Paternoster Row Forty Years Ago

Originally published in The Bookman (Hodder & Stoughton) vol.1 #1 (Oct 1891).

The collapse of the old firm of Groombridge and Sons starts one thinking of Paternoster-row as it was forty years ago. In the corner of Panyer-alley old Mr. Groombridge was a well-known figure, and a comfortable business he and his sons—counterparts of the father—carried on, but the day of good Scotch agencies has passed, and the old firm had for a long time been going, and has now gone. What wonderful changes have taken place on the same side of the way since Groombridge and Sons were agents for the Christian Treasury and Hogg's Instructor, etc. The Scottish publishers of the former, Messrs. Johnstone and Hunter, once a prosperous house, subsequently had a branch establishment not far off (under the management of Mr. Theobald, formerly trade manager of the Religious Tract Society, and Mr. Dalgleish, now of the firm of Dobbs, Kidd and Co.), but the firm has long since passed away. Close to Panyer-alley, Messrs. Aylott and Jones, two much respected members of the trade, conducted a wholesale bookselling business, but their capital was not sufficient to compete with the larger houses. A few doors lower down, the part-publishing establishment of Mr. Alderman Kelly stood, but the palmy days of the canvassing trade have ceased. Within a short distance were three second-hand book stores, viz., Messrs, Ives and Swan, Mr. Ebenezer Palmer, and Mr. Richard Baynes. The last named, perhaps equally well known as "Dicky Baynes," was a well-known "character"; he was succeeded by Mr. Alexander Heylin, who combined publishing with second-hand bookselling—unsuccessfully.
        At the corner of Ivy-lane Messrs. Sherwood, Gilbert and Piper conducted a wholesale bookselling business in an old building which gave place to the excellent premises of Messrs. Kent and Richards, their successors. Two other firms close by have disappeared, that of Wertheim and Mackintosh and Hall, Virtue and Co.; this last-named firm was at one time the publishers of the popular prophetical works of Dr. Cumming, and the first work of Rev. C.H. Spurgeon, 'The Saint and his Saviour,' now published a few doors off, in premises on the site of which formerly stood the house of Ward and Trego, a celebrated theological business, where the Evangelical Magazine, Eclectic Review, etc., were published for many years. The partners have long since been dead, but Mr. Trego's respected manager, Mr. J.C. Crisp, is still living. The business was bought by Jackson, Walford and Hodder, who removed from St. Paul's Churchyard (the premises were rebuilt by the present firm, Messrs. Hodder and Stoughton). Their near neighbours were Messrs. Partridge and Oakey, the enterprising publishers of a three-volume 4to edition of Matthew Henry's Commentary; and Mr. John Snow, who published the Christian Witness and the Christian Penny Magazine. Mr. Snow, who only recently passed away, was succeeded by his son and his assistant, Mr. Gogerly, who removed to Ivy-lane, nearly opposite to the old-established house of the founder of Messrs. Virtue and Co.'s business, and where a few years previously Mrs. Virtue (all honour to her) took an active part behind the counter.
        On the site now occupied by Messrs. Nelson and Son, stood a large wholesale drug business, which, like the soap store on the other side of the way, had to "clear out" in favour of the literary lords of creation! It was a great satisfaction to the bookmen of "the Row" when Messrs. Knight and Co., the soap boilers, took their departure. Such good neighbours as Messrs. Hitchcock, Williams and Co. close by could be readily tolerated, for it has been affirmed, with some truth, that they were dealers in the same articles as some producers of old divinity—"dry goods"!
        Of old-established firms on that side of the Row no longer to be found, there may be named that of Messrs. Duncan and Malcolm, where Messrs. Blackwood and Sons' premises now stand, and the almost forgotten but important house in its day of Messrs. Baldwin, Cradock and Joy. Just beyond the premises now occupied by Mr. Elliot Stock, and formerly by Mr. B.L. Green and Mr. H.J. Tresidder, was the shop of Messrs. Houlston and Stoneman. An interesting fact connected with this house is that Mr. Worster, who has survived both his old employers, is still identified with Messrs. Houlston and Sons in Paternoster-square, having been connected with the same business for sixty-two years.
        On either side of Paternoster-row was found a rendezvous for literary men—authors and publishers—but "The Chapter Coffee House" and "Dolly's Chop House" belong to a day that is past, and their place has not been supplied elsewhere.

