partly responsible. He was among the earliest English critics to see the
importance for the study of literature of the historical point of view
and to take into close account, in the study of an author or of a whole
literature, the social environment. Not that Jeffrey was one of the
original minds who first conceived of the historical method of study in
its application to art, and worked out for themselves conceptions of
literature as a growth and development and as dependent upon the spirit
of the age and upon social conditions. Jeffrey, it can hardly be
doubted, was merely a clever borrower. Long before his day, the
principles underlying the historical conception of literature had been
worked out in Germany, and had been applied by Herder and Goethe, and
their disciples, for the solution of problems in criticism. Of this
German theorizing Jeffrey can hardly have had direct knowledge. But to
Madame de Staël, who was an adept in German speculation, Jeffrey
probably owed much,--both to her teaching and to her example. Her _De la
littérature considérée dans ses rapports avec les institutions sociales_
had appeared in France in 1800, and her _De l’Allemagne_, a study of
German life and literature conceived throughout in strict harmony with
the principles of the historical method, was published in 1810. Now it
is in 1811 that an unmistakable broadening of method may be discerned in
Jeffrey’s literary criticism. His essay on Ford’s _Dramatic Works_
(August, 1811) is remarkable for its rapid survey of the whole
development of English literature, its brilliant generalizations as
regards the characteristics of such definite periods as that of the
Restoration, and its fairly successful attempts to account for these
characteristics as the outcome in each case of the social conditions of
the time. Before 1811, or at any rate before 1810, Jeffrey never gets,
in his study of an author, beyond the biographical point of view. He may
consider psychological questions,--the characteristics of an author’s
mind that have impressed themselves on his book, or the nature of the
public taste to which literature of a certain kind caters. But the
sociological origin of a literary school or a writer has not before that
time troubled Jeffrey. After the _Ford_ essay the historical and the
sociological points of view are used rather frequently, though it must
be admitted with uncertain success and not with entire loyalty.
Perhaps Jeffrey’s most interesting actual discussion of the historical
method occurs in the introduction to his essay on _Wilhelm Meister_,
written in 1825. In this introduction he tries to classify the
influences that mould literature and guide its development, and his
formulas are curiously suggestive of the much later and rather famous
theorizing of the French critic, Taine. Jeffrey does not recognize
race--the first of Taine’s forces; “human nature,” Jeffrey asserts, “is
everywhere fundamentally the same.” But for Taine’s two other sets of
forces which he groups under the names _moment_ and _milieu_, close
equivalents may be found in Jeffrey’s formulas. “The circumstances,” he
asserts, “which have distinguished [literature] into so many local
varieties ... may be divided into two great classes,--the one embracing
all that relates to the newness or antiquity of the society to which
they belong, or, in other words, to the stage which any particular
nation has attained in that progress from rudeness to refinement, in
which all are engaged; the other comprehending what may be termed the
accidental causes by which the character and condition of communities
may be affected; such as their government, their relative position as to
power and civilization to neighbouring countries, their prevailing
occupations, determined in some degree by the capabilities of their
soil and climate.” Of these principles, Jeffrey goes on through a
half-dozen paragraphs to make more special application; he describes
certain kinds of literature, or certain characteristics of literature,
that are apt to correspond to certain stages of civilization; he
considers hastily some of the qualities impressed upon literature by
different sorts of political institutions. All this general discussion,
though decidedly in the air, is true and suggestive; it shows that by
1825 Jeffrey had a good deal of insight into the general theory of the
dependence of literature on society. It must not be forgotten, however,
in estimating Jeffrey’s originality, that even in England Coleridge and
Hazlitt had, for a good many years before the date of this _Wilhelm
Meister_ essay, been applying the historical method with insight and
power for the explanation of literary problems.
