As soon as the second number was published, Mr. Gifford, whose health was hardly equal to the constant strain of preparing and editing the successive numbers, hastened away, as was his custom, to the seaside.  He wrote to Mr. Murray from Ryde: 

Mr. Gifford to John Murray.

June 18, 1809.

“I rejoice to hear of our success, and feel very anxious to carry it further.  A fortnight’s complete abstraction from all sublunary cares has done me much good, and I am now ready to put on my spectacles and look about me....  Hoppner is here, and has been at Death’s door.  The third day after his arrival, he had an apoplectic fit, from which blisters, etc., have miraculously recovered him....  This morning I received a letter from Mr. Erskine.  He speaks very highly of the second number, and of the Austrian article, which is thought its chief attraction.  Theology, he says, few people read or care about.  On this, I wish to say a word seriously.  I am sorry that Mr. E. has fallen into that notion, too general I fear in Scotland; but this is his own concern.  I differ with him totally, however, as to the few readers which such subjects find; for as far as my knowledge reaches, the reverse is the fact.  The strongest letter which I have received since I came down, in our favour, points out the two serious articles as masterly productions and of decided superiority.  We have taught the truth I mention to the Edinburgh Review, and in their last number they have also attempted to be serious, and abstain from their flippant impiety.  It is not done with the best grace, but it has done them credit, I hear....  When you make up your parcel, pray put in some small cheap ‘Horace,’ which I can no more do without than Parson Adams ex ‘Aeschylus.’  I have left it somewhere on the road.  Any common thing will do.”

Mr. Murray sent Gifford a splendid copy of “Horace” in the next parcel of books and manuscripts.  In his reply Gifford, expostulating, “Why, my dear Sir, will you do these things?” thanked him warmly for his gift.

Mr. George Ellis was, as usual, ready with his criticism.  Differing from Gifford, he wrote: 

“I confess that, to my taste, the long article on the New Testament is very tedious, and that the progress of Socinianism is, to my apprehension, a bugbear which we have no immediate reason to be scared by; but it may alarm some people, and what I think a dull prosing piece of orthodoxy may have its admirers, and promote our sale.”

Even Constable had a good word to say of it.  In a letter to his partner, Hunter, then in London, he said: 

“I received the Quarterly Review yesterday, and immediately went and delivered it to Mr. Jeffrey himself.  It really seems a respectable number, but what then?  Unless theirs improves and ours falls off it cannot harm us, I think.  I observe that Nos. 1 and 2 extend to merely twenty-nine sheets, so that, in fact, ours is still the cheaper of the two.  Murray’s waiting on you with it is one of the wisest things I ever knew him do:  you will not be behindhand with him in civility.”