SOURCE: "The Cockney School," in The Romantic Reviewers: 1802-1824, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1969, pp. 176-215.

[In the following excerpt, Hayden surveys the contemporary critical reviews of Leigh Hunt's poetry, which frequently focus on his expressed political views.]

The idea of a 'Cockney School of Poetry' was originated by John Gibson Lockhart in Blackwood's Magazine in a scurrilous series of articles begun in October, 1817. In the same month, the Edinburgh Magazine recognized a literary group which included the same writers, Leigh Hunt, John Keats, and William Hazlitt. Thus it is evident that the grouping by Blackwood's is not ascribable solely to a desire for lumping together offensive writers for ease of attack, as was largely the case with Southey's vaguely descriptive 'Satanic School'.

The Cockney School was, in fact, the nearest approach to a literary school of any so denominated by the reviewers. The members lived in the London area and they were friends. More important, they shared certain attitudes toward life and literature, as well as certain peculiarities of style and sentiment. Ironically, Hazlitt's writings had the least of the vulgarity which the title 'Cockney' was meant to designate, but he was more often than Hunt or Keats attacked as a 'Cockney'.

Much of the abuse discharged at the Cockneys was, of course, political. With Leigh Hunt, who was in many ways the center of the group, editing the radical Examiner during most of the period, this should surprise no one. What is remarkable, however, was the extent to which their political affiliations were more an asset than a liability, as we shall see.

Leigh Hunt

In the light of Leigh Hunt's well-known skirmishes with Blackwood's Magazine, the relations of the 'King of the Cockneys' with his reviewers would most likely be thought to have been hostile, but such is not the case. The 'On the Cockney School of Poetry' series in that periodical, it is true, deal mainly with Hunt, but most of the articles are not reviews but invective of the lowest order. In any case, Blackwood's did not reflect the opinion of the reviewers as a whole, who rendered favorable judgments on most of Hunt's publications.

The first of these, the Critical Essays on the Performers of the London Theatres (1807), contained selections of Hunt's dramatic criticism as published in the News. It was in general well received, with particular approbation given to his judgment, impartiality, and taste. Qualifications took the form of censure of stylistic blemishes, such as quaint diction (for example, 'close wideness'), evident immaturity in thinking, and unsuccessful attempts at humor. Hunt's only other extensive prose publication in the period under study, An Attempt to Shew the Folly and Danger of Methodism (1809), was likewise a collection of articles published previously, this time in the Examiner. It received only two reviews, both favorable.

Discounting Hunt's verses in the Examiner, which received a gratuitous hostile review in the Satirist, his first poetic publication after 1802 was The Feast of the Poets (1814). As with the prose pieces, this satiric poem met with a majority of favorable verdicts though there was a good deal of adverse criticism of the slovenliness and vulgarity of the style. Hunt's vanity also came under good-humored fire in the Critical Review, which commented on Hunt's statement of reluctance, as a critic himself, to publish verse:

There is a constitutional quality in this gentleman which operates so undisguisedly—a frankness of assumption, which proves him to be on such excellent terms with himself, that we hear of his perplexity with a most satisfied persuasion of its philosophical endurance.... [And yet] a little solemn coxcombry, when united to ability and good intention is pardonable enough; and possibly not the less palatable for a slight perception of the ridiculous which attends our regard of it.¹

The Critical Review also observed that Hunt went too far in taking his attacks on the poets into their private lives; and the Monthly Review remarked: 'He plays the part of a critic with less mercy than the most merciless of reviewers. . . .'² A fit time for the Satirist to prefigure Blackwood's bitter, personal abuse: Hunt is 'in politics, a drivelling man-milliner; and in literature, an empty coxcomb'.³

In the following year, Hunt published The Descent of Liberty, an attempt to revive the form of the masque. Again the reception was more favorable than otherwise, but critical opposition was gaining momentum (with, however, only the monthlies and one weekly concerned). There was good reason for the increased hostility; for unlike the light-hearted satire which preceded it, the masque was a serious attempt to succeed with a difficult form and was a failure on many counts. Even John Scott in the Champion, who praised the poet and his work to the skies, had to condemn Hunt's affectation and familiarity, and, a more important failing, his allowance of 'a too licentious indulgence of the shadowy gleamings of his fancy, by permitting them to escape him in language like themselves, half-formed, new coined, and unsanctioned'. ⁴ Scott explained:

The difficulty of finding words to represent all that passes within the poet's mind, is, in many respects, salutary;—it drives him to the necessity of selecting with some reference to the understandings, tastes, and habits of his readers; it forces him to define what he would otherwise leave vague,—and, in short, forms his and the public's best security, against his being seduced to outpour upon them the egotism, wildness, crudity, and rawness of his secret breast, instead of presenting a refined and assorted col-lection of what is truly valuable, suitable, and pleasing.

