Scotland was at the time stirring with an important literary and scientific movement, the productions of the Scotch press were too much ignored by the English literary periodicals, and received inadequate appreciation even in Scotland itself for want of a good critical journal on the spot.  “If countries may be said to have their ages with respect to improvement,” says the preface to the first number of the new Review, “then North Britain may be considered as in a state of early youth, guided and supported by the more mature strength of her kindred country.  If in anything her advances have been such as to make a more forward state, it is in science.”  After remarking that the two obstacles to the literary advancement of Scotland had hitherto been her deficiency in the art of printing and her imperfect command of good English, and that the first of these obstacles had been removed entirely, and the second shown by recent writers to be capable of being surmounted, it proceeds:  “The idea therefore was that to show men at this particular stage of the country’s progress the gradual advance of science would be a means of inciting them to a more eager pursuit of learning, to distinguish themselves and to do honour to their country.”  The editor was Alexander Wedderburn, who afterwards became Lord High Chancellor of England and Earl of Rosslyn, but had in 1755 only just passed as an advocate at the Scotch bar; and the contributors were Robertson, who wrote eight review articles on new historical publications; Blair, who gave one or two indifferent notices of works in philosophy; Jardine, one of the ministers of Edinburgh, who discussed Ebenezer Erskine’s sermons, a few theological pamphlets, and Mrs. Cleland’s Cookery Book; and Adam Smith, who contributed to the first number a review of Dr. Johnson’s Dictionary, and to the second a remarkable letter to the editor proposing to widen the scope of the Review, and giving a striking survey of the state of contemporary literature in all the countries of Europe.  Smith’s two contributions are out of sight the ablest and most important articles the Review published.

He gives a warm and most appreciative welcome to Johnson’s Dictionary, but thinks it would have been improved if the author had in the first place more often censured words not of approved use, and if in the second he had, instead of simply enumerating the several meanings of a word, arranged them into classes and distinguished principal from subsidiary meanings.  Then to illustrate what he wants, Smith himself writes two model articles, one on Wit and the other on Humour, both acute and interesting.  He counts humour to be always something accidental and fitful, the disease of a disposition, and he considers it much inferior to wit, though it may often be more amusing.  “Wit expresses something that is more designed, concerted, regular, and artificial; humour something that is more wild, loose, extravagant, and fantastical; something which comes upon a man by fits which he can neither command nor restrain, and which is not perfectly consistent with true politeness.  Humour, it has been said, is often more diverting than wit; yet a man of wit is as much above a man of humour as a gentleman is above a buffoon; a buffoon, however, will often divert more than a gentleman.”