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[45] author, thus wrote in 1819 to Sir William Scott: “So great is the call for talents of all sorts in the active use of professional and other business in America, that few of our ablest men have leisure to devote exclusively to literature or the fine arts, or to composition on abstract science. This obvious reason . . . will explain why we have few professional authors and those not among our ablest men.” He then speaks of a “review published in Boston,” and says: “The review is edited by gentlemen young in life, engaged in active business, and who have scarcely a moment of leisure to devote to these pursuits. The latter, too, is voluntary and without profit to themselves.” 1 This referred plainly to the North American Review. The articles which appeared in this Review had a wide influence, in their day, on both political and literary opinion. They were written, as a rule, in what may be called the Southey style, which then predominated in the London quarterlies — an orderly and clear-cut style, not wanting in vigor, but essentially academic. The early articles, if they brought
1 Story's “Life and letters,” I. p. 32.
Macmillan, 1900.
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