Crabbe and Rogers were traditions of
the time of Goldsmith and Johnson; Gilford wrote with a virulence and
ability which he might have learned in boyhood from Junius; but with
these exceptions, English literature fifty years ago was represented by
young men.
We mention, as the first group of young thinkers, the founders of the
"Edinburgh Review,"--Sydney Smith, Francis Jeffrey, Francis Horner, and
Henry Brougham,--whose united ages, when the first number of that review
appeared in 1802, made one hundred and seven years. Members of the Whig
party, possessing much learning and more vivacity and earnestness,
and having among them, if not severally, abundance both of daring and
prudence, they startled conservative people, evoked the best efforts of
authors by their brilliant castigations, and inaugurated the discussion
of measures of reform which it took thirty years to get through
Parliament. The critic of the company was Francis Jeffrey, whose
happiness it was to live just when he was needed. Without capacity to
excel either in the realm of ideas or of facts, he was unrivalled in the
power of discovering the relations between the two.
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