Note 657 — THE LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D. (continued 4)

Stockdale (Memoirs, ii. 57) says that, in 1770, the payment to writers in the Critical Review was two guineas a sheet, but that some of the writers in The Monthly Review received four guineas a sheet. As these Reviews were octavos, each sheet contained sixteen pages. Lord Jeffrey says that the writers in the Edinburgh Review were at first paid ten guineas a sheet. 'Not long after the minimum was raised to sixteen guineas, at which it remained during my reign, though two-thirds of the articles were paid much higher—averaging, I should think, from twenty to twenty-five guineas a sheet on the whole number.' Cockburn's Jeffrey, i. 136.