e the first number appeared, Jeffrey
complains that almost all his friends are about to emigrate to London;
and the prediction was soon verified. Sydney Smith left to begin his
career as a clergyman in London; Horner and Brougham almost immediately
took to the English bar, with a view to pushing into public life; Allen
joined Lord Holland; Charles Bell set up in a London practice; two other
promising contributors took offence, and deserted the 'Review' in its
infancy; and Jeffrey was left almost alone, though still a centre of
attraction to the scattered group. He himself only undertook the
editorship on the understanding that he might renounce it as soon as he
could do without it; and always guarded himself most carefully against
any appearance of deserting a legal for a literary career. Although the
Edinburgh _cenacle_ was not dissolved, its bonds were greatly loosened;
the chief contributors were in no sense men who looked upon literature
as a principal occupation; and Jeffrey, as much as Brougham and Horner,
would have resented, as a mischievous imputation, the suggestion that
his chief energies were devoted to the 'Review.' In some sense this
might be an advantage. An article upon politics or philosophy is, of
course, better done by a professed statesman and thinker than by a
literary hack; but, on the other hand, a man who turns aside from
politics or philosophy to do mere hackwork, does it worse than the
professed man of letters. Work, taken up at odd hours to satisfy
editorial importunity or add a few pounds to a narrow income, is apt to
show the characteristic defects of all amateur performances. A very
large part of the early numbers is amateurish in this objectionable
sense. It is mere hand-to-mouth information, and is written, so to
speak, with the left hand. A clever man has turned over the last new
book of travels or poetry, or made a sudden incursion into foreign
literature or into some passage of history entirely fresh to him, and
has given his first impressions with an audacity which almost disarms
one by its extraordinary _naivete_. The standard of such disquisitions
was then so low that writing which would now be impossible passed muster
without an objection. When, in later years, Macaulay discussed Hampden
or Chatham, the book which he ostensibly reviewed was a mere pretext for
producing the rich stores of a mind trained by years of previous
historical study. Jeffrey wrote about Mrs. Hutchinson's 'Memo