ORIGIN OF THE "QUARTERLY REVIEW" The publication of a Tory Review was not the result of a sudden inspiration.

The scheme had long been pondered over.

Mr.Canning had impressed upon Mr.Pitt the importance of securing the newspaper press, then almost entirely Whiggish or Revolutionary, on the side of his administration.

To combat, in some measure, the democratic principles then in full swing, Mr.Canning, with others, started, in November 1797, the _Anti-Jacobin, or Weekly Examiner_.
The _Anti-Jacobin_ ceased to be published in 1798, when Canning, having been appointed Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, found his time fully occupied by the business of his department, as well as by his parliamentary duties, and could no longer take part in that clever publication.
Four years later, in October 1802, the first number of the _Edinburgh Review_ was published.

It appeared at the right time, and, as the first quarterly organ of the higher criticism, evidently hit the mark at which it aimed.