Four years later, in October 1802, the first number of the _Edinburgh
Review_ was published. It appeared at the right time, and, as the first
quarterly organ of the higher criticism, evidently hit the mark at which
it aimed. It was conducted by some of the cleverest literary young men
in Edinburgh--Jeffrey, Brougham, Sydney Smith, Francis Horner, Dr.
Thomas Brown, and others. Though Walter Scott was not a founder of the
_Review_, he was a frequent contributor.

In its early days the criticism was rude, and wanting in delicate
insight; for the most part too dictatorial, and often unfair. Thus
Jeffrey could never appreciate the merits of Wordsworth, Southey, and
Coleridge. "This will never do!" was the commencement of his review of
Wordsworth's noblest poem. Jeffrey boasted that he had "crushed the
'Excursion.'" "He might as well say," observed Southey, "that he could
crush Skiddaw." Ignorance also seems to have pervaded the article
written by Brougham, in the second number of the _Edinburgh_, on Dr.
Thomas Young's discovery of the true principles of interferences in the
undulatory theory of light. Sir John Herschell, a more competent
authority, said of Young's discovery, that it was sufficient of itself
to have placed its author in the highest rank of scientific immortality.

The situation seemed to Mr. Murray to warrant the following letter:

_John Murray to the Right Hon. George Canning_.

_September 25, 1807._

Sir,