Besides, though the real ability of the Edinburgh Review was great, the vast popularity which it so speedily obtained, and the brilliant course which it ran, were unquestionably more owing to the novelty of its plan, and the fact of its advocating those political principles which were agreeable to the majority of people at the time, than to its merits.
One cause of the rise of the Edinburgh Review, and perhaps also one cause of its comparative fall, is the uniformity with which it has all along followed the Whig party. Before that party got into office, and when, in consequence of their boldness and lofty pretensions as oppositionists, the opinions of the Edinburgh Review,—at least, its political opinions,—which were all along the ones upon which the greater part of its celebrity rested,—were by many received as the infallible oracles of truth; and when the trial which the country had had of that party shook them a little in public estimation, though the Review received a shock along with them, it still retained a considerable portion of its influence. But, as the opinions of men became a little more liberal, and the frequency of disappointment made them more and more suspicious of all parties, some Jesuitical articles in the Review, on the subjects of representation and reform, shook the confidence of the people in it; while, much about the same time, or, at least, not long afterwards, the failure of its prophecies with regard to the ultimate success of Buonaparte, laid it open to the attacks of the Tories. For the first of these suspicions, there appeared to be but too much foundation; and though the latter was more Jesuitical than just, still it was the interest of the parties to press it to extremity. When the Edinburgh Review predicted the ultimate triumph of Napoleon, it did not, of course, anticipate, that he would, with the example of Charles XII. before him, undertake so hazardous an enterprise as a winter campaign into the interior of Russia; but the Review did not enter a caveat against such an excursion; and, therefore, it was held as prophesying in the face of this as well as of all the other chances.
I have noticed those circumstances with a view of showing, not only that the absolute literary merits of the Edinburgh Review were not the sole cause of its popularity, but that even though they had, the merit does not in whole, or even in the greater part, belong to the Athens. The Athens never could, of her own will, ability, and patronage, support a single literary man; and it could not well be expected that she could, for any length of time, support a literary work.
The first of these positions may be established by a reference to the history of the whole literary men of the Athens, as well as to the state which they are in at the present time; and the second, besides being a necessary and legitimate deduction from the first, may be confirmed by an appeal to the facts.
Allan Ramsay was the first Athenian writer, after the hiatus of which I have spoken; and Allan addressed himself as much to the taste and foibles of the Athens as it was possible for one of so limited education and limited powers to do. Allan made a comfortable living; but he did not make that as a poet; he did it, first, as a hairdresser, and then as a bookseller, and as the keeper of a circulating library, which, being the first of the kind in the Athens, proved a most fortunate speculation. The works of Colin Maclaurin, and some of the other illustrious men, of which the Athens never was worthy, were put into circulation as much in the way of charity to their families, as from any love for those sciences and arts of which they were the ornaments.
Robert Ferguson was pre-eminently the poet of the Athens. Born within her walls, he devoted his muse to the chanting of her praises; and how did she reward her tuneful son? Why, she blamed him because he wrote verses rather than law papers; she liked his songs, and she sung them; but she would give him no reward for his labour; and poor Ferguson, neglected, heart-broken, and starved, ended his days in a mad-house; and his ungrateful step-dame, the Athens,—that city, which, if one would be silly enough to believe her, is the model, the encourager, and the rewarder, of all taste, would not do for him, what England, even in her worst and most worthless times, did for the poets whom she starved,—she would not give him a monument,—no, not so much as an unhewn stone, to let it be known that one grave in the Canon-gate church-yard contained holier dust than that of a baron bailie.
Even when the immortal Burns came, to shame a selfish, undiscriminating, and ungrateful land, the Athens made not the slightest attempt to wash out the foul stain which she had given herself in the case of Ferguson. Burns put her in mind of that stain, not only by the erection of the little tomb-stone over his unfortunate brother; but in a monument more durable,—a poem, which, had there been any soul within the cold ribs of the Athens, would have harrowed it with remorse, that might have been a stimulus to repentance. But the Athens took it all with that sang-froid which is the concomitant and the characteristic of reckless and self-sufficient dulness; and no where in the whole history of literature, is there an instance of neglect more mean, and ingratitude more disgraceful, than that of the Athens, for Robert Burns. She lured him, by fair promises, within her siren and seductive walls. Day after day, and week after week, she dipt him deeper in that dissipation, of which she knows better how to set the example than any city between Kent and Caithness. She showed him about, from tavern to tavern, from one evening party to another, and through every one of her hundred scenes and sinks of vice; and this precious work she continued, till the prospects which he had left behind were blasted, and his own powers and habits spoiled; and the moment she had done this, she had the baseness, not only to drive him helpless back upon the world, but to slander his name for practices which none but herself had taught him.
In a word, when I look at the literary men, whom evil stars have confined to the Athens, or, in any way made to look to her for patronage, I find a few who have succeeded, because it has not been in her power to injure them; and all upon whom she has had power, lost and ruined. Even Jeffrey, if he had not had his fees to bear him out, and if his journal had not been patronised in London, might have written his Review in vain; ay, and Scott, who perhaps persevered longer in writing in obscurity than any other author of the present times, would long ere now have been mute or a maniac, had he not possessed some property, held a public office, and been a fierce and forward party-man. Among them all, there has never been an author in the Athens who has lived even decently by literature alone,—as little is there, at this moment, within the whole of her compass, a single person above starvation, who has not some other occupation or emolument, than that of a literary man.
The Edinburgh Review, the only periodical work of any consequence in the Athens which professes to be liberal, and which rests its character upon its merits, and affords a revenue to any body, does not support one literary man in the city, nor is there one Athenian contributor to it, of whom literature is the only or even the chief means of support. Even the editor, well as it is alleged he is paid for his labour, finds the wrangling of the bar a more lucrative employment, addicts himself more and more to it, and more and more withdraws himself from the Review; while the place of those Athenian writers of the higher class who have died away, without being followed by successors worthy of them in their avowed professions, are not replaced in the journal by Athenian writers at all, but by mere hacks of London, who have been so long upon the town that nobody sets much store by their lucubrations.
The oldest literary journal in the Athens,—the one which was once named after the whole of Scotland, and which is now named peculiarly after the Athens, is perhaps the one which should be taken as the proper test of her literary powers.