The Literature of Freedom--The Liberal Literature of
England--Periodicals--Edinburgh Review--Its Founders--Its
Contributors--Its Standard and Style of Criticism--Its
Influence--London Quarterly Review Started--Political Services of
the Edinburgh--Its Ecclesiastical Tone--Sydney Smith--Decline of
the Political Influence of the Edinburgh--Blackwood's
Magazine--Tait's Magazine--Westminster Review--The Eclectic--The
New Monthly--The Weekly Press--Cobbett's Register--Hunt's
Examiner--Mr. Fonblanque--Mr. Landor--The Spectator--Douglas
Jerrold--Punch--People's and Howitt's Journals--Mr.
Howitt--Chambers's Journal--Penny Magazine and Cyclopedia.
In the times of the Commonwealth, when the mind of England was set free,
Milton was the center of a constellation of intellects that exemplified
in their writings the value of his own saying--"Give me the liberty to
know and to argue freely, above all other liberties." After his sun set,
liberty without licentiousness hid behind a cloud, which was not fully
cleared away till the storm of the American and French revolutions.
While the literature of England depended for sustenance upon the
patronage of the great, it was marked, with occasional exceptions, by
the brand of servility; and so long as authors looked for remuneration
to the munificence of the lord or lady to whom they dedicated their
works, they laid their choicest gifts at the footstool of power and
title. As education became diffused, enlarging the circle of readers,
writers began to look to the public for patronage, and adapted their
works to the popular taste. Then the publishers and booksellers became
the agents, the middle-men, between the author and the reader. Long
after this change, however, it was hazardous for a writer to lift his
pen against existing institutions in Church and State; and he who run a
tilt against these, were he able to make sale of his works, might deem
himself fortunate if he escaped a prosecution for libel or sedition,
that emptied his purse of its guineas, or planted his feet in the
stocks. Even so late as the beginning of this century, the instances
were not a few where writers, who doubted the divinity of the royal
Guelphs, and questioned whether all the religion in the kingdom emanated
from Lambeth Palace, were fined, cropped, branded, and shipped beyond
seas. The impulse given to European intellect by the first French
revolution, was not confined to statesmen and warriors. It stimulated
thought in all classes. As in politics, so in letters, fetters fell from
men's minds, and reason, imagination, and utterance were emancipated.
The Fox school of politicians encouraged the growth of a literature in
England favorable to freedom. It immediately started up, rank and
luxuriant; and though bearing every variety of fruit that could delight
the eye, or regale the appetite, or poison the taste, the decided
preponderance of the product has been congenial to rational liberty,
healthy morals, and sound learning.
In estimating the literary influences which have contributed to the
cause of Progress and Reform in Great Britain, during the present
century, a high place should be assigned to the EDINBURGH REVIEW.
This celebrated periodical appeared at an era when independence of
thought and manliness of utterance had almost ceased from the public
journals and councils of the kingdom. The terrors of the French
revolution had arrested the march of liberal opinions. The declamation
of Burke and the ambition of Napoleon had frightened the isle from its
propriety. Tooke had barely escaped the gallows through the courageous
eloquence of Erskine. Fox had withdrawn from the contest in despair,
and cherished in secret the fires of freedom, to burst forth in happier
times.
Previous to 1802, the literary periodicals of Great Britain were mere
repositories of miscellanies, relating to art, poetry, letters, and
gossip, partly original and partly selected, huddled together without
system, and making up a medley as varied and respectable as a first
class weekly newspaper of the present day. The criticisms of books were
jejune in the extreme, consisting chiefly of a few smart witticisms, and
meager connecting remarks stringing together ample quotations from the
work under review. They rarely ventured into deep water on philosophical
subjects, and as seldom pushed out upon the tempestuous sea of political
discussion. Perhaps one or two journals might plead a feeble exception
to the general rule; but the mass was weary, stale, flat, and
unprofitable.
The Edinburgh appeared. It bounded into the arena without the
countenance of birth or station, without the imprimatur of the
universities or literary clubs. Its avowed mission was to erect a higher
standard of merit, and secure a bolder style and a purer taste in
literature, and to apply philosophical principles and the maxims of
truth and humanity to politics, aiming to be the manual of the scholar,
the monitor of the statesman. As in its advent it had asked permission
of no one _to be_, so as to its future course it asked no advice as to
what it should _do_. Soliciting no quarter, promising no favors, its
independent bearing and defiant tone broke the spell which held the mind
of a nation in fetters. Its first number revived the discussion of great
political principles. The splendid diction and searching philosophy of
an essay on the causes and consequences of the French revolution at once
arrested the public eye, and stamped the character of the journal.
