1825.] 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF CONTEM- 
PORARY CRITICISM. No, xtvit. 
“The Quarterly, and Westminster 
tide Reviewers. 
(Continued from p. 140.) 
E said in our last—in the com- 
parison between the Westmins- 
ter and the Quarterly Reviewers, of Dr. 
Henderson’s History of Ancient and 
Modern Wines—which we were just 
entering upon, when our limits com- 
pelled us to break off,—that the latter, 
though he set out with disclaiming the 
intention,* became, instead of a tory 
classic, a chemico-political economist— 
we might have gone further :—we might 
have said—that, upon this subject, he 
almost becomes a sort of jacobin—or, 
at least, something very like it,—an eco- 
nomical reformer: finds out that every 
thing is not just as it should be; vents 
his spleen against partial and dispro- 
portioned taxation; and grumbles at 
being obliged to quench, or inflame, his 
thirst with a compound of “ harshness, 
bitterness, acidity and other repulsive 
qualities, which are only disguised by a 
large admixture of ardent spirit,” instead 
of regaling his palate with the light and 
delicate wines of Champagne and the 
Bordelais. : 
/ 
_ “We do think it a serious evil, no matter 
how produced or how far remediable, that 
the national taste should have become habi- 
tuated to the brandied, fiery, deleterious 
potations which are known as ‘common 
port;’ and that, as Dr. Henderson accu- 
rately states the case, ‘the man of mode- 
rate fortune, who purchases for daily use a 
cask of good ordinary French wine, at eight- 
pence a-gallon, must submit to a tax of 
more than 1,500 per cent.” This tax may 
now be 700 per cent. lighter, but still the 
* With a qualification, however; a part 
of the phraseology of which, we suspect, our 
readers will not very much admire :— 
** Not that we are by any means disposed to under- 
value the importance of these researches ; foras long 
as man is a wine-drinking animal, it behoves him to 
be grateful to those whose labours are directed to 
improve the quality of his potations. But on such 
voluntary guardians of the public weal, scientific and 
practical, must the lieges in general, however biba- 
cious, be contented to repose themselves, for the 
conservance of their health, andthe delectation of 
their palates.” : 
What a “conservance of delectation”’ have 
we here, for “‘bibacious lieges’’ who “repose 
themselves on guardians’’—7. e.niake cushions 
of them! We suspect that the reviewer 
had been a little too bibacious himself when 
he wrote this ; and had made so free with the 
flask as to put the peduntitious fluids into a 
state of fermentation. ' 
‘Monrury Mac. No. 415. 
_ Ancient and Modern Wines. 
main evil exists for the consumer: that the 
230 
market is not open to the equal competition 
of French and Portuguese wines ; thatthe 
genuine supply of good Oporto, is, noto- 
riously and utterly unequal to the deman 
which the protection occasions for it; an 
that every temptation is therefore created 
to mix it with villanous trash, and to cover 
the adulteration with excessive quantiti¢s 
of brandy.” 
In short, this Quarterly Reviewer 
seems to be a bon vivant—a good jolly 
fellow, with something like a clerical 
acuteness and discrimination of taste 
in these matters; and when his imagi- 
nation puts a bumper in his hand and 
places. his bottle before him, his feel- 
ings become as acute as the perceptions 
of his palate. He feels where the shoe 
pinches; and, “i’faith,* as an Irishman 
might say, “it is in his troat 3’ and he 
can discover the cause, and denounce 
it too; and can cry out against in- 
justice, quite as naturally “ an as he were 
any radical.” 
Both the reviewers, however, go 
pretty fully into the whole subject of 
Dr. Henderson’s book; and both (es- 
pecially the Westminster) interpolate 
freely from their own stores of re- 
search—with the advantage, neverthe- 
less, in point of historical information 
and tasteful Jearning, decidedly on the 
side of the Westminster. 
We noted a variety of passages in 
both; as we proceeded, to which we 
wished to refer again for quotation ; 
but find them much too numerous for 
our allotted space. We must ‘satisfy 
ourselves, therefore, with merely ob- 
serving that, of the original matter in- 
troduced by the respective reviewers, 
the sketch of the geographical history 
of the vine (at the commencement: of 
the Westminster article), its indigenous 
origin in Persia, its progress always to 
the west (never to the east, or, at any 
rate, not farther than the Indus), and 
the countries over which it has ulti- 
mately spread, with what relates to the 
palm wine of eastern countries,—appear 
particularly entitled to commendatory 
attention ; while, in the Quarterly, the 
same preference is due to what relates 
to the vines of the American continent, 
in which some species were indigenous 
also,—the wild vine, from whose fruita 
tolerable wine may be made, flourishing 
with great luxuriance even in Canada, 
—and to the history of the cultivation: 
of the vine in our own country, where; 
most assuredly, in elder times (proba- 
bly from the days of the Romans, -cer~ 
tainly during the Saxon epoch; and as 
2H assuredly 