The best criticism of the masque, however, was delivered by the Theatrical Inquisitor. After praising Hunt's integrity and independence and censuring his egotism and over-confidence, the reviewer attacks the allegory, 'a species of writing much too abstracted to be entertaining', made even worse here by 'its making an improbable fiction of reality [the political situation on the Continent], and consequently destroying the interest of the tale'.⁵ The long-winded, ludicrous stage directions are next ridiculed as they deserved. But the reviewer was just warming up to more serious charges: 'The language is often rugged, the metre in many lines is deficient, the ideas trite and quaintly expressed.' One of many stated examples of the latter is a 'Wrapping looks and balmy tongue', and the comment on all the examples was:

Surely no reader of taste or common understanding will accept of these unmeaning phrases as the genuine language of poetry. Even supposing, which is not the case, that the ideas were poetical, the want of just expression would still be felt as a most intolerable defect; for although it must be confessed that words are nothing more than the symbols of ideas, yet the beauty and appropriate use of these symbols form the second great source of the pleasure we receive from poetry.⁶

Then the meaning of passages is questioned: for example, airs 'feel as they were fit for hearts and eyes / To breathe and sparkle in' (italics added by the reviewer). 'The idea of hearts breathing', he commented, 'has at least the merit of novelty.'⁷ Examples of rugged meter ('And summon from their waiting climes / The pleasures that perfect victorious times') and of familiarity ('Phaniel, if your cloud holds two, / I'll come up, and sit with you') were also given. The reviewer observed:

By a strange contradiction of judgment, or of feeling, he has written on two very opposite principles; sometimes he has affected a homeliness of language and ideas, that is almost disgusting; and at other times he has heaped together, without any meaning, a parcel of high-sounding words. . . .⁸

The review ends with the hope that Hunt will abandon poetry and stick to politics: 'In the one he will only lose that credit which he has obtained in the other.'⁹

In the following year (1816), Hunt published what is easily his best original work in verse, The Story of Rimini. The reviewers certainly thought it was the best published to that point, and for the first time the quarterlies became involved. Only the Quarterly Review and the New Monthly Magazine were hostile, although all of those reviewing the poem had reservations of one kind or another.

But the freshness and vigor of the execution received a good deal of praise. Jeffrey (probably drawing upon a MS review by Hazlitt) in the Edinburgh Review thought the tone very like Chaucer's, except that Hunt's homeliness and directness often seemed forced. Hunt's vivid descriptions were praised by many reviewers, and Jeffrey noted that the activity being described in the opening account of the procession was reflected in the gaiety and movement of the verse. The progress of the passion of Paulo and Francesca also received favorable comment from many hands.

But then there was the obstacle of Hunt's style, which had, in the words of the Literary Panorama, 'imperfections easily pointed out, by men who possess no proportion of his powers'. In this review is also perhaps the best description of the effect of reading the poem:

In this poem he indulges himself in description, and his ideas, his versification, his management are so lively, graceful, and applicable, that the reader shares with him in the delight of his composition, which, perhaps, is as great a compliment as words can utter. Amidst this gratification the reader detects in slovenly affectation of ease, the constraint of Art, a kind of occasional slipshod hitch in the verse. . . .¹⁰

Another incidental but discerning point was that

In a short poem points of time, or incident, may occur, in which the mind feels the disadvantage resulting from early exhaustion. The mind feels that excessive labour has been bestowed on opening incidents, and to place this labour where it would be more effectual, a part at least of what has been read must be forgot; a new train of ideas, the same, yet not the same, demanded by the imagination, excite a dangerous kind of rivalship, and the poet must forego them, because he has already introduced others so nearly alike, that the most careless reader must detect the resemblance.¹¹

The most important defect in the poem, however, was pointed out by Jeffrey in the Edinburgh Review: 'The diction of this little poem is among its chief beauties—and yet its greatest blemishes are faults in diction.—It is very English throughout—but often very affectedly negligent, and so extremely familiar as to be absolutely low and vulgar.'¹² Some examples given are 'a scattery light' and 'a clipsome waist'.

