he impost. The _liberty of
the press_, in its fullest extent, is to be employed against them."

Such is the language of reform, and the spirit of a reformist! A
little private malignity thus ferments a good deal of public spirit;
but patriotism must be independent to be pure. If the "Edinburgh
Review" continues to succeed in its sale, as Stuart fancies,
Edinburgh itself may be in some danger. His perfect contempt of
his contemporaries is amusing:--

"Monboddo's second volume is published, and, with Kaimes, will appear
in our next; the former is a childish performance; the latter rather
better. We are to treat them with a good deal of freedom. I observe an
amazing falling off in the English Reviews. We beat them hollow. I
fancy they have no assistance but from the Dissenters,--a dull body of
men. The Monthly will not easily recover the death of Hawkesworth; and
I suspect that Langhorne has forsaken them; for I see no longer his
pen."

We are now hastening to the sudden and the moral catastrophe of our
tale. The thousand copies which had emigrated to London remained
there, little disturbed by public inquiry; and in Scotland, the
personal animosity against almost every literary character there,
which had inflamed the sale, became naturally the latent cause of its
extinction; for its life was but a feverish existence, and its florid
complexion carried with it the seeds of its dissolution. Stuart at
length quarrelled with his coadjutor, Smellie, for altering his
reviews. Smellie's prudential dexterity was such, that, in an article
designed to level Lord Kaimes with Lord Monboddo, the whole libel was
completely metamorphosed into a panegyric. They were involved in a
lawsuit about "a blasphemous paper." And now the enraged Zoilus
complains of "his hours of peevishness and dissatisfaction." He
acknowledges that "a circumstance had happened which had broke his
peace and ease altogether for some weeks." And now he resolves that
this great work shall quietly sink into a mere compilation from the
London periodical works. Such, then, is the progress of malignant
genius! The author, like him who invented the brazen bull of Phalaris,
is writhing in that machine of tortures he had contrived for others.

We now come to a very remarkable passage: it is the frenzied language
of disappointed wickedness.

"_17 June, 1774._

"It is an infinite disappointment to me that the Magazine does not
grow in London; I thought the soil ha