Chapter V

Prior to 1802 there were two standard Reviews in Great Britain,--the _Monthly Review_ and the _Critical Review_. Minor Reviews there had been in plenty, of longer or shorter life; but these two periodicals had pushed beyond their competitors and were regarded as the best of their kind. The _Monthly Review_ had been founded in 1749 by Ralph Griffiths, a bookseller; it was Whig in politics and Low Church in religion. Its rival, the _Critical Review_, of which Smollett was for many years editor, had been founded in 1756, and was Tory and High Church. These Reviews were alike in form and in ostensible aim; they were published monthly, were made up of unsigned articles of moderate length, and professed to give competent accounts of the qualities of all new books. But though thus apparently worthy predecessors of the great Reviews with which nineteenth-century readers are familiar, they were really quite unlike them in general policy, in scope and style, and in influence. They were merely booksellers’ organs, under the strict supervision of booksellers, and often edited by booksellers. They were used persistently and systematically, though, of course, discreetly, to further the bookseller’s business schemes, to quicken the sale in case of a slow market, and to damage the publications of rivals. They were written for the most part by drudges and penny-a-liners, who worked under the orders of the bookseller like slaves under the lash of the slave-driver. These characteristics of the older Reviews may be best illustrated by a brief account of the methods in accordance with which Griffiths, the editor of the _Monthly_, conducted his _Review_, and by some choice anecdotes of his treatment of subordinates.

Griffiths was originally a bookseller; and, though he was able later to retire from this business and to devote himself wholly to the management of his _Review_, he retained still the instincts of a petty tradesman, and kept his eye on the state of the market like a skilful seller of perishable wares. Of scholarship, of genuine taste, and literary ability he had next to nothing; but he had shrewd common sense, sound business instincts, tact in dealing with men, readiness to bully or to fawn as might be needful, and unlimited patience in scheming for the commercial success of his venture.

His dealings with Goldsmith between 1755 and 1765, and with William Taylor of Norwich between 1790 and 1800, illustrate his narrow policy in the conduct of the _Monthly_ and his tyranny towards contributors. Goldsmith, he by turns bullied and bribed according as poor Goldsmith was more or less in need of money. On one occasion he became Goldsmith’s security with his tailor for a new suit of clothes on condition that Goldsmith at once write four articles for the _Review_; these articles were turned out to order, and appeared in December, 1758. On Goldsmith’s failing to pay his tailor’s bill in the specified time, Griffiths demanded the return of the suit and also of the books; and when he found that Goldsmith had pawned the books, he wrote him abusively, terming him sharper and villain, and threatening him with jail. In 1759, on the appearance of Goldsmith’s first book, Griffiths ordered one of his hacks, the notorious Kenrick, to ridicule the work, and to make a personal attack on the author. These orders were faithfully carried out in the next number of the _Monthly Review_.[8]

With William Taylor of Norwich Griffiths took a very different tone. Taylor was one of the few men of breeding and of parts who, before 1802, condescended to write for Reviews, and he was moreover for many years the great English authority on German literature. For these reasons, Griffiths always used him with the utmost tenderness, and, even when giving him orders or refusing his articles, took a flattering tone of deference and admiration. On one occasion Taylor demanded an increase of pay; Griffiths’s answer gives a very instructive glimpse of the relations between the bookseller-editor and his hack-writers. The “gratuity” for review work, Griffiths assures Taylor, had been settled fifty years before at two guineas a sheet of sixteen printed pages, “a sum not then deemed altogether puny,” and in the case of most writers had since remained unchanged, although there had been certain “allowed exceptions in favour of the most difficult branches of the business.” These exceptions, however, had tended to cause much jealousy and heart-burning among the contributors; for “it could not be expected that those labourers in the vineyard, who customarily executed the less difficult branches of the culture, would ever be cordially convinced that _their_ merits and importance were inferior to any.” After these laborious explanations Griffiths agrees to raise Taylor’s compensation to three guineas per sheet of sixteen printed pages, though he expressly points out that by so doing he risks “exciting jealousy in the corps, similar, perhaps, to what happened among the vine-dressers, Matt., chap. xx.” “If objections arise,” he shrewdly continues, “we must resort for consolation to a list of candidates for the next vacancy, for in the literary harvest there is never any want of reapers.”[9] Griffiths’s slave-driving propensities show clearly through the thin disguise of politic words. Plainly he feels himself absolute master of the minds and wills of an indefinite number of penny-a-liners; and it is on these penny-a-liners that he resolves to depend for the great mass of his articles.

