In 1802, Constable commenced the _Farmer’s Magazine_, under the management of an able East Lothian agriculturist, Mr. R. Brown, then of Markle. This work enjoyed a reputation contemporary with the whole of his business life. Altogether, Constable was making fair way as a publisher, when, in 1802, the _Edinburgh Review_ burst like a bombshell upon an astonished world, and gave him just reason to believe that his professional fortune was thoroughly ensured in the most glorious manner.
The origin of the _Review_, like the beginnings of all things, is wrapped in doubt and mystery. Hitherto in the critical department of English literature, a review had been little more than a peg upon which to hang books for advertisement, and in which the general bearings of science, literature, and politics were left almost untouched. In Scotland, criticism was at a still lower ebb, for the country had possessed no regular review at all since the old _Edinburgh Review_ had expired in 1756, after a flickering existence of a twelvemonth.
“One day,” writes Sydney Smith, “we happened to meet in the eighth or ninth storey (it was the third) of a flat in Buccleuch-place, the elevated residence of the then Mr. Jeffrey. I proposed that we should get up a review. This was acceded to with acclamations. I was appointed editor, and remained long enough in Edinburgh to edit the first number of the _Edinburgh Review_. The motto I proposed was--
‘We cultivate literature upon a little oatmeal.’
But this was too near the truth to be admitted, and so we took our present grave motto from Publius Lyrus, of whom none of us had, I am sure, read a single line; and so began what has since turned out to be a very important and able journal. When I left Edinburgh it fell into the stronger hands of Lord Jeffrey and Lord Brougham, and reached the highest point of popularity and success.”
It was resolved to bring out the first number of the work in June, 1802; but its outset was surrounded with many difficulties, arising from want of experience in its chief conductors. The meetings of the conspirators were held in a little room off Willison’s (Constable’s father-in-law’s) office in Craig’s-court, to which each man was requested to steal singly, by whichever way would be least suspicious; and there they examined and criticised each other’s productions, and corrected the proof sheets as they were thrown off. Here it was that Jeffrey once rushed down excitedly into Willison’s printing-office, crying, “Where is your pepper-box, man--your pepper-box?” In vain the printer declared he had no such useful article on the premises; Jeffrey persisted that the proof sheets must have been dusted with commas from a pepper-box, so lavish had the printer been with his points. Through various delays, typographical and otherwise, the first number, as we have seen, did not appear until the following November.