(1780-1857)
Croker was certainly unfortunate in his enemies, though they have given
him immortality. The contemptible Rigby in Disraeli's _Coningsby_
(admittedly drawn from him) is scarcely more damaging to his reputation
than the sound, if prejudiced, onslaught of Macaulay's review, of which
we find echoes, after twelve years, in the same essayist's Madame
D'Arblay. Dr. Hill tells us that he "added considerably to our knowledge
of Johnson," yet he was a thoroughly bad editor and had no real sympathy
with either the subject or the author of that incomparable "Life":
through his essentially low mind. He was not a scholar, and he was
inaccurate.
Croker was intimately associated with the _Quarterly_ from its
foundation until 1857, retaining his bitterness and spite to the year of
his death. But he was a born fighter, and never happier than in the heat
of controversy. That he secured the friendship of Scott, Peel, and
Wellington must go to prove that his political, and literary prejudices,
had not destroyed altogether his private character. He is credited with
being the first writer to use the word "conservatives" in the
_Quarterly_, January, 1830. He was a member of the Irish Bar, M.P. for
Dublin, Acting Chief Secretary for Ireland, Secretary of the Admiralty
(where his best work was accomplished), and a Privy Councillor.
* * * * *
The veiled sarcasm of his attack on _Sydney Smith_ was only to be
expected from a Tory reviewer, and was probably inflamed by that heated
loyalty to the Church which characterised his paper.
_Macaulay_ had certainly provoked his retaliation, and we
may notice here the same eager partisanship of Church and
State, pervading even his personal malice.