own plans....  It will happen fortunately that we intend opening with an article on the missionaries, which, as it will be written in opposition to the sentiments in the Edinburgh Review, is very likely to gain that large body of which Wilberforce is the head.  I have collected from every Missionary Society in London, of which there are no less than five, all their curious reports, proceedings and history, which, I know, Sydney Smith never saw; and which I could only procure by personal application.  Southey will give a complete view of the subject, and if he will enter heartily into it, and do it well, it will be as much as he can do for the first number.  These transactions contain, amidst a great deal of fanaticism, the most curious information you can imagine upon the history, literature, topography and manners of nations and countries of which we are otherwise totally ignorant....  If you have occasion to write to Southey, pray urge the vast importance of this subject, and entreat him to give it all his ability.  I find that a new volume of Burns’ (’The Reliques’) will be published by the end of this month, which will form the subject of another capital article under your hands.  I presume ‘Sir John Carr (Tour in Scotland)’ will be another article, which even you, I fancy, will like; ‘Mrs. Grant of Laggan,’ too, and perhaps your friend Mr. Cumberland’s ‘John de Lancaster’ ....  Are you not sufficiently well acquainted with Miss (Joanna) Baillie, both to confide in her, and command her talents?  If so, you will probably think of what may suit her, and what may apply to her.  Mr. Heber, too, would apply to his brother at your request, and his friend Coplestone, who will also be written to by a friend of Gifford’s....”

Scott was very desirous of enlisting George Canning among the contributors to the Quarterly.  He wrote to his friend Ellis: 

Mr. Scott to Mr. G. Ellis.

“As our start is of such immense consequence, don’t you think Mr. Canning, though unquestionably our Atlas, might for a day find a Hercules on whom to devolve the burden of the globe, while he writes for us a review?  I know what an audacious request this is, but suppose he should, as great statesmen sometimes do, take a political fit of the gout, and absent himself from a large ministerial dinner which might give it him in good earnest—­dine at three on a chicken and pint of wine, and lay the foundation of at least one good article?  Let us but once get afloat, and our labour is not worth talking about; but, till then, all hands must work hard.”

This suggestion was communicated by George Ellis to Gifford, the chosen editor, and on December 1, Murray informed Scott that the article on Spain was proceeding under Mr. Canning’s immediate superintendence.  Canning and Gifford went down to Mr. Ellis’s house at Sunninghill, where the three remained together for four days, during which time the article was hatched and completed.