Page:A history of booksellers, the old and the new.djvu/148

114 H4 CONSTABLE, CAD ELL, AND BLACK. collected and given to the public in 1821, and exhibit in some instances a power of numbers which for mere melody of sound has seldom been surpassed in the English language. In 1802, Constable commenced the Farmer's Magazine, under the management of an able East Lothian agriculturist, Mr. R. Brown, then of Markle. This work enjoyed a reputation contemporary with the whole of his business life. Altogether, Constable was making fair way as a publisher, when, in 1 802, the Edinburgh Review burst like a bombshell upon an astonished world, and gave him just reason to believe that his professional fortune was thoroughly ensured in the most glorious manner. The origin of the Review, like the beginnings of all things, is wrapped in doubt and mystery. Hitherto in the critical department of English literature, a review had been little more than a peg upon which to hang books for advertisement, and in which the general bearings of science, literature, and politics were left almost untouched. In Scotland, criticism was at a still lower ebb, for the country had possessed no regular review at all since the old Edinburgh Review had expired in 1756, after a flickering exist- ence of a twelvemonth. " One day," writes Sydney Smith, "we happened to meet in the eighth or ninth storey (it was the third) of a flat in Buccleuch-place, the elevated residence of the then Mr. Jeffrey. I proposed that we should get up a review. This was acceded to with acclamations. I was appointed editor, and remained long enough in Edinburgh to edit the first number of the Edinburgh Review. The motto I proposed was