historical romance,' and would never be quoted as an authority on any question or point of the history of England.' There is little difference between Croker and Gladstone. While fully alive to the great qualities which will ensure to Macaulay's History' a permanent place in our literature so long as that literature exists, Gladstone declared that his whole method of touch and handling are poetical'; and what was his opinion of it as an 'authority' we have seen. It is clear then that, if Croker erred in finding fault, he erred in good company. But, whatever view we take of his attack, nothing can excuse the unwarranted expressions which Macaulay threw upon his private life, and which Macaulay's biographer has amplified by reference to certain unsavoury portions' of that life which had been brought to light in the course of either parliamentary or judicial investigations.' His private life, so far as has been ascertained, was blameless. Nothing whatever (says Mr Jennings) that was injurious to Mr Croker's private character was ever brought to light in a parliamentary or any other investigation.' The friendships with great men of unblemished character which he retained to the end of his life are a sufficient answer to the charge. With the Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel he was on terms of the closest intimacy for many years. The Duke's confidential conversations with him are scattered up and down the pages of the Croker Papers.' With Peel his friendship was broken off only through Croker's disagreement with him on the subject of the Corn Laws; and there is plenty of evidence that the breach inflicted on Croker's affectionate nature a bitter pang. Scott and Barrow were on similar terms with him. Tom Moore and Lord Hardwicke sign their letters to him 'ever yours' and 'yours affectionately.' The Duke of Rutland, Lord John Manners, Sir Thomas Lawrence, Lord Aberdeen, Guizot, the Duc d'Aumâle, Dean Trench, Sir George Sinclair, Lord Lyndhurst, Lord Strangford, Lord Palmerston, Lord Hatherton, were (as is evident from their correspondence) his close personal friends. The man who in 1823 founded the Athenæum Club, and selected the original committee, must have been regarded with general respect. The man who, in 1816, perceived the value of the Elgin Marbles, and, by the Vol. 210,--No. 419. 3 с testimony of Lord Elgin, had the chief hand in obtaining them for the nation, was clearly not without artistic culture. The publicist whose essays on the French Revolution are still a valuable authority, and whose vast collection of pamphlets on that subject is amongst the chief treasures of the British Museum, merits some respect as an historian. Those who assert, with Macaulay, that such a one was 'a bad, a very bad man' (above p. 749), will have some difficulty in upholding their contention. No action for libel lies against the dead, nor can such an action be brought in their behalf; but this does not justify the perpetuation of a libellous remark which, had both the parties been alive, would have involved the utterer of it in heavy damages. As a critic of prose writings, or of any work in which reason predominates and accuracy of statement is essential, Croker was acute and discriminating, if inclined to be severe. In the matter of poetry, he was apt to be narrow and unsympathetic. Admiring, among his contemporaries, Byron and Scott, he demanded above all things clearness and simplicity. The refinements of versification had no charm for him; to the witchery of words he turned a deaf ear. In short, though some poetry was within his range, he was a thoroughly unpoetical person; and a worse choice could hardly have been made for a review of the poets' poet, Keats. His notice of Endymion' appeared in April 1818, and is perhaps the most notorious article ever published in the Quarterly Review. This is probably due to the fact that Keats' death-he died three years later, of consump tion-has been attributed to the effects of the attack in the Quarterly,' acting upon a morbid and hypersensitive organisation-a belief doubtless strengthened, if not originated, by Byron's well-known lines in Don Juan' (canto xi, st. 60): 'Tis strange, the mind, that very fiery particle, and supported by the elegy,' as Byron calls it, which Shelley composed on the same subject: * Mr Colvin, in his 'Life of Keats' ('Men of Letters' series), makes it clear that this and other still severer criticisms had much less effect on Keats than is generally imagined. + Byron's 'Letters,' v, 331, s.d. July 30, 1821. ""Who killed John Keats?" "I," says the Quarterly, So savage and Tartarly, ""Twas one of my feats." 6.66 "Who shot the arrow?" The poet-priest Milman So ready to kill man, Or Southey, or Barrow.' The article in question is a short essay of only four pages. It should be noted that the review is limited to the Endymion,' which, by common consent, contains more of Keats' defects and eccentricities, and less of his essential beauties, than any other of his considerable works. The critic confesses that he has only read the first book, and is unable to understand a word of it; he was probably right in supposing that he would get no more light from the other three. The first book is enough, in his opinion, to prove three things-that the verses mean nothing; that they are often bad verses; and that they contain a number of newfangled words, or words used in improper ways, tending to perversion of the language. In support of the two last charges, at all events, he gives illustrations which, it must be confessed, go far to convict the culprit. Nor is his blame unmixed: 'It is not (he says) that the author has not powers of language, rays of fancy, and gleams of genius-he has all