In the Preface to the poem, Hunt had echoed Wordsworth's Preface to the Lyrical Ballads of 1800: 'The proper language of poetry is in fact nothing different from that of real life. . . .' And thus the whole controversy in which the reviewers were still engaged at this time with respect to Wordsworth's theories was provoked for the moment in reviews of The Story of Rimini. Unfortunately—for those theories—Hunt's poetic practice made only too easy a mark for the opposition. It was so easy, in fact, that the controversy is uninteresting in comparison with the discussion of Wordsworth's theories and practice. John Wilson Croker in the Quarterly Review merely quotes from Hunt's Preface, which admits that 'of course mere vulgarisms and fugitive phrases' must be excluded, and comments:

If there be one fault more eminently conspicuous and ridiculous in Mr. Hunt's work than another, it is,—that it is full of mere vulgarisms and fugitive phrases, and that in every page the language is—not only not the actual, existing language, but an ungrammatical, unauthorized, chaotic jargon, such as we believe was never before spoken; much less written.

In what vernacular tongue, for instance, does Mr. Hunt find a lady's waist called clipsome, (p. 10.)—or the shout of a mob 'enormous', (p. 9.)—or a fit, lightsome;—or that a hero's nose is 'lightsomely brought down from a forehead of clear-spirited thought', (p. 46.)—or that his back 'drops' lightsomely in, (p. 20).¹³

The question of morality was also raised. The plot of the poem turns on an incestuous liaison; yet it is notable that the reviewers did not object to the mere fact of the incest, although some felt a slight repugnance at the choice of theme. The British Review and the Monthly Review observed that the story was handled with all possible delicacy; the latter review further remarked, in a sort of inverted defense of the poem, that nevertheless, 'enough occurs to alarm the vigilant and perhaps fastidious supervisors of female reading in the present nice era'.¹⁴ John Gibson Lockhart, on the other hand, in that part of his article on the poem in Blackwood's having pretensions to serious criticism, objected strongly to the light-hearted handling of the theme: 'It would fain be the genteel comedy of incest.'¹⁵ And the Eclectic Review had its doubts:

We give the Author full credit for the decency of his representations, for the absence of every thing that can disgust, or seduce, or inflame: but still we doubt whether such stories are not likely to do some hurt to the cause of morality; whether it is possible so to distinguish between the offence and the offender, as to render the one detestable, while the other is represented as so very amiable; and whether indeed this amiableness is not gotten by paring off sundry little portions of the sin; such as selfishness—that unheroic quality, on the part of the seducer; base infidelity on the part of the woman.¹⁶

The Literary Panorama offered a different sort of objection: 'The writer who attributes evils to fate, is not a moral writer.'¹⁷

Though the reviewers in general were not morally outraged, two hostile reviewers indulged in some vicious personal abuse. The Dedication to Lord Byron was the target; for example, Croker observed:

We never, in so few lines, saw so many clear marks of the vulgar impatience of a low man, conscious and ashamed of his wretched vanity, and labouring, with coarse flippancy, to scramble over the bounds of birth and education, and fidget himself into the stout-heartedness of being familiar with a LORD.¹⁸

The Dedication, like so much of Hunt's writing, is indeed embarrassingly familiar, but such remarks as Croker's are, to say the least, inadmissible.

Faced with the vanity and familiarity of Hunt's dedications and prefaces, and the vulgarity and preciousness of his poetic diction, the reviewers turned more and more to humorous comment. Elements of the comic had been present in some of the earliest reviews of Hunt's works; but it was the totally serious review that was the exception in the criticism of Foliage (1818), a collection of original poems (or 'Greenwoods') and translations of classical poetry (or 'Evergreens'). (The Literary Gazette remarked on the puns: There is much silliness in such doings. . . .')^{1 9} The review in the Quarterly Review, possibly by John Wilson Croker, opened on a facetious note:

Winter has at length passed away: spring returns upon us, like a reconciled mistress, with redoubled smiles and graces; and even we poor critics, 'in populous city pent', feel a sort of ungainly inspiration from the starved leaflets and smutty buds in our window-pots; what, then, must be the feelings with which the Arcadian Hunt,

'half-stretched on the ground,
With a cheek-smoothing air coming taking him round,'

—p. lxxxi.

must welcome the approach of the 'fair-limbed' goddess to his rural retreat at Hampstead? He owes her indeed especial gratitude; and it would be unpardonable in him to suffer his 'day-sweet' voice, and 'smoothing-on' 'sleeking-up' harp to be mute upon this occasion.²⁰

The Literary Gazette was a little more serious:

True poetry opens a nobler pursuit than this squirrel-hunting among bushes. . . . Many of our modern writers seem to imagine that poetic genius consists in the fanciful illustration of the most trite objects; that to call a tree leafy, and a bird hoppy, and a cat purry, is genuine nature; that to speak of brutes having 'lamping eyes', . . . of rills among stones having 'little whiffling tones', .. . of 'sleek seas ...', and similar fooleries, is pure unadulterated inspira-tion and not silly nonsense. They may be right: we are sceptics.²¹

Fair or not—legitimate critical style or mere abuse—such humorous comment must have been hard to stifle with respect to much of Hunt's verse.

