Part 3

For still another innovation in critical methods, Jeffrey was at least 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.