EDWIN PERCY WHIPPLE 1819-1886 Edwin Percy Whipple was born at Gloucester, Massachusetts, in 1819. He received his early, and, indeed, his only school education in the public schools of Salem. When a boy he set out for Boston to begin life on his own account as a broker's clerk. He soon became a member of the Mercantile Library Association, and it was in the debates and literary exercises carried on under the auspices of this institution that he acquired his first taste for literature. This was, in fact, his university course, and his later works often show traces of his early training in these youthful debates. In 1843 he published his essay on Macaulay." This has a twofold interest, inasmuch as it was his first serious attempt at literary work, and in the second place we plainly see here that Macaulay was, consciously or unconsciously, the great master after whom Whipple modelled his own literary style. 66 In 1860 Whipple abandoned all business pursuits to devote himself exclusively to literature. With the exception of Richard Grant White, he was for many years the only American man of letters gaining a livelihood as a professional critic. He contributed regularly to a number of prominent literary magazines and reviews, notably, the "North American Review," the Christian Examiner," and the Atlantic Monthly." He lectured frequently on literary topics, and was universally received with favor and appreciation. The most important of his essays were collected by him in two volumes during his lifetime, and published under the titles, "Essays and Reviews" (1848), and "Literature of the Age of Elizabeth" (1869). A number of other volumes, made up of collections from his miscellaneous writings, are now included in the nine volumes of his published works. He died in 1886. Whipple's style is not faultless, although, as a rule, it is polished and clear, and at times even brilliant and epigrammatic. He possesses the art of making trite subjects interesting to his hearers in a manner entirely his own. His critical judgments are usually sound, and his writings seem justly entitled to be accorded a place in the literature of his country. I MACAULAY T is impossible to cast even a careless glance over the literature of the last thirty years without perceiving the prominent station occupied by critics, reviewers, and essayists. Criticism, in the old days of monthly reviews and gentlemen's magazines, was quite an humble occupation, and was chiefly monopolized by the "barren rascals" of letters, who scribbled, sinned, and starved, in attics and cellars; but it has since been almost exalted into a creative art, and numbers among its professors some of the most accomplished writers of the age. Dennis, Rhymer, Winstanley, Theophilus Cibber, Griffiths, and other" eminent hands," as well as the nameless contributors to defunct periodicals, have departed, body and soul, and left not a wreck behind; and their places have been supplied by such men as Coleridge, Carlyle, Macaulay, Lamb, Hazlitt, Jeffrey, Wilson, Gifford, Mackintosh, Sydney Smith, Hallam, Campbell, Talfourd, and Brougham. Indeed, every celebrated writer of the present century, without, it is believed, a solitary exception, has dabbled or excelled in criticism. It has been the road to fame and profit, and has commanded both applause and guineas, when the unfortunate objects of it have been blessed with neither. Many of the strongest minds of the age will leave no other record behind them than critical essays and popular speeches. To those who have made criticism a business, it has led to success in other professions. The "Edinburgh Review," which took the lead in the establishment of the new order of things, was projected in a lofty attic by two briefless barristers and a titheless parson; the former are now lords, and the latter is a snug prebendary, rejoicing in the reputation of being the divinest wit and wittiest divine of the age. That celebrated journal made reviewing more respectable than authorship. It was started at a time when the degeneracy of literature de 1 [This essay was first published in the Boston "Miscellany," in February, 1843.-EDITOR.] manded a sharp vein of criticism. Its contributors were men who possessed talents and information, and so far held a slight advantage over most of those they reviewed. Grub Street quarterly quaked to its foundations, as the northern comet shot its portentous glare into the dark alleys where bathos and puerility buzzed and hived. The citizens of Brussels, on the night previous to Waterloo, were hardly more terror-struck than the vast array of fated authors who, every three months, waited the appearance of the baleful luminary, and, starting at every sound which betokened its arrival, "Whispered with white lips, the foe! it comes! it comes!" In the early and palmy days of the "Review," when reviewers were wits, and writers were hacks, the shore of the great ocean of books was "heaped with the damned like pebbles.” Like an "eagle in a dovecote," it fluttered the leaves of the Minerva Press, and stifled the weak notes of imbecile elegance, and the dull croak of insipid vulgarity, learned ignorance, and pompous humility. The descent of Attila on the Roman empire was not a more awful visitation to the Italians than the fell swoop of the "Edinburgh Review" on the degenerate denizens of Grub Street and Paternoster Row. It carried ruin and devastation whithersoever it went, and in many cases it carried those severe but providential dispensations to the right places, and made havoc consistent both with political and poetic justice. The Edinburgh reviewers, indeed, were found not to be of the old school of critics. They were not contented with the humble task of chronicling the appearance of books, and meekly condensing their weak contents for the edification of lazy heads; but when they deigned to read and analyze the work they judged, they sought rather for opportunities to display their own wit and knowledge, than to flatter the vanity of the author, or to increase his readers. Many of their most splendid articles were essays rather than reviews. The writer whose work afforded the name of the subject was summarily disposed of in a quiet sneer, a terse sarcasm, or a faint panegyric, and the remainder of the article hardly recognized his existence. It is to these purely original contributions, written by men of the first order of talent, that the "Review " owes most of its reputation; and their frequent appearance has exalted it above all other period icals of the age, and has atoned for its frequent injustice to authors, its numerous inconsistencies, and its many supposed heresies in taste, philosophy, and religion. Among the many noted critics and essayists who have made the great quarterly their medium of communication with the public, there is none who has obtained a wider celebrity, or justified his popularity by compositions of more intrinsic excellence, than Thomas Babington Macaulay. He began to contribute to the "Review" when it appeared to be passing from the green into the yellow leaf of public favor, and his articles commanded immediate attention, and gave it new life and brilliancy. The estimation in which he was early held is evinced by the remark of Mackintosh, that he was master of every species of composition-a saying which obtained for both a clumsy sneer from "Blackwood's Magazine." From the year 1825 to the present period, Macaulay has continued his connection with the "Review." There probably never was a series of articles communicated to a periodical which can challenge comparison with those of Macaulay for effectiveness. They are characterized by many of the qualities of heart and mind which stamp the productions of an Edinburgh reviewer; but in the combination of various excellences, they far excel the finest efforts of the class. As nimble and concise in wit as Sydney Smith; an eye quick to seize all those delicate refinements of language, and happy turns of expression which charm us in Jeffrey; displaying much of the imperious scorn, passionate strength, and swelling diction of Brougham; as brilliant, and as acute in critical dissection, as Hazlitt, without his unsoundness of mind; at times evincing a critical judgment which would not disgrace the stern gravity of Hallam, and a range of thought and knowledge which reminds us of Mackintosh-Macaulay seems to be the abstract and epitome of the whole journalseems the utmost that an Edinburgh reviewer "can come to." He delights everyone-high or low, intelligent or ignorant. His spice is of so keen a flavor that it tickles the coarsest palate. He has the hesitating suffrages of men of taste, and the plaudits of the million. The man who has a common knowledge of the English language, and the scholar who has mastered its refinements, seem equally sensible to the charm of his diction. No matter how unpromising the subject on which he writes may ap |