might be able to judge for themselves. It likewise hinted at the tacit understanding then existing between certain authors, publishers and reviews for their mutual advantage, but which was arousing a growing feeling of distrust on the part of the public. The _British Critic_ (1793-1843) was edited by William Beloe and Robert Nares as the organ of the High Church Party. This "dull mass of orthodoxy" concerned itself extensively with literary reviews; but its articles were best known for their lack of interest and authority. The foibles of the _British Critic_ were satirized in Bishop Copleston's _Advice to a Young Reviewer_ (1807) with an appended mock critique of Milton's _L'Allegro_. In 1826 it was united with the _Quarterly Theological Review_ and continued until 1843. _The Anti-Jacobin Review and Magazine; or, Monthly Political and Literary Censor_ (1799-1821) played a strenuous rôle in the troublous times of the Napoleonic wars. It continued the policy of the _Anti-Jacobin, or Weekly Examiner_ (1797-98) conducted with such marked vigor by William Gifford, but it numbered among its contributors none of the brilliant men whose witty verses for the weekly paper are still read in the popular _Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin_. The _Review_ was conducted by John Richards Green, better known as John Gifford. Its articles were at times sensational in character, viciously abusing writers of known or suspected republican sentiments. From its pages could be culled a new series of "Beauties of the Anti-Jacobin" which for sheer vituperation and relentless abuse would be without a rival among such anthologies. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the principal reviews in course of publication were the _Monthly_, the _Critical_, the _British Critic_, and the _Anti-Jacobin_. The latter was preëminently vulgar in its appeal, the _Critical_ had lost its former prestige, and the other two had never risen above a level of mediocrity. There was more than a lurking suspicion that these periodicals were, to a certain extent, booksellers' organs, quite unreliable on account of the partial and biassed criticisms which they offered the dissatisfied public. The time was evidently ripe for a new departure in literary reviews--for the establishment of a trustworthy critical journal, conducted by capable editors and printing readable notices of important books. People were quite willing to have an unfortunate author assailed and flayed for their entertainment; but they did not care to be deceived by laudatory criticisms that were inspired by the publisher's name instead of the intrinsic merits of the work itself.