Page:A history of booksellers, the old and the new.djvu/239

WILLIAM &LACKWOOD. 203 Row." It was riot without liliich forethought, we may be sure, that this step was Undertaker!, and the speedy establishment of the famous magazine clearly shows us what was the chief motive to such a ven- turous change. The magazine literature of the day was wofully weak. The vitality with which Cave had endowed the Gentleman's Magazine, had long since died away. No more such "hack-writers" as Johnson and Gold- smith came forward to enliven its pages, at the meagre payment of four guineas a sheet, and now it only " Hopped its pleasant way from church to church, And nursed its little bald biography." Such was the type of English periodical literature, and the Scotch were certainly no better off. The Scots Magazine stood Constable, it is true, in good stead, but only as a nursery ground, from which writers might be trained for transplantation to a stronger soil. Vastly different was the condition of the rival quarterlies ; but still, in Scotland at all events, the Edinburgh carried everything after its own desire. Wit the writers had in plenty learning, too, and the gift of open-speaking ; but to fairness, biassed as they were by party ties, they never laid the least claim, and yet all Edinburgh was enthralled by the opinions of the Edinburgh Revieiv, for intellectual attainments at that time commanded for their posses- sors the leading place in the society of the Modern Athens, and, as the principles advocated in its pages were decidedly opposed to those of the existing administration, the success it indubitably had at- tained, the vast following it was gathering, not only irritated but alarmed the Scotch Tory party. 132