it consists, Mackenzie was the sole author of thirty-nine, besides assisting in the composition of others. Among the other contributors were Lord Hailes; Professor Richardson of Glasgow; William Strahan, the printer, frequently mentioned by Boswell; Beattie, the author of the "Minstrel ;" and David Hume, the nephew of the historian. In interest and variety of contents the Mirror is superior to the Adventurer, with which its merits in other respects are about on a level. The most noticeable contribution to it is probably Mackenzie's "Story of La Roche," the pathos of which has been much praised. The publication of the Lounger, a continuation of the Mirror, possessing the same characteristics, and likewise conducted by members of the "Mirror Club," as it was called, begun on February 5, 1785, was continued till January 6, 1787.

We pass on to a new era in periodical literature, which dawned when, in 1802, the first number of the Edinburgh Review appeared. Of the origin of this epoch-making journal, Sydney Smith, one of its earliest and most brilliant contributors, has given the following account:-"Towards the end of my residence in Edinburgh, Brougham, Jeffrey, and myself happened to meet in the eighth or ninth storey, or flat, in Buccleuch Place, the then elevated residence of Mr. Jeffrey. I proposed that we should set up a Review. This was acceded to with acclamation. I was appointed editor, and remained long enough in Edinburgh to edit the first number of the Review. The motto I proposed for the Review was 'Tenui Musam meditamur avenâ'—'We cultivate literature on a little oatmeal.' But this was too near the truth to be admitted; so we took our present grave motto from Publius Syrus [“Judex damnatur cum 66 nocens absolvitur "- "The judge is condemned when the guilty is acquitted"], of whom none of us had, I am sure, read a single line; and so began what turned out to be a very important and able journal. When I left Edinburgh, it fell into the stronger hands of Lord Jeffrey and Brougham, and reached the highest point of popularity and success." This account, bating a slight touch or two of humorous exaggeration, as, for example, “the eighth or ninth

The Edinburgh Review.

449

storey," is substantially correct. The effect of the first number of the Review was, says Jeffrey's biographer, Lord Cockburn, "electrical." To readers accustomed to the tedious, inane twaddle which formed the staple of the magazines of the day, it was a very welcome relief to find such fresh, vigorous writing as was to be found in the new periodical. Yet it cannot be said that the early volumes of the Review strike one who looks at them nowadays as of any extraordinary merit or interest. Many of the articles are of the kind called "padding," consisting of a sort of epitome of the work noticed, with copious extracts. In the early years of the Review's existence, it contained none of those brief monographs, often having only a very slight connection with the works nominally under notice, in which writers possessed of special knowledge on particular subjects tersely sum up the results of their investigations. Some account of Jeffrey's connection with the Review has already been given. He was succeeded by Macvey Napier, Professor of Conveyancing in Edinburgh University, who occupied the editorial chair till his death in 1847. The entertaining volume of selections from his correspondence, published in 1879, shows how difficult he found his position in having to settle the conflicting claims of various contributors, and, in particular, of having to pacify as best he could the vindictive passions of Brougham, who wished to make the Review a vehicle for venting his spite against his political opponents. Since Napier's death, the Review has been edited by Jeffrey's son-in-law, William Empson; Sir George Cornewall Lewis, distinguished as a statesman and a scholar; and Mr. Henry Reeve, its present editor, who succeeded Sir G. C. Lewis in 1855. Mr. Reeve, who is Registrar of the Privy Council, is chiefly known by his translation of De Tocqueville's "Democracy in America." A very long and brilliant list of the leading contributors to the Edinburgh Review under its various editors might be drawn up, including such men as Sir Walter Scott, Hallam, Macaulay, Carlyle, Henry Rogers, the author of the "Eclipse of Faith,” whose really wonderful gift of style should keep his memory

alive; Sir James Stephen, Lytton, Thackeray, Leigh Hunt, Froude, and others.