Behind a Bookseller's Counter

Originally published in The Bookman (Hodder & Stoughton) vol.1 #1 (Oct 1891).

It seems rather a sad thing to say that in spite of all the Reviewers who review books, and all the Critics who criticise them, the public are generally bewildered by the multitude of their advisers as to what books they should buy. Now what should they do? Why, go to their bookseller and ask his advice, and I am glad to say they do. I am very sorry for the reviewers, and I am sure they would be sorry for themselves to find that in spite of all their proffered help to the reading public, the bookseller is assailed all day long with the query, What have you got new? Many booksellers pin their faith to the Athenæum, but, as a rule, a bookseller's judgment of a book is arrived at by a process unknown to the reviewer, and I hardly think it is my business to detail that process here. It may, however, be sufficient to say that before a book is published an early copy is submitted to him, and after glancing at the volume, he is very quickly able to say whether the book promises to be a success. Of course he is frequently wrong, but, as a rule, a bookseller never makes a mistake in purchasing too many copies of a book. Now this brings me back to the reviewer. We frequently find elaborate reviews of a book which bring the customer to the point of purchasing the volume, but alas for the wasted efforts of the reviewer, the price of the book is found to be quite beyond the means of the purchaser. Now why in the name of common sense does not the reviewer mention the price of the book? It can be very easily ascertained, and be the means of saving the reader and the bookseller a great deal of trouble.
        It was said at one time that a review in the Times was sufficient to carry off an edition, but these days have gone, if they ever existed. It still has a considerable influence on the sale of the book, and I had an experience the other day which will show its power. A customer called and said that there was a book reviewed in the Times that morning, he could not remember the name of the book, and on being questioned as to the subject-matter of the book, he could not remember that either, but all the same he wished a copy of the book. My experience taught me that there had been some happy phrase or sentence in the review which had caught my customer's eye, and that was quite sufficient to cause a craving for the volume. The Spectator is particularly happy in this way, and a short review there is frequently more successful in creating a demand for a book than a lengthy notice with nothing particular in it, or minus one of those felicitous expressions which immediately rivet a reader's attention.

*                *                *                *                *

        There is no doubt that the year 1891, so far as it has gone, has been a very indifferent one for the booksellers. There has been a want of any conspicuous book to give a spurt to business. It is a curious fact that one single good book is quite sufficient to make a good season. The knowledge that there is a book of thrilling interest on the bookseller's shelves exerts a magnetic power on a book-buyer in causing him to wend his steps towards that book, and the purchase of that one book leads to his being the possessor of a considerable parcel, to his intense surprise, but to the delight of the bookseller. We now want something to "boom," as

                "The Rudyards have ceased from Kipling,
                And the Haggards Ride no more."

We are now all anxiously waiting for the coming season, but as yet there is not much sign of any good thing. But as the "unexpected usually happens," there may be something in store for us which will make our hearts rejoice.

*                *                *                *                *

        Many booksellers now say that bookselling is on the decline, and they point to the diminishing number of booksellers in town and country. Others, again, that there are more books sold now than thirty or forty years ago, and I think this opinion is the correct one. Bookselling may be in a smaller number of hands, but the output of the publishers is still a tremendous one, and it must filter through the booksellers in some way. It is an exceedingly pleasant and delightful business, but it doesn't answer for a bookseller to be too much of a "bookworm," as he must study the commercial as well as the literary aspect of a book if he is to be regarded as a successful man of business. But I fear "the trade" is not attracting the best men within its borders, or if they do come in they are generally in a hurry to get outside again. There has, however, sprung up quite recently in London a spirit of "camaraderie," which promises to have great influence in knitting the trade together and restoring a better feeling than has hitherto prevailed.

Δ

Introductory

by Leonard Lloyd (uncredited).

Originally published in The Poet's Magazine (Leonard Lloyd) vol.1 #1 (Aug 1876).

                "The Poets' Magazine!" an open door!
                Setting for newest gems, uncut before,
                Of latent Wit and Humour! We divine,
                With rod of potency! to spring a mine,
                Fertile in beauty, genius, and power,
                Illumined pages: sunny with a shower
                Of sweet poetic fancies! We give birth
                To thoughts profound, to jeu d'esprits of mirth,
                To lover's lays—so they be not too long—
                To true iambics, and all forms of song
                That can delight the ear, and rouse the soul,
                And boast a certain harmony of roll.
                To earn a welcome—it shall be our creed,
                To help the aspirant—till he succeed;
                And not to "bend, or break, a bruiséd reed."
                Welcome us kindly—if we interpose,
                And ask admittance, 'midst the Monthly Prose,
                Who shall forbid us? sailing in the wake,
                Now we at last a Poets' Corner take,

A Few Words at Starting

Originally published in Sharpe's London Magazine (Thomas Bowdler Sharpe) vol.1 #1 (01 Nov 1845).

We do not feel that much apology is necessary for the attempt we are about to make, to add one to the number of those caterers for the literary appetite of the day, who spread out their stores at regularly recurring intervals to catch the public eye. In all those cases in which the appearance of the applicant for favour is really an intrusion, uncalled for and unwelcome, the process of putting him down (being nothing more than merely letting him alone) is at once so simple and so effectual, gives so little trouble, and does the business so thoroughly, that it amounts to a tax upon the public good-nature sufficiently slight to admit of its being easily pardoned, even though it should be rather unceremoniously imposed. If, however, we must needs, for the sake of good manners, offer some apology, it shall be much about what we should suppose a tradesman to say in justification of his opening a shop in a crowded thoroughfare:—"No doubt there are many shops, but there is also a large demand. The world is becoming fuller every day, and the article in which I deal is getting more and more into request. Why should not I find customers as well as another, if I only give them as good an article for their money as he does?"
        In this "if," lies the pinch of the case; for it cannot be denied, that there are already articles in the market, with which it would not be prudent rashly to challenge a comparison. It is, besides, precisely the point on which it least becomes him to speak, upon whom the task of introducing a publication of this kind by a preliminary notice generally devolves. A tradesman may commend his own wares without incurring the charge of presumption or bad taste; but the literary workman has no such privilege. Diligence and good intention are the utmost to which he can be permitted to pledge himself beforehand. Of his ability to command the other qualities requisite to render his commodity attractive, he is seldom a competent judge; and it is, therefore, a point of prudence with him to be silent on a subject on which his opinion would not carry much weight. The world has become sufficiently knowing in these matters, to refuse to accept the expression either of confidence or of humility, as a sure indication of the possession of powers to command success. If the former is too often the offspring of presumption and ignorance, the latter, where it is genuine, is just as likely to be nothing better than the mere outleaking of unretentive conscious dulness. Silence, in these circumstances, is the wisest and most dignified course. Readers very soon discover for themselves what they ought to think; and promises made at starting are speedily forgotten amid the realities of actual Performance.
        Our Publisher has informed the world already, in the announcement circulated by him, that his object has been "to furnish a publication which shall supply the general reader with matter of an amusing and instructive character, for the hours of recreation." We do not know that we can add much to this description of the purpose of this publication. That it points to what has now become one of the imperative wants of society, which must somehow or other be supplied, no man of common observation is ignorant; nor are we at all disposed to question that the want is, in many quarters, and from many sources, very worthily supplied. But the desire of knowledge is an appetite which grows by what it feeds on. The more it is gratified, the more insatiable becomes its craving. Wherever it is planted, it carries a living generative principle within it, unceasingly tending to an indefinite increase. The more thoroughly a publication of this kind succeeds, the more impossible does it become, that it should occupy alone the field which it has opened up. Its power of gratifying the hungry cravings which it is waking up around it, is bounded by limits, moral, intellectual, mechanical,—while these cravings are unbounded in the extent of their increase, and in the diversified character of their objects. The man who first stirs up the inert soil of his neighbour's mind, and sets him a thinking, may perhaps