In regard to literature, I think the success of the Edinburgh Review has been far more triumphant than in any other department of its exertions. Here it had to encounter fewer obstacles in the previous character and habits of the Scottish people; for the influence of the Sceptical Philosophy, introduced by the great men of the last age, had very much removed all feelings of intense admiration for any works besides their own, from among almost the only class of people who in Scotland are much interested about such subjects. The Scottish education, too, as you have already seen in part, is not such as to oppose any very formidable barrier of repugnant feelings against the encroachment of the spirit of degrading mockery. Ignorant in a great measure of the mighty spirits of antiquity, the Scottish student wants in truth the most powerful of all those feelings, which teach and prepare other men to regard with an eye of humility, as well as of admiration, those who in their own time seem to revive the greatness of the departed, and vindicate once more the innate greatness of our nature. It is, indeed, no uncommon thing to meet with men, calling themselves classical scholars, who seem to think it a part of their character as such to undervalue, on all occasions,

the exertions of contemporary genius. But these are only your empty race of solemn pretenders, who read particular books, only because few other people read them-and who, unable themselves to produce anything worthy of the attention of their own age, are glad to shelter their imbecility under the shadow of over-strained exclusive reverence for ages that have gone by. It is not necessary to suppose, that liberal and enlightened scholarship has anything in common with these reverend Tom Folios. The just and genuine effect of intimate acquaintance with the great authors of antiquity, is to make men love and reverence the great authors of their own time the intellectual kinsmen and heirs of those whom they have so been wont to worship.

It is, indeed, a very deplorable thing to observe, in what an absurd state of ignorance the majority of educated people in Scotland have been persuaded to keep themselves, concerning much of the best and truest literature of their own age, as well as of the ages that have gone by. Among the Whigs in Edinburgh, above all, a stranger from the south is every day thunderstruck by some new mark of total and incon ceivable ignorance concerning men and things, which, to every man of education with whom

he has conversed in any other town of Britain, are" familiar as household words." The degree to which the intellectual subjection of these people has been carried, is a thing of which I am quite sure you cannot possibly have the smallest suspicion. The Edinburgh Reviewers have not checked or impeded only the influence of particular authors among their countrymen; they have entirely prevented them from ever coming beyond the Tweed. They have willed them to be unknown, absolutely and literally unknown, and so are they at this moment. I do not on my.conscience believe, that there is one Whig in Edinburgh to whom the name of my friend Charles Lamb would convey any distinct or de, finite idea. His John Woodville was ridiculed in the Edinburgh Review, and the effect of this paltry ridicule has been not only to prevent the Scotch from reading John Woodville, (a tragedy which, although every way worthy of Lamb's exquisite genius, wants very many of the popular charms in which some of his other pieces are rich to overflowing)-but almost to prevent them from remembering that such a person as Charles Lamb exists, at least to prevent them most effectually from ever having recourse for delight and instruction to volumes, wherein ás

much delight and instruction may be found, as in any of similar size, which an English library -possesses. Even the commanding, majestic intellect of Wordsworth has not been able to overcome the effect of the petty warfare kept up against it by a set of wits, one of whom only might have been expected to enter with some portion of intelligence into the spirit of so great and original a poet. To find fault with particu! lar parts of Mr. Wordsworth's poems, or with particular points in the Psycological system upon which the whole structure of his poetry is built, this might have been very well either for the Reviewers, or the readers of the Review. But the actual truth of the case is something very different, indeed, from this. The reading public of Edinburgh do not criticise Mr Words worth; they think him below their criticism; they know nothing about what he has done, or what he is likely to do. They think him a mere old sequestered hermit, eaten up with vanity and affectation, who publishes every now and then some absurd poem about a Washing-Tub, ora Leech-Gatherer, or a Little Grey Cloak. They do not know even the names of some of the finest poems our age, has produced. They never sheard of Ruth, or Michael, or the Bro

thers, or Hart-Leap Well, or the Recollections of Infancy, or the Sonnets to Buonaparte. They do not know, that there is such a thing as a description of a Church-yard in the Excursion. Alas! how severely is their ignorance punished in itself. But after all, Mr Wordsworth can have no very great right to complain. The same people who despise, and are ignorant of him, despise also, and are ignorant of all the majestic poets the world has ever produced, with no exceptions beyond two or three great names, acquaintance with which has been forced upon them by circumstances entirely out of their controul. The fate of Homer, of Eschylus, of Dante-nay, of Milton-is his.

The spirit of this facetious and rejoicing ignorance has become so habitual to the Scotchmen of the present day, that even they who have thrown off all allegiance to the Edinburgh Re view, cannot divest themselves of its influence. There is no work which has done so much to weaken the authority of the Edinburgh Review in such matters as Blackwood's Magazine; and yet I saw an article in that work the other day, in which it seemed to be made matter of congratulatory reflection, that "if Mr Coleridge should make his appearance suddenly among