His object was literary. He wanted to win a
place on the staff of the Edinburgh Review, under the vast shadow
of Lord Macaulay; and, to a young American in 1868, such rank
seemed colossal -- the highest in the literary world -- as it had
been only five-and-twenty years before. Time and tide had flowed
since then, but the position still flattered vanity, though it
brought no other flattery or reward except the regular thirty
pounds of pay -- fifty dollars a month, measured in time and
labor.
The Edinburgh article finished, he set himself to work on a
scheme for the North American Review. In England, Lord Robert
Cecil had invented for the London Quarterly an annual review of
politics which he called the "Session." Adams stole the idea and
the name -- he thought he had been enough in Lord Robert's house,
in days of his struggle with adversity, to excuse the theft --
and began what he meant for a permanent series of annual
political reviews which he hoped to make, in time, a political
authority. With his sources of information, and his social
intimacies at Washington, he could not help saying something that
would command attention. He had the field to himself, and he
meant to give himself a free hand, as he went on. Whether the
newspapers liked it or not, they would have to reckon with him;
for such a power, once established, was more effective than all
the speeches in Congress or reports to the President that could
be crammed into the Government presses.
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