Literary Critics and Reviewers in Early Nineteenth-Century Britain by Peter F. Morgan (review)

HUMANITIES 425 have avoided the absurd statement that Roxana's 'crime of continuing to trade means that she must suffer.' Part Two is necessarily slighter, though it contains new information, such as the section on the increase in the average size of the dowries of heiresses (compiled from an analysis of figures in The Complete Peerage), which gives us a more precise idea of the standing in the social scale of heiresses like Clarissa Harlowe and Emma Woodhouse. (It should be noted, however, that Macey's figures for the earlier period do not accord with those given in the table of 'Marriage Portions offered by Peers, 1474-1724: in Lawrence Stone's The Crisis of the Aristocracy, "558- "64", Appendix xxxi.) As with Part One, however, the focus on monetary motivation, interesting as it sometimes can be, too often appears to fiatten the fictional perspective by downplaying, or eliminating, the moral and psychological dimension of the stories. In the case of Richardson the result is especially unfortunate, as the difference between Pamela and Clarissa is minimized, to the grave detriment of the latter. Because Clarissa is seen (in an unfortunate choice of words)as a young woman 'very much impregnated with the values and concerns of materialism: her careful and macabre - preparations for death, perhaps the finest example of Richardson's mythopoeic imagination at work, are said to 'demonstrate a return to those very precise organizing qualities of Richardson's managing ladies.' The most useful feature of Macey's study is its renewal of emphaSiS upon realism in fiction. In novel after novel he shows us how carefully the narrators keep track of money, the exact value of estates and dowries, the constant awareness of all characters of the value of money and property. These concerns are the underpinning of realist fiction. But upon such substantial foundations superstructures of wondrous subtlety and great art have been raised. The complexity and variety of human emotions, the nuance of language, the analysis ofmotive, the comedy and the tragedy of the human condition are to be found in the house offiction. Only rarely in Macey's study are we permitted a glimpse of them. (DAVID BLEWETT) Peter F. Morgan. Literary Critics and Reviewers in Early Nineteenth-Century Britain Croom Helm. xv, 181. £14.95 Concentrating on their criticism of contemporary poetry and fiction, Professor Morgan discusses severalof the major reviewers and journals of the early nineteenth century: Jeffrey, Carlyle, Macaulay, Scott, Croker, Lockhart, and John Stuart Mill. The principal journals in question are the Edinburgh Review, the Quarterly Review, and the Westminster Review. Starting with Jeffrey, 'the father of the review form itself, of review 426 LETTERS IN CANADA 1983 criticism in general, and of the review axticle: he describes the significance of the critics as periodical writers, giving an account of their main critical opinions in the general context of romanticism. It is a very ambitious task for so short a book, however full of erudition, an exacting exercise in distillation. Morgan quotes often, communicating the tone as well as the content of his reviewers' work. With the lesser figures such as Jeffrey and Croker, one may feel sufficiently informed, though perhaps not so moved as Wordsworth complaining that jeffrey was 'a depraved Coxcomb; the greatest Dunce in this Island, and assuredly the Man who takes most pains to prove himselfso: Butwith such prolificorencyclopaedic minds as Scott's, Macaulay's, Carlyle's, or Mill's, one feels one is scarcely glimpsing their full stature. Morgan has had severe choices to make. For the most part, he deals with these peopleas reviewers, showing the great range of their opinions, even when the opinions resist neat classification as when Croker, a fulminating, Tory ex-Secretary of the Admiralty, details a lady writer's shortcomings in a book on France: 'Bad taste - Bombast and Nonsense - Blunders - Ignorance of the French Language and Manners - General Ignorance - jacobinism - Falsehood Licentiousness , and Impiety: The journal covered a wide range of topiCS, and, since'for Macaulay, as for Carlyle, criticism and literature itself are but two human activities amongst many: most of these critics are concerned about the social roles of literature and the place of literary men in...