Pedants in the pulpit, and scribblers of Rosa-Matilda verses in printed
albums, saw, from other articles in the manifesto, that exterminating
war was declared on their inanities and sentimentalities. The new
journal was perused with avidity, and produced a sensation in all
classes of readers, exciting admiration and envy, love and hatred,
defiance and fear. It rapidly obtained a large circulation, steadily
rose to the highest position ever attained by any similar publication,
reigned supreme in an empire of its own creation for a third of a
century, accomplishing vast good mingled with no inconsiderable evil.
The honor of founding this Review belongs to Sydney Smith. He suggested
the idea to Messrs. Jeffrey, Brougham, and Murray--he, a poor young
curate of Salisbury Plain, "driven in stress of politics" into
Edinburgh, while on a voyage to Germany--they, briefless young advocates
of the northern capital. They all subsequently rose to eminence; all
becoming lords except Smith, who might have been made a lord bishop if
he had not been created the prince of wits. The four adventurers, who
met in the eighth or ninth story of Buccleugh Place, and agreed to start
a Review, provided they could get the first number published on trust,
they not having money enough to pay the printer, could not have dreamed
that the journal would be eagerly read for half a century, from London
to Calcutta, from the Cape of Good Hope to the sources of the
Mississippi, and that Brougham would become Lord Chancellor of Great
Britain, Jeffrey Lord Justice of the highest court of Scotland, Murray
also Lord Justice of Scotland, and Smith Canon of St. Paul's Cathedral,
firing hot shot at Pennsylvanians for not paying interest on a small
loan from his surplus of L70,000.
Did space permit, it might be interesting to attempt to trace the causes
of the great power which this periodical exerted over public opinion.
The temper of the times when it appeared in respect to politics, and the
Dead Sea of dullness in literary criticism that spread all around, gave
novelty to an enterprise which proposed to combine the highest literary
and scientific excellences with the boldest discussion of public men and
affairs. The execution of the plan came up to the lofty tone of the
manifesto. In its infancy, and onward to its maturity, the Edinburgh
surrounded itself with a host of contributors whose names have given and
received celebrity from its pages. Smith, Jeffrey, Brougham, Murray,
Scott, Playfair, Leslie, Brewster, Stewart, Horner, Romilly, Stephen,
Mackintosh, Brown, Malthus, Ricardo, Hallam, Hamilton, Hazlitt, Forster,
McCulloch, Macaulay, Carlyle, Talfourd--and these are but a tithe--have
given it their choicest productions, ranging through the fields of
politics, finance, jurisprudence, ethics, science, poetry, art, and
letters, in all their multiform departments. The contributions of many
of these writers have been extracted and published in separate volumes,
which, in their turn, have challenged the criticism of celebrated
reviewers on both sides of the Atlantic.
Nor was less zest imparted to its earlier pages because ability was not
always accompanied with candor, and attacks upon distinguished authors
and statesmen were no less fierce than assaults upon popular works and
venerable institutions. Persons and principles were alike mixed in the
melee. Nobody, nothing was spared that opposed the march of the literary
Tamerlane. In the department of literary criticism, its standard was
just, lofty, or capricious, according to its mood; its style, by turns
and by authors, grave or sarcastic, eulogistic or saucy, argumentative
or sentimental, chaste or slashing, classical or savage. A man-of-war of
the first class, and of the regular service, when civil and
ecclesiastical abuses were to be discovered and destroyed, in literary
contests it often run up the flag and used the weapons of the buccaneer.
Not only did it exterminate the small craft of penny-a-line novelists
and poetasters, but it pursued Wordsworth, Southey, Coleridge, Byron,
Montgomery, Lamb, and all with whom they treated or sympathized, with a
spirit akin to that of the "Red Corsair of the Mozambique," when chasing
----"Argosies with portly sail,
Flying by him with their woven wings,
Rich with Barbaric pearl and gold."
