not.” Consequently, there cannot be too much dialectics and debatable matter, too much pomp and paradox, in a review. To elevate and surprise is the great rule for producing a dramatic or critical effect. The more you startle the reader, the more he will be able to startle others with a succession of smart intellectual shocks. The most admired of our Reviews is saturated with this sort of electrical matter, which is regularly played off so as to produce a good deal of astonishment and a strong sensation in the public mind. The intrinsic merits of an author are a question of very subordinate consideration to the keeping up the character of the work and supplying the town with a sufficient number of grave or brilliant topics for the consumption of the next three months!
This decided and paramount tone in criticism is the growth of the present century, and was not at all the fashion in that calm, peaceable period when the Monthly Review bore “sole sovereign sway and masterdom” over all literary productions. Though nothing can be said against the respectability or usefulness of that publication during its long and almost exclusive enjoyment of the public favour, yet the style of criticism adopted in it is such as to appear
