All the talent available was secured. Scott came to town to be present at the birth of the expected prodigy, and well he might, for three of the articles in the first number were his own. Rose, and young Disraeli, and Hookham Frere, and Robert Southey--the future back-bone of the _Review_--were all represented, and on 1st February, 1809, the first number of the _Quarterly Review_ was published. According to tradition there were high jinks at Murray’s shop in Fleet Street when the first numbers arrived from the binders; a triumphal column of the books “was raised aloft in solemn joy in the counting-house, the best wine in the cellar was uncorked, and glasses in hand John Murray and assistants danced jubilant round the pile.” The pile, however, did not long remain, as so many famous columns have done to mock the hope of its builders, but the whole issue was sold almost immediately, and a second edition was called for. To the second number Canning himself contributed, and received his payment of ten guineas per sheet. Barrow, too, was introduced, who contributed, in all, no less than one hundred and ninety-five articles, “on every subject, from ‘China’ to ‘Life Assurance.’” After Barrow and Croker, Southey was, perhaps, the most prolific; to the first hundred and twenty-six numbers he contributed ninety-four articles--many of them of great permanent value--and to him Murray uniformly exhibited a generosity almost without parallel. For an article on the “Lives of Nelson,” he received twenty guineas a sheet, double what Southey himself acknowledged to be ample, and he was offered £100 to enlarge the article into a volume, and having exceeded the estimated quantity of print, Murray paid him double the amount stipulated, adding another 200 guineas when the book was revised for the “Family Library.” For the review of the “Life of Wellington,” Southey got £100, and he thought the sum so large that he himself calls it “a ridiculous price;” yet this ridiculous price he continued to receive, and he was in the habit of saying that he was as much overpaid for his articles by Murray, as he was underpaid for the rest of his work for other publishers. “Madoc,” of which he had great hopes, brought him £3 19_s._ 1_d._ for the first twelvemonth, and the three volumes of the “History of the Brazils,” scarcely paid their expenses of publication. Of the other contributors it is unnecessary to speak fully here; but the _Review_, now that it was established, gave Murray at once a pre-eminence in the London trade, by bringing him into connection with the chief Conservative statesmen, and with the principal literary men in England.