mber, 1846, and is now first made
public: "I can not say exactly where the project of the _Edinburgh
Review_ was first talked of among the projectors. But the first serious
consultations about it--and which led to our application to a
publisher--were held in a small house, where I then lived, in
_Buccleugh-place_ (I forget the number). They were attended by S. Smith,
F. Horner, Dr. Thomas Brown, Lord Murray, and some of them also by Lord
Webb Seymour, Dr. John Thomson, and Thomas Thomson. The first three
numbers were given to the publisher--he taking the risk and defraying
the charges. There was then no individual editor, but as many of us as
could be got to attend used to meet in a dingy room of Willson's
printing office, in Craig's Close, where the proofs of our own articles
were read over and remarked upon, and attempts made also to sit in
judgment on the few manuscripts which were then offered by strangers.
But we had seldom patience to go through with this; and it was soon
found necessary to have a responsible editor, and the office was pressed
upon me. About the same time Constable was told that he must allow ten
guineas a sheet to the contributors, to which he at once assented; and
not long after, the _minimum_ was raised to sixteen guineas, at which it
remained during my reign. Two-thirds of the articles were paid much
higher--averaging, I should think, from twenty to twenty-five guineas a
sheet on the whole number. I had, I might say, an unlimited discretion
in this respect, and must do the publishers the justice to say that they
never made the slightest objection. Indeed, as we all knew that they had
(for a long time at least) a very great profit, they probably felt that
they were at our mercy. Smith was by far the most timid of the
confederacy, and believed that, unless our incognito was strictly
maintained, we could not go on a day; and this was his object for making
us hold our dark divans at Willson's office, to which he insisted on our
repairing singly, and by back approaches or different lanes! He also had
so strong an impression of Brougham's indiscretion and rashness, that he
would not let him be a member of our association, though wished for by
all the rest. He was admitted, however, after the third number, and did
more work for us than any body. Brown took offense at some alterations
Smith had made in a trifling article of his in the second number, and
left us thus early; publishing at the same time in