iterature;
and we shall have, in regard to periodicals, to observe the rise, in the
first place of the weekly newspaper, and then of the daily, as
competitors in strictly critical and literary work with the quarterly
and monthly reviews, as well as some changes in these latter.

For just as we found that the first development of nineteenth century
criticism coincided with or followed upon a new departure or development
in periodicals, so we shall find that a similar change accompanied or
caused changes in the middle of the century. Although the popularity of
the quarterly and monthly reviews and magazines which had been headed
respectively by the _Edinburgh_ and _Blackwood_ did not exactly wane,
and though some of the most brilliant work of the middle of the
century--George Eliot's novels, Kingsley's and Froude's essays, and the
like--appeared in them, the ever fickle appetite of readers seemed to
desire something else in shape, something different in price, style, and
form. Why this sort of change, which is perpetually recurring, should
usually bring with it a corresponding change, and sometimes a
corresponding improvement, of literary production, is more than any one
can say, but the fact is not easily disputable.

On the present occasion the change took three successive forms--first,
the raising, or rather restoring, of the weekly sixpenny critical
newspaper to a higher pitch of popularity than it had ever held;
secondly, the cheapening and multiplying of the monthly magazines;
thirdly, the establishment of new monthly reviews, somewhat more
resembling the old quarterlies than anything else, but with signed
instead of anonymous articles.

The uprising of the weekly newspaper took shape in two remarkably
different forms, represented respectively by _Household Words_, which
Dickens started early in the fifties, and by the _Saturday Review_,
which came a little later. The former might best be described as a
monthly of the _Blackwood_ and _London_ kind cheapened, made more
frequent in issue, and adjusted to a considerably lower and more popular
standard of interest and culture--politics, moreover, being ostensibly
though not quite really excluded. Dickens contributed to it largely
himself. He received contributions from writers of established repute
like Bulwer and Lever; but he made his chief mark with the paper by
breeding up a school of younger writers who wrote to his own pattern in
fiction, miscellaneous essay, a