An English divine and writer, was born in Dublin, Aug. 1780, and educated at Trinity College. After his ordination he went to London, and spent some years as a writer for the newspaper press. In 1835 he was appointed rector of St. Stephen’s, Walbrook, and he occupied that parish with great credit, both as preacher and pastor, up to the day of his death, Nov. 24, 1860. Dr. Croly wrote several extravagant novels and tragedies, among them “Salathiel,” “Marston” and “Catiline.” His better reputation rests upon his fidelity and power as a preacher, after his appointment to St. Stephen’s, and upon his religious writings, the more important of which are “Divine Providence, or the three Cycles of Revelation” (Lond. 1834, 8vo):—“The Apocalypse”:—“Prophecy of the Rise, Progress, and Fall of the Church of Rome” (3rd ed. Lond. 1838, 8vo): “The Popish Primacy,” 2 sermons (Lond. 1850, 8vo):—“Sermons” (1848, 8vo). He also wrote a “Life of Burke,” and a “Life of George IV,” both reprinted in America.
Personal
Croly is a fierce-looking Irishman, very lively in conversation, and certainly has considerable talent as a writer; his eloquence, like his person, is rather energetic than elegant, and though he has great power and concentration of thought, he wants the delicacy and discrimination of judgment which are the finest qualities in a critic.
We dined with the Harnesses; Milman and Croly were among the guests. I like Mr. Milman; not so the other critic.
He was a man of undoubted talent, but cold, imperious, and sarcastic.
He had a large and not prepossessing person, and a dashing and somewhat imperious manner; held violent Tory opinions; expressed them very energetically.
Rev. George Croly was a somewhat severe and bitter political Tory partisan; but as the author of two enduring novels, a successful play, and a work that professes to interpret the Apocalypse of St. John, he holds higher rank as an author than he did as a clergyman of the Established Church—first as curate of a parish on barren, beautiful Dartmoor, then as, for a time, Chaplain to the Foundling Hospital, and subsequently as rector of one of the City churches—St. Stephen, Walbrook. During the mayoralty of his friend, Sir Francis Graham Moon, his parishioners presented him with a testimonial—a marble bust of himself. His was not a pleasant face to perpetuate, neither was his a genial nature to commemorate; a fierce politician, he hated his opponents with a hatred at once irrational and unchristian.
General
There are many natural scenes, and passages tender and eloquent, but somewhat cold and stately; it [“Salathiel”] abounds in descriptions on which all the splendours of fancy and languages are lavished…. The author, in his poem of “May Fair,” was more at home; it contains passages, which, for condensed vigour of thought and language, and sharp severity of rebuke, are not to be paralleled in the “Legion Club” of Swift.
Croly has a remarkable splendour of language; he is stately, dignified, and affluent in imagery; but sometimes, from condensation and inversions, obscure; and he is deficient in simplicity and tenderness, which is doubtless the principal reason why his works are so little read. He is not less distinguished as a prose writer than as a poet. His “Salathiel, a Story of the Past, the Present, and the Future,” has hardly been surpassed in energy, pathos, or dramatic interest, by any romance of the time; and his “Tales of the Great St. Bernard” were nearly as attractive and popular.
Hundreds of copies of verses from his indefatigable pen, some of them of surpassing excellence, lie scattered about—rich bouquets of unowned flowers—throughout the wide, unbounded fields of periodical literature…. A rich command of language, whether for the tender or the serious—an ear finely attuned to musical expression—a fertile and lucid conceptive power, and an intellect at once subtle and masculine.
Whose thoughts full of genius and lofty views, are conveyed in the purest and most classical English idiom. The ardent admirer of Burke, he has adopted his views, shared his fervor, and, in a great measure, imitated his style. But he has largely inhaled, also, the spirit, and profited by the lessons of the age in which he lived; the contemporary and observer of the French Revolution and its consequences, he has portrayed both in a philosophic spirit and with a poet’s fire; and what Burke predicted from the contemplation of the Future, he has painted from the observation of the Present.
Few authors of the nineteenth century, who have written so much, have written so well as Dr. Croly. His prose style is clear, rich, idiomatic, and at times eloquent; while as a poet he has many great and shining qualities.
Whose verse, more especially in his shorter pieces, sometimes surprises us with sudden felicities, although in general, perhaps, in everything at least except the sound, rather too like prose, as his prose certainly too much resembles verse.
Dr. Croly succeeded as a poet, as a writer of fiction, as an historian, as a literary editor, as a religious polemic. In this long list of works, there is scarcely one that at the time of its publication did not make its mark. His “Catiline” in poetry, his “Salathiel,” in fiction, his “George IV” and “Edmund Burke,” in history, fall little short of being of the first class in their several kinds.
His works are numberless; from sermons to novels, from political pamphlets to romantic poems. The book by which he is best known is the singular romance of “Salathiel,” embodying one of the legends of the Wandering Jew, and showing occasionally considerable power. This book made a distinct impression upon the mind of the time, and holds a fantastic place, if not on the same level as “Vathek,” at least in a similar fanciful region; but it has not, like “Vathek,” kept the reputation which in its day it obtained.
Croly is a characteristic example of the dominant literary school of his youth, that of Byron and Moore. The defects of this school are unreality and meretriciousness; its redeeming qualities are a certain warmth of colouring and largeness of handling, both of which Croly possessed in ample measure. His chief work, “Salathiel,” is boldly conceived, and may still be read with pleasure for the power of the situations and the vigour of the language, although some passages are palpable imitations of De Quincey. He was less at home in modern life, yet “Marston” is interesting as a romance, and remarkable for its sketches of public men. In all his works, whether in prose or verse, Croly displays a lively and gorgeous fancy, with a total deficiency of creative imagination, humour, and pathos.
He was an eloquent speaker and writer, and some passages from his poems have served the schoolmaster and the elocutionist well; but as a whole his poems lack interest.
