"This will never do!" said Lord Francis Jeffrey, editor of the quarterly Edinburgh Review, when in 1814 he beheld Poet William Wordsworth's since-famed "The Excursion.'' Editor Jeffrey was typical of the Review's early editors: holding strong opinions, he expressed them strongly. Editor Jeffrey has been dead since 1850; the Edinburgh Review died last week.
Famous men guided the Review on its iconoclastic career. Historian Thomas Babington Macaulay, once the magazine's star reviewer, was known as "chief executioner." Essayist William Hazlitt, Novelist William Makepeace Thackeray, Prophet Thomas Carlyle, Novelist Walter Scott were...
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