Volume 1 - Electric Scotland

IDEAL CONDUCT OF A MAGAZINE. 409
then to you, so that you may have the advantage of their con-
fidential opinion in addition to your own judgment. For I shall
instruct Mr Davies to communicate his opinion of it to you,
and not to me, in order that he may not be withheld by any
feeling of delicacy from expressing the whole of his mind should
it be unfavourable to the scheme, whether more or less.
Of this scheme part will, of course, be private, for your own
eye, not that of the public : but the far larger portion will be
produced in a sort of Letter or Essay on the Desiderata of a
Magazine, and should you approve of the contents, I propose
that you should annex to it a declaration of your perfect assent
to the sentiments of your correspondent, and a sort of promise
that the proprietors are determind to conduct their Magazine
on the same principle to the best of their power. If either the
scheme be rejected or my co-operation in the realisation of the
same not agreed to, I then rely on your honour that no use shall
be made of the same, but that it shall be sent back to me.
Let us then for a moment suppose the plan to have received
your approbation and concurrence, and that I first supplied you
monthly to the extent of two sheets, one article of which shall
be (so far as my comparative talents and genius make it possible
or probable) equivalent to the leading article in the ' Edinburgh
or * Quarterly ' Eeviews (by leading, I mean that one article
which is expected to be most talked of, as for instance, several of
Mr Southey's in the ' Quarterly '), and that I shall be at all times
ready to give my best advice and opinion with regard to the
other parts of the Magazine, to be, as it were, your London
editor or curator, and to exert my interest among my literary
friends not V)eing professional authors, to procure communications,
to re- enliven for this purpose my correspondence abroad with
several valued friends of mine who are of highest rank among
the foreign Literati—in short, to give to the ' Edinburgh Maga-
zine' the whole weight of my interest, name, and character,
whatever they may be. What shall you consider as a due remuneration
? Suppose that I shall write the first of June, and
that every three months you are at liberty to reconsider the
terms according as your experience may have been.
You may either attach the whole to the nominal price of
the sheets furnished, or make the remuneration depend part
'