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The Edinburgh Reviewers were not missionaries of a creed. They were a set of brilliant young men, to whom the Review was at first a mere pastime, occupying such leisure as was allowed by their professional pursuits. They were indeed men of liberal sympathies, intelligent and independent enough to hold by a party which was out of power.
Then, to deny that anything was specially designed to be what it is is one proposition; while to deny that the Designer supernaturally or immediately made it so is another: though the reviewers appear not to recognize the distinction.
The Essayists and Reviewers, "Septem contra Christum," "should," he said, "be shot for deserting their posts"; even Dean Stanley, their amicus curioe, whom he liked, came in for a share of his sarcasm; "there he goes," he said to Froude, "boring holes in the bottom of the Church of England."
"Do you think so?" cried her cousin, brightening. "Sure of it, my dear. His own books don't sell, and he knew the quickest way to kill yours was to distribute it through the diocese with his blessing." "Then you don't really think it's a pretty story?" "Dear me, no! Not nearly as bad as that " "You're so good, Bella but the reviewers?" "Oh, the reviewers," Mrs. Clinch jeered.
If a friend's book came in their way, it was treated worse or better than that of a stranger, but with impartial disregard for truth in either case; yet many were the authors who would go up endless back stairs to secure from that paper a flattering criticism, and then be as proud of it as if it had been the genuine and unsought utterance of a true man's conviction; and many were the men, immeasurably the superiors of the reviewers, and in a general way acquainted with their character, who would accept as conclusive upon the merits of a book the opinions they gave, nor ever question a mode of quotation by which a book was made to show itself whatever the reviewer chose to call it.
In the Autumn "William Foster's" new book was issued by an "advanced" publisher, who loved to hear his wares called dangerous, and who walked on air when the reviewers said that such men as he were a curse to Society as they occasionally did when there was nothing special to write about. In the autumn also Mrs. Ardagh's illness grew worse and it appeared that she could not live much longer.
He was just as well aware as his reviewers, or as Lady Louisa Stuart, that the conclusion of "Rob Roy" is "huddled up," that the sudden demise of all the young Baldistones is a high-handed measure. He knew that, in real life, Frank and Di Vernon would never have met again after that farewell on the moonlit road.
How hard it is in the case of Keats and Shelley to feel that they had not some inkling of all the desirous worship, the generous praise, that has surrounded their memory after their death! How hard it is to enter into the bitterness of spirit which fell upon Shelley, not once nor twice, at the acrid contempt of reviewers!
Pitt, who bribed the Directory to order the reviewers not to notice so formidable an attack on the maritime greatness of perfidious Albion.
Political writers; correspondents, "special" and "local;" reviewers; reporters; stenographers, or "gallery" men; dramatic and musical critics; "paragraphists" the new name for fire and murder manifolders, and other "flimsy" compilers; and, penny-a-liners: each and all, are, severally and collectively, "editors," beneath the star-spangled banner of equality and freedom.
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