“‘We cultivate literature on a little oatmeal.’

“But this was too near the truth to be admitted, and so we took our present grave motto from Publius Syrus, of whom none of us had, I am sure, ever read a single line; and so began what has since turned out to be a very important and able journal.  When I left Edinburgh, it fell into the stronger hands of Lord Jeffrey and Lord Brougham, and reached the highest point of popularity and success.

“To appreciate the value of the Edinburgh Review, the state of England at the period when that journal began should be had in remembrance.  The Catholics were not emancipated.  The Corporation and Test Acts were unrepealed.  The Game-Laws were horribly oppressive; steel-traps and spring-guns were set all over the country; prisoners tried for their lives could have no counsel.  Lord Eldon and the Court of Chancery pressed heavily on mankind.  Libel was punished by the most cruel and vindictive imprisonments.  The principles of Political Economy were little understood.  The laws of debt and conspiracy were upon the worst footing.  The enormous wickedness of the slave-trade was tolerated.  A thousand evils were in existence, which the talents of good and able men have since lessened or removed; and these efforts have been not a little assisted by the honest boldness of the Edinburgh Review.”

Lord Brougham has left on record a similar account.

“I at once entered warmly into Smith’s scheme.  Jeffrey, by nature always rather timid, was full of doubts and fears.  It required all Smith’s overpowering vivacity to argue and laugh Jeffrey out of his difficulties.  There would, he said, be no lack of contributors.  There was himself, ready to write any number of articles, or to edit the whole; there was Jeffrey, facile princeps in all kinds of literature; there was myself, full of mathematics and everything relating to the Colonies; there was Horner for Political Economy, and Murray for General Subjects.  Besides, might we not, from our great and never-to-be-doubted success, fairly hope to receive help from such leviathans as Playfair, Dugald Stewart, Thomas Brown, Thomson, and others?”

These bright forecasts put heart of grace into the timid Jeffrey.  Sydney Smith’s jovial optimism prevailed.  The financial part of the business was arranged with Constable in Edinburgh, and Longman in London:  and the first number (clad in that famous livery of Blue and Buff[19] which the Whigs had copied from Charles Fox’s coat and waistcoat) appeared in the autumn of 1802.  The cover was thus inscribed—­

    THE EDINBURGH REVIEW

    OR

    CRITICAL JOURNAL

FOR

Oct. 1802—­Jan. 1803

To be continued quarterly

* * * * *

Judex damnatur cum nocens absolvitur

PUBLIUS SYRUS.