But Hunt's slighting remarks about Christianity, abruptly obtruded into the Preface to the volume, occasioned some serious discussions. The Eclectic Review observed that it is very difficult to give oneself to poetry when offensive opinions get in the way—that consequently nothing is more impolitic for a poet than

to obtrude upon his readers those points in his individual character, which relate to differences of religious creed or political opinion, thereby tending to awaken a class of associations opposite to those which it is the business of the poet to excite.

Mr. Leigh Hunt has, in the present volume, been betrayed by his incurable egotism, into this capital error.²²

The Quarterly was less circumspect in tendering its objections; Hunt and his associates were branded as Epicureans. And although Hunt is said to avoid in all likelihood the practice which he preaches, he is held accountable for the possible corruption of disciples—those 'who have neither the intellectual pride of a first discovery to compensate them for self-restriction, nor the ardent anxiety for the reputation of an infant sect to support them against their own principle. . . .'²³ This is at least taking Hunt's philosophy more seriously than anyone today would do; but any force the argument might have is invalidated by the vicious, personal attack, which follows, on one of Hunt's associates. It is Shelley, unnamed but unmistakable; and this is in a way ironic; for Shelley is often said to have suffered from his connection with Hunt. In this review, exactly the opposite is the case.

Nevertheless, the Quarterly Review in spite of its objections recognized Hunt's merits: 'a general richness of language, and a picturesque imagination; this last indeed, the faculty of placing before us, with considerable warmth of colouring, and truth of drawing, the groups which his fancy assembles, he possesses in an eminent degree. . . .'²⁴ But perhaps his scenes are a little too picturesque, too like paintings. This last comment, also made in the Eclectic Review, is remarkable, inasmuch as the capacity of a poetic scene for graphic transposition was almost always a form of praise used by reviewers.

And yet, the reviewer in the Quarterly continues, besides his dangerous philosophy and his stylistic defects Hunt presents, 'though it occurs but seldom, an impurity of both' language and sentiment.

He may amuse or deceive himself with distinctions between voluptuousness and grossness, but will he never learn that things indifferent or innocent in themselves may become dangerous from the weakness or corruption of the recipient? .. . If the thing be practically pernicious, its abstract innocence is but a slight compensation. . . .²⁵

What voluptuousness there is occurs mainly in the longest poem of the collection, 'The Nymphs', which received from the reviewers most attention and most praise. The chatty epistles to his friends were not so well received; the Eclectic Review briefly described the central problem: 'Mr. Hunt's attempts at playfulness are not graceful.'²⁶ The British Critic likewise summed up the defect in Hunt's exuberant translations: 'We will not call Mr. Hunt a mannerist, but he has the happy faculty of making all the poets whom he translates sing in strains very like his own', often with catastrophic results.²⁷

Hunt's next original verse, Hero and Leander; and Bacchus and Ariadne, was published in the collected edition of his poetry in 1819. It received only one review, and that one was most strange. P. G. Patmore in the London Magazine begins by claiming that Hunt had been badly treated by the reviewers—a claim which can only refer to the reviews of Foliage; and yet after indulging in some enthusiastic praise of Hunt's poetry (for example, it is 'all over spots of sunshine'), he defends The Story of Rimini, which on the whole had received favorable reviews.²⁸ Then the strangeness increases as Patmore goes on to enumerate Hunt's stylistic faults, which he maintains are present in that poem as well as in Hero and Leander: 'The inveterate mannerism,—the familiarity reaching sometimes to vulgarity,—the recurrence of careless and prosaic lines, and even whole passages,—and the determination to use old and uncommon words in new and uncommon, and sometimes inappropriate and unintelligible senses.' And yet, 'in spite of all this, Hero and Leander in particular, is a very sweet little poem.'²¹ It is difficult to understand exactly what caused such inconsistencies and reversals; perhaps the review had been heavily edited or maybe it was just that Patmore was sympathetic in general, becoming confused when faced with Hunt's shortcomings.

