Text: Anonymous, “[Comment on the New Quarterly Magazine],” Derby Mercury (Derby, UK), vol. 147, no 8526, May 29, 1878, p. 6, col. 1

[page 6, column 1, continued:]

The New Quarterly Magazine. No. XIX. London: CHATTO and WINDUS.

“Better late than never” must be our motto for this article upon the current number of the New Quarterly, which has lain, unnoticed, upon our library table, only too long. And, yet, in many respects it is the best number of this popular serial we have yet met with, and the conjunction between Poe and Hawthorne in its pages is somewhat remarkable. It is the living Edgar Allan Poe to whom Mr. Ingram introduces us in the opening paper, entitled “Unknown Correspondence of Edgar Poe,” and it is the shadow of the shade of the author of “The Scarlet Letter” which falls upon us whilst reading the younger Hawthorne's story, Mrs. Gainsborough's Diamonds but we repeat that the association of these two great names is worthy of remark by readers who, like ourselves, are not disinclined to institute comparisons between the modes of thought and composition with which they must be for ever identified. In publishing Poe's hitherto inedited letters, Mr. Ingram puts finishing stroke to the biography prefixed to his edition of Poe's works (Ediuburgh, A. and C. Black), and those who have indignantly read the calumnies of Griswold, cannot fail to be strongly impressed with this glimpse into the real life of the much-maligned poet. Possessors of that edition should buy an extra copy of the current number of the New Quarterly, cut out Mr. Ingram's paper, and insert the leaves into the first volume of Poe's collected works. Future collectors will thank us for the hint.

We detect a touch of the irony of Nathaniel Hawthorne in his son's novelette, which is skilfully contrived to entrap mystically minded readers; but there is something unfair in the opening, which connects the wife of the narrator of the story (in the reader's imagination) with the chief actress in the events which follow.

These are the chief features of the magazine, which also contains Professor Colvin’ satisfactory exposure of the Apollo Belvidere, patched-up impostor that he is since Gioranni Montorsoli took him in band and “restored” him, much as some modern architects have manipulated the grand ecolosiastical buildings which remain to us from the Middle Ages.