Quarterly Review

“ Much has been made of two articles which appeared in The British Foreign Quarterly Review and which attacked most bit- terly the newspapers of the United States in general and The New York Herald in particular. The Westminster Review an- swered these charges sufficiently when it remarked that Ameri- can journalism was no worse than English. There is every reason to believe that the articles in The Foreign Quarterly Review were not written in good faith. ”

“ But I do not believe that any devices would have made a radical and democratic review defray its expenses, including a paid editor or sub-editor, and a liberal payment to writers. I myself and several frequent contributors gave our labour gratuitously, as we had done for Molesworth; but the paid contributors continued to be remunerated on the usual scale of the Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews ”

“ In this book-making age, we are aware that it is impossible for a Quarterly to review the twentieth part of the productions constantly issuing from the press: but if, as we suppose, it is the design of these periodicals to direct the taste of the public in every department of science and literature, surely they should contain reviews of such works selected from the mass, as are best worthy attention ”

“ It is a remarkable fact that the Americans have never produced a Quarterly worthy of the name, except the 'North American Review,' which is certainly below the intellectual level of the four or five English reviews which are reprinted in New York every quarter within a fortnight of their publication in England. ”

“ Possibly, one of the consequences resulting from such an association, would be the establishment of a good and an impartial Review, a work the want of which has been felt for several years. The two long-established and celebrated Reviews, the unbending champions of the most opposite political opinions, are, from widely differing causes, exhibiting unequivocal signs of decrepitude and decay. The Quarterly advocate of despotic principles is fast receding from the advancing intelligence of the age ”

“ In the old, old Quarterlies is many a slashing review, that, however absurd it be as criticism, we can hardly wish unwritten. In the National Observer, before its reformation, were countless fine examples of the cavilling method. ”

“ The American Economic Review, established in 1911, is a quarterly publication which has devoted particular attention to the bibliography of economic subjects, and which should be consulted for the announcement of new books, the summary of articles in periodicals, and the appreciation of important works in book reviews. ”

“ These reviews are getting more and more powerful, especially The Quarterly. They are like a superstition which, the more it prostrates the crowd and the longer it continues, the more it becomes powerful, just in proportion to their increasing weakness. ”

“ The Reviewer vindicates himself against Bp. Ellicott's misconceptions. But you are quite determined that I shall mean something essentially different. The Quarterly Reviewer, (you say,) is one who “contends that the Received Text needs but little emendation ”

“ The Quarterly follows the most important movements of foreign politics but devotes chief attention to questions of present interest in the United States. Every article is signed and expresses simply the personal view of the writer. Scholarly reviews and brief book notes are published and an annual Supplement gives a valuable record of political events throughout the world. Address editorial communications to the Political Science Quarterly; business communications to the Academy of Political Science, Columbia University, New York. ”

“ If we seek their successors among the writers for the weekly or monthly journals, we shall certainly fail to find them. Looking to the Reviews, we find ourselves forced to agree with the English journalist, who informs his readers that "it is said, and with apparent justice, that the quarterlies are not as good as they were." From year to year they have less the appearance of being the production of men who looked to any thing beyond mere pecuniary compensation for their labor. ”

“ With the printing press to produce, the curiosity of man to demand, and his vanity and greed—if not also his genius and ambition—to supply, the book is in all probability pretty safe. In the forms and varieties of this periodical publication we have seen some interesting changes. [Pg 450] As might have been expected, the tendency has been for the intervals of publication to be shortened—for the quarterly to give way as the fashionable form to the monthly, the monthly to the weekly, the weekly to the daily. ”

“ There are hosts of letters in these volumes from indignant authors who express themselves with true British candor because the Quarterly has assailed their books, or their friends’ books, or their friends’ friends’ books, or their pet politicians, or their most cherished political schemes. There are hosts of other letters which merely record a distinctly unfavorable opinion of the magazine’s literary qualities, and which lament with pitiless sincerity that the last number hardly contained a single readable article. ”

“ So complete is the change, that all mind, except the heaviest and least popular, is likely to flow hereafter through the Daily, Weekly, Monthly or Quarterly Miscellanies, which compete with universities, parliaments, churches, and libraries, for ascendency in the government of mankind. ”

“ In the narrow sense of the term, they are not literary reviews; the function of periodicals that discuss present day politics, sociology, theology, history, science, art and numerous other generic subjects is more inclusive and appeals to a much larger audience than the periodical of literary criticism. In the quarterlies and monthlies we look for the most authoritative reviews of the important books of the day; but for general [Pg xxxvii] literary review and gossip, a new class of monthlies, best represented by Dr. ”

“ There appears a foolish pride in the representation of things from this quarter ; the strength and resources of the Country are far overrated, and those who are engaged in this business, to indulge their pride, will sacrifice their Country. The inhabitants are beginning to move off in great bodies, and unless a firmer barrier can be formed, this quarter will be all depopulated. We are living upon chanty, and subsist by daily collections. ”

“ For periodicals—newspapers, magazines, reviews—are the Fools’ Paradise of the commonplace, the mediocre, the orthodox, the respectable. As the strength of a chain must be measured by its weakest link, so the thought of a periodical must be measured by the thought of its most imbecile subscribers. A periodical to live must be a commercial success; the faintest thrill of new ideas would affect its circulation by shocking off some of its regular readers; it must suit its articles to the size of its customers—a very little hat for a very little head, a very little thought for a very little brain. ”

