A gang of critics …

… Literary Review - Frances Wilson on reviewing in the 19th century. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)

Reviewers ruled the world. Keats was 'snuffed out', as Byron put it, by a bad notice in the Quarterly Review, and Byron responded to his own bad reviews with the satirical 'English Bards and Scotch Reviewers'. Back then, the best reviewers - and the best magazines - were all Scotch; you couldn't throw a stone in Edinburgh without hitting one of these slippery, multi-authored, self-reflexive, pugnacious, parodic, super-opinionated periodicals. The success of the Edinburgh Review inspired the creation of Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine and Tait's Edinburgh Magazine, while down south the London Magazine was born. 'By and by', mused Thomas Carlyle, 'it will be found that all Literature has become one boundless self-devouring Review.'

Sounds a bit like blogging.