If Macaulay represents a new _Edinburgh_ from the days of Jeffrey,
Brougham, and Sydney Smith, the variety of criticism embraced by the
_Quarterly_ is even more startling. There was more malice, and far
coarser personalities in the early days, and almost continuously while
Gifford, Croker, and Lockhart held the reins: it is--almost certainly--
among these three that the responsibility for our "anonymous" group of
onslaughts may be distributed. The two earliest appreciations of Jane
Austen (from Scott and Whately) offer an interlude--actually in the same
period--which positively startles us by the honesty of its attempt at
fair criticism and the entire freedom from personality.
Gladstone's interesting recognition of Tennyson, and the "Church in
Arms" against Darwin (so ably pleaded by Wilberforce), belong to yet
another school of criticism which comes much nearer to our day, though
retaining the solemnity, the prolixity, and the _ex cathedra_ assumption
of authority with which all the Reviews began their career; and is
singularly cautious in its independence.