Croker was for many years one of the leading contributors on literary and historical subjects to the
Quarterly Review, with which he had been associated from its foundation. The rancorous spirit in which many of his articles were written did much to embitter party feeling. It also reacted unfavourably on Croker's reputation as a worker in the department of pure literature by bringing political animosities into literary criticism. He was also responsible for the famous
Quarterly article on
John Keats's
Endymion.
Shelley and
Byron blamed this article for bringing about the death of the poet, 'snuffed out', in Byron's phrase, 'by an article' (they, however, attributed the article to
William Gifford). His
magnum opus, an edition of ''Boswell's Life of Johnson
(1831) was the subject of an unfavourable review by Macaulay in the Edinburgh Review (a Whig rival/opponent of the Quarterly Review
) The main grounds of criticism were echoed by Thomas Carlyle in a less famous review in Fraser's Magazine'' • that Croker had added extensive notes which were to little point, being superfluous or declaring Croker's inability to grasp Johnson's point on matters where the reviewers had no difficulty. Macaulay also complained (with numerous examples) of factual errors in the notes; Carlyle of their carping attitude to Johnson's motives (Carlyle, whose father was a stonemason, and who (like Johnson) had scraped a living as a schoolmaster, before writing encyclopedia articles for bread-and-butter wages, also took great exception to one note which took for granted that when Johnson spoke of having lived on 4½
d a day he was disclosing something of which he should have been ashamed to speak) • that Croker had not preserved the integrity of Boswell's text, but had interpolated text from four other accounts of Johnson (Hawkins, Mrs Thrale etc.), distinguished only from genuine Boswell by being inside brackets, so that "You begin a sentence under Boswell's guidance, thinking to be carried happily through it by the same: but no; in the middle, perhaps after your semi-colon, and some consequent 'for' – starts up one of these Bracket-ligatures, and stitches you in half a page to twenty or thirty pages of a Hawkins, Tyers, Murphy, Piozzi; so that often one must make the old sad reflection, Where we are, we know; whither we are going no man knoweth" Croker was occupied for several years on an annotated edition of
Alexander Pope's works. It was left unfinished at the time of his death, but it was afterwards completed by
Whitwell Elwin and
William John Courthope. He died at St Albans Bank, Hampton. Croker was generally supposed to be the original from which
Benjamin Disraeli drew the character of "Rigby" in
Coningsby, because he had for many years had the sole management of the estates of
the Marquess of Hertford, the "Lord Monmouth" of the story. Hostile portrayals of Croker can also be found in the novels
Florence Macarthy by
Lady Morgan (a political opponent whom Croker subjected to notoriously savage reviews in the
Quarterly) and
The Anglo-Irish of the Nineteenth Century (1828) by
John Banim. The chief works of Croker not already mentioned were: •
Stories for Children from the History of England (1817), which provided the model for
Scott's
Tales of a Grandfather •
Letters on the Naval War with America •
A Reply to the Letters of Malachi Malagrowther (1826) •
Military Events of the French Revolution of 1830 (1831) • a translation of
Bassompierre's
Embassy to England (1819) He also wrote several lyrical pieces of some merit, such as the
Songs of Trafalgar (1806) and
The Battles of Talavera (1809). He edited the
Suffolk Papers (1823), Hervey's
Memoirs of the Court of George II (1817), the
Letters of Mary Lepel, Lady Hervey (1821–1822), and
Walpole's
Letters to Lord Hertford (1824). His memoirs, diaries and correspondence were edited by Louis J. Jennings in 1884 under the title of
The Croker Papers (3 vols.). ==Legacy==