Page:A history of booksellers, the old and the new.djvu/142



CONSTABLE, CADELL, AND BLACK.

THE "EDINBURGH REVIEW," "WAVERLEY NOVELS," AND "ENCYCLOPÆDIA BRITANNICA."

ROM 1790 to 1820 Edinburgh richly deserved the honourable title of "Modern Athens." Her University and her High School, directed by men pre-eminently fitted for their duties, capable of firing their pupils' minds with a noble purpose, endowed with a lofty ideal of a master's responsibilities—in fact, possessed of all the qualities that Dr. Arnold afterwards displayed elsewhere—attracted and educated a set of young men, unrivalled, perhaps, in modern times for genius and energy, for wit and learning. Nothing, then, was wanting to their due encouragement but a liberal patron, and this position was speedily occupied by a publisher, who, in his munificence and venturous spirit, soon outstripped his boldest English rival—whose one fault was, in fact, that of always being a Mæcenas, never a tradesman.

Archibald Constable was born on the 24th of February, 1776, at Kellie, in the parish of Carnbee in Fifeshire. He was the son of Thomas Constable,