The very temerity of the Review, sustained by such rare learning,
ability, and brilliancy, gave it currency with friends and foes. It was
admitted by its enemies that no similar publication displayed so many
rich veins of thought, uttered so many acute observations, or arrayed
its offspring in such graceful drapery; and they found fault, not so
much with the standards set up, or the principles inculcated, as with
their alleged unjust application to their favorite books and authors.
The answer of the reviewers was short and characteristic. If they used
the stiletto or the scalping-knife when they ought to use the scimitar
or the broad-sword, why, that was according to the canons of criticism
they had in such cases made and provided, and the friends of the slain
might resort to reprisals.
A specimen of the mode in which it drowned in ridicule pedantry and
stupidity, is found in the first number, in a review, by Sydney Smith,
of Rev. Dr. Langford's "Anniversary Sermon of the Royal Humane Society."
After giving the title of the publication in the usual form, the
reviewer says: "An accident which happened to the gentleman engaged in
reviewing this sermon proves, in the most striking manner, the
importance of this charity for restoring to life persons in whom the
vital power is suspended. He was discovered with Dr. Langford's
discourse lying open before him, in a state of the most profound sleep,
from which he could not, by any means, be awakened for a great length of
time. By attending, however, to the rules prescribed by the Humane
Society, flinging in the smoke of tobacco, applying hot flannels, and
carefully removing the discourse itself to a great distance, the critic
was restored to his disconsolate brothers. The only account he could
give of himself was, that he remembers reading on regularly, till he
came to the following pathetic description of a drowned tradesman;
beyond which he recollects nothing." Then follows a paragraph from the
sermon, dropsical with dullness; and here the article ends.
A specimen of the style in which it pronounced sentence of contempt on
an author is found at a later date, and is perfect of its kind. It is
the introductory paragraph of Macaulay's review of Gleig's Life of
Warren Hastings. "This book," says Macaulay, "seems to have been
manufactured in pursuance of a contract, by which the representatives of
Warren Hastings, on the one part, bound themselves to furnish papers,
and Mr. Gleig, on the other part, bound himself to furnish praise. It is
but just to say, that the covenants on both sides have been most
faithfully kept; and the result is before us in the form of three big
bad volumes, full of undigested correspondence and undiscerning
panegyric." Macaulay then goes on through seventy pages, giving his own
brilliant portrait of Hastings, never noticing the author except at long
intervals, when he turns aside for a moment to give him a blow in the
face with his brush.
The Review gave an impulse to periodical literature, and elevated the
tone of literary criticism and political disquisition. Grub street made
a stand against the invader, worthy of its ancient garrets. It issued
fifty pamphlets in a single year, explaining, extenuating, defending,
defying. But dullness and insipidity at length gave way, and retreated
rapidly to the trunk-makers and green grocers. Much evil was mingled
with the good. The excellences of the new journal were not alone
imitated. Ferocity and fire blazed out from the pages of cotemporaneous
publications. But, they were the rush-light to Vesuvius. At length,
soldiers of higher mettle and brighter armor than Grub street could
muster took the field. Byron had shivered a lance with the Edinburgh.
Southey, whose scalp it had mangled, was stung to madness, and vowed
vengeance. Scott denounced its politics as rash, radical, and
revolutionary. The great Whig rhinoceros from beyond the Tweed had
ravaged the softer landscape of England, and tossed Tory politicians and
poets on its horn for six years, when Brougham's celebrated article on
Don Pedro de Cevallos and Spanish affairs appeared, avowing
ultra-democratic doctrines. Scott, who had some time before ceased to
be a contributor, now ordered his subscription stopped, and entered into
correspondence with Ellis, Southey, Gifford, and others, in regard to
starting a rival periodical, that should encounter the spoiler in his
own field, and with weapons of like temper and force. The result was the
establishment, in 1809, of the Quarterly Review, in London. Its editor
was William Gifford; and in boldness, bitterness, dogmatism, and
ferocity, he was a full match for any writer in the Edinburgh; though,
in comprehension of broad principles and appreciation of the beautiful,
in acuteness and originality, he fell below the journal he was set up to
overthrow.
