s, we must
include more respectable errors of judgment, if we find also several
remarkable appreciations which prove singular insight.

Following the "early" reviews, whether distinguished for culpable
blindness, private hostility, or rare sympathy, we must depend for our
second main source of material upon that fortunate combination of
circumstances when one of the mighty has been invited to pass judgment
upon his peers. When Scott notices Jane Austen, Macaulay James Boswell,
Gladstone and John Stuart Mill Lord Tennyson, the article acquires a
double value from author and subject. Curiously enough, as it would seem
to us in these days of advertisement, many such treasures of criticism
were published anonymously; and accident has often aided research in the
discovery of their authorship. It is only too probable that more were
written than we have yet on record.

In reviewing, as elsewhere, the growth of professionalism has tended to
level the quality of work. The mass of thoroughly competent criticism
issued to-day has raised enormously the general tone of the press; but
genuine men of letters are seldom employed to welcome, or stifle, a
newcomer; though Meredith, and more frequently Swinburne, have on
occasion elected to pronounce judgment upon the passing generation; as
Mrs. Meynell or Mr. G.K. Chesterton have sometimes said the right thing
about their contemporaries. The days when postcard notices from
Gladstone secured a record in sales are over; and, from whatever
combination of causes, we hear no more of famous reviews.

R. BRIMLEY JOHNSON.

It is with regret that I have found it impossible to print more than a
few of the following reviews complete. The writing of those days was, in
almost every case, extremely prolix, and often irrelevant. It nearly
always makes heavy reading in the originals. The _principle_ of
selection adopted is to retain the most pithy, and attractive, portion
of each article: omitting quotations and the discussion of particular
passages. It therefore becomes necessary to remark--in justice to the
writers--that most of the criticisms here quoted were accompanied by
references to what was regarded by the reviewer as evidence supporting
them. Most of the authors, or books, noticed however, are sufficiently
well known for the reader to have no difficulty in judging for himself.

R. B. J.

OF CRITICISM AND CRITIC

DR. JOHNSON

There is a certain race of men, that either imagi