uch a success is an
appreciative notice of Keats, which would be the more satisfactory if
poor Keats had not been previously assailed by the Opposition journal.
The other judgments are for the most part pronounced upon men already
celebrated; and the single phrase which has survived is the celebrated
'This will never do,' directed against Wordsworth's 'Excursion.' Every
critic has a sacred and inalienable right to blunder at times: but
Jeffrey's blundering is amazingly systematic and comprehensive. In the
last of his poetical critiques (October 1829) he sums up his critical
experience. He doubts whether Mrs. Hemans, whom he is reviewing at the
time, will be immortal. 'The tuneful quartos of Southey,' he says, 'are
already little better than lumber; and the rich melodies of Keats and
Shelley, and the fantastical emphasis of Wordsworth, and the plebeian
pathos of Crabbe, are melting fast from the field of vision. The novels
of Scott have put out his poetry. Even the splendid strains of Moore are
fading into distance and dimness, except where they have been married to
immortal music; and the blazing star of Byron himself is receding from
its place of pride.' Who survive this general decay? Not Coleridge, who
is not even mentioned; nor is Mrs. Hemans secure. The two who show least
marks of decay are--of all people in the world--Rogers and Campbell! It
is only to be added that this summary was republished in 1843, by which
time the true proportions of the great reputations of the period were
becoming more obvious to an ordinary observer. It seems almost
incredible now that any sane critic should pick out the poems of Rogers
and Campbell as the sole enduring relics from the age of Wordsworth,
Shelley, Keats, Coleridge, and Byron.

Doubtless a critic should rather draw the moral of his own fallibility
than of his superiority to Jeffrey. Criticism is a still more perishable
commodity than poetry. Jeffrey was a man of unusual intelligence and
quickness of feeling; and a follower in his steps should think twice
before he ventures to cast the first stone. If all critics who have
grossly blundered are therefore to be pronounced utterly incompetent, we
should, I fear, have to condemn nearly everyone who has taken up the
profession. Not only Dennis and Rymer, but Dryden, Pope, Addison,
Johnson, Gray, Wordsworth, Byron, and even Coleridge, down to the last
new critic in the latest and most fashionable journals, would have to be
censur