Early Reviews of English Poets | Page 2

early appreciation of certain poets. A few unexpectedly favorable notices, such as the Monthly Review's critique of Browning's Sordello, are printed because they appear to be unique. The chief criterion in selecting these reviews (apart from the effort to represent most of the periodicals and the principal poets between Gray and Browning) has been that of interest to the modern reader. In most cases, criticisms of a writer's earlier works were preferred as more likely to be spontaneous and uninfluenced by his growing literary reputation. Thus the volume does not attempt to trace the development of English critical methods, nor to supply a hand-book of representative English criticism; it offers merely a selection of bygone but readable reviews--what the critics thought, or, in some cases, pretended to think, of works of poets whom we have since held in honorable esteem. The short notices and the well-known longer reviews are printed entire; but considerations of space and interest necessitated excisions in a few cases, all of which are, of course, properly indicated. The spelling and punctuation of the original texts have been carefully followed.
The history of English critical journals has not yet been adequately written. The following introduction offers a rapid survey of the subject, compiled principally from the sources indicated in the bibliographical list. I am indebted to Professor Felix E. Schelling of the University of Pennsylvania, and to Dr. Robert Ellis Thompson and Professor Albert H. Smyth of the Philadelphia Central High School for many suggestions that have been of value in writing the introduction. Dr. Edward Z. Davis examined at my request certain pamphlets in the British Museum that threw additional light upon the history of the early reviews. Dr. A.S.W. Rosenbach and Professor J.H. Moffatt read the proofs of the introduction and notes respectively, and suggested several noteworthy improvements.
J.L.H.
CENTRAL HIGH SCHOOL, PHILADELPHIA.

CONTENTS
Preface vii Introduction xiii Bibliography lvi
REVIEWS
GRAY Odes (Monthly Review) 1 GOLDSMITH The Traveller (Critical Review) 5 COWPER Poems, 1782 (Critical Review) 10 BURNS Poems, 1786 (Edinburgh Magazine) 13 Poems, 1786 (Critical Review) 15 WORDSWORTH Descriptive Sketches (Monthly Review) 16 An Evening Walk (Monthly Review) 19 Lyrical Ballads (Critical Review) 20 Poems, 1807 (Edinburgh Review) 24 COLERIDGE Christabel (Edinburgh Review) 47 SOUTHEY Madoc (Monthly Review) 60 LAMB Blank Verse (Monthly Review) 65 Album Verses (Literary Gazette) 66 LANDOR Gebir (British Critic) 68 Gebir (Monthly Review) 69 SCOTT Marmion (Edinburgh Review) 70 BYRON Hours of Idleness (Edinburgh Review) 94 Childe Harold (Christian Observer) 101 SHELLEY Alastor (Monthly Review) 115 The Cenci (London Magazine) 116 Adonais (Literary Gazette) 129 KEATS Endymion (Quarterly Review) 135 Endymion (Blackwood's Magazine) 141 TENNYSON Timbuctoo (Athen?um) 151 Poems, 1833 (Quarterly Review) 152 The Princess (Literary Gazette) 176 BROWNING Paracelsus (Athen?um) 187 Sordello (Monthly Review) 188 Men and Women (Saturday Review) 189
Notes 197 Index 223

INTRODUCTION
To the modern reader, with an abundance of periodicals of all sorts and upon all subjects at hand, it seems hardly possible that this wealth of ephemeral literature was virtually developed within the past two centuries. It offers such a rational means for the dissemination of the latest scientific and literary news that the mind undeceived by facts would naturally place the origin of the periodical near the invention of printing itself. Apart from certain sporadic manifestations of what is termed, by courtesy, periodical literature, the real beginning of that important department of letters was in the innumerable Mercurii that flourished in London after the outbreak of the Civil War. Although the British Museum Catalogue presents a long list of these curious messengers and news-carriers, the only one that could be of interest in the present connection is the Mercurius Librarius; or a Catalogue of Books Printed and Published at London[A] (1668-70), the contents of which simply fulfilled the promise of its title.
Literary journals in England were, however, not a native development, but were copied, like the fashions and artistic norms of that period, from the French. The famous and long-lived Journal des S?avans was begun at Paris in 1665 by M. Denis de Sallo, who has been called, since the time of Voltaire, the "inventor" of literary journals. In 1684 Pierre Bayle began at Amsterdam the publication of Nouvelles de la République des Lettres, which continued under various hands until 1718. These French periodicals were the acknowledged inspiration for similar ventures in England, beginning in 1682 with the Weekly Memorial for the Ingenious: or an Account of Books lately set forth in Several Languages, with some other Curious Novelties relating to Arts and Sciences. The preface stated the intention of the publishers to notice foreign as well as domestic works, and to transcribe the "curious novelties" from the Journal des S?avans. Fifty weekly numbers appeared (1682-83), consisting principally of translations of the best articles in the French journal.
A few years later (1686), the Genevan theologian, Jean Le Clerc, then a