge and a possessor of it. And as for the wit of your article, it is downright, horrible, disgusting stupidity, almost as bad as Dibdin's. He is an ass, no doubt-What is the reviewer, when he tells us that the Roxburghe Club," if less enlightened, is not more numerous than Johanna Southcote's sect," when one of the first names on its roll is Sir Walter Scott? He might as well have looked before he made the assertion.

If I thought little of the last article, dear sir, I think very highly of the next-On the Past and Present State of the Country. I read with joy always the picture of our national improvement, for I love the country from north to south, from east to west, from high to low. I love it in every relation, and

that love thrills through every pulse of my heart. I read that picture also with vanity, for it fulfils anticipations and prophecies made by me in the darkest and gloomiest seasons, when even some of the most sanguine quail ed. I wish I could copy the whole article-its details proving our improvement in agriculture, manufactures, and property of every kind-but that is impossible; I shall, however, make room for two bits of it. First, the improvement of the merchants, peasantry, &c.*

I am sorry that I must stop here, for the details that follow must gratify every friend of his country. The other morceau shall be on the national debt, for it is a view of the subject I have often taken. I even see my own phrases in this article.*

*

I rejoice to read this article, and hope never to live to see any other picture of the country.

What have we next? Crofton Croker's Fairy Legends-a pretty book indeed, by an excellent young fellow. It only receives the commendation it deserves. North ought to have reviewed it long ago. I hope Croker will give us another volume.

The Star in the East, by a Mr Conder! In the name of goodness, why do you praise such trash, and put its doggrel in contrast with Cowper and Burns? The remarks on Milton are mere trash. It is objected to him that in Paradise Lost the female character

is undervalued. Do you remember the subject of Paradise Lost?-the ruin of mankind by a woman's indiscretion. Could she in that poem appear otherwise than undervalued? And again it seems the good angels insult the bad! My dear sir, the doctrine of Conciliation was not known in those days. There did not appear any great necessity to compliment the spirits of evil,

The authors of vice and wickedness, before unknown.

See Sir Morgan ODoherty's Maxims, Maxim 89.

Again, Satan is drawn attractively, and is the hero. Satan is drawn as his name implies, the Adversary of Heaven, and therefore must be drawn as a being of power. It never would do to introduce, as you seem to wish, a devil in hoofs, horn, and tail. He was fallen -but he was an Archangel fallen. And I can assure you, he is not the hero of Paradise Lost. It was a false theory of Epic poets that made anybody think So. If you have nothing else to say, I recommend you to keep away from Milton. En passant, as I shall prove some of those days, Milton was an Arian. I do not think anybody has yet noticed that curious fact, but you may take my word for it. The article is altogether very paltry.

And the last of Henderson on Wines is dull, very dull indeed. There are higher authorities on that subject than yours, my dear sir.

Again I must say, MR JOHN MURRAY, THIS WILL NEVER DO, hoping the next will be better.

P. S.-A filthy and silly pamphlet has been published in Glasgow against you, for cutting up that poor thing Theodric. Never mind it. The chief argument against our promising young friend is, that as he is not known in our literature, he has no right to review Campbell. Mind the impudence of the Whigs. Jeffrey, who could no more write a book than yourself, has reviewed and abused Scott, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey, Moore, Byron, and many others, all the time to the great delight of the sapient persons who believe in his review. But the moment a Whig is attacked, a man far inferior to at least three of them, if not to the whole five, an uproar is set up as if you had committed sacrilege. They are a neat set of fellows.