Chapter XLIV
John Murray—Share in Marmion—Reverence for Scott—The Quarterly Review—The ‘Cevallos’ Article—Jeffrey’s Pessimism—Contemplated Flight to America—Anecdotes of Earl of Buchan.
When Constable had concluded his arrangement with Scott, he followed a usual and prudent practice in offering fourth shares of the adventure to two other booksellers. They agreed, and their reply added, ‘We both view it as honourable, profitable, and glorious to be concerned in the publication of a new poem by Walter Scott.’ The writer of these words was John Murray, of Fleet Street, a young bookseller already of some note. Murray, as a keen business man, had evidently an eye to see and a mind that could grasp the future. He was aware that the Edinburgh Review was the great source and support of Constable’s fortunes. Knowing also that Scott, though a Tory, was an important contributor to the Review, ne seems to have been on the watch for the time when, as he acutely anticipated, some occasion of rupture would emerge. He told Lockhart long after that when he read the review of Marmion and the political article in the same number, he said to himself—‘Walter Scott has feelings both as a gentleman and a Tory, which these people must now have wounded; the alliance between him and the whole clique of the Review, its proprietor included, is now shaken.’ With the same sagacity, he pushed his advances towards Scott by the medium of James Ballantyne. Murray came north in person, visited Scott at Ashestiel, and learned that, as he had expected, the disruption had begun. Scott had, in fact, been so disgusted with an article in the twenty-sixth number entitled ‘Don Cevallos on the Usurpation of Spain,’ that he had written to Constable withdrawing his subscription and saying, ‘The Edinburgh Review had become such as to render it impossible for me to continue a contributor to it.—Now, it is such as I can no longer continue to receive or read it.’ Mr. Cadell, one of Constable’s partners, mentions that the list of the then subscribers exhibits, in an indignant dash of Constable’s pen opposite Scott’s name, the word ‘STOPT!!!’ The opportunity was a good one for advancing Murray’s views. Before the end of the year some unguarded words of Mr. Hunter, Constable’s junior partner, made the breach complete. We find Scott writing about ‘folks who learn to undervalue the means by which they have risen,’ and Constable stamping his foot and saying, ‘Ay, there is such a thing as rearing the oak until it can support itself.’ The result of all this, as concerns Scott, was that he eagerly entered into Murray’s plans for establishing a rival Review, and that he carried out a scheme, ‘begun’ (Lockhart admits) ‘in the short-sighted heat of pique,’ of starting a new bookselling house in Edinburgh, another rival to Constable.
Murray’s new Review was the Quarterly. The first number came out in February 1809, and was quite sufficient to prove that the Edinburgh was now to have a powerful competitor, and Jeffrey to find in Gifford a ‘foeman worthy of his steel.’ The idea of the Quarterly was precisely that which had guided the projectors of its rival, ‘to be conducted totally independent of bookselling influence, on a plan as liberal as that of the Edinburgh, its literature as well supported, and its principles English and constitutional.’ A great deal was, naturally enough, said at the time about the political excesses of the Edinburgh Review as having caused the introduction of the Quarterly. But there was no need to justify it on such grounds. Lord Cockburn in his Life of Jeffrey sums up the argument with equal fairness and good sense when he says, ‘It was not this solitary article’ (the ‘Cevallos’) ‘that produced the rival journal. Unless the public tone and doctrines (of the Edinburgh Review) had been positively reversed, or party politics altogether excluded, a periodical work in defence of Church, Tory, and War principles, must have arisen; simply because the defence of these principles required it. The defence was a consequence of the attack. And it is fortunate that it was so. For besides getting these opinions fairly discussed, the party excesses natural to any unchecked publication were diminished; and a work arose which, in many respects, is an honour to British literature, and has called out, and indirectly reared, a great variety of the highest order of talent.’
Jeffrey himself, in writing to Horner for opinions of the new Quarterly, disavows with creditable spirit any unworthy jealousy or fear. He recognises the merit of the work, ‘inspired, compared with the poor prattle of Cumberland,’ and admits that his ‘natural indolence would have been better pleased not to be always in sight of an alert and keen antagonist.’ But at the same time he rejoices in the idea of seeing magazine literature improved, and congratulates himself on having set the example.
Lord Cockburn expressly states that Jeffrey was himself the writer of the unfortunate Cevallos article. It is curious and interesting, but not so very surprising, to find an earnest and far-seeing man like Jeffrey taking so despondent a view of British prospects in the Peninsula. It must be remembered that the great burst of enthusiasm in this country over the national rising of Spain against Napoleon was really, as every one now knows, founded upon ignorance and exaggeration. It was Jeffrey’s chief crime that he ventured to doubt the patriotism and efficiency of the Spaniards. He could not, of course, foresee what the genius of Wellington was to effect, and he undoubtedly expected that Napoleon would enter Ireland soon; ‘and then’ (he asks) ‘how is England to be kept?’ Looking upon the conquest of the whole continent by France as a practical certainty, he was for peace at any price, and non-interference whatever happened elsewhere. It was his intention when the catastrophe came, to try to go to America. ‘I hate despotism and insolence so much, that I could bear a great deal rather than live here under Frenchmen and such wretches as will at first be employed by them.’
Such cold fears and calculations were apt to make his writings distasteful in those excited times. The Cevallos article, in which he flatly expressed despair of the vaunted ‘regeneration’ of Spain, capped the whole. About twenty-five ‘persons of consideration’ in Edinburgh forbade the Review to enter their doors. The Earl of Buchan, a rather vain and foolish character at the best, did more. He ordered the door of his house in George Street to be set wide open, and the offending number to be laid down on the lobby floor. Then, when all was ready, his lordship solemnly kicked the volume out into the street.
In Scott’s Journal, April 20, 1829, the death of this eccentric person is noticed: ‘Lord Buchan is dead, a person whose immense vanity, bordering upon insanity, obscured, or rather eclipsed, very considerable talents.... I felt something at parting with this old man, though but a trumpery body. He gave me the first approbation I ever obtained from a stranger. His caprice had led him to examine Dr. Adam’s class when I, a boy twelve years old, and then in disgrace for some aggravated case of negligence, was called up from a low bench, and recited my lesson with some spirit and appearance of feeling the poetry (it was the apparition of Hector’s ghost in the Aeneid) amid the noble Earl’s applause. I was very proud of this at the time.’