f some emolument and
not inconsiderable distinction.

The story of the _Edinburgh Review_ and its foundation has been very
often told on the humorous, if not exactly historical, authority of
Sydney Smith. It is unnecessary to repeat it. It is undoubted that the
idea was Sydney's. It is equally undoubted that, but for Jeffrey, the
said idea might never have taken form at all, and would never have
retained any form for more than a few months. It was only Jeffrey's
long-established habit of critical writing, the untiring energy into
which he whipped up his no doubt gifted but quite untrained
contributors, and the skill which he almost at once developed in editing
proper,--that is to say in selecting, arranging, adapting, and, even to
some extent, re-writing contributions--which secured success. Very
different opinions have been expressed at different times on the
intrinsic merits of this celebrated production; and perhaps, on the
whole, the principal feeling of explorers into the long and dusty
ranges of its early volumes, has been one of disappointment. I believe
myself that, in similar cases, a similar result is very common indeed,
and that it is due to the operation of two familiar fallacies. The one
is the delusion as to the products of former times being necessarily
better than those of the present; a delusion which is not the less
deluding because of its counterpart, the delusion about progress. The
other is a more peculiar and subtle one. I shall not go so far as a very
experienced journalist who once said to me commiseratingly, "My good
sir, I won't exactly say that literary merit hurts a newspaper." But
there is no doubt that all the great successes of journalism, for the
last hundred years, have been much more due to the fact of the new
venture being new, of its supplying something that the public wanted and
had not got, than to the fact of the supply being extraordinarily good
in kind. In nearly every case, the intrinsic merit has improved as the
thing went on, but it has ceased to be a novel merit. Nothing would be
easier than to show that the early _Edinburgh_ articles were very far
from perfect. Of Jeffrey we shall speak presently, and there is no doubt
that Sydney at his best was, and is always, delightful. But the
blundering bluster of Brougham, the solemn ineffectiveness of Horner (of
whom I can never think without also thinking of Scott's delightful
Shandean jest on him), the respectable erudition of the