Page:A history of booksellers, the old and the new.djvu/151

CONSTABLE, CADELL, AND BLACK. 117 fluenced by the booksellers; and, secondly, the regular payment of editor and contributors : Jeffrey receiving, from the commencement of his labours, 300 per annum (afterwards increased to 800), whilst every contributor was compelled, even if wealthy, to accept a minimum bonus of 10 (afterwards raised to 16) per sheet. Never before had the enterprise of young and almost unknown men started so ambitious a scheme, and never since have pluck and learning, talent and genius been so amply rewarded. They found the world of English society, English literature, and English politics warped and dwarfed scared by the French Revolution and the American Republic into a dormant state of Toryism they found matters thus, and in an incredibly short time they almost changed the current of the national thought. Jeffrey, with his clear, legal mind, his startling and brilliant manner of expression, his sarcasm cold and sharp-edged as a Toledo blade, unfortunately only too capable of wounding too deeply won the position of the greatest English critic of all time, and of the most eminent Scot- tish lawyer of the day achieving the highest honours open to the advocates of Edinburgh. Brougham, with his ponderous learning, his marvellous versatility, his immense powers of work, became not only the first English lawyer, but one of the first English states- men of his time. Sydney Smith, the wittiest man certainly of his century, might have attained the highest honours open to his calling, had he not pre- ferred the more humble and more praiseworthy career of being a liberal clergyman at a time when the wearers of his cloth were one and all rank Tories to the backbone,