editor for selecting, curtailing, and correcting the contributions to
the Review. But this is not all; for, as he is the person immediately
responsible to the bookseller that the work (amounting to a certain
number of pages, more or less) shall be before the public at a certain
time, it will be the editor's duty to consider in due turn the articles
of which each number ought to consist, and to take measures for
procuring them from the persons best qualified to write upon such and
such subjects. But this is sometimes so troublesome, that I foresee with
pleasure you will soon be obliged to abandon your resolution of writing
nothing yourself. At the same time, if you will accept of my services as
a sort of jackal or lion's provider, I will do all in my power to assist
in this troublesome department of editorial duty.

"But there is still something behind, and that of the last consequence.
One great resource to which the _Edinburgh_ editor turns himself, and by
which he gives popularity even to the duller articles of his _Review_,
is accepting contributions from persons of inferior powers of writing,
provided they understand the books to which their criticisms relate; and
as such are often of stupefying mediocrity, he renders them palatable by
throwing in a handful of spice, namely, any lively paragraph or
entertaining illustration that occurs to him in reading them over. By
this sort of veneering he converts, without loss of time or hindrance to
business, articles, which in their original state might hang in the
market, into such goods as are not likely to disgrace those among which
they are placed. This seems to be a point in which an editor's
assistance is of the last consequence, for those who possess the
knowledge necessary to review books of research or abstruse
disquisitions, are very often unable to put the criticisms into a
readable, much more a pleasant and captivating form; and as their
science cannot be attained 'for the nonce,' the only remedy is to supply