The "Critical Review" "must lament that 'Guy Mannering' is too often written in language unintelligible to all except the Scotch." The "Critical Monthly" also had scruples about morality.

The novel "advocates duelling, encourages a taste for peeping into the future,--a taste by far too prevalent,--and it is not over nice on religious subjects!" The "Quarterly Review" distinguished itself by stupidity, if not by spite.

"The language of 'Guy Mannering,' though characteristic, is mean; the state of society, though peculiar, is vulgar.

Meg Merrilies is swelled into a very unnatural importance." The speech of Meg Merrilies to Ellangowan is "one of the few which affords an intelligible extract." The Author "does not even scruple to overturn the laws of Nature"-- because Colonel Mannering resides in the neighbourhood of Ellangowan! "The Author either gravely believes what no other man alive believes, or he has, of malice prepense, committed so great an offence against good taste as to build his story on what he must know to be a contemptible absurdity.

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