Famous Reviews, Selected and Edited with Introductory Notes by R. Brimley Johnson — Reading Companion

The Critic as Combatant

The reviews in this volume are far from dispassionate assessments. They are performances. Jeffrey’s attack on Southey’s Thalaba exemplifies the period’s willingness to blend personal invective with literary judgment. The anonymous Quarterly piece on Keats—infamous for its cruelty—shows how reviews could wound careers. Even when praising, as Macaulay does in his essay on Madame d’Arblay, the critic adopts a combative stance, arguing against prior judgments. Johnson’s selections highlight that these critics saw themselves as guardians of taste, wielding authority through wit and aggression.

Tensions Over War and Peace in Tennyson’s <em>Maud</em>

A striking passage from an anonymous Quarterly review of Tennyson’s Maud (1855) captures the era’s anxiety about militarism. The reviewer quotes the poem’s lines—"War with a thousand battles, and shaking a hundred thrones"—and then questions whether the poet endorses the hero’s bellicose sentiments. The critic warns that such "fervid partial representations" can breed error, especially when peace is not a real danger. The review’s own language escalates: it compares war to plague, famine, and flood, calling it a "perilous delusion" to teach war as a cure for moral evil. This exchange reveals how critics scrutinized poetry for its social and political implications, demanding responsibility from the poet.

Johnson’s Editorial Hand: Selection and Framing

R. Brimley Johnson does not merely reprint reviews; he curates them. His introductory notes are brief, often just a paragraph, but they signal his editorial stance. For instance, he introduces the Edinburgh Review section by noting its founding in 1802, and he groups reviews by critic—Jeffrey, Brougham, Sydney Smith, Macaulay—implying a canon of influential reviewers. The table of contents itself is a statement: it lists targets like "Southey’s Thalaba" and "Keats" alongside reviewers like "Lord Jeffrey" and "Gifford." By including both famous attacks (on Keats) and famous defenses (Scott on Austen), Johnson constructs a narrative of critical conflict. The reader is left to infer the editor’s own sympathies from what he chooses to include.

Readers approaching this collection should attend to the interplay between the reviews and Johnson’s framing. The editor’s choices—which reviews to include, how to group them, what to emphasize in his notes—shape the narrative as much as the critics’ words. Consider why Johnson pairs Macaulay on Croker with an anonymous piece on Vanity Fair and Jane Eyre. The volume rewards those who read not just for content, but for the implicit dialogue between editor and critic.

There’s something companionable about old reviews—their bluntness feels almost like a conversation overheard. I found myself thinking of that while rereading the gentle essays in Rustic Sounds, and Other Studies in Literature and Natural History — Background and Themes, where the same love of patient observation turns quieter, toward woods and weather rather than quarrels. Different temperaments, same unhurried attention. Strange how that lingers.