between 1810 and 1830. We can hardly imagine why men who at heart
respected and liked each other should have found it necessary to hold no
communion, but, on the contrary, to wage bitter war, because the one
was an admirer of the Prince Regent and Lord Castlereagh, the other a
supporter of Queen Caroline and Mr. Brougham. We cannot conceive why a
poet should be stigmatized as a base and detestable character, merely
because he was a Cockney and a Radical; nor can we comprehend how
gentlemen, aggrieved by articles in newspapers and magazines, should
have thought it necessary to the vindication of their honor to horsewhip
or shoot the printers or editors of the publications. Yet in 1817 and
the following years such was the state of things in the capital of
Scotland.... You were either a Tory and a good man, or a Whig and a
rascal, and _vice versa_. If you were a Tory and wanted a place, it was
the duty of all good Tories to stand by you; if you were a Whig, your
chance was small; but its feebleness was all the more a reason why
you should be proclaimed a martyr, and all your opponents profligate
mercenaries." But parties changed, and men changed with them. It was
a Whig ministry which gave Wilson, in 1852, a pension of two hundred
pounds.

Mrs. Gordon has praised her father as "the beau-ideal of what a critic
should be, whose judgments will live as _parts_ of literature, and not
merely _talk_ about it." That these so-called judgments are worthy to
live, and will live, we fully believe; yet we could never think him a
model critic, or even a great one. Though not deficient in analytic
power, he wanted the judicial faculty. He could create, but he could not
weigh coolly and impartially what was created. His whole make forbade
it. He was impatient, passionate, reckless, furious in his likes and
dislikes. His fervid enthusiasm for one author dictated a splendid
tribute to a friend; while an irrational prejudice against another