ubject. Now, should this plan
succeed, you must hang your birding-piece on its hook, take down your
old Anti-Jacobin armour, and "remember your swashing blow." It is not
that I think this projected Review ought to be exclusively or
principally political; this would, in my opinion, absolutely counteract
its purpose, which I think should be to offer to those who love their
country, and to those whom we would wish to love it, a periodical work
of criticism conducted with equal talent, but upon sounder principles.
Is not this very possible? In point of learning, you Englishmen have ten
times our scholarship; and, as for talent and genius, "Are not Abana and
Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, better than any of the rivers in Israel?"
Have we not yourself and your cousin, the Roses, Malthus, Matthias,
Gifford, Heber, and his brother? Can I not procure you a score of
blue-caps who would rather write for us than for the _Edinburgh Review_
if they got as much pay by it? "A good plot, good friends, and full of
expectation--an excellent plot, very good friends!"

Heber's fear was lest we should fail in procuring regular steady
contributors; but I know so much of the interior discipline of reviewing
as to have no apprehension of that. Provided we are once set a-going by
a few dashing numbers, there would be no fear of enlisting regular
contributors; but the amateurs must bestir themselves in the first
instance. From the Government we should be entitled to expect
confidential communications as to points of fact (so far as fit to be
made public) in our political disquisitions. With this advantage, our
good cause and St. George to boot, we may at least divide the field with
our formidable competitors, who, after all, are much better at cutting
than parrying, and whose uninterrupted triumph has as much unfitted them
for resisting a serious attack as it has done Buonaparte for the Spanish
war. Jeffrey is, to be sure, a man of the most uncommon versatility of
talent, but what then?

"General Howe is a gallant commander,
There are others as gallant as he."

Think of all this, and let me hear from you very soon on the subject.
Canning is, I have good reason to know, very anxious about the plan. I
mentioned it to Robert Dundas, who was here with his lady for a few days
on a pilgrimage to Melrose, and he highly approved of it. Though no
literary man, he is judicious, _clair-voyant_, and uncommonly
sound-headed, like his father, Lord Melvill