On 15 November 1810, William Gifford wrote to George Ellis: ‘– redit labor actus in orbem. The wheel is come round, and we are again in the press. In what state is your first article?’ (QR Letter 68). On 29 December, sending back a review to Walter Scott, he warned him, ‘… you must not keep it beyond a fortnight – our labour, you know, like the husbandman's redit actus in orbem, and I wish to put your review as forward as possible’ (QR Letter 75). On both occasions, Gifford was quoting from Virgil's account in the Georgics of the farmer's year: Redit agricolis labor actus in orbem, ‘The work of farmers, once performed, comes round again’. It was to a classical quotation that Gifford went to encapsulate the recurrent demands of a periodical publication. In so doing, he will have reached not for a dictionary of quotations, but simply into his memory, which like that of many other educated men of the times was well stocked with Latin and (to a lesser extent) Greek phrases which summed up situations, feelings and rules of conduct. Such phrases were convenient resources with which to introduce or drive home a point. Boswell, discussing Johnson's use of quotations, commented that ‘a highly classical phrase [may be used] to produce an instantaneous strong expression’. Editing a quarterly journal involved a seasonal cycle of work which might aptly be compared to that of the husbandman; but even within a season, the editor's dealings with several contributors necessitated the repetition of letters of request, encouragement, reminder or rebuke. It is appropriate, then, that the invocation of Virgil's classical reference to the farmer's round should itself ‘come round again’, made first to Ellis and then to Scott.

The Quarterly Review during Gifford's editorship was published at a time when classical scholarship was still deeply embedded in English high culture, though its authority had declined in the previous two centuries.