But, dazzling as has been the meteoric career of the Edinburgh in the
firmament of letters, it is in the department of governmental reform
that its greatest and best services have been rendered. Its founder has
well said, that at its advent "it was always considered a piece of
impertinence in England if a man of less than L2,000 or L3,000 a year
had any opinion at all on important subjects." The Edinburgh Review has
taught a Manchester calico-printer how to take the Government by the
beard. In the forty-six years of its existence, it has seen the British
slave trade abolished--a devastating European war terminated--the Holy
Alliance broken up, and its anointed conspirators brought into
contempt--the corporation and test acts repealed--the Catholics
emancipated--the criminal code humanized--the death-penalty
circumscribed--the reform bill carried, extending the suffrage to half a
million of people--West India and East India slavery abolished--the
commercial monopoly of the East India Company overthrown--municipal
corporations reformed--the court of chancery opened, and sunlight let in
upon its doings--the common law courts made more accessible to the
masses--the law of libel made endurable--the poor-laws made more
charitable--the game-laws brought nearer the verge of modern
civilization--the corn-laws repealed--the post-office made subservient
to all who can raise a penny--the means of educating the poor
increased--the privileges of the Established Church curtailed in three
kingdoms--and a long catalogue of minor reforms effected, and dignity
and intensity imparted to the popular demand for still larger
concessions to the progressive genius of the age. And this journal may
proudly say, that all these measures have received the support, and most
of them the early, zealous, and powerful support of the Edinburgh
Review. These measures gained advantages from the advocacy of the
Review, far beyond the intrinsic force of the arguments with which it
supported them; as, indeed, did the party of progress whose oracle it
was. Its brilliant literary reputation shed a luster around the most
radical political opinions, clothing them in bright raiment, and giving
them an introduction into the halls of the learned and the saloons of
the noble. Its numerous articles on liberal and general education,
especially those written by Sydney Smith, are above all praise. And
while it impaled bores and charlatans in literature, and scourged quacks
and villains in the State, it was no less a terror to hypocrites and
oppressors in the Church. But candor must admit, that if it was
generally a terror to evil doers in the name of religion, it was not
always a praise to them that did well.
The ecclesiastical and religious tone of the Review, during the first
twenty years of its existence, was imparted to it mainly by Sydney
Smith. He had a good deal more wit than charity; was not ashamed to
steal his sermons from Taylor, Hooker and Barrow, that he might save
time to shoot sarcasms at Wesley and "the nasty Methodists," and shower
ridicule upon Wilberforce and "the patent Christians at Clapham;" and
seemed to have little reverence for any part of the Establishment which
he defended, except its tithes and its titles. He pleaded for toleration
and emancipation, not so much because Dissenters and Catholics deserved
them, but because to grant them would silence clamor, and more firmly
secure the power and patronage, and exalt the dignity of "the Church."
But, though it breathed a good deal of this spirit, the Review always
contended for religious freedom, and, when need be, was as hearty in its
assaults upon the miter of the primate, and its ridicule of the starched
robes of the bench of bishops, as of ranters and patent Christians.
Sydney Smith hated tyranny, but he loved money; he was a humane man, and
no ascetic or bigot; and it was his superabundant wit, and the ludicrous
light in which almost everything struck his mind, that gave edge to his
sarcasms, and made him seem more uncharitable than he really was. Two of
his articles in the Edinburgh carried through Parliament a bill
extending to all grades of felons the full benefit of counsel when on
trial. Previous to this, counsel, even in capital cases, were not
allowed to address juries in favor of prisoners, and before a poor
wretch could get half through a stammering speech in his own behalf, he
was generally choked off by the judge, that he might be the more
speedily strangled by the hangman. Ah! old Dean Swift humanized; few men
have done more to explode error, shame bigotry, and expose abuses, than
thou!
As a political journal, the influence of the Edinburgh Review has, to a
great extent, passed away. Its power and glory culminated during the
administration of Earl Grey. Till then, it shone in unrivaled splendor,
pouring its beams in the path of progress, and shedding more light
around the footsteps of reform than all other like sources combined.
Other luminaries, fresher in their rising, and reflecting the opinions
of the awakened mind of England, have dimmed its fires. It has grown
wayward, timid, conservative, and aristocratic, touching gingerly, and
with gloved fingers, topics which it once handled without mittens. From
the hour it became the organ of power, it ceased to be the herald of the
people. In its decline, it has occasionally roused itself, and struck a
blow for freedom, which revived the memory of the glorious days before
the blight of Conservatism came upon it. It has shared the fate of the
Whigs, and of all Quarterlies, as the organs of political opinion.
