The Quarterly Review

“ It was said to be an article of a solemn description; and report magnified the periodical into the Quarterly Review. So he became one who wrote for the English Press. It was felt that he was a man of letters; it was assumed that he was on terms of familiar correspondence with all the chief literary men of the day. ”

“ I willingly also subscribe for the republication of the first twenty-eight numbers to be furnished me through the same channel, for the convenience of payment. This work is certainly unrivalled in merit, and if continued by the same talents, information and principles which distinguish it in every department of science which it reviews, it will become a real Encyclopedia, justly taking its station in our libraries with the most valuable depositories of human knowledge. Of the Quarterly Review I have not seen many numbers. As the antagonist of the other it appears to me a pigmy against a giant. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 review in question concludes with the remark that if the author would buy a spelling-book, a pocket-dictionary, exchange her raptures for common sense, and gather a few precepts of humility from the Bible, 'she might hope to prove, not indeed a good writer of novels, but a useful friend, a faithful wife, a tender mother, and a respectable and happy mistress of a family.' This impertinence is thoroughly characteristic of the days when the Quarterly was regarded as an amusing but frivolous, not to say flippant, publication. ”

“ A man writes a book of criticisms. A Quarterly Review criticises the critic. A Monthly Magazine takes up the critic's critic. A Weekly Journal criticises the critic of the critic's critic, and a daily paper favors us with some critical remarks on the performance of the writer in the Weekly, who has criticised the critical notice in the Monthly of the critical essay in the Quarterly on the critical work we started with. And thus we see that as each flea “has smaller fleas that on him prey,” even the critic himself cannot escape the common lot of being bitten. ”

“ 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 ”

“ It is not, certainly, in any spirit of national superiority that we point to the undoubted fact that, notwithstanding the great expansion of newspaper literature in the States, the wide diffusion of popular education, and the circulation of English books of the best kind at a mere nominal cost, the Americans have as yet produced nothing representatively like our London Times, or Punch, or the Athenæum, or the Illustrated London News, or the Saturday Review, or the Art Journal, or the Edinburgh and Quarterly. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If only as amusing pictures of the old style of criticism, which in this more polite age has rarely been seen—except a few years ago in the coarse but vigorous criticisms of the 'Saturday Review,' when that journal possessed a power in the world of letters it has since lost by the death or secession of the men who made it famous—we may be excused for giving a few specimens of the reviewer's manner. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Scholars sneer at and would fain dispense with them altogether; and the public, grown lazy and helpless by this constant use of props and stays, can now scarce brace itself even to get through a magazine article, but reads in the daily paper laid beside the breakfast-plate a short notice of the last number of the long-established and popular review, and there upon passes its judgment and is content. ”

“ A Review is, or is supposed to be, an embodiment of this important element; exercising itself always with reference to the leading interests of the age, holding a middle place between the buzz of the newspapers and the mature judgment of the historian, less subject to the influences of passion or party than the former, and held to less strict account for severe attention to justice than the latter. Our current literary ideas and forms are of English growth. The violence of party spirit, the universal interest in politics, have in England made the great Reviews into political organs. ”

“ And first, as in duty bound, we began to discuss the Quarterly Magazine, and its past success, and its future hopes, and its patrons, and its contributors. Davenant was wonderfully angry because some “fathomless blockheads” found obscurities in his lyrical poem. “If there were any descendings into the deep fountains of thought, any abstruse researches ‘into the mind of man’—in short, to speak plainly, if there were anything in the poem which a man might be very proud to risk his reputation upon, then one might be prepared for darkness and coldness in this improving and understanding age ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Review, which is the organ of no party, and no sect, and supported by men of all shades of opinion, aims at the collection and production in a popular form of all that is important in the history, the politics, the topography, the statistics, the philology, the manners and customs, the political and domestic economy, &c. ”

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

“ So it comes about that the periodical literature is, on the whole, somewhat more scrupulously devout in tone, somewhat more given to laud and dilate upon the traffic of the upper leisure class and to carry on the discussion in the terms and tone imputed to that class, somewhat more prone to speak deprecatingly of the vulgar innovations of modern culture, than the average of the readers to whom it is addressed. ”

“ And then—what a lesson does change of quarters teach us, to discriminate between the worthless and the valuable; and with equanimity to endure separation from things which have become interesting to us, but which we cannot remove. ”

“ 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. ”