It was conducted by some of the cleverest literary young men in Edinburgh--Jeffrey, Brougham, Sydney Smith, Francis Horner, Dr.
Thomas Brown, and others.

Though Walter Scott was not a founder of the _Review_, he was a frequent contributor.
In its early days the criticism was rude, and wanting in delicate insight; for the most part too dictatorial, and often unfair.

Thus Jeffrey could never appreciate the merits of Wordsworth, Southey, and Coleridge.

"This will never do!" was the commencement of his review of Wordsworth's noblest poem.

Jeffrey boasted that he had "crushed the 'Excursion.'" "He might as well say," observed Southey, "that he could crush Skiddaw." Ignorance also seems to have pervaded the article written by Brougham, in the second number of the _Edinburgh_, on Dr.
Thomas Young's discovery of the true principles of interferences in the undulatory theory of light.