In point of fact, Jeffrey is usually much more impressive when he talks
abstractly about the historical method than when he tries to apply it
specifically. He is specially apt to be unhistorical when he treats of
the beginnings either of literature or of institutions. He lacked the
knowledge of facts which alone could render possible a fruitful
historical conception. His construction of early periods is always _a
priori_ in terms of a cheap psychology. His account, in the essay on
_Leckie_, of the origin of government, should be compared with his
description of the earliest attempts at poetic composition. In both
cases he has a great deal to say about what “it was natural” for the
earliest experimenters in each kind of work to aim at and to effect, and
substantially nothing to say of the actual facts as determined by
investigation. Moreover, these earliest experimenters are for Jeffrey
marvellously like eighteenth-century _connoisseurs_, confronting
consciously, and trying to solve reflectively, intricate problems in art
or in politics. This view is, of course, unhistorical, and illustrates
the difficulty Jeffrey had in escaping from old ways of thought.
Finally, Jeffrey never applies the historical method successfully to the
study of any contemporary piece of literature. In the essay on _Wilhelm
Meister_, for example, the general account of the principles that
underlie historical criticism is fluent and clear; but the change is
abrupt and disastrous when Jeffrey turns to the particular discussion of
Goethe’s novels. Far from being historical or scientific, or trying to
trace out in Goethe’s work the significant forces that were shaping
contemporary German life, Jeffrey merely gives himself over to railing
at whatever jars on his personal taste. In short, half the essay is
scientific and half purely dogmatic, and the two halves have scarcely
any logical connection. Sad to say, Jeffrey nearly always bungled or
faltered like this when trying to use the historical method,
particularly when trying to interpret the literature of his own time.
Other instances of his shortsightedness or clumsiness are to be found in
his treatment of Byron and Wordsworth. He missed entirely the meaning of
Byron’s savage revolt against the conventionalism of eighteenth-century
moral ideals, and he was equally unable to understand Wordsworth’s high
conservatism. Perhaps the most damaging accusation that can be brought
against Jeffrey, as a critic, is inability to read and interpret the age
in which he lived.
Jeffrey’s imperfect grasp of the historical method is shown in one other
way: he never realized that there was any conflict between his work as a
dogmatic critic and his work as a scientific student of literature, or
had a premonition of the blighting effect that the spread of historical
conceptions of literature was ultimately to have on the prestige of the
dogmatic critic. More and more, since Jeffrey’s day, criticism has
concerned itself with the scientific explanation and the interpretation
of literature; less and less has it posed as the ultimate science of
right thinking and right doing in literary art. This change has been
brought about partly by the Romantic movement with its fostering of
individualism in art, and partly through the development of historical
conceptions in all departments of thought. Both these forces were in
full play during Jeffrey’s life, and of neither did he at all measure
the scope or significance.
Regarded, then, from a modern point of view, Jeffrey, as a literary
critic, takes shape somewhat as follows: As an appreciator he is sadly
to seek, owing largely to over-intellectualism and disputatiousness. As
a dogmatic critic he is even yet thoroughly readable because of his
dashing style, his deft and ready handling, his shrewd common sense, and
his sincerity; he expressed brilliantly the tastes and antipathies of a
large circle of cultivated people of considerable social distinction,
who, while not peculiarly artistic or literary, read widely and
intelligently, and felt keenly and delicately, though within a somewhat
limited range. Even in his dogmatic criticism, however, his faults are
obvious; his dogmatism is peremptory; his tone, often bitter; and his
prejudices are as scarlet. On the other hand, for giving a strong
ethical trend to literary criticism, he deserves all honour. His social
sympathies were intense and alert; they fixed the character of his whole
theory of beauty, and continually expressed themselves in his comments
upon books and authors. Through his persistently ethical interpretations
of literature, he really enlarged the borders of literary criticism. As
for his historical criticism, it cannot be said to have much permanent
value. Into the general theory on which the use of the historical method
rests, Jeffrey shows considerable insight; but he was by nature and by
training a dogmatist, not a scientific student of fact. Though his
theorizings led him to believe speculatively in the relativity of
beauty, and though he recognized abstractly that literature must vary
from age to age as the time-spirit varies, yet he rarely let these
convictions affect his tone or method in the treatment of literature; he
is as round and intolerant in his blame of Addison or Pope as if he had
never been within seeing distance of the historical point of view. In
short, the disinterestedness of science was foreign to Jeffrey’s nature;
he was primarily and distinctively, not an investigator or interpreter,
but a censor bent on praise or blame.
