1825.] 
For the Monthly Magazine. 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF CONTEM- 
PORARY CRITICISM. 
No. XLI. 
The Quarterly Review, the British Re- 
view, Sir Egerton Brydges, and Dr- 
Styles. 
HE Sixty-first Number of the Quar- 
terly Review, published during the 
preceding month, is certainly a most 
unchastised exemplification of the cha- 
racteristic assigned to it by its Westmin- 
ster antagonist, and quoted from thence 
in p. 418 of our number for November 
last. If “ meking compilations,” to fill 
out its pages, by pillaging books of tra- 
vels and books of amusement, be “‘ book- 
seller’s catchpenny,” here is catchpenny 
enough : for full one-half of the present 
six-shillings’ worth is devoted to voyages 
and travels. Some articles of not very 
important biography, and a pretty vo- 
lume of feminine essays, furnish matter 
for more than one-third of what re- 
mains; and no single work of much 
higher distinction, or subject of primary 
importance (unless the causes of the 
progress of dissent, and the wisdom of 
multiplying new churches, may be so 
considered), is either subjected to ana- 
lysis, or brought under consideration. 
We have, however, already avowed that 
this propensity to mere anusive litera- 
ture is not so heavy an offence in our 
eyes, as in those of our brethren of The 
Westminster. We have no very great 
objection either to booksellers or authors 
“catching a penny” by amusing us, or 
the public: it is only when they catch 
their pence by abusing the understand- 
ings of their readers, that we find cause 
of quarrel ; and as for the pillaging part 
of the question,—weighing actions by 
their consequences, and wishing to dis- 
tinguish them accordingly,—we have 
some doubt whether even such ample 
quotations as our Reviewers occasionally 
indulge in, are entitled to quite so harsh 
an epithet. It is certainly, when prac- 
tised in the wholesale way, a tolerably 
easy mode of helping one’s friend out of 
a neighbour’s dish; but it may fairly be 
questioned, whether, in the generality of 
instances, it does not benefit the original 
providers, in advertising the merits of 
their bill of fare, more than it injures 
them by forestalling the public taste, 
Many, it is true, get a snack from the 
seraps purloined, who would never have 
paid the price of the ordinary: but are 
not many others invited to the table, 
who, but for this foretaste, would never 
have thought of the banquet? Not to 
Philosophy of Contemporary Criticism—No. XLI. 
13 
run the metaphor out of breath:—we 
think it is sufficiently evident, that fewer 
books are not sold, and that authors 
are not worse remunerated, since the 
system of ample quotation by reviewers 
came into fashion, than-before. Pam- 
phlets, indeed, we are informed, no 
longer pay paper and print,—for the 
matter of a half-crown pamphlet now 
finds its way into a couple of pages of a 
two-shilling magazine, or the column of 
a sevenpenny newspaper. But volumi- 
nous works are not fewer in number, or 
published in smaller editions; and we 
question very much whether even Sir 
Walter Scott would have made sixty 
thousand pounds in one year by novel- 
writing, if the trumpet of quotation had 
not been pretty freely blown for him in 
newspapers, magazines and reviews,— 
On the charge of robbery, therefore, we 
find a flaw ia the indictment; and it is 
dismissed from our impartial tribunal. 
We have more objection, we confess, 
to that species of literary swindling, 
which catches the penny and the atten- 
tion of the reader by false pretences ;— 
by making the title-page of a book the 
text merely—or the stalking-horse, for 
a snarling, an insidious, or an excursive 
essay, with which the merits or demerits, 
the style or matter of the book an- 
nounced have no sort of connexion : 
especially when such rambling disquisi- 
tions (as is frequently the case) are 
made the vehicles of personal malignity, 
political sophistry, or venal prostitu- 
tion: or for puffing-off, perhaps, some 
else-forgotten work of a patron, a pub- 
lisher, or a reviewing colleague.* 
But 
* Thus, for example, in the present num- 
ber, no less than three distinct occasions 
are taken by the goodly brotherhood of the 
Quarterly, to sound the trumpet of Brother 
Southey. In p. 13, we have reference to 
“ Dr. Southey’s valuable History of Brazil ;”’ 
in p. 248, we are referred to “ the extraor- 
dinary eloquence and beauty with which Dr. 
Southey has recently attempted to enlist 
the better affections on the side of the 
martyr-like resignation of Laud.” —(Extra- 
ordinary indeed, considering how Dr. 
Southey’s beauty of eloquence would once 
have been employed!) In the same page, 
we are again reminded of Dr. Southey’s 
merits in “telling a damning tale}!which 
throws back all the blame of refusing the 
conciliation proposed”—[at the conciliatory 
period of the Restoration, &c.]—“‘on ‘the 
dissenters themselves.” And in pp. 49, 50, 
an ample quotation, with chapter and verse, 
formally reminds us that Dr. Southey has 
not only written a valuable History of 
Brazil, 