be able, unaided, to keep up for him a constant supply of materials, suited to his temperament and intellectual character, on which to exercise his thoughts. But he who does the same service for twenty or a hundred men, each of whom has his own peculiar turn of mind, will most infallibly fail in the attempt to furnish them all with intellectual food of which they can continue to make a profitable use. And when we consider that each man, in whom the desire of knowledge is awakened, carries about with him an atmosphere which transmits it like a contagion to the circle around him; that each of these in turn, as soon as infected, forms the centre of a circle, from which the like influence radiates to every point on its circumference; and soon, in endless geometrical progression; it becomes manifest, that we shall far sooner reach the limit of our power to supply the demand for intellectual sustenance, than we shall that of the demand itself.
        The growing development of this particular form of publication—the Periodical—and the increasing variety of subjects to which it is becoming adapted, are a necessary consequence of the extension of a literary taste beyond the class of merely literary men. The professional student, whose business lies in his books, can afford time to dig for his necessary knowledge through the bowels of the most ponderous folios, and finds in the fruit of his labours a sufficient reward for his toil. But thousands have now been taught to regard knowledge as a necessary, whose pursuit of it can be followed only by snatches, at intervals of relaxation from their ordinary business and labour; and to these, this mode, desultory and fragmentary though it is, of presenting it, prepared and trimmed for immediate use, the husk removed, the shell broken, and the kernel ready for mastication, is as indispensable as the daily supply of the common necessaries of life. Their Magazine must come to their doors as regularly as their milk or their beer.
        The knowledge which publications of this kind disseminate may be compared to a fountain, far hid among the mountains, which can only be reached, after much painful and toilsome travel, by a few; to render it available to the multitude, reservoirs must be formed, and pipes laid, which carry it to every man's door, to be drawn off as he needs it, without waste of time, expense of labour, or hindrance to his regular employments. We claim only to be allowed to insert our pipe into the general reservoir, and so to share in the work of distribation of the precious element. There is little danger that all of us together shall either exhaust the fountain, or deluge the world with an overabundant supply.
        A single word may be necessary as to the principle on which me propose that this Magazine shell be conducted, We intend its contents to be as diversified in character as may be found practicable, furnishing something to gratify all tastes, except such as we cannot stoop to gratify without degrading ourselves. Original essays, tales, articles descriptive of objects antiquarian or historical interest, will be interspersed with translations from approved foreign authors, and occasional notices of, and interesting extracts from, English publications not generally accessible. And to the lovers of poetry we think we can promise contributions in that department, to which they will not disdain to grant more than one perusal.
        We should be sorry to allow any reader to rise from the perusal of these remarks, with the impression that we had no moral purpose in view in this undertaking, although we have not attempted formally to obtrude it upon his notice. We are, we trust, sensible of the responsibility which attaches to every man, who takes upon him to address the world though the press, and who thus sets in motion an agency, whose effects nay be immeasurably out of proportion to his individual capacity or personal importance. We wish to instruct es well as amuse; to instruct while we amuse; so to amuse that our readers shall be wiser and happier for the enjoyment we may afford them. Disclaiming all intention of usurping the chair of the appointed religious teacher, we trust so to regulate our undertaking, that the reader of this Magazine will find it to deepen in his mind the impression, that religion and pure morality are the sources of our truest happiness—the foundations of one highest hopes. Having no party views, we have no intention of addressing ourselves to the limited sympathies of any particular class. We shall find more pleasure in dwelling upon those views of our present condition and future hopes, which afford to all of us a common ground for our sympathies to rest upon, than upon those which may be suggestive of topics of contention and animosity.
        No pact of our projected plan is contemplated by us with more interest and satisfaction, than that which holds it out as intended to furnish employment for "hours of recreation;" for it suggests that we shall be engaged in lightening the burden of labour; in conveying some portion of the more elevated enjoyments of life within the reach of men whose condition is, too generally, one of unmingled toil and privation; and thus contributing to sweeten the lot and brighten the hopes of those whose stalwart limbs, if we view tho matter aright, are the main pillars on which the structure of society rests.