These very characteristics of his criticism, however, were of a kind to
bring Jeffrey, in 1803, great glory. With some disguise until 1809, when
the Tory _Quarterly Review_ was founded, undisguisedly thereafter,
Jeffrey was the great Whig champion in all that pertained to letters.
From a partisan critic, audacious and brilliant dogmatism was just what
was sure to win the widest hearing. Moreover, in accounting for
Jeffrey’s enormous popularity, the trashiness and insipidity of earlier
review-writing must be kept in mind. Reviewing had been the pet
occupation of Grub street; penny-a-liners had impressed upon criticism
all their own unloveliness and feebleness; review articles seemed to
issue from under-fed, torpid brains and anæmic bodies. Jeffrey’s
reviewing was the very incarnation of health, vigour, and prosperity.
Finally, Jeffrey profited in name and fame more than it is easy now to
compute from the happy opportuneness of a new literary form, a literary
form that was made possible through the establishment of the _Edinburgh
Review_. This Review differed in many of its business arrangements and
in its mode of publication from preceding Reviews; it was established in
accordance with a new conception of the scope of review-writing, and of
the relation of reviewers to the public. As the result of this new
conception and these new relations, literary criticism, which had
hitherto been merely more or less ingenious talk about technical
matters, was transformed into the earnest and vigorous discussion of
literature as the expression of all that was significant and absorbing
in the life of the time. And as still further results of the new policy,
reviewing and reviewers came into hitherto unknown honour; the
_Edinburgh Review_ was adored or was hated and feared throughout the
length and breadth of the land, and Jeffrey was universally regarded as
demonic in his versatility, brilliancy, penetration, and vigour. Much of
Jeffrey’s great prestige as a critic must be set down as due to his
having long stood as the visible symbol of the success of the new style
of reviewing.
IV
The story of the foundation of the _Edinburgh Review_ has been told so
often as hardly to bear repeating. Enough of the facts, however, must
be gone over again to make clear the change that the new periodical
wrought in reviewing and in the relations between critics and the
public.
The classical account of the origin of the _Review_ is Sydney Smith’s
and is to be found in the Preface to his collected _Works_; it has been
reproduced in Lord Cockburn’s _Life of Jeffrey_[5] and in the _Life and
Times of Lord Brougham_.[6] With his usual crabbedness Brougham disputes
a few minor details, but he leaves the substantial accuracy of
“Sydney’s” story unimpeached.
The idea of the new _Review_ was Sydney Smith’s. The most important
conspirators were Sydney, Jeffrey, Francis Horner, and Brougham. The
plot was discussed and matured in Jeffrey’s house in Buccleuch Place,
Edinburgh. Sydney Smith’s famous proposal of a motto, _Tenui musam
meditamur avena_, “We cultivate literature on a little oatmeal,” was
rejected; the “sage Horner’s” suggestion was adopted,--a line from
Publius Syrus, _Judex damnatur cum nocens absolvitur_, which foretold
the righteous severity of tone that was to characterize the _Review_.
The first number was to have appeared in June, 1802, but, owing to
dilatory contributors and Jeffrey’s faintheartedness, was seriously
delayed; it finally appeared in October, 1802, under the supervision of
Sydney Smith. After the publication of the first number Jeffrey was
formally appointed editor, and, with some hesitation, accepted the post.
The success of the _Review_ was from the start beyond all expectation.
