Page:A history of booksellers, the old and the new.djvu/132

100 of the Company of Stationers," but, with the characteristic modesty of his disposition, paid the customary fine to be allowed to decline the offices of warden and master of the company.

For many years the "House" had been London agents and part proprietors of the Edinburgh Review, and when the commercial crash of 1826 destroyed Constable's huge establishment, the property was virtually in their own hands, and the number for December, 1826, is printed for "Longman, Rees, Orme, Browne, and Green, London, and Adam Black, Edinburgh;" and if we "read between the lines" of the new designation we learn that Hurst had been concerned in some bill transactions, and had been this year compelled to retire (he died an inmate of the Charter House, in 1847), and we may also gather something of the strong connection that was to be formed with the house of Adam Black.

Jeffrey retired from the editorial chair in 1829, but Macney Napier, the editor of the Encyclopædia Britannica was appointed in his stead, and the literary management of the journal was still continued in Edinburgh. Sydney Smith ceased to write for the Review in 1827; but in 1825 an article was contributed on Milton, by a young man of five-and-twenty; and Mr. Thomas Babington Macaulay, who, as Moore said, could do any mortal thing but forget, was destined to be, not only the most brilliant of the daring and talented band of Edinburgh Reviewers, but eventually, one of the most powerful contributors to Longman's fortune and reputation.