How Mr.Barrow was induced to become a contributor is thus explained in his Autobiography.

[Footnote: "Autobiographical Memoir of Sir John Barrow," Murray, 1847.] "One morning, in the summer of the year 1809, Mr.Canning looked in upon me at the Admiralty, said he had often troubled me on business, but he was now about to ask me a favour.

'I believe you are acquainted with my friend William Gifford ?' 'By reputation,' I said, 'but not personally.' 'Then,' says he, 'I must make you personally acquainted; will you come and dine with me at Gloucester Lodge any day, the sooner the more agreeable--say to-morrow, if you are disengaged ?' On accepting, he said, 'I will send for Gifford to meet you; I know he will be too glad to come.' "'Now,' he continued, 'it is right I should tell you that, in the _Review_ of which two numbers have appeared, under the name of the _Quarterly_, I am deeply, both publicly and personally, interested, and have taken a leading part with Mr.George Ellis, Hookham Frere, Walter Scott, Rose, Southey, and some others; our object in that work being to counteract the _virus_ scattered among His Majesty's subjects through the pages of the _Edinburgh Review_.

Now, I wish to enlist you in our corps, not as a mere advising idler, but as an efficient labourer in our friend Gifford's vineyard.'" Mr.Barrow modestly expressed a doubt as to his competence, but in the sequel, he tells us, Mr.Canning carried his point, and "I may add, once for all, that what with Gifford's eager and urgent demands, and the exercise becoming habitual and not disagreeable, I did not cease writing for the _Quarterly Review_ till I had supplied no less, rather more, than 190 articles." The fourth number of the _Quarterly_, which was due in November, was not published until the end of December 1809.

Gifford's excuse was the want of copy.