“The effect,” says Lord Cockburn, “was electrical. And instead of
expiring, as many wished, in their first effort, the force of the shock
was increased on each subsequent discharge. It is impossible for those
who did not live at the time, and in the heart of the scene, to feel, or
almost to understand the impression made by the new luminary, or the
anxieties with which its motions were observed.” Lord Brougham’s account
of the matter is no less emphatic. “The success was far beyond any of
our expectations. It was so great that Jeffrey was utterly dumbfounded,
for he had predicted for our journal the fate of the original _Edinburgh
Review_, which, born in 1755, died in 1756, having produced only two
numbers! The truth is, the most sanguine among us, even Smith himself,
could not have foreseen the greatness of the first triumph, any more
than we could have imagined the long and successful career the _Review_
was afterwards to run, or the vast reforms and improvements in all our
institutions, social as well as political, it was destined to effect.”
The subscription list of the _Review_ grew within six years from 1750 to
9000; and by 1813 it numbered more than 12,000. The importance of these
figures will be better understood when the reader recollects that in
1816 the London _Times_ sold only 8000 copies daily. Moreover, it should
be remembered that one copy of a magazine went much further then than it
goes now, and did service in more than a single household. In 1809
Jeffrey boasted that the _Review_ was read by 50,000 thinking people
within a month after it was printed; doubtless this was a perfectly
sound estimate.
Various causes have been suggested as contributing to the instant and
phenomenal success of the _Review_,--the puzzling anonymity of its
articles, its magisterial tone, the audacity of its attacks, what Horner
calls its “scurrility,” the novelty of its Scotch origin. All these
causes doubtless had their influence. More important still, however,
were the wit, the knowledge, and the originality of the brilliant
contributors that Jeffrey rallied round him. Writing to his brother in
July, 1803, Jeffrey thus describes his fellow-workers: “I do not think
you know any of my associates. There is the sage Horner, however, whom
you have seen, and who has gone to the English bar with the resolution
of being Lord Chancellor; Brougham, a great mathematician, who has just
published a book upon the Colonial Policy of Europe, which all you
Americans should read; Rev. Sydney Smith and P. Elmsley, two Oxonian
priests, full of jokes and erudition; my excellent little Sanscrit
Hamilton, who is also in the hands of Bonaparte at Fontainebleau; Thomas
Thomson and John Murray, two ingenious advocates; and some dozen of
occasional contributors, among whom the most illustrious, I think, are
young Watt of Birmingham and Davy of the Royal Institution.”[7] Many of
these names are now forgotten, but those of Sydney Smith, Brougham,
Horner, and Davy speak for themselves and are guarantees of brilliancy
of style, originality of treatment, and vigorous thought.
The editor and the contributors, then, must receive their full share of
credit for the success of the new _Review_; but their ability alone can
hardly account for a success that converted the “blue and yellow” into a
national institution. To explain a success so permanent and
far-reaching, we must look beyond editor and contributors and consider
the relation of the _Review_ to its social environment. The _Edinburgh
Review_ came into being in answer to a popular need; it developed a new
literary form to meet this need; and its business arrangements were such
as enabled the cleverest and most suggestive writers to adapt their work
to the requirements of the reading public more readily and more
effectively than ever before. The meaning of these assertions will grow
clearer as we consider the difference between the _Edinburgh Review_ and
earlier English Reviews.
V
Prior to 1802 there were two standard Reviews in Great Britain,--the
_Monthly Review_ and the _Critical Review_. Minor Reviews there had been
in plenty, of longer or shorter life; but these two periodicals had
pushed beyond their competitors and were regarded as the best of their
kind. The _Monthly Review_ had been founded in 1749 by Ralph Griffiths,
a bookseller; it was Whig in politics and Low Church in religion. Its
rival, the _Critical Review_, of which Smollett was for many years
editor, had been founded in 1756, and was Tory and High Church. These
Reviews were alike in form and in ostensible aim; they were published
monthly, were made up of unsigned articles of moderate length, and
professed to give competent accounts of the qualities of all new books.
