“With regard to the comission which you have given me, it is, I fear, completely out of my power to execute it.  Literature neither resides at Constantinople nor passes through it.  Even were I able to obtain the publications of France and Germany by way of Vienna, the road is so circuitous, that you would have them later than others who contrive to smuggle them across the North Sea.  Every London newspaper that retails its daily sixpennyworth of false reports, publishes the French, the Hamburgh, the Vienna, the Frankfort, and other journals, full as soon as we receive any of them here.  This is the case at all times; at present it is much worse.  We are entirely insulated.  The Russians block up the usual road through Bucharest, and the Servians prevent the passage of couriers through Bosnia.  And in addition to these difficulties, the present state of the Continent must at least interrupt all literary works.  You will not, I am sure, look upon these as idle excuses.  Things may probably improve, and I will not quit this country without commissioning some one here to send you anything that may be of use to so promising a publication as your Review.”

No sooner was one number published, than preparations were made for the next.  Every periodical is a continuous work—­never ending, still beginning.  New contributors must be gained; new books reviewed; new views criticised.  Mr. Murray was, even more than the editor, the backbone of the enterprise:  he was indefatigable in soliciting new writers for the Quarterly, and in finding the books fit for review, and the appropriate reviewers of the books.  Sometimes the reviews were printed before the editor was consulted, but everything passed under the notice of Gifford, and received his emendations and final approval.

Mr. Murray went so far as to invite Leigh Hunt to contribute an article on Literature or Poetry for the Quarterly.  The reply came from John Hunt, Leigh’s brother.  He said: 

Mr. John Hunt to John Murray.

“My brother some days back requested me to present to you his thanks for the polite note you favoured him with on the subject of the Review, to which he should have been most willing to have contributed in the manner you propose, did he not perceive that the political sentiments contained in it are in direct opposition to his own.”

This was honest, and it did not interfere with the personal intercourse of the publisher and the poet.  Murray afterwards wrote to Scott:  “Hunt is most vilely wrong-headed in politics, which he has allowed to turn him away from the path of elegant criticism, which might have led him to eminence and respectability.”

James Mill, author of the “History of British India,” sent an article for the second number; but the sentiments and principles not being in accordance with those of the editor, it was not at once accepted.  On learning this, he wrote to Mr. Murray as follows: