the _Edinburgh_ and the _Quarterly_. That on Leigh Hunt, always the pet
topic of Toryism, from whom he certainly provoked some retaliation, is
only paralleled in _Blackwood_. We have included the _Shakespeare_ and
the _Moxon_ as attractively brief samples on the approved model of
savage banter, and the _Jane Eyre_ as perhaps the most flagrant example
of bad taste to be found in these merciless pages. It was George Henry
Lewis, by the way, who so much offended Charlotte Brontë by the
greeting, "There ought to be a bond between us, for we have both written
naughty books."

It is interesting to find Thackeray among those it was permitted to
praise: though the "moral" objection to his "realism" reveals a strange
attitude.

We may notice, with some surprise, that the attitude towards George
Eliot is nearly as hostile as towards Charlotte Brontë.




GIFFORD ON WEBER'S "FORD"

[From _The Quarterly Review_, December, 1811]


... When it is determined to reprint the writings of an ancient author,
it is usual, we believe, to bestow a little labour in gratifying the
natural desire of the reader to know something of his domestic
circumstances. Ford had declared in the title-pages of his several
plays, that he was of the Inner Temple; and, from his entry there, Mr.