AND THE CRITIC
the most tedious extent with his ‘ This will never do!"" — the “ byword of critical cocksureness ” with which he opened his review of Wordsworth's The Excursion ;38 Lockhart was called “ the Scorpion which delighteth to sting the faces of men ;" 39 Gifford attacked his contemporaries and was in turn read a well
deserved lesson thereon by Hazlitt ;40 Croker was known " above all, perhaps, as the wickedest of reviewers, that is, as theauthor
of the foul and false political articles in the Quarterly Review , which stand out as the disgrace of the periodical literature of
our time,” 41 although a recent critic awards to Gifford the first place for establishing the reputation of the Quarterly Review for
scurrility ; 42 Macaulay has been deemed " inhuman in insisting on the republication of poor Satan Montgomery's poems. It is a pity that he did not live to read Fitzjames Stephen 's examina tion of his Life of Warren Hastings. It might have taught him
mercy ;" 43 Spedding through nineteen evenings criticizes Macau lay 's review of Montagu 's edition of the Works of Francis Bacon , taking up the review almost paragraph by paragraph in order to show how the ostensible review of Montagu is really made the excuse for an elaborate discussion of Bacon 's career and that it suited Macaulay to use Montagu's facts in order to overthrow his theory.44 38 Edinburgh Review , November , 1814, 24: 1-30. 39 Mrs. Oliphant, Annals of a Publishing House, I, 194. 40 " Letter to William Gifford ,” Collected Works of William Hazlitt, I, 365- 411.
Harriet Martineau, " John Wilson Croker," Biographical Sketches, 60 -69. É . L . Pearson, Book -Reviews, pp. 20– 21. 43 Goldwin Smith , Reminiscences, p . 167. Sir James Fitzjames Stephen speaks of his “ affectionate admiration " for
Macaulay who was his own friend , his father's friend , and his grandfather's friend, and that as he was also Macaulay's successor in office he was “ better able than most persons to appreciate the splendour of the services which he
rendered to India . ” Sir James is therefore anxious to repair if possible a
wrong unintentionally done by Macaulay “ because he adopted on insufficient grounds the traditional hatred which the Whigs bore to Impey , and also because his marvellous power of style blinded him to the effect which his language produced .” — The Story of Nuncomar and the Impeachment of Sir
Elijah Impey, I, 3 . Leslie Stephen in his life of his brother gives a full account of the publica
tion of this work in which Sir James made “ mince -meat of Macaulay'smost famous essay.” — The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen , pp. 428-436.
- James Spedding, Evenings with a Reviewer , or Macaulay and Bacon ,
2 vols.
