WE ARE accustomed to regard the Tatler and Spectator in the
days of Queen Anne as marking the only literary renaissance
since Shakespeare, the awakening of a general interest in read-
ing and an enlargement of the intellectual horizon. However,
the first quarter of the Nineteenth Century was as important and
equally exciting. This difference is made clear by a compari-
son of the Tatler and Spectator of the earlier period with the
Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews of the later: the former more
calm, reasonable, almost stately; the latter passionate, personal,
nervous, abusive, no polite respecter of feelings -- fitting reflec-
tion of the political and social confusion then existing in Eng-
land and Europe. Between the two periods the magazine and
review underwent great change. The language of periodical
literature showed a deterioration in smoothness and in dignity;
the popularity and respect for such writing gave way to the more
immediate appeal of the novel. Part of this change was made
possible by conditions which were imposed by such slave-drivers
as Ralph Griffiths, a bookseller and publisher, whose dealings
with his hirelings can be read in any life of Oliver Goldsmith.
The articles were "puffs" or "slatings," to sell a book or to injure
some other bookseller's offering; the pay was nominal, never
more than two guineas per sheet of sixteen printed pages; hence
the magazine became a hotbed for the hackwriter.

The story of the founding of the Edinburgh Review in 1802,
by Smith, Jeffrey, Horner and Brougham, though often re-

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