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might be expected to be among an indolent and voluptuous people, but absolute necessaries of lifethe daily food of millions of the most active, intelligent labourers, the most shrewd, indefatigable, and enterprising tribes on the face of the earth. Compare an ordinary provincial journal of last week, with the best that was published in the metropolis fifty years ago, and the step which refinement has made in the interval will at once appear. The periodical publications of the first half of the last century, the Tatler, Spectator, Guardian, and their successors, did much towards increasing an eager relish for elegant literature, as well as rendering the more useful and popular kinds of knowledge accessible to every body. But, except in their masterpieces, which may be equalled, though never excelled, there are hundreds of articles in every week's newspapers, which may at least rival the common run of essays in some of the most celebrated works above alluded to. The Literary Gazette, the Spectator, and several other weekly journals, are decidedly literary, and exercise no slight jurisdiction in affairs of criticism and taste.

Of higher rank, though far inferior potency, are Magazines. A few of these, indeed, have considerable sale; but they rather reflect the image of the public mind, than contribute towards forming its features or giving it expression. As amusing miscellanies, they are in general far superior to their predecessors, before the establishment of that which bears the title of Monthly, — and which, whatever may have been its merits or delinquencies in past

times, had the honour of effecting as glorious a revolution among the compilers of these, as Southey and Wordsworth effected among the rhymers of 1796. Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, at this time, probably takes the lead among the fraternity, and by the boldness, hilarity, and address with which it is managed, it has become equally formidable in politics and predominant in literature. In both these departments, the New Monthly and the London assume a high station. *

Yet there are no publications whatever, which at once exemplify the advancement and the perversion of mind at this particular time, by such decided symptoms of both, as the magazines already named, which are at the head of their class. In the leading articles of these, there is scarcely a line of natural writing from month-end to month-end. Let this sweeping censure be admitted with what qualification it may, the general truth of the assertion may be established by an appeal to any page of any one of them opened at random. That admirable talents

are in full exercise there, will be instantly acknowledged; but then. all is effort, and splendour, and display. It is fine acting, which only falls short of nature; but it is not nature, and therefore cannot quite please, even at its best: we feel there is something wrong; we may not know exactly what it is, but this we do know, that all is not right. The con

And, since this Essay was composed, the Metropolitan, Frazer's Magazine, and others.

tributions are got up in a masterly manner, but evidently for the purpose of producing the greatest possible effect; they are positive experiments upon the minds of the readers- not the unburdening of the minds of the writers themselves, glad to pour out in words the fulness of feelings long cherished in secret, and which they would have uttered in a desert island, where rocks, and woods, and streams were their only auditors. Authors write best for the public when they write for themselves. *

Reviews not only rank higher than magazines in literature — rather by usurpation than right — but they rival newspapers themselves in political influence, while they hold divided empire with the weightier classes of literature-books of every size, and kind, and character, on which moreover they exercise an authority peculiar to the present age, and never dreamed of by critics in any past period since the alphabet was invented. Formerly reviews were, on the whole, what they professed to be critical essays on new publications; and they filled a respectable office in the republic of letters, as censors who did their duty, not always with ability, but generally with fairness; or, if otherwise, with a decent gravity

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*It is but justice to say, that since this paper was originally composed, (in 1823), considerable improvement has been introduced in the style of many magazine articles, but still sufficient of the prodigality of genius (as well as the extravagance of bad taste) is exhibited monthly in such publications to justify the retention of the passage as it originally stood, with that abatement of its severity which this note implies.

of injustice that seldom exposed them to retaliation. The commencement of the Edinburgh Review was the discovery of a new world in criticism, to which all authors were liable to be transported as criminals, and there dealt with according to laws made on the spot, and executed by those who made them. The speculation answered well, the adventurers grew rich and renowned, and their ambition increased with their wealth and celebrity.

Another work, the Quarterly Review, on the same scale, in the course of a few years was started in opposition to it; and this has flourished not less than its prototype, by adopting nearly the same system of tactics in literature, while it has been inveterately confronted to it in politics.

The Westminster Review and the British Critic, in their respective departments, exercise no small influence over respectable classes of readers.

In these nondescript publications downright authorship and critical commentary are combined; the latter being often subsidiary to the former, and a nominal review being an original essay on the subject, of which the work placed at the head of the article sometimes furnishes little more than the title. These distinguished periodicals, on the ground of their decided superiority to all contemporary journals in which the same subjects are discussed, have long commanded the admiration both of friends and foes; and it is a proud proof of the ascendancy of literature in our own day, that these several reviews are the most powerful political auxiliaries, or rather engines of the several parties, which, in such a state

as ours, divide public opinion between them on questions of national interest. It may be added that there are other respectable publications, bearing the name also of reviews, especially the Monthly and the Eclectic, which are conducted with various degrees of ability, but all employing more or less the same arts of criticism, and making criticism subservient to purposes foreign to itself, though captivating to the world of idle and capricious, as well as curious and intelligent, readers. By these, as well as by the magazines and newspapers, such variety and abundance of extracts from new books are regularly copied into their own pages, as almost to supersede the use of the originals; whatever is most valuable in each being thus gratuitously furnished to the public. To authors of high powers this practice is eminently serviceable, as by these means they are earlier and more advantageously introduced to favour and fame than they could otherwise have been by all the arts of puffing and the expense of advertising.

On the whole, therefore, periodical publications of every order may be regarded as propitious in their influence to the circulation of knowledge and the interests of literature; while truth, however perverted in some instances by passion and prejudice, is more rapidly, effectually, and universally diffused by the ever varying and everlasting conflicts maintained in these, than the same quantity with the same force of evidence could be developed in bulkier volumes, by a slower process, and within an incomparably more contracted circle. Works, however, of the

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