The relations between Lord Brougham and Mr. Napier naturally suggest a good many reflections on the vexed question of the comparative advantages of the old and the new theory of a periodical.  The new theory is that a periodical should not be an organ but an open pulpit, and that each writer should sign his name.  Without disrespect to ably conducted and eminent contemporaries of long standing, it may be said that the tide of opinion and favour is setting in this direction.  Yet, on the whole, experience perhaps leads to a doubt whether the gains of the system of signature are so very considerable as some of us once expected.  An editor on the new system is no doubt relieved of a certain measure of responsibility.  Lord Cockburn’s panegyric on the first great editor may show what was expected from a man in such a position as Jeffrey’s.  “He had to discover, and to train, authors; to discern what truth and the public mind required; to suggest subjects; to reject, and, more offensive still, to improve, contributions; to keep down absurdities; to infuse spirit; to excite the timid; to repress violence; to soothe jealousies; to quell mutinies; to watch times; and all this in the morning of the reviewing day, before experience had taught editors conciliatory firmness, and contributors reasonable submission.  He directed and controlled the elements he presided over with a master’s judgment.  There was not one of his associates who could have even held these elements together for a single year....  Inferior to these excellences, but still important, was his dexterity in revising the writings of others.  Without altering the general tone or character of the composition, he had great skill in leaving out defective ideas or words, and in so aiding the original by lively or graceful touches, that reasonable authors were surprised and charmed on seeing how much better they looked than they thought they would” (Cockburn’s Life of Jeffrey, i. 301).

From such toils and dangers as these the editor of a Review with signed articles is in the main happily free.  He has usually suggestions to make, for his experience has probably given him points of view as to the effectiveness of this or that feature of an article for its own purpose, which would not occur to a writer.  The writer is absorbed in his subject, and has been less accustomed to think of the public.  But this exercise of a claim to a general acquiescence in the judgment and experience of a man who has the best reasons for trying to judge rightly, is a very different thing from the duty of drilling contributors and dressing contributions as they were dressed and drilled by Jeffrey.  As Southey said, when groaning under the mutilations inflicted by Gifford on Iris contributions to the Quarterly, “there must be a power expurgatory in the hands of the editor; and the misfortune is that editors frequently think it incumbent on them to use that power merely because they have it” (Southey’s Life, iv. 18).