On the Idleness of Authors

by Oliver Medley.

Originally published in Knight's Quarterly Magazine (Charles Knight & Co.) vol.1 #2 (1823).

        It is now the twelfth day of September;—and having been under a solemn pledge for fourteen weeks to write a paper or two for the second number of that excellent and most punctual Periodical, the Quarterly Magazine, I propose to discharge the obligation by a treatise on the idleness of Authors.
        Delightful characteristic of our tribe!—ennobling privilege of our calling, which alone sets us above opera-dancers and political economists!—little understood and much abused germ of all intellectual excellence!—thou solace of poets and terror of publishers!—how shall I give thee 'honour due'! In the bower where I am sitting, with a murmuring voice amongst the trees and a bottle of cider on the table, I would 'muse' thy 'praise' in 'expressive silence,'—but the editor forbids, and I must write.
        Not a line for an hour!—Well, sir, who shall presume to question the employment of those fleeting minutes?—Say that I have been half asleep—or mending my pen—or gazing upon the light clouds gathering up into a soaking afternoon—is not this employment? Who can say how many brilliant thoughts, and lofty hopes, and satisfying remembrances, have crossed my brain in this brief space?—Thoughts, and hopes, and remembrances, that may be the food of my pen for a long series of years. But I have not been idle, sir. I have been contemplating the death of a dozen wasps that 'tangled their sweet wings' in an author's cider. And was there no mental food in such an act? I have absolutely exhausted, in this occupation, every possible image of blind and presumptuous man, quaffing excitements above his nature, and so maddening onwards to destruction—of vain and giddy youth trembling on the edge of pleasure's gulf, and soon perishing in the poison of his lawless enjoyments. I have thought of Rousseau raving in the frenzy of his morbid sensibility, and of "maudlin Clarence in his Malmsey butt;"—I have thought of—but I will think again of what I have thought.
        Of all the abominable prejudices of the abominable world of realities, the most abominable is the belief that the gentlemen of the "irritabile genus" are bound to take their seats at a mahogany desk as the clock strikes ten, and there patiently fill six sheets of foolscap before dinner. To the British with all editors, and to the Gazette with all publishers, who dare to approach the shrine of Talent with such atrocious profaneness. I would rather be shut up in the cell of Rembrandt, to study chiaro-scuro by two inches of sun-light—I would rather mature my philosophy with the fifteen pipes of Hobbes of Malmesbury—I would rather take the pudding and potatoes of Sir Richard Phillips, to produce on a Saturday night my fifty solid pages of ink and paste—I would rather live upon Otway's roll or Chatterton's stale tart—than write for a trader in literature who should expect such preposterous exertions. I will write when I am in the vein, but I will never write six regular hours a day, even for the rewards of a Southey or a Scott. I will write, like Pliny, between the courses of his feast—I will write, like Henry Stephens, when he divided the Bible into verses—I will write, like Steele, when he rambled out to an ale-house to indite five guineas' worth of polities—I will write, like Pope, when he walked up Binfield Hill, and translated 'the Dying Christian,' while Bernard Lintot held his horse—I will write, like Johnson, when he got up Rasselas in three nights, to pay for his mother's funeral—I will write, like Jeffrey, when he sits down in his drawing-room suit of green and gray, to discuss the poetry o' midnight before the brief of breakfast—I will write, like Brougham, after an early division or a sober assize dinner—I will write, like Moore, perpetrating poetic theology between his meridian sheets—I will write, like Hazlitt, when he wants ten guineas to remove from the uncourteous visitors who sometimes preside over his Penates. I will write in bed, in the fields, in a balloon, in a boat, in a coach, in a lecture-room, in a mob, in a picture-gallery, in the gallery of the House of Commons, in the stage-box—but I will never write at a mahogany desk from ten o'clock till four.
        Courteous reader, judge me charitably, when I avow that I have had this article for six weeks in hand, and during those forty-two days have no tangible labours to record, but the perusal of 'Guy Mannering' for the seventeenth time, and the first Canto of 'La Belle Tryamour' for the twenty-fifth. Am I therefore idle?
        Would that [ kept a diary to shame the foul insinuation. Alas! I never bought a charming little book at Taylor and Hessey's, as innocent and as blank as Fanny's mind, called 'the Student's Journal?' But you shall have some of my most vivid recollections of these fleeting weeks, and you shall then pronounce upon my industry.
        I had dedicated a day to the real idleness of committing to paper a tardily-discovered maze of profound investigations, and had closed the outer oak of my chambers in Hare Court, when a formidable knocking, which distinctly affirmed that the oak spake not the truth, made me prepare myself for a morning of labour. I knew that it was the touch of Shafto. Now Shafto, with the ignorant, has the reputation of being the idlest fellow in town; but the accusation is a foul falsehood. It is true, that Shafto can never be induced to perform his morning ablutions, till he has spent three hours over the newspaper;—but then he takes such a vivid interest in every passing event—his political sagacity is built upon such an accurate knowledge of the strength of parties and the calibre of statesmen—his taste in matters of art is so indisputable—and he has such a critical acquaintance with the stars of the theatrical hemisphere—that you feel that it is the proper business of Shafto's life—not to trim his beard by twelve o'clock, or to make an attempt to 'be lucky in his tie'—but to gossip till the tea is as cold as the leading article of the Times, about Canning and Brougham, Chantrey and Haydon, Macready and Miss Foote, Wednesday's Almacks and Friday's execution. At length we sallied out for a day of business; we had to examine some papers at the British Museum. Shafto, however, is a greater lover of art than of science—so we did not get that day beyond the Elgin Marbles, which we worshipped for five hours; and talked of the Parthenon, and the length of the Peireian walls, and the new church at Pancras, and the decay of architecture in Great Britain—and then we came back to the Museum, and abused the trustees, and pathetically harangued upon the necessity of a more liberal admission to students—and placed the Royal Library in the Mews—and deplored the custom of money-taking to see the monuments at Westminster and the Lions in the Tower—and praised Mr. Croker—and laughed at Mr. Bankes—and thought that Haydon, the historical painter, was not much greater than Vandyke the portrait-painter—and—but I shall at some future time publish Shafto's conversations on art, and I will not anticipate. Was this idleness?
        I had devoted another day to the small industry of penmanship, when in stalked my fat friend Buttercup. It is impossible to describe the fascination of this prince of good fellows. He is not quite so lively as Vyvyan, but then he has more gusto in his ribaldry—he is not quite so witty as Falstaff, but then he has more activity in his punches of your ribs. I resigned myself to another day of labour;—for I never could completely understand the secret of Buttercup's success in setting the table in a roar. After my second bottle, at twelve o'clock at night, I discovered it was all manner. Was this idleness?
        I went into the country, that I might earn my ten guineas in peace. In a fortunate hour, I met with Gerard Montgomery: he was, as the world would say, remarkably industrious. We agreed to work together. The rain of the summer had passed away, and it was succeeded by fresh and bracing mornings, noons in which the sun poured down its fervent heat upon the ripening sheaves of the late harvest, and evenings in which the twilight came prematurely on, with a mist that dimly shadowed the moon which scarcely mounted above the horizon. I wanted amazingly to shoot, but I was determined to write; and Gerard and I walked duly forth in this sweet season, to write in company. We sat under a gnarled oak, and looked upon the grey towers of Windsor, and the broad masses of its forest;—the fawn and the deer suggested many a feeling of tenderness and beauty—the falling leaves told us many a lesson of truth in far deeper poetry than Mr. Rogers' Human Life. We felt inspired in "the Monarch's and the Muses' seats;" but Gerard's inspiration went off in giddy rhymes, and mine remained in sage but untranslateable reveries. Yet I was busy in the study of human nature; and I learned a few most important lessons of intellectual evolutions. I have seen, as I watched Gerard's impassioned countenance, the infancy of a thought, struggling into energy in its perilous contest with the fetters of a rhyme, and at last triumphing in the maturity of a stanza. I mean to be Montgomery's Boswell, and no temptation of writing a dull essay for sordid gain shall draw me from the golden glorious opportunity of gathering materials for my Note Book. Is this idleness?
        After a fortnight's experience, I found that I could not write prose in the society of a poet. I had Davenant to fly to; and we agreed to be the Beaumont and Fletcher of philosophy and criticism for No. II. On the first morning of our resolution, we were a little hipped: we considered that gymnastics might improve our metaphysics, and played at leapfrog for a full hour. We were languid and weary, and in the desire to go to our work brightly, we slept till one: we then rubbed our pens, and assorted our spotless quire of delicate paper; but Davenant had first to be delivered of a theory on the supernatural creations of Shakspeare, and this carried us to Racine and Voltaire, Aristotle and Confucius; a slight dissertation on the merits of the Italian Platonists led us to Germany, and we ended, as the candles were brought, with Kant and Jacob Behmen. Was this idleness?
        I then resolved (in compassion to the unhappy editor, who wrote to me by every post) to take a skiff, and skulling down the Thames to some solitary creek, finish my half sheet, and have done with him. How delightfully I lay in the bottom of my little boat, watching the swallows gathering about the willow banks, and thinking unutterable things about their mysterious instincts;—how I listened to the distant eddy of the mill-stream, which terminated my tranquil creek—how—I looked back to my boyish days, with its cares that were past, and its friendships that the world had scared away;—how I jumped up, for I found the half sheet was going on badly. At the bottom of the boat lay a fishing-red. I was ever a lover of angling, that is, ever since I read Isaac Walton; and I resolved upon an hour of the "contemplative man's recreation." I stayed in the creek "till the evening star shone in its silent depth," and I carried home, in the proud satisfaction of having earned my supper, six perch and a pope. Was this idleness?
        I am writing this plain and honest narrative on the lawn of a delightful little village inn; before me is a deal table, a bottle of cider, and a gill of brandy,—above, is a laburnum dropping its faded leaves upon my head,—and, at the fire within, is a handsome pullet, that, I fear, has been prematurely slaughtered for my enjoyment. I have yet an hour of leisure, which I must devote to my treatise.
        The idleness of authors is a misnomer, an impossibility. No author, at least no author of talent, was ever idle. I can conceive the idleness of the editor of a daily paper, of a writer in the Metropolitan Encyclopedia, of the compiler of a mathematical dictionary—but [ cannot conceive the idleness of a poet or an essayist. He is most industrious when he seems most at his ease;—he is bringing the flowers to his garners that his future art is to distil into a celestial perfume.

