JOHN WILSON CROKER, one of the founders of the Quarterly Review, had an intellect which might have made his one of the greatest names of nineteenth-century literature had he devoted himself to constructive work instead of the vicious and malignant criticism which characterized the political “reviewing” of his time. As it is, though he did work of real excellence, he is remembered chiefly for a controversy with Macaulay in which both were wrong. The characteristic “critical review” of Croker’s time is frequently mistaken for a genuine essay, but the differences between them are as vital as those between an edible mushroom and a toadstool. A genuine essay stands for some definite thought around which a constructive intellect has slowly accumulated the material for its expression. The typical reviews of the Quarterly frequently represent ignorance, impudence, malignity, and the worst form of literary grand larceny. The reviewer begins by attacking the author of a book which may have cost years of painful study, and in order to bolster up his own false pretenses of superior familiarity with the subject, ends by deliberately “assimilating” from the author he attacks whatever in the book promises to be of most interest to the public for whose pennies and approval he is appealing. This was a method with some of the most celebrated “cut and slash” reviewers of the first half of the nineteenth century. It had a most unfortunate effect on the morals of literature, and it so corrupted style that it is hard to find anywhere worse examples of turgid and pompous diffuseness than frequently appear in the most pretentious of the critical reviews.

  Croker’s best work was done when he was handling some subject in which he felt himself a pioneer. His “History of the Guillotine” is still read, and perhaps nothing he has written does him more credit.

  He was born in Galway, Ireland, December 20th, 1780, and educated at Trinity College, Dublin. Elected to Parliament in 1808, he held office until 1832, when he retired permanently in fulfillment of the pledge or protestation that he would never sit in any Parliament chosen under the Reform Bill. His edition of Boswell’s “Life of Johnson” was attacked by Macaulay, and he retorted with an attack on Macaulay’s “History of England.” He wrote poems, sketches, and historical works, but his chief reputation in his own generation depended on his work in politics and as a political reviewer. He died August 10th, 1857.