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like Uriel, the angel of the sun, partaker in all the glories of the orb in which he dwells. Undazzled by the splendour which surrounds himself, he sees every thing with the calm eye of intellect. It is true, that at the moment when he views any object, a flood of light and warmth are thrown over it from the passing sun of genius. Still he sees the world as it is; and if the beams love to dwell longest on some favoured region, there is none upon which they never shine. It is a bold thing to compare Shakspeare with a Reviewer; but if ever the world shall possess a perfect Reviewer, be assured that he will bear, in many respects, a striking resemblance to this first of poets. Like him he will be universal—impartial—rational. The serious and the mirthful will be alike his favourites. He will dissect with equal acuteness the character of a Caliban or a Coriolanus. He will have divine intellect and human feeling so blended within him, that he shall sound, with equal facility, the soul of a Hamlet, and the heart of a Juliet. What a being would this be! Compared with him, the present critics of England are either satirical buffoons, like Foote or Aristophanes, or they are truculent tragedians, like the author of The Revenge. But it is time that I should introduce them a little more fully to your acquaintance.

I said, in the first sentence of this letter, that the present Reviewers of England are as despotical as Nero or Tiberius. An oligarchy is always a tyrannical government; and such is at this moment the constitution of their literary empire. The oligarchy is made up of two parties, who detest each other with a virulence of hatred never surpassed either in Syracuse or in Florence. The heads of these two factions,—these Neri and Bianchi of criticism,—are Jeffray and Gifford. The former resembles the gay despot of Rome, the latter the bloody and cruel one of Capreæ. Both are men of great talents, and both are, I think, very bad Reviewers. We have never had any thing like either of them in Germany, therefore I must describe them at some length.

I think that no man can ever be a good critic, unless he be something more than a Reviewer. Aristotle and Lessing remain, but Chamfort and all the wits of the Mercure have perished. We will not take our opinion of a great poet from one whom, in spite of all the cleverness which can be shewn in a Review, we still feel to be immeasurably the inferior of the person whom he criticises. Mr Gifford (Editor of the Quarterly or Ministerial Review) is merely a critic and a satirist. He has translated Juvenal, and done full justice, if not to the majestic eloquence, at least to the savage spleen of that terrible declaimer. He has written one celebrated satire of his own. He has also been Editor of almost all the old dramatists of England; and he has displayed, in his illustrations of these writers, great verbal acumen, and great penetration into some parts of human nature; but he has done all this with a perpetual accompaniment of ill-natured abuse, and cold rancorous raillery. He appears to be admirably fitted for deciding among readings, and for reviling his enemies. He is exquisitely formed for the purposes of political objurgation, but not at all for those of gentle and universal criticism. He is, besides, a man who has raised himself from a low rank in society, by his great and powerful talents; and he still retains not a little of that coarseness and insensibility in regard to small things, which are always inseparable from the character of one whose youthful education has been conducted without the delicacy and tenderness natural to people of the more refined orders of society. We often read the Reviews in his journal with great pleasure,—such are the strength of his language and the malignity of our nature;—but all who are, who have been, or who mean to be authors, must, I think, "join trembling with their mirth." To say the truth, Mr Gifford is one of the last persons whose opinion I should think of asking, with respect to a great work of genius. The glass through which he looks is indeed one of great power, but it is tinged with the darkness of bile; and although it reveals distant objects, it at the same time discolours them.

The worst thing about this gentleman's severity is, that in most instances it is quite disproportioned to the offences which call it forth. His reputation, as a man who has deserved well of English literature, rests chiefly on his poetical satire, which I have mentioned above—the "Baviad and