1825.) — 
up against the unaffiliated and’ indepen- 
dent adventurer all the avenues to public 
notice and estimation: Hence the func- 
tion of criticism, as exercised through 
the popular vehicles, is not to assist the 
progress of intellect, but to narrow the 
sphere of competition, and appropriate 
the channels of exertion; not to encou- 
rage and foster the germs of timidly- 
unfolding genius, but to crush and 
blight them in the very bud:—to pro- 
scribe, in short, to extinguish, to anni- 
hilate, whatever ability, of whatever de- 
scription, any ill-starred wight may 
attempt to manifest, who is not either 
too important in station and alliance to 
be overlooked, or connected, by some 
link of party, of affinity, or association, 
with some one at least of these trumpet- 
ing confederacies. =~ 
Lord Byron, in his first effort for ce- 
lebrity, stood in the full danger of this 
hostile predicament. Though a man of 
family, he was not of those families, nor 
his connexions of those circles, which 
constittite the omnipotent insignificance 
of what calls itself the Fashionable 
World ;* nor was he either protégé 
or associate of those lords of the literary 
ascendant (the oracles or the echoes of 
that world,) the junta of the Edinburgh 
Review. And yet he dared to think he 
had some pretensions to poetic talent, 
and to print the juvenile effusions of his 
Hours of Idleness. 
* Sir E. B.’s description of that hetero- 
geneous amalgamation of the quackery of 
high life, though not sufficiently pertinent 
to our argument for insertion in the text, is 
neyertheless too piguante to be disregarded ; 
and our readers will not be displeased to 
meet with it as an appended note : 
*« { will not degrade my pen by attempting to 
give a picture of the manner in which it acts, or an 
examination of the little despicable cabals, artifices, 
intrigues, passions, and insanities, on these puny 
narrow stages of life, where the actors and actresses 
have the folly and blindness to call themselves the 
world, as if these few hundreds of silly people formed 
the exclusively-important part of mankind !—nay, as 
if they monopolized title, birth, rank, wealth, polish, 
talent, and knowledge; and this at a crisis, ‘when 
the ancient and great nobility keep themselves for 
the most part aloof; and when these erclusionalists 
are principally new titles, East-Indians, adventurers, 
noisy politicians, impudent wits of low origin, vulgar 
emergers from the City suddenly got rich, contrac- 
tors, Jews, rhyming orators, and scheming parsons, 
who have pushed themselves into notice by dint of 
open purse or brazen face; and who get a little bad 
gilding, like the gingerbread of a rustic fair, by a 
few cast duchesses, countesses, &c., who, having 
come to the end of their own pockets, credits, and 
characters, are willing to come wherever the doors 
of large houses can be opened to them, and the costs 
of expensive cutertainments paid |” 
; 
Philosophy of Contemporary Criticism.—No. XLII B. 
213 
We may not quite agree with Sir 
E. B. even in the qualified degree of me- 
rit ascribed by him to that publication ; 
but certainly a more shameless viola- 
tion of every principle, not merely of 
critical candour, but of common vera- 
city, than the pretended critical notice 
of it, could not well have been expected, 
even from the Edinburgh Review of 
those days, when slander, misrepresen- 
tation, and malignity had not ceased to 
be its discriminating characteristics. 
The Critique and the Poems are both 
before us. We speak not, therefore, 
from vague and fading recollections. 
The Reviewer invidiously selects some 
of the weakest stanzas from his: most 
inefficient attempts; and, with unquali- 
fied audacity, thus pronounces—- 
“ Now we positively do assert, that there 
is nothing better than these stanzas in the 
whole compass of the noble minor’s yo- 
lume.”’ 
To this we do as positively reply, that 
it is utterly impossible but that the wri- 
ter of that article must have known, that 
he was thus positively asserting a most 
gross and malicious falsehood ; and that 
there were in that little volume (though 
mauch is puerile, and much is commion- 
place,) not only much better specimens 
than those selected, but many flashes and 
indications of ahighly poeticmind; many 
passages, which nothing but the dawn- 
Ings of poetic inspiration could . have 
produced; and, some entire poems, 
which would not, as juyenilities, haye 
disgraced the pages of some .of those 
volumes which have been favoured with 
critical commendation. wi 
We think, with Sir E. B., that causes 
of irritation did not cease with the tri- 
umph of our poet over his reviewers. 
And if the natural influence of that 
feverish popularity, which followed 
with a flush as intemperate as it was, 
perhaps, unreasonable, on the publica- 
tion of the first two cantos of “ Childe 
Harold,” was much more likely to in- 
crease than to soothe an inherent ex- 
citability,—the incense of that adulation 
was but of short continuance: while, 
at the same time, if the song of triumph 
wrung in his ears, the yell and the cavil 
of malignant calumny mingled their 
harshest dissonance—as indeed they ever 
do, with the pzan that acknowledges 
the attainments of intellectual supe- 
riority. 
“ In the midst of this burst of fashion- 
able idolatry lis enemies, and his traducers 
never left him. Not only were every error 
and 