these; but he is unhappily a disciple of the new school of what has been somewhere called Cockney poetry; which may be defined to consist of the most incongruous ideas in the most uncouth language.' It is a pity that he did not more clearly appreciate, and give credit for, these 'rays of fancy' and 'gleams of genius.' It is, in fact, not so much in what it says, as in what it does not say, that the article goes wrong. Common-sense is applied as the only criterion of poetry. For the real and deeper beauties of the poem Croker had neither eye nor ear; he could only see its superficial defects. He could not rise above the critical manners of his time; and the criticism of the day, if hostile, was habitually brutal. Jeffrey in the Edinburgh,'* Lockhart and others in Blackwood,' were not a whit behind * See the article on Coleridge's 'Christabel' (September 1816), in which Jeffrey says that the work has not one couplet which could be reckoned poetry were it found in the corner of a newspaper.' And Coleridge himself (in 'Biographia Literaria) calls Maturin's 'Bertram' a 'superfetation of blasphemy upon nonsense.' Croker in brutality. In the 'Quarterly' itself there appeared, a little later than this (Oct. 1821), an article, by a Mr Walker, of Cambridge, on Shelley's Prometheus Unbound,' which far exceeds Croker's in severity. Here again it is the common-sense view which is taken. The predominating character of Mr Shelley's poetry' (says the critic) 'is want of meaning.' He then quotes some lines as a proof of this, and continues: This galimatias (for it goes far beyond simple nonsense) is rivalled by the following.' Will it be believed that what follows is The Cloud'? In another place he prints a passage of blank verse as prose, and then triumphantly proclaims that his readers will probably perceive that Mr Shelley's poetry is, in sober sadness, drivelling prose run mad. Finally, we come to the real gravamen-and a serious one, it must be allowed. Shelley pours contempt on religion and even attacks Christianity. The blasphemies we may indeed resent, deplore, and condemn ; but it does not follow that Shelley was no poet.* But to return to Croker, on whose character and opinions we have dwelt at some length, because the charges made against him in some measure affect the Review of which he was, for nearly half a century, the chief supporter. Few men can have left so deep a mark on the journalism of their day. From 1809 to 1854 he was connected with the Quarterly'; from 1811 onwards, except for a brief interval between 1825 and 1831, he wrote regularly for it; and he contributed, in all, at least 258 articles to the Review. He wrote on all sorts of subjects, but, during the first twenty years, very little on politics. Nor did he wish to emphasise the political character of the 'Quarterly.' 'Murray well knows' (he says in a letter to Lockhart† (1834)) that I never was a friend to making the Review a political engine.... Neither politics nor trifles can make a sufficient substratum and foundation; solid literature and science must be the substance.' Nevertheless, whenever he had Another article, on Shelley's 'Revolt of Islam,' by J. T. Coleridge, is more temperate. The writer finds 'some beautiful stanzas,' but rightly condemns his bad principles, especially his advocacy of lawless love.' + Croker Papers,' ii, 229. In the Quarterly Review,' No. 283 (July 1876), will be found a general summary of Croker's life by the then editor, Sir W. Smith. a chance and he had many-he took care that the political flavour of the Review should at least be pronounced. In 1854, shortly after Elwin had taken over the editorship, he ceased writing for the Review, for the reason already stated (p. 749). His death, which was sudden and painless, followed three years later. . Among the occasional contributors in the early days of the Review should be included Hoppner, the painter; Sharon Turner, the historian; Robert Grant, author of several works on Indian government, and his brother Charles, Lord Glenelg; Isaac D'Israeli; Reginald Heber, Bishop of Calcutta, and his elder brother Richard, the friend of Scott; Prof. Monk, editor of the Hippolytus'; C. J. Blomfield, afterwards Bishop of London; John Ireland, Dean of Westminster, founder of the famous scholarships at Oxford; Francis Cohen, better known as Sir Francis Palgrave, the historian; Henry Hallam; W. R. Lyall, Dean of Canterbury; Henry Phillpotts, afterwards Bishop of Exeter; John Taylor Coleridge; Sir John Malcolm, the ambassador to Persia; Richard Whately, afterwards Archbishop of Dublin; Ugo Foscolo, who called his house Digamma Cottage,' after the subject of one of his articles; Stratford Canning, the 'Great Eltchi' of Constantinople; Sir T. Stamford Raffles, Governor of Java; T. R. Malthus, author of the Essay on Population'; John Keble; H. H. Milman, Dean of St Paul's, and historian of Latin Christianity; Rev. J. J. Blunt, whose Undesigned Coincidences' was long a favourite work; Nassau W. Senior, the economist; Blanco White, author of the sonnet on Night and Death,' which Coleridge extravagantly pronounced the finest in the language; Sir Charles Lyell; Captain Basil Hall, the well-known voyager; Sir Francis Head, LieutenantGovernor of Upper Canada; Sir David Brewster; Washington Irving-but we must stop, or the line would stretch to the crack of doom. The names given above, all taken from the first twenty years of the Quarterly,' will show, however, that from the outset the regular 'staff' of the Review, if such it may be called, was supplemented by men who could write on particular subjects with special authority. 6 The editorial reign of William Gifford lasted for fifteen years (1809-1824). When he gave up control, the |