wrote scientific, legal and literary papers as well, with the air of one whose mandates go undisputed. Undisputed they did go, too. In fact Brougham just escaped being a genius! He made a big splash in his own little world and age, but his fame has not outlived him. Another prominent contributor was Sydney Smith, a man of no small reputation as a humorist. He earnestly applied his talents to the forwarding of serious causes, and talents undoubtedly he had; but the wit of his style, according to the Hon. Arthur R. D. Elliot, erstwhile editor of the Review, its cleverness and jollity, prevented many from recognizing the genuine sincerity of his character.

By the end of 1806, Sir Walter Scott had contributed twelve articles in all, among them papers on Ellis’s “Early English Poets”, on Godwin’s “Life of Chaucer”, on Chatterton’s “Works”, on Froissart’s “Chronicles”. After 1806, he withdrew from the Review, and politics became the more prominent feature. No account of the Edinburgh Review has ever been given, written or told without including a remark of Jeffrey’s to Sir Walter Scott in a letter about this time. It would never do to omit it here! The remark is this: “The Review, in short, has but two legs to stand on. Literature, no doubt, is one of them: but its Right Leg is Politics.”9 Scott’s ideal was to keep it literary; and his break was on account of its excessive Whiggism. In Jeffrey’s mind, however, The Edinburgh Review was destined to save the nation! He championed the causes of Catholic emancipation, of popular education, prison reform, even some small degree of justice in Ireland, et cetera, all flavored, of course, with the saving grace of Whiggism.

Modern critics more than once have characterized Jeffrey as that “once-noted despot of letters”. But it is not fair only to be told that Jeffrey once said of Wordsworth’s Excursion, “This will never do!” That he considered the end of The Ode to Duty “utterly without meaning”; and that the Ode on Intimations of Immortality was “unintelligible”; that he ignored Shelley, and committed other like unpardonable sins. Those things are true and known and by them is he judged, but they are not all by which he should be judged by any means! There is no doubt in the world but what Jeffrey’s mind was cast in a superior mould. Lockhart himself has already testified there could not be “a more fertile, teeming intellect”. He was seldom, if ever, profound, we admit; but even the most grudging critic must grant him that large, speculative understanding and shrewd scrutiny so prominent in his compositions. Imagination, fancy, wit, sarcasm were his own, but not the warm and saving quality of humor. He was a great man and a brilliant criticiser, though hardly a great critic. The great critic is the true prophet and Jeffrey was no prophet. As late as 1829 in an article on Mrs. Hemans in the Edinburgh Review, he wrote: “Since the beginning of our critical career we have seen a vast deal of beautiful poetry pass into oblivion in spite of our feeble efforts to recall or retain it in remembrance. The tuneful quartos of Southey are already little better than lumber:—and the rich melodies of Keats and Shelley,—and the fantastical emphasis of Wordsworth,—and the plebeian pathos of Crabbe,—are melting fast from the field of our vision. The novels of Scott have put out his poetry. Even the splendid strains of Moore are fading into distance and dimness, except where they have been married to immortal music; and the blazing star of Byron himself is receding from its place of pride.”10 Herein he only redeems himself from his early condemnation of Wordsworth and Shelley and Southey, to damn himself irrevocably in our eyes again with his amazing lack of foresight! No! Jeffrey was no prophet. He had not the range of vision of the true critic, and “where there is no vision the people perish”. This was indeed an epitaph written a century ago for a grave not even yet in view. It must not be hastily concluded from this, however, that all the criticism in the Edinburgh Review was poor stuff. A vast amount of it was splendid work; the best output of the best minds of the time; and it was the one and only authentic and readable journal for years. This is corroborated by a statement of Sir Walter Scott’s in a letter to George Ellis: “No genteel family can pretend to be without the Edinburgh Review; because, independent of its politics, it gives the only valuable literary criticisms that can be met with.”11

But it was high time for a new periodical of opposite politics and fresh outlook; and in 1809 Gifford was established as editor of The Quarterly Review. Its four pillars were politics, literature, scholarship, and science; but its main purpose was to oppose the Edinburgh and create an intellectual nucleus for the rallying of the Tories. In October 1808 after plans were well on foot, Scott wrote to Gifford, prospective editor: “The real reason for instituting the new publication is the disgusting and deleterious doctrines with which the most popular of our Reviews disgraces its pages.”12 This of course was a reference to the political policies of the Edinburgh, yet the tone of the Quarterly was not to be one of political opposition only. Scott was eager for the success of the first number and wrote nearly a third of it himself. Later he busied himself to enlist the services of Southey and Rogers and Moore and Kirkpatrick Sharpe as contributors. Southey wrote altogether about one hundred articles on subjects varying from Lord Nelson to the Poor Laws. Scott himself contributed about thirty with his usual versatility of subject matter, all the way from fly fishing to Pepys’ Diary. In the issue for January 1817 he even reviewed “Tales of my Landlord” and “ventured to attribute them to the author of Waverley and Guy Mannering.”! John Wilson Croker, satirist, was another prominent contributor, narrow of mind and heart, intolerant of soul. He was an accurate and able “argu-fier” however, and one of the ruling genii in the politics of the Quarterly. In forty-five years he contributed something like