Another strange occurrence preceded this: a partly favorable reception in Blackwood's, Hunt's most relentless foe, of his annual Literary Pocket-Book of 1819 and 1820. The review, possibly by John Wilson, is actually a mixture of attacks on Hunt and Keats, of Blackwood's customary cloying, whimsical humor, and of praise and recommendation of the volumes. The Literary Pocket-Book of 1821 received a truly favorable review in the London Magazine.

Hunt was applauded more loudly by reviewers of his Amyntas (1820), a translation of Tasso's Aminta. Far and away the best work of Hunt published in the period under study, it received three enthusiastic reviews and only one unfavorable one (in the Literary Gazette). The Monthly Magazine summed up the general attitude:

We . . . think this translation superior to any thing of Mr. Hunt's which we have seen: it has more of what is good in his manner, and abounds in fewer of his faults. It is written, too, quite con amore. We perceive our author is in his true element—for the original itself is simple and affected throughout.³⁰

The reviewer in the Monthly Review agreed with this and offered some further observations of a more general nature. He maintained that the 'familiarity and quaintness both of thought and expression', notable in Hunt's previous poems, 'do not arise out of affectation and conceit, as we might first suppose: they are rather the offspring of necessity; of singular and somewhat confined powers both of mind and language. . . .'³¹ In fact, 'his success, in the little work before us, is to be chiefly attributed to his want of capacity for greater things'.³² The reviewer went on to disagree with 'the dicta of a modern critic [Hazlitt]: who, with latitudinarian kindness towards the world, maintains that every thing is poetry, and that we are all poets ', by arguing for a more elevated content and form in poetry.³³ But in arguing such points in relation to Hunt's verse, the reviewer has too easy a time and does nothing but set forth his own views, which are not very profound. His remarks on Hunt's merits, after a discussion of his mannerisms, show more thought:

Still this system is not without its use. It has beauties of its own, and of a peculiar kind; and it makes him notice objects that other poets have neglected, and describe them in words which though singular are often happy. There is a freshness of perception about his poetry, and his descriptions of scenery and character are given with ease. The lighter and more transient feelings are likewise under his controul, though the intenseness of the passions is exhibited with little effect.³⁴

After years of relatively favorable and for the most part serious criticism, Hunt published Ultra-Crepidarius (1823), a satire on William Gifford, editor of the Quarterly Review; and the nature of the satire upset the equanimity of the critics. Some of the reviews were favorable and some hostile; but all of them were partisan and therefore uninteresting, except for the extent of their malignity. The reviewer in Blackwood's, possibly John Wilson, showed that magazine's usual flair along those lines. In referring to a passage describing the arising of Mercury and Venus from bed, he remarks: 'One thinks of some aged cur, with mangy back, glazed eyeballs dropping rheum, and with most disconsolate mazzard muzzling among the fleas of his abominable loins, by some accident lying upon the bed where love and beauty are embracing, and embraced.'³⁵

Political bias is more obvious in reviews of Hunt's works than in those of most writers dealt with in this study. This should not be surprising in view of Hunt's political career as editor of the Examiner. What is remarkable is that the political bias worked largely in Hunt's favor. Periodicals run by Dissenters, such as the Critical Review and the Eclectic Review, and the liberal journals, such as the Champion and the London Magazine, gave Hunt critical support, which could scarcely have been offset by the hostility of periodicals of an opposite political persuasion, such as the British Critic and the Literary Gazette.

And the extent to which the bias affected the literary judgments is, in any case, difficult to determine in view of the unevenness of Hunt's work. His verse is not much esteemed today; there has, in fact, been no edition of his poetry since 1923. It is the incredible unevenness in its quality, I think, that accounts for Hunt's present unpopularity. The poet who could write

Hallo!—what?—Where? What can it be
That strikes up so deliciously?
I never in my life—what? no!
That little tin-box playing so?

could also pen the following speech of a shepherdess describing her conversion to the ranks of Love (translated from Tasso's Aminta):

I yielded, I confess; and all that conquered me,
What was it? patience and humility,
And sighs, and soft laments, and asking pardon.
Darkness, and one short night, then shewed me more,
Than the long lustre of a thousand days.

Wordsworth, like Hunt, was dealing with emotions at the point where it becomes difficult to keep from crossing the thin line that separates sentiment from sentimentality—simple emotion from affectation; and Wordsworth sometimes crossed over. Hunt was forever skipping back and forth across that line.