Periodical literature has seen a revolution in the public taste.
Quarterlies and Monthlies hardly survived the advent of railways. The
electric telegraph, which can barely keep pace with the revolutions of
parties and states, has made even Weeklies seem stale. The Penny
Magazine defies the Quarterly, and the Daily Press rules the hour. But,
ten thousand thanks to the Edinburgh Review, for ushering in an era
which has made its own existence no longer necessary to the politician
and the statesman.
A brief notice of a few other liberal periodicals will close this
chapter.
The London Quarterly having failed to destroy the influence of the
Edinburgh, a less stately and more lively periodical was planted on the
spot where the great Whig champion bore sway, to encounter its politics
with the lighter weapons of wit and satire, and dispute its mastery in
the field of polite letters and criticism. Blackwood's Edinburgh
Magazine entered the lists in 1817. Reckoning among its contributors
some of the ripest scholars and rarest wits of the times, it occupies a
first place among literary journals, while able partisans sprinkle its
pages with the spiciest vindications of ultra Tory politics. During the
reform-bill excitement, Tait's Edinburgh Magazine was sent forth as an
antidote to Blackwood. A corps of rare essayists and critics have given
it a highly respectable position in the literary world, and its
political articles, written with vigor and eloquence, have kept pace
with the advancing step of the age.
After several unsuccessful attempts had been made to establish a
permanent Quarterly journal in London, to support the liberal side in
politics, Mr. Bentham and his disciples started the Westminster Review,
in 1824. Leaping into the arena far ahead of the Edinburgh, it drew its
blade in defense of the radicals, and proposed fundamental reforms in
the Constitution of the country. Reflecting the views of its celebrated
founder, it has advocated, with great ability, unqualified suffrage,
freedom of trade, the dissolution of the union of Church and State, the
abolition of the hereditary feature of the House of Peers, the
abrogation of the court of chancery, and a complete remodeling and
codification of the laws of the realm. Bentham, Bowring, Col. Thompson,
and Roebuck have been among its political contributors, and many of its
literary articles have been of a high order. Carlyle has published in it
several characteristic essays. It exhibits more courage and soul than
any of its cotemporaries, and is the most democratic Quarterly in the
kingdom. The Eclectic Review, a periodical devoted rather to
ecclesiastical reforms, though it indulges in literature and politics,
has, under the control of Dr. Price, a distinguished Baptist clergyman,
rendered good service in the cause of philanthropy. Robert Hall and John
Foster, names familiar to scholars and divines in both hemispheres, used
to contribute to its pages. The New Monthly Magazine, under the
editorship of Campbell, and afterward of Bulwer, though chiefly devoted
to literature, espoused the liberal side in politics. For a time it
received the contributions of our accomplished countryman, Mr. Willis.
But, it is not the Quarterly and the Monthly that originate and guide
public opinion. At best, they but follow in its wake. The Weekly and the
Daily trace the channels in which its currents flow. And here we are
launched upon an ocean of periodical literature. From the days of
Wilkes' "North Briton," down to those of Punch's "Charivari," a
constantly swelling mass of newspapers has borne the cause of the People
forward from triumph to triumph. Confining our view to those standing
out of the mass, on peculiar and independent ground, the eye is at once
attracted by the Register and the Examiner--the greatest of their class.
The former was founded by William Cobbett, the latter by Leigh Hunt; the
one uttering the discontents of the lower class of radicals, the other
reflecting the opinions of the higher. Of Cobbett's writings I have
already spoken at considerable length. He was the best exponent of the
wrongs, prejudices and hates of the subterranean strata of English
society, that has ever appeared. The Examiner was established in 1809.
It displayed a much higher order of literary talent than the Register,
but was equally radical in politics, and scarcely less violent in its
attacks on public men and institutions. Hunt was repeatedly prosecuted
by the Government, and lay two years in prison for a libel on that
decoction of treachery and lechery, the Prince of Wales. While in jail,
he composed some of his best poems. The Examiner has always displayed
marked ability and brilliancy, both in its political and literary
departments. While under the editorship of Mr. Fonblanque, a writer of
extraordinary vigor and taste, it ordinarily produced political articles
executed in a style that would have adorned the Edinburgh Review, while
their doctrines were congenial to the progressive genius of the times.
