51<2 The Two Professors. [MAY, 



during the superintendence of the waspish and malignant Gifford. It was 

 all very well, because it was all very safe and convenient, at that period, 

 to maintain the aristocratical system, and to attempt to hoodwink the 

 people by as popular and plausible a setting forth of the tory tactics as 

 was practicable or pleasant. It was all very well for Mr. Gifford, with 

 his tongue in his cheek and his pen in his hand, that pen urged forward 

 by the government upon one question held back by Mr. Canning upon 

 another swayed and directed this way and that way by Mr. Murray it 

 was all very well in that crafty old commentator to strive to sneer away 

 the reputation of the honest, and to deprecate the ability of his superiors j 

 there is a time for all things, and this was the time for the thing Gifford. 

 It was all very well for Mr. Southey, with a sanctified air and the smirk 

 ot a Pharisee, to thank God that he was not as other men are, seeing that 

 he was what other men would hardly desire to be j it was all very well 

 for Mr. Croker to have his swing and to turn his summerset in his own 

 way, and at his own discretion, but it will not do now. Since the acces- 

 sion of Mr. Lockhart the Quarterly has been in a bad way. It is true, 

 it has its tricks still. " It lisps, it ambles, and nicknames God's crea- 

 tures," but it is only laughed at for its pains. It raves and hath much 

 wrath, but is encountered with silent contempt. Even its old friends- 

 <c the great overpaid" the sinecurists or expectants, shake their heads 

 and sip their wine in silence. The truth is, the day of the Quarterly is 

 gone by for ever, and the whole pestilent crew that sat whetting their 

 tusks and sharpening their fangs under the secure shadow of its influence, 

 are gone their ways to prey elsewhere in a more private and, perhaps, a 

 less profitable direction. Verily, their teeth are drawn, and their nails 

 pared, and there is no venom remaining in them. 



It is worthy of enquiry, what w 7 as the tenor of the Quarterly's criticism 

 at that period nay, what has it been up to the present time ? Has it 

 upon any one occasion introduced to the public, or assisted in bringing 

 into notice, any one individual, to whose productions genius may fairly and 

 honorably be attributed ? No. Has it discovered any anxiety to make 

 reparation for former neglect, by a late, but full, ample, and satisfactory 

 acknowledgment of error and remissness ? No. Has it recorded its 

 sympathy with genius, its admiration of intellectual greatness, save where 

 it had been long ago confessed and allowed ? No. 



We know very well, and a sad reflection it is, that 



" Nations slowly wise and meanly just, 

 To buried merit raise the tardy bust." 



But what has the Quarterly done for living merit ? What bust has it 

 raised to the living or to the dead, that might not be exceeded in truth of 

 expression by a carving on a cherry-stone, and in vigour of outline by 

 the profile of a cheese-paring ? True, indeed, it is, that, conscious of 

 its many delinquencies, and errors both of commission and omission, the 

 Quarterly Review has latterly cast its one eye with much piercing expres- 

 sion over the expanse of English poetical literature ; and not being able 

 to find any thing or body in the heavens above, or in the earth beneath, 

 it has been fain to resort to the waters under the earth ; and brooding on 

 the banks of Lethe for a space, with an easy leap dived to the bottom, 

 and succeeded in plucking up drowned genius, by the shoulder-knot, in 

 the corporeal presence of Mr. John Jones, and in bringing to light the 

 " buried merit" of Miss Mary Colling, with a pair of blue worstead hose 



