Our first number must contain the most valuable and striking information in politics, and the most interesting articles of general literature and science, written by our most able friends.  If our plan appears to be so advantageous to the ministers whose measures, to a certain extent, we intend to justify, to support, to recommend and assist, that they have promised their support; when might that support be so advantageously given, either for their own interests or ours, as at the commencement, when we are most weak, and have the most arduous onset to make, and when we do and must stand most in need of help?  If our first number be not written with the greatest ability, upon the most interesting topics, it will not excite public attention.  No man, even the friend of the principles we adopt, will leave the sprightly pages of the Edinburgh Review to read a dull detail of staid morality, or dissertations on subjects whose interest has long fled.

I do not say this from any, even the smallest doubt, of our having all that we desire in these respects in our power; but because I am apprehensive that without your assistance it will not be drawn into action, and my reason for this fear I will thus submit to you.  You mentioned in your letter to Mr. Gifford, that our Review should open with a grand article on Spain—­meaning a display of the political feeling of the people, and the probable results of this important contest.  I suggested to Mr. Gifford that Mr. Frere should be written to, which he said was easy, and that he thought he would do it; for Frere could not only give the facts upon the subject, but could write them better than any other person.  But having, in my project, given the name of Southey as a person who might assist occasionally in a number or two hence, I found at our next interview that Mr. Gifford, who does not know Mr. Southey, had spoken to a friend to ask Mr. S. to write the article upon Spain.  It is true that Mr. Southey knows a great deal about Spain, and on another occasion would have given a good article upon the subject; but at present his is not the kind of knowledge which we want, and it is, moreover, trusting our secret to a stranger, who has, by the way, a directly opposite bias in politics.

Mr. Gifford also told me, with very great stress, that among the articles he had submitted to you was [one on] Hodgson’s Translation of Juvenal, which at no time could be a very interesting article for us, and having been published more than six months ago, would probably be a very stupid one.  Then, you must observe, that it would necessarily involve a comparison with Mr. Gifford’s own translation, which must of course be praised, and thus show an individual feeling—­the least spark of which, in our early numbers, would both betray and ruin us.  He talks of reviewing himself a late translation of “Persius,” for (entre nous) a similar reason.  He has himself nearly completed a translation, which will be published in a few months.