“ But within the last twenty years periodical literature has become extensively hebdomadal, and even diurnal; and, as a necessary consequence, the essays of those sustaining it in this shape have decreased in proportionate value, at once from the larger amount of work demanded, and from the shorter time allowed for its execution. Such essays may serve the hour fairly, but can seldom be of high worth ultroneously.’ ‘The extent and variety of the labours called for at the hands of those actively engaged on modern cheap periodicals can scarcely be conceived by the uninitiated public. ”

“ We shall have to consider the rise and performances of two great individual writers, one of whom entirely re-created, if he may not almost be said to have created, the criticism of art in England, while the other gave a new temper, if not exactly a new direction, to the criticism of literature; and we shall have, in regard to periodicals, to observe the rise, in the first place of the weekly newspaper, and then of the daily, as competitors in strictly critical and literary work with the quarterly and monthly reviews, as well as some changes in these latter. ”

“ J. H. Raymond will deliver two full courses through the quarter on the Principles of Economics and A Historical Survey of Sociological Thought, and also a series of public lectures on A Group of Social Philosophers. The summer quarter is not a "summer school," but an integral part of the university year, with all the departments in operation. ”

“ June 14, 1818, The Examiner assailed the editor of the Quarterly as a government critic who disguised a political quarrel in literary garb, as a sycophant to power and wealth:
[Pg 137] “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, not to be imposed upon by shallow pretensions ”

“ Meanwhile, however, the city had been quietly visited by an enterprising representative of a New York periodical of the new type that developed with the opening years of the century—one making a specialty of passionate "muck-raking." And since the people of America love nothing better than being startled, Yardley's Weekly had acquired a circulation truly fabulous. The emissary of the paper had attended several of the Citizens meetings; interviewed, it seemed, many persons: the result was a revelation to make the blood of politicians, capitalists and corporation lawyers run cold. ”

“ A quarter is not a great capital to subsist on in New York when one is not a beggar and has no friends. Two days of it drove me out again to find at least the food to keep me alive; but in those two days I met the man who, long years after, was to be my honored chief, Charles A. Dana, the editor of the Sun. ”

“ But there are parts of the country where quarter-day means more than this, where sales of furniture abound when removals are going on. In those primitive districts people are not apt to be very prosperous, and they are apt to drink and get into debt when they are not prospering. To be “sold up” is the natural consequence, and sales are almost as much a matter of course as quarter-day. ”

“ Economic discussion and the debate of radical social solutions absorb the attention of the country, and are the preponderating topics of serious conversations. Economic papers have the precedence in our periodicals, and, even in the purely literary magazine, they crowd the novel and the romance. ”

“ what comes from this quarter, set it all down as so much gain. ”

“ Every quarter of a year, every month every day, there must be a supply for the gratification of the public, of new and luminous theories on the subjects of religion, foreign politics, home politics, civil economy, finance, trade, agriculture, emigration, and the colonies. ”

“ It is said that when Canning [258] declined a cheque forwarded for an article in the Quarterly, John Murray [259] sent it back with a blunt threat that if he did not take his money he could never be admitted again. The great publisher told him that if men like himself in position worked for nothing, all the men like himself in talent who could not afford it would not work for the Quarterly. ”

“ These were the company quartermaster-sergeants, whose job is to look after the feeding of their companies at all times and their housing when out of the line. "Quarters" is by training an autocrat and by hereditary reputation a scoundrel, but when he is seen waiting to show his men into its happy but temporary homes at the end of a long march, he is the most popular man in the company. ”

“ Later Divisions.—Coming down to the close of the eighteenth century, we find the following division of English periodical literature: Quarterlies, usually called Reviews; Monthlies, generally entitled Magazines; Weeklies, containing digests of news; and Dailies, in which are found the intelligence and facts of the present moment; and in this order, too, were the intellectual strength and learning of the time at first employed. The Quarterlies contained the articles of the great men—the acknowledged critics in politics, literature, and art ”

“ There was a huge suspicion that the leaders of the so-called Democratic Party in 1904 betrayed the people into the hands of Wall Street, and your editorials have certainly confirmed this suspicion. Indeed the “magazine with a purpose back of it” is having a mighty influence with every honest and fair-minded man. The literary features of your Magazine are excellent. The “Educational Department” alone is worth more than the subscription price. In fact your Magazine has no peer for the price in America. ”

“ Count upon your fingers all the juvenile periodicals which you know even by name. Compare this supply with the demand. We are certainly understating the figures when we say that there are twenty million young people in the United States. Even the most widely-circulated of these periodicals does not claim half a million subscribers. We believe it safe to say that of our whole great nation of young people, not one in ten is yet supplied with a monthly or weekly periodical. After all, is there not ample room for us at the American fireside? ”

“ How paltry, how much to be lamented the spirit of their criticisms!—They breathe the essence of fanaticism. True, we have a few quarterlys and monthlys, that rise above the ordinary grade, and will compare, in all the excellencies of thought, with any productions of the kind, in any country or clime. ”

“ Permanent funds recommended to be put in care of trustees.
9. Schools to be under the care of monthly meetings’ committees and reports are to be made thereon.
10. The poor children to be educated free of charge, and also the Negroes, where they are not able to pay. Children not Friends were not omitted, [793] as we find in the plans actually followed by the monthly meetings.
The functions of the quarterly meeting
The chief functions of the quarterly meeting were: (1) to transmit these advices; (2) to gather and return reports of the accomplishments within its limits ”