had sold nearly two editions in about three months, but after the
Quarterly review of them came out they never sold another copy.  'My
book,' he said, 'sold well--the first edition had gone off in six
weeks--till that review came out.  I had just prepared a second
edition--such was called for--but then the Quarterly told the public
that I was a fool and a dunce, and more, that I was an evil disposed
person: and the public, supposing Gifford to know best, confessed
that it had been a great ass to be pleased where it ought not to be,
and the sale completely stopped. 

The review, when examined, is seen to be a smart essay in detraction
with its arguments ad invidiam very deftly inserted.  But as a piece
of criticism it misses even such points as might fairly have been
made against the book; as, for example, that it harps too
monotonously upon the tense string of enthusiasm.  Hazlitt could not
have applied to this work the motto--'For I am nothing if not
critical'--which he chose for his View of the English Stage in 1818;
the Characters being anything but 'critical' in the sense there
connoted.  Jeffrey noted this in the forefront of a sympathetic
article in the Edinburgh.