                "How various his employments, whom the world
                Calls idle."

        The truly idle men of this world are secretaries of state, lawyers in full practice, bank-directors, merchants with "correspondents in all parts of Europe," fashionable publishers, bankers, and every variation of the people connected with trade. These work by deputy. But your poet—
        I think a little walk before dinner will be necessary to my digestion,—and I will, therefore, finish my treatise tomorrow.

The Editor

by Frederic Vernon.

Originally published in Knight's Quarterly Magazine (Charles Knight & Co.) vol.1 #1 (1823).

                Qu'il parle donc encore,—qu'il parle comme il pourra, et qu'il me dise qui il est,
                d'ou il vient, et d'od il a apporté les étranges curiositês qu'il m'a offertes!
                                                VATHEK.

        "And so, Mr. Frederic, you are going to set up a periodical?"
        "It is even so, Doctor,—infinitely true."
        "Very meritorious, vastly amusing:—pray, did you ever set up any thing before?"
        "I set up a tandem last March, Doctor!"
        "Yes, and lodged me in a ditch last April. Look to it, Frederic, for the Whip and the Editor incur alike the peril of an overturn and the danger of ditch-water."
        "And, by the manes of my grandmother's, so they do. I have not been a month in my seat, and the reins are giving way, the wheels playing the devil's tattoo over the stones, and the leader curvetting right and left as if he had no idea of a straight line. Every post I pass threatens death and demolition; every pedestrian I meet looks knowingly at the cattle, and whispers to his companion, ‘go it, Sir,—he's in for a smash! Bah! let me pull up for a second; and reduce matters to order."
        Thus then:
        Gentlemen Contributors, to drop all metaphor, and to drop all ceremony, it is necessary that I should make a few remarks on the line of conduct you are severally and collectively pursuing.
        Here I have before me a pile of papers of sufficient depth and of sufficient obscurity to pose the decypherer of De Republica: quartos of quiet prose, folios of gentlemanly rhyme. What in the name of merriment do you take me for? Bacon or Confucius, Duns Scotus or Doctor Bentley?
        What in the name of virtû, do you mean, Shafto, by sending me a critique of twenty pages upon the exhibition at Somerset House, when you know exceedingly well that a considerable expenditure of time, and a considerable acquisition of flash terms, have not yet enabled you to distinguish a Lawrence from a Vandyke or a Wilkie from a Jan Stein? Sir, you may take me at the most unpicturesque moment of my life,—take me from the Crown and Anchor, from the Fives Court, from Tattersall's, and I will back myself at five to one to write a better critique at six pages an hour.
        What in the name of commonsense do you mean, Pendragon, by sending me a learned treatise, not composed without much labour, not perused without more, and not comprehended with any labour whatever, for the purpose of overthrowing the existence of Trismegistus, and showing Prince Hohenloe to be a true prophet?—when you know exceeding well, that an university drilling has hardly communicated to you the important basis of all reasoning, that two and two make four; and has altogether failed in convincing you of the no less desirable theorem, that the doctrines of the Treasury Bench are infallible.—Why, my dear Pendragon, you may arrest me at the most unargumentative period of my life,—arrest me at Almack's in the last quadrille, arrest me at the Opera. (Vestris and the Donna del Lago)—arrest me at --s when I win my next thousand, or at Doncaster when the horse I back walks over,—and, at any of these junctures, reason me dumb if I do not knock off a more sober, a more just, a more philosophical essay, in the time you would take to mend your pen.
        And, finally, what in the name of the muses do you mean, Willoughby, by sending me two portfolios and one small album crammed to the very margin with sonnets and love verses. If this be the ballast our vessel needs, c'en est fait—I quit the helm! IfI were to sanction with my name and authority such an outrageous import of tenderness and tears, where could I find a friend? Who would listen to my judgment in the side-box? Who would look at my Bucephalus in the Ring? Who would laugh at my jokes at Brookes's? Why, my dear Willoughby, I never saw but two beautiful faces in my life and I fell in love with neither of them; yet, by the spirit of Leander the Waterman, you may call me at the most unpoetical moment that ever an unpoetical man passed through,—you may call me from the paying of a ceremonious visit, or from the paying of a tailor's bill; from the lecture room of Dr. Gall, or from the gallery of the House of Commons,—and I will wager Moore to Bowles, or the Chancellor to a filbert, that I beat you at love-rhyming, in the judgment of any bright-eyed Dulcinea from fifteen to twenty and from London to the Land's-end!
        Are these the topics to which my attention is now to be devoted? Venison and Champagne, Dice and Collinet, am I to apostatize from you for ever, that I may dabble with manuscripts and proof sheets, that I may be abused by the Critics and adored by the Blues, that I may be cut by the Bloods in Bond Street, and patronized by the Devils in Pall Mall. Be it so!
        But I have not done with my distresses.—Gentlemen Contributors, to you I am indebted for restless days and sleepless nights;—my acquaintance with you has afforded a very rapid introduction to care and to calomel. Ere I engaged in this perilous vocation my slumbers were light, and my digestion was easy; but you have filled my brain with the horrors of promises unperformed, and of talents misapplied. You, Aymer, were profuse in your vows of attachment; but you kept your proofs for two months in your pocket:—you, Medley, led me to caleulate upon a magnificent Essay, and you beguiled me with an Epigram. My honoured friends of the tribe of Balaam are those only that send an answer by return of post; the wits leave me to moan over rejected petitions and unopened remonstrances.
        