Death of a Quarterly

"This will never do!" said Lord Francis Jeffrey, editor of the quarterly Edinburgh Review, when in 1814 he beheld Poet William Wordsworth's since-famed "The Excursion.'' Editor Jeffrey was typical of the Review's early editors: holding strong opinions, he expressed them strongly. Editor Jeffrey has been dead since 1850; the Edinburgh Review died last week.

Famous men guided the Review on its iconoclastic career. Historian Thomas Babington Macaulay, once the magazine's star reviewer, was known as "chief executioner." Essayist William Hazlitt, Novelist William Makepeace Thackeray, Prophet Thomas Carlyle, Novelist Walter Scott were contributors.

In 1802, the Edinburgh Review was the first magazine of its kind in the United Kingdom. Punster Sydney Smith, its first editor, aimed "to erect a higher standard of merit, and secure a bolder and a purer taste in literature, and to apply philosophical principles and the maxims of truth and humanity to politics." The Review was originally Whig; its cover, buff and blue, always proclaimed its old faith.

Like Blackwood's Magazine and the Quarterly Review, its ancient rivals, the Edinburgh Review matured, grew old, sedate. Last week its editors sadly confessed: "Modern readers are not willing to wait a quarter of a year for observations on life, letters, history and society." They announced the Review's demise.

Blackwood's and the Quarterly still survive.