_Quarterly_. [3] _Cambridge History of English Literature_, V. xii, ch. 6, p. 157 [4] J. G. Lockhart: _Peter’s Letters_, V. ii, p. 61 This first number, October 1802, is as representative as any. Jeffrey wrote the first article, reviewing a book on the causes of the revolution by Mounier, late president of the French National Assembly. There was an article by Francis Horner on “The Paper Credit of Great Britain”; one by Brougham on “The Crisis in the Sugar Colonies”. Another by Jeffrey, a criticism of Southey’s “Thalaba”, indicates the young editor’s intention to live up to the motto of the _Review_:--“_Judex damnatur cum nocens absolvitur_--The Judge is damned when the offender is freed”. With Jeffrey anything new in the world of letters was taboo, and Southey he considered “a champion and apostle” of a school of poetry which was nothing if not new. Quoting him: “Southey is the first of these brought before us for judgment, and we cannot discharge our inquisitorial office conscientiously without pronouncing a few words upon the nature and tendency of the tenets he has helped to propagate”.[5] Notice that Jeffrey uses the term “inquisitorial office”, therein pleading guilty to the very attitude of which Lockhart accused him, and in opposition to which in _Blackwood’s Magazine_ he later took such a decided stand, offending how similarly, we are later to discover. [5] _Cambridge History of English Literature_, V. xii, ch. 6, p. 159 Lockhart admired Jeffrey and praised his talents; it was the use to which he put those talents that Lockhart assailed. The following words of Lockhart’s own, even though tinged with that exaggerated vindictiveness so characteristic of him, give a pretty fair idea of the attitude he and all the Blackwood group took against Jeffrey and the _Edinburgh Review_; and shows the spirit underlying the rivalry that took root before ever _Blackwood’s Magazine_ existed and prevailed for ever after. “Endowed by nature with a keen talent for sarcasm (Jeffrey, that is) nothing could be more easy for him than to fasten, with the destructive effect of nonchalance upon a work which had perhaps been composed with much earnestness of thought on the part of the author.... The object of the critic, however, is by no means to assist those who read his critical lucubrations, to enter with more facility, or with better preparation into the thoughts or feelings or truths which his author endeavors to inculcate or illustrate. His object is merely to make the author look foolish; and he prostitutes his own fine talents, to enable the common herd”[6]--to look down upon the deluded author who is victim of the _Review_. This is what Lockhart considered Jeffrey to be doing, and he was not alone in his opinion. It is to be remembered, however, that Lockhart’s attitude was always more tense, keener, and a little more bitter than others’, yet his words better than any one else’s sound the keynote of the deadly