The Sun.
London, England, 1857-08-13 00:00:00

THE LATE JOHN WILSON C.ROKER.

John Wilson Croker was a conspicuous man.
during a long course of years in politics and litera-
ture. He was widely knowji as Secretary to the
Admiralty which office he held for one-and-
twenty years ; as a member of Parliament for
twenty-five years; as an industrious and accom-
plished author ; and, above all, perhaps, as the
wickedest of reviewers ; that is, as the author of
the foul and false political articles in the Quarter/g
_Review, which stand out as the disgrace of the
periodical literature of our time. His natural
abilities, his capacity and inclination for toil, the
mingled violence and causticity of his temper, and
his entire unscrupulousness in matters both of
feeling and of statement; combined to make him a
remarkable, if not a very loveable personage, and
an useful, though not very honourable member of
a, political party.
He was the son of the Surveyor-General of Ire-
land, and was born in that Connaught which was
then the "hell" of the empire. "To Hell or
Connaught," was still the imprecation of the day
when Croker was born; that is, in 1780. He was
always called an Irishman ; and very properly, as
Galway was his native place ; but he was of English
descent. As for temperament, we do not know that
ei,her England or Ireland would be very anxious
to claim him : and he certainly was sui generis—
remarkably independent of the influences which
largely affect the characters of most men. He was
educated at Trinity College, Dublin, and was called
to the bar in 1802. His first publication, " Fami-
liar Epistles to F. E. Jones, Esq.," shows that his
proneness to sarcasm existed early ; but the higher
qualities which once made him the hope of the Tory
party were then so much more vigorous than at a
later time, that the expectations excited by the outset
of his public life were fully justifiable. It was in
1807 that be entered Parliament as member for

Downpatrick, and within two years he was Secretary
to the Admiralty. He bad by that time given high
proof of his ability in his celebrated pamphlet on the
Past and Present Slate of Ireland." The author-
ship
was for some time uncertain. Because it was
candid and painfully faithful, the Edinburgh Review,
so early as 1813, could not believe it to be his, while,
on the other hand, there was the wonder that the
man who so wrote about Ireland should be so
speedily invited to office by the Government under
Pcrceval. That Irish pamphlet may now be re-
garded as perhaps the most honourable achieve-
ment of Mr. Croker's long life of authorship.
Just before this he had joined with Mr. Canning,
Walter Scott, George Ellis, Mr. Morritt, and others
in setting up the Quarterly Review, the first num-
ber of which appeared in the spring of 1809. The
Edinlncrgh Review hed then existed seven years ;
and while obnoxious to the Tory party for its poli-
tics; it was not less so to the general public for the
reckless ferocity of some of its criticism, in those
its early days. If the Quarterly proposed to rebuke
this sin by example, it was rather curious that Mr.
Croker should be its most extensive and constant
contributor Tor forty years—seeing that he car-
ried the licsnse of anonymous criticism to
the last extreme. Before he had done his work
in that department, he had earned for himself—
purchased by hard facts—the following character,
calmly ut,ered by one of the first men of the time
Croker is a man who would go a hundred miles
through sleet and snow, on the top of a coach, in a
Dec .tuber nig'et, to search a parish register, for the
sake of showing that a man is illegitimate, or a
woman older than she says she is." He had actu-
ally gone down into the country to find the register
of Fanny Burney's baptism, and revelled in the ex-
posure of a lids-statement of her ago ; and the other
half of the commentary was understood to have
been earned in the same way. He did not begin his
Quarterly reviewine, with the sable virulence which
grew upon him in as later years. That malignant
Weer of the mind, engendered by political disap-
pointment, at length absorbed his better qualities.
It is necessary to speak thus frankly of the temper
of the man, because his statements must in justice
be discredited ; and because justice requires that
the due discrimination be made between the bon-
oirrable and generoui-minded men wbo ennoble the
function .of criticism by the spirit they throw into
it, and one who, like Croker, employed it at last
for the gratification of his own morbid inclination
indict pain. The propensity was so strong in
Croker's case that we find him unable to resist it
even in regard to his old and affectionate friend
Walter Scott, and at a time when that old friend
was sinking in adversity and disease. He reviewed
in the London. Courier Scott's " Malagrowther
Letters," in 1826, in a way which called for the
delicate and touching rebuke contained in Scott's
let'er b him, dated March 19th of that year—a
rebuke remembered long after the trespass that
called it forth was disregarded as a piece of " Croker's
malignity." The latest instance of this sort of con-
troversy called forth by Mr. Croker's public vitu-
peration of his oldest and dearest friends, was the
series of letters that passel between Lim and Lord
J. Russell, after the publication of NI ore's Diaries
and Correspondence. Up to the last his victims re-
fused to believe, till compelled, that the articles
had proceeded from his pen—well as they knew
bis spirit of reviewing. When he had been
staying at Drayton Manor, not long before Sir
Robert Peel's death, bad been not only hospitably
entertainel, but kindly ministered to under his in- '
firmities of deafness and had health, and went home
to cut up Ns host in a political article for the forth-
coming " Quarterly"—his fellow guests at Drayton
refused as long as poesible to believe the article to
be his ; and in the same way, as Lord John Russell
informed him, Mrs. Moore would not for a long
time credit the fact that the review of the poet's
" Life" was his, saying she had always understood
Mr. Croker to be her husband's friend. It was in
the "Quarterly" that the ctsappointed politician
vented his embittered feelings ; as indeed he him-
self avowed. He declared, when Lord Grey came
into office, that he did not consider his pension
worth three months pnreh tsa ; thit he should
therefore lay it by while he had it, and macie
his income by " tomahawkin" liberal authors in
the " Quarterly." He did it, not only by writing
t :cies upon them, but by interpolating
other people's arfeles with his own sarcasms
and slanders, so as to compel the real reviewers, in
repeated instances, to demand the republication of
their articles in a genuine state and a separate