During the early years of the existence of the Edinburgh Review it did not adopt a very decided tone in politics. Social and political reforms were indeed advocated, but the advocacy was not carried on in very emphatic fashion; and the Review could scarcely be called a party organ till the appearance in 1808 of an article on the work of Don Pedro Cevallos on the "French Usurpation of Spain" gave undisguised expression to its Whig leanings. Great was the consternation and indignation excited by the article in the breasts of many Tories, not a few of whom had already begun to regard the Review with suspicion. When the number containing it appeared, Scott wrote to Constable, the publisher, in these terms:-" The Edinburgh Review had become such as to render it impossible for me to continue a contributor to it. Now it is such as I can no longer continue to receive or read it." The list of the then subscribers exhibits, in an indignant dash of Constable's pen opposite Scott's name, the word-"Stopt!!!" The eccentric Earl of Buchan took a more conspicuous way of showing his displeasure than Scott. Throwing the obnoxious number on the floor of his hall, he solemnly kicked it out into the street. Already there had been negotiations among various parties as to the starting of a Tory Quarterly, and the article on the "French Usurpation of Spain" had the effect of bringing these negotiations at once to a point. Canning, then Secretary for Foreign Affairs, was warmly interested in the new project; Scott exerted himself to the utmost to further it; many eminent writers of Tory politics promised their aid; and at length, in February 1809, the opening number appeared. The original editor was William Gifford, who retained the post till within about a year of his death in 1826. Gifford," a little dumpled-up man," who, originally a shoemaker, had fought his way up to eminence and power, is now chiefly remembered for his connection with the Quarterly, and for the work he did in editing the old dramatists. His satires, the "Baviad” and "e" Mæviad," are now as entirely forgotten as the schools

The Quarterly Review.

45I of poetry they were meant to ridicule. The chief contributors to the early numbers of the Quarterly were Scott, Southey, George Ellis, William Rose, the translator of Ariosto, Reginald Heber, Sir John Barrow, and last, but by no means least notable, John Wilson Croker. To most readers of the present day, Croker is known only from the annihilating review by Macaulay of his edition of Boswell's "Johnson," and from the inimitably trenchant and incisive portrait of him under the name of Rigby in Disraeli's "Coningsby." Truculent brutality, combined with a sort of attorney sharpness, may be described as the leading characteristics of his many articles in the Quarterly, which may be easily recognised from their abundance of italics and small capitals. On the whole, the early volumes of the Quarterly are not equal in interest and ability to the early numbers of the Edinburgh. Political partisanship appears in every page; no mercy is ever shown to the work of a Whig, however great its literary merit may be. When Gifford withdrew from the editorship of the Quarterly, it was for a short time held by Henry Nelson Coleridge, after which, in 1826, Lockhart became editor. Lockhart resigned the office in 1853, and was succeeded by the Rev. Whitwell Elwin, well known as the editor of Pope, who continued in office till 1860. His place was taken by a Mr. Macpherson, after which, in 1867, the present editor, Dr. William Smith, was appointed. Under his management the Quarterly has reached a perhaps higher level of excellence than it had ever previously attained, the articles on literary subjects being particularly able and scholarly.

Since the commencement of the Edinburgh and the Quarterly, many Reviews in imitation of them have been started. Among these may be mentioned the Westminster Review, begun in 1824 to advocate the views of advanced.

1 Croker was a man who incurred a great deal of enmity, and whose character possessed some highly objectionable features. An account of his life, and a not very forcible defence of his character, will be found in an article in the Quarterly Review for July 1876, written by the present editor, Dr. William Smith.

thinkers in religion and politics, and still continued after a not very prosperous career; the British Quarterly, begun by Dr. Vaughan to represent the cause of dissent; the North British Review, originally started as the organ of the Free Church Party in Scotland; the Dublin Review, the Catholic organ, &c., &c.

While in the early part of this century most of the higher and middle classes of Edinburgh were Conservative in their politics, the Edinburgh Review, the only Scottish literary journal on which they could look with any pride, was Liberal. Such a state of things was naturally galling to many staunch Northern Tories; but for some years nothing was done to remedy it. At length, in December 1816, William Blackwood, an enterprising young Edinburgh publisher, was applied to by two literary men of some slight reputation, James Cleghorn and Thomas Pringle, to become the publisher of a new monthly magazine, which they had projected. He consented, and in April 1817 the first number of the Edinburgh Monthly Magazine appeared. It was conducted with little spirit or ability, and after six numbers of it had been published, the editors, who resented Blackwood's interference with their functions, were obliged to abandon their office. Blackwood now took the editorship into his own hands, and in October 1817 appeared the first number of Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine. "It needed," says the biographer of Christopher North, "no advertising trumpet to let the world know that a new reign (a reign of terror in its way) had begun. . . . Among a considerable variety of papers, most of them able and interesting, it contained not less than three of a kind well calculated to arouse curiosity and to give deep offence to sections more or less extensive of the reading public. The first was a most unwarrantable assault on Coleridge's Biographia Literaria,' which was judged to be a 'most execrable' performance, and its author a miserable compound of egotism and malignity."" The second was an even more unjustifiable attack on Leigh Hunt, who was spoken of as a "profligate creature," a person with cut reverence either for God or man. "The third was the