Among its frequent contributors is the intrepid, proud, humane,
eccentric Walter Savage Landor, a poet of keen sensibilities, an ardent
lover of truth and freedom--a man, "take him all in all." Latterly, the
reformatory tone of The Examiner is somewhat modified, but it maintains
its place in the front rank of the weekly literary and political press.
The Spectator deservedly holds a high position in this department of
newspapers. At first it was strongly radical in its politics; but, like
the Examiner, it has latterly abated its tone without diminishing its
ability.
Belonging to the same general class as the Examiner and Spectator, are
the various periodicals that have borne the name of Douglas Jerrold. Mr.
Jerrold has written successful melodramas, comedies, and farces for the
theaters; sparkling essays for the classic Blackwood; humorous and
serious tales for the New Monthly; stories and squibs for Punch;
political "leaders" for first-class newspapers; besides sketches,
criticisms, and "articles" without number for the million. Abounding in
wit, sarcasm, humor, pathos, philosophy and fun, there runs through his
writings a large vein of unadulterated humanity, which gives life and
heart to the whole. He wages holy war against fustian literature, sham
statesmanship, sectarian cant, legalized injustice, and titled tyranny.
If England's periodical writers were of his temper and metal, the good
time foreshadowed by Mackay, would soon come, when
"The pen shall supersede the sword,
And right, not might, shall be the lord."
Having unexpectedly fallen upon Punch, in connection with Mr. Jerrold, I
will say that that eccentric person deserves honorable mention among
English Reformers. His unparalleled wit is tempered with love to
mankind; his sympathies are with the million; and he displays in his
weekly walk and conversation a great deal more humanity, quite as much
Christian charity, (though far less "religion,") as "The Church of
England Quarterly Review," the organ of High Church Toryism. Punch is
too much of a man to send Mr. Shore to prison, or to excommunicate Mr.
Noel.
The People's Journal and Howitt's Journal are successful attempts to
mingle tasteful literary essays with radical political disquisitions,
and bring them within the reach of every-day men of business and toil.
Though many accomplished writers contributed to their pages, the
Howitts, who originated the enterprise, were for some time its animating
soul. The educated radicalism of England found an organ in these
journals, whose tone harmonized with their sympathies. High as is Mr.
Howitt's literary reputation, it is as a political and social reformer
that his name will be the most widely known. His "History of
Priestcraft," published in 1834, while he lived in Nottingham, and which
met a sale of some 20,000 copies, gave him eclat in a new field, brought
him some money, which he needed, and an election as alderman of that
town, which he did not want at all. Four years afterward, he published
"Colonization and Christianity," which led to the formation of the
British India Society, to the abolition of slavery in the peninsula of
Hindostan, and to efforts to relieve from oppression and stimulate to
enterprise the myriads that swarm in that long-neglected portion of the
empire. Mr. Howitt's writings in behalf of Complete Suffrage, Religious
Toleration, and Irish Relief, are as honorable to the benevolence of his
heart as are his numerous literary works to the fertility of his genius.
Still confining myself to _quasi_ literary productions, I may mention in
this connection a series of publications, adapted to the means and
capacities of the common people, which, though not specially intended to
promote social and political reform, exerted a powerful influence in
that direction. Chambers' Edinburgh Journal was commenced in 1832; it
consists of papers on literature, science, history and biography, and,
being sold at a cheap rate, reached at one period a circulation of
nearly 100,000 copies. The Society for the Diffusion of Useful
Knowledge, founded in 1825, caused to be prepared, and placed at cheap
prices in the hands of the working classes, numerous publications of the
same general character, but of a higher order, as those of the Chambers;
and it subsequently issued two weekly periodicals, the Penny Magazine
and the Penny Cyclopedia, filled with entertaining knowledge, which
circulated by thousands through all the workshops of the kingdom, and
have found their way to the learned rich and the laboring poor on this
side of the ocean. These publications imparted to the common mind of
England that knowledge which is power, and, in conjunction with the
political press, taught the people the nature and value of their rights,
and inspired them with courage to demand and defend them.
So much for periodical literature. Another department of English
letters, more strictly deserving the name of "Literature," which has
rendered powerful aid to the cause of political reform during the
present century, will be noticed in the next chapter.