form.
When be entered parliament, he was an admi-
rable debater—ready, acute, bold, and well fur-
nished with information, and not yet so dangerously
reckless as to make him feared by his own party.
It is rather strango now to find his name foremost
in the list of parliamentary orators in the hooks of
foreigners visiting England after the peace. He
was listened to by the house as an inferior kind of
Disraeli, fur the amusement aff,rded by his sar-
casm ; and foreigners mistook this manifestation of
the old bull-baiting spirit for an evidence of the par-
liamentary weight of the satirist ; and a House (.f
Commons that enjoys that sort of sport deserves
the French commentary—the imputation of being
led by a Croker. There were occasions, however,
on which he appeared to ad-vantage on other
grounds than his sarcastic wit. It should be re-
membered. that it was be who, in 1821, before Oa-
th lie Emancipa' ion could be supposed near at
hand, -proposed to enable the crown to make a suit-
able provision for the Catholic clergy. Lord Cas-
tl-reagh opposed the motion, which was necessarily
withdrawn ;-' but Mr. Croker declared that he con-
sider. d the principle safe, and should bring forward
the measure t-11 it' should be adopted. He was
Steady to the object, and in 18025 actually obtained
a nrijority upon it in the Commons; and there is
no qmstion of his earnestness in desiring a mea-
sure of considerable relief to. the consciences and
liberties of the Catholic body..

He held his grcund with the chiefs of his own
party by other qualities than his official ability.
Ms command of detail was remarkable and So were

his industry and his sagacity within a small range
interests wa , IE4 zeal for party also great—a zeal
hbown in his eagerness tofilla3ip places with patty
adherents, fr-m the laureateship (which he pro
"'ea for Southey) to the lo.weat office that
could be filled by an electioneering agent ; bet
it" was also
this
Iva
_most acceptable political gossip'
It was
beisch made him a frequent guest
at the ltegun
table, and an inimitable ac-
quaintance at critical seasons of ministerial
change, when such
men as lie revel in the it'd,.
&nits of the day, anci.i anifeatation of such vices and weatinn the m
e
%ET-Jss- cotrat out, together
stith noble virtues, in
gerki4stAe spirit of of personal
. interests. The con
paper, which made such a tioiseol' n the Beacon netw-
-1822,
nne on tit:
made him
the proper recipient of Seowa:tcoont
Me
matter ; and to him therefore s
ina'aPnl
addressed his
painful explanations, as they stand in the id Lif „
It is probable that the intercourse betweeul
Scott, though not without an occasional rum' e-
about the most cordial that the survivor everw"
enjoy-ed. Scott's real geniality and politic obti
mass to offence enabled him to bear more than most
men would : and in their literary relations, h 6
contrived to show Itimse'f the debtor. He avowrd
that his " Tales of a Grandfather" were suggested
and moclelLd by Croker's "Stories from the His-
tory of England.;" and he was aided in his "Lire
of Napoleon," by Croker's loans of masses of
Pl' r'. He met cabinet ministers, by the half=
dozen at a time, at the Secr,tary's fable; and re-
ceived from the
the Regent's abomut reports of handsome sayings of
him.t The cordiality could not,
withstand on Croker's side,
the and the temptfttion to
insult a friend throughpress, a-4 he showed at I
the very time by his remarks on Malag,rowher ~
but on Scott' ways side ithearty. When the
political changes of 1827 wen,
. going forward, his
first thought seems to have been for Croker. "I