Vulgarity, familiarity, bad taste: as terms of critical disapproval these are, I believe, valid and meaningful, although it is not often necessary to call them into use; for the occasion seldom arises when dealing with works of any literary value. When dealing with Hunt's works, some of which are well worth reading, the need for applying such terms is constant. They may at first seem to be mere abuse when encountered in contemporary reviews; but it is difficult to tell a writer he is being vulgar without sounding abusive, just as it is difficult to point out familiarity without restoring to humorous comment. Blackwood's, as usual, went too far and indulged in personal abuse, thereby creating a one-sided image of Hunt's contemporary critics. It is significant that the word 'Cockney', applied with such malignity by 'Blackwood's Merry Men', was almost never used by Hunt's reviewers in other periodicals....

Notes

¹CR, V 4s (Mar., 1814), 293-94.

²MR, LXXV (Sept., 1814), 100.

³Sat., XIV (Apr., 1814), 327.

⁴Champ, Mar. 26, 1815, p. 102.

⁵TI, VI (Apr., 1815), 290.

⁶Ibid., p. 294.

⁷Ibid., p. 295.

⁸Ibid., p. 297.

⁹Ibid., p. 298.

¹⁰LP, IV 2s (Sept., 1816), 936.

¹¹Ibid., pp. 936-37.

¹²ER, XXVI (June, 1816), 491.

¹³QR, XIV (Jan., 1816), 477.

¹⁴MR, LXXX (June, 1816), 138.

¹⁵BM, II (Nov., 1817), 197.

¹⁶EcR, V 2s (Apr., 1816), 381.

¹⁷LP, IV 2s (Sept., 1816), 937.

¹⁸QR, XIV (Jan., 1816), 481. Hunt himself later admitted his guilt with regard to this charge. See Leigh Hunt, Lord Byron and Some of His Contemporaries, 2d ed. (London, 1828), I, 54-55.

¹⁹LG, Apr. 4, 1818, p. 212.

²⁰QR, XVIII (Jan., 1818), 324-25.

²¹LG, Apr. 4, 1818, pp. 210-11.

²²EcR, X 2s (Nov., 1818), 484-85.

²³QR, XVIII (Jan., 1818), 327.

²⁴Ibid., pp. 329-30.

²⁵Ibid., p. 329.

²⁶EcR, X 2s (Nov., 1818), 492.

²⁷BC, X 2s (July, 1818), 95.

²⁸LM, II (July, 1820), 46.

²⁹Ibid., p. 51.

³⁰MM, L (Aug., 1820), 65.

³¹MR, XCIII (Sept., 1820), 18.

³²Ibid., p. 29.

³³Ibid., p. 19.

³⁴Ibid., p. 20.

³⁵BM, XV (Jan., 1824), 87.

Works Cited

British Reviewing Periodicals 1802-24

BC British Critic (1793-1826). . . .

BM Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine (1817- ). . . .

Champ Champion (1814-22). . . .

CR Critical Review (1756-1817). . . .

EcR Eclectic Review (1805-68). . . .

ER Edinburgh Review (1802-1929). . . .

LG Literary Gazette (1817-62). . . .

LM London Magazine (1820-29). . . .

LP Literary Panorama (1806-19). . . .

MM Monthly Magazine (1796-1825). . . .

MR Monthly Review (1749-1845). . . .

QR Quarterly Review (1809- ). . . .

Sat Satirist (1807-14). A monthly magazine of 112 pages first published in London (Vols. I-V) by Samuel Tipper, then (Vol. VI) by W. N. Jones, and finally by anonymous 'Proprietors'. Much more political than most magazines, the Satirist's literary reviews nevertheless contain indiscriminately unfavorable judgments, especially severe after George Manners, the original proprietor and editor, sold the magazine to William Jerdan (later editor of the LG) in 1812. Hewson Clarke was probably the reviewer of both editions of Byron's Hours of Idleness; at least Byron believed him to be the culprit (L. Marchand, Byron [New York, 1957], I, 155; R. E. Prothero, ed. The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals [London, 1898-1901], I, 321n). The Sat contained political cartoons by George Cruikshank.

TI Theatrical Inquisitor (1812-21). A monthly magazine of eighty pages published in London by C. Chappie. It was conducted in 1814 by George Soane (L. M. Jones, 'The Essays and Critical Writing of John Hamilton Reynolds', Harvard diss. [1952], p. 11n. See also F. Sper, The Periodical Press of London [Boston, 1937], p. 15). It had the usual magazine features, except for chronicles, but was, as its title implies, weighted in the direction of drama. It nevertheless contained a considerable number of literary reviews.