But though thus apparently worthy predecessors of the great Reviews with
which nineteenth-century readers are familiar, they were really quite
unlike them in general policy, in scope and style, and in influence.
They were merely booksellers’ organs, under the strict supervision of
booksellers, and often edited by booksellers. They were used
persistently and systematically, though, of course, discreetly, to
further the bookseller’s business schemes, to quicken the sale in case
of a slow market, and to damage the publications of rivals. They were
written for the most part by drudges and penny-a-liners, who worked
under the orders of the bookseller like slaves under the lash of the
slave-driver. These characteristics of the older Reviews may be best
illustrated by a brief account of the methods in accordance with which
Griffiths, the editor of the _Monthly_, conducted his _Review_, and by
some choice anecdotes of his treatment of subordinates.
Griffiths was originally a bookseller; and, though he was able later to
retire from this business and to devote himself wholly to the management
of his _Review_, he retained still the instincts of a petty tradesman,
and kept his eye on the state of the market like a skilful seller of
perishable wares. Of scholarship, of genuine taste, and literary ability
he had next to nothing; but he had shrewd common sense, sound business
instincts, tact in dealing with men, readiness to bully or to fawn as
might be needful, and unlimited patience in scheming for the commercial
success of his venture.
His dealings with Goldsmith between 1755 and 1765, and with William
Taylor of Norwich between 1790 and 1800, illustrate his narrow policy in
the conduct of the _Monthly_ and his tyranny towards contributors.
Goldsmith, he by turns bullied and bribed according as poor Goldsmith
was more or less in need of money. On one occasion he became Goldsmith’s
security with his tailor for a new suit of clothes on condition that
Goldsmith at once write four articles for the _Review_; these articles
were turned out to order, and appeared in December, 1758. On Goldsmith’s
failing to pay his tailor’s bill in the specified time, Griffiths
demanded the return of the suit and also of the books; and when he found
that Goldsmith had pawned the books, he wrote him abusively, terming him
sharper and villain, and threatening him with jail. In 1759, on the
appearance of Goldsmith’s first book, Griffiths ordered one of his
hacks, the notorious Kenrick, to ridicule the work, and to make a
personal attack on the author. These orders were faithfully carried out
in the next number of the _Monthly Review_.[8]
With William Taylor of Norwich Griffiths took a very different tone.
Taylor was one of the few men of breeding and of parts who, before 1802,
condescended to write for Reviews, and he was moreover for many years
the great English authority on German literature. For these reasons,
Griffiths always used him with the utmost tenderness, and, even when
giving him orders or refusing his articles, took a flattering tone of
deference and admiration. On one occasion Taylor demanded an increase of
pay; Griffiths’s answer gives a very instructive glimpse of the
relations between the bookseller-editor and his hack-writers. The
“gratuity” for review work, Griffiths assures Taylor, had been settled
fifty years before at two guineas a sheet of sixteen printed pages, “a
sum not then deemed altogether puny,” and in the case of most writers
had since remained unchanged, although there had been certain “allowed
exceptions in favour of the most difficult branches of the business.”
These exceptions, however, had tended to cause much jealousy and
heart-burning among the contributors; for “it could not be expected that
those labourers in the vineyard, who customarily executed the less
difficult branches of the culture, would ever be cordially convinced
that _their_ merits and importance were inferior to any.” After these
laborious explanations Griffiths agrees to raise Taylor’s compensation
to three guineas per sheet of sixteen printed pages, though he expressly
points out that by so doing he risks “exciting jealousy in the corps,
similar, perhaps, to what happened among the vine-dressers, Matt., chap.
xx.” “If objections arise,” he shrewdly continues, “we must resort for
consolation to a list of candidates for the next vacancy, for in the
literary harvest there is never any want of reapers.”[9] Griffiths’s
slave-driving propensities show clearly through the thin disguise of
politic words. Plainly he feels himself absolute master of the minds and
wills of an indefinite number of penny-a-liners; and it is on these
penny-a-liners that he resolves to depend for the great mass of his
articles.