e Edinburgh Review was founded in 1802, the Quarterly Review in 1809,
Blackwood's Magazine in 1817. These three won distinction among others of
less importance, and from them only I quote. In 1802, when Tory rule was
strongest and Lord Eldon flourished, there was living in Edinburgh a group
of young men who were for the most part briefless barristers. Their case
was worse because they were Whigs. Few cases came their way and no offices.
These young men were Francis Jeffrey, Francis Horner, Henry Brougham, and
there was also Sydney Smith who had just come to Edinburgh from an English
country parish. The eldest was thirty-one, the youngest twenty-three.
Although all of them had brilliant lives before them, not one of them had
made as yet more than a step toward his accomplishment. Sydney Smith had
been but lately an obscure curate, buried in the middle of Salisbury Plain,
away from all contact with the world. Francis Jeffrey had been a hack
writer in London, had studied medicine, had sought unsuccessfully a
government position in India, had written poor sonnets, and was now
lounging with but a scanty occupation in the halls of the law courts.
Francis Horner had just come to the Scottish bar straight from his studies.
Henry Brougham, who in days to come was to be Lord Chancellor of England
and to whose skill in debate the passing of the Great Reform bill of 1832
is partly due, is also just admitted to the practice of the law.

The founding of the Review was casual. These men were accustomed to meet of
an evening for general discussion and speculation. It happened one night as
they sat together--the place was a garret if legend is to be believed--that
Sydney Smith lamented that their discussions came to nothing, for they were
all Whigs, all converted to the cause; whereas if they could only bring
their opinions to the outside public they could stir opinion. From so
slight a root the Review sprouted. Sydney Smith was made editor and kept
the position until after the appearance of the first number, when Jeffrey
succeeded him. The Review became immediately a power, appearing quarterly
and striking its blows anonymously against a sluggish government, lashing
the Tory writers, and taking its part, which is of greater consequence, in
the promulgation of the Whig reforms which were to ripen in thirty years
and convert the old into modern England. In the destruction of outworn
things, it was, as it were, a magazine of Whig explosives.