The evil influence of the publisher’s despotism ran through the _Review_ and vitiated all its judgments. The editor-publisher prescribed to his hacks what treatment a book should receive. Sometimes this was with a view to the market. “I send also the _Horæ Bibilicæ_ at a venture,” writes Griffiths to Taylor, “... it signifies not much whether we notice it or not, as it is not _on sale_.”[10] The italics are Griffiths’s own. Sometimes, the publisher-editor merely wanted to favour a friend or injure an enemy. Griffiths’s dictation in the case of Goldsmith’s first book has already been noted. On another occasion Griffiths sent a copy of Murphy’s _Tacitus_ to Taylor with the following significant suggestion: “One thing I have to mention, _entre nous_, that Mr. M. is _one of us_, and that it is a rule in our society for the members to behave with due decorum toward each other, whenever they appear at their own bar as _authors_, out of their own critical province. If a kingdom (like poor France at present) be divided against itself, ‘how shall that kingdom stand’?”[11] If Griffiths ventured on this dictation with a man of Taylor’s standing and independence, his tyranny over his regular dependents must have been complete and relentless.

As a result, review-writing became purely hackwork. The reviewer had no voice of his own in his criticism; what little individuality he might, in his feebleness, have put into his work, had he been left to himself, disappeared under the eye of his taskmaster. He became a mere machine, praising and blaming perfunctorily and conventionally, at the bidding of the editor-publisher. Mawkish adulation or random abuse became the staple of critical articles; and in neither kind of work did the critic rise above the dead level of hopeless mediocrity.

A final result of this whole system of review-managing and hack-writing was unwillingness on the part of men of position to have anything to do with review-writing. If a man criticised books in a Review, he felt that he was putting himself on a level with Kenrick, Griffiths’s notorious hireling, who had been imprisoned for libel, with Kit Smart, who had bound himself to a bookseller for ninety-nine years, and with other like wretches. William Taylor of Norwich was one of the few gentlemen who, before 1802, ventured to write for Reviews.

With the establishment of the _Edinburgh Review_ all this was changed. The prime principle of the new _Review_ was independence of booksellers. The plan was not a bookseller’s scheme, but was the outcome of the ambitious fervour of half a dozen young adventurers in law, literature, and politics. From the start the bookseller was a “mere instrument,” as Brougham specially notes. The management of the _Review_ was at first in the hands of Sydney Smith. When he set out for London his last words to the publisher, Constable, were, “If you will give £200 per annum to your editor and ten guineas a sheet, you will soon have the best Review in Europe.” Accordingly, the editorship was at once offered to Jeffrey, at even a higher salary, £300, than Sydney Smith had named. Jeffrey hesitated because of “the risk of general degradation.” But he found the £300 “a monstrous bribe”; moreover, the other contributors were all planning to take their ten guineas a sheet; accordingly, after many qualms, he swallowed his scruples and became a paid editor. “The publication,” he wrote to his brother, in July, 1803, “is in the highest degree respectable as yet, as there are none but gentlemen connected with it. If it ever sink into the ordinary bookseller’s journal, I have done with it.”

So began Jeffrey’s “reign” of twenty-six years; and so ended the despotism of booksellers. Henceforth the editor, not the publisher, was master. It was Jeffrey who decided what books should be handled, or rather what subjects should be discussed; it was Jeffrey who determined the price to be paid for each article,--“I had,” he declares, “an unlimited discretion in this respect”; it was Jeffrey who pleaded with the dilatory, mollified the refractory, and reached out here and there after new contributors; in short, it was Jeffrey who shaped the policy of the _Review_ and impressed on it its distinctive character.

But there were several other hardly less important points in which the business policy of the _Edinburgh_ was a new departure. The pay for reviewing was greatly increased. The old price had been two guineas a sheet of sixteen printed pages; the _Edinburgh Review_, after the first three numbers, paid ten guineas a sheet, and very soon sixteen guineas. Moreover, this was the minimum rate; over two-thirds of the articles were, according to Jeffrey, “paid much higher, averaging from twenty to twenty-five guineas a sheet on the whole number.”

Again, every contributor was forced to take pay; no contributor, however nice his honour, was suffered to refuse. This regulation was of the utmost importance; the rule salved the consciences of many brilliant young professional men, who were glad of pay, but ashamed to write for it, and afraid of being dubbed penny-a-liners. By Jeffrey’s clever arrangement they could write for fame or for simple amusement, and then have money “thrust upon them.” With high prices and enforced compensation the new _Review_ at once drew into its service men of a totally different stamp from the old hack-writers.

Finally, the _Edinburgh_ was published quarterly, whereas the old Reviews were published monthly. This change was for two reasons important: in the first place, writers had more time in which to prepare their articles and led less of a hand-to-mouth life intellectually; and, in the second place, the _Review_ made no attempt to notice all publications, and chose for discussion only books of real significance. Coleridge particularly commends this part of the policy of the _Review_: “It has a claim upon the gratitude of the literary republic, and, indeed, of the reading public at large, for having originated the scheme of reviewing those books only, which are susceptible and deserving of argumentative criticism.”[12]