er, but could not
help saying, in her broken English, when her guest was departing, 'Well,
good night, Mr. Jeffrey. Dey tell me you have abused Scott in de Review,
and I hope Mr. Constable has paid _you_ very well for writing it.'"

Jeffrey's article apparently had little influence on the sale of
_Marmion_, which reached eight editions (25,000 copies) in three years.
In October, 1808, the _Edinburgh Review_ published an appreciative
review of Scott's edition of Dryden, and afterwards received with favor
the later poems and the principal Waverley Novels.

78. _Mr. Thomas Inkle_. The story of Inkle and Yarico was related by
Steele in no. 11 of the _Spectator_. It was afterwards dramatized (1787)
by George Colman.

LORD BYRON

The twentieth number of the _Edinburgh Review_ contained Jeffrey's long
article on Wordsworth's _Poems_ (1807); the twenty-second contained his
review of Scott's _Marmion_; and the twenty-first (January, 1808)
contained a still more famous critique, long attributed to Jeffrey--the
review of Byron's _Hours of Idleness_ (1807). It is reprinted from
_Edinburgh Rev._, XI (285-289) in Stevenson's _Early Reviews_ and forms
Appendix II of R.E. Prothero's edition of Byron's _Letters and
Journals_. We know definitely that the article was written by Henry
Brougham. (See Prothero, op. cit., II, p. 397, and Sir M.E. Grant Duff's
_Notes from a Diary_, II, p. 189.)

It is hardly within the province of literary criticism to deal with
hypothetical conditions in authors' lives; but it is at least a matter
of some interest to conjecture whether Byron would have become a great
poet if this stinging review had not been published. It is evident that
the _Hours of Idleness_ gave few signs of promise, and the poet, fully
intent upon a political career, himself expressed his intention of
abandoning the muse. Many an educated Englishman has published such a
volume of _Juvenilia_ and sinned no more. But a nature like Byron's
could not overlook the effrontery of the _Edinburgh Review_. The
proud-spirited poet was evidently far more incensed by the patronizing
tone of the article than by its strictures: what could be more galling
than the reiterated references to the "noble minor," or the withering
contempt that characterized a particular poem as "the thing in page 79"?
Many years later, Byron wrote to Shelley:--"I recollect the effect on me
of the _Edinburgh_ on my first poem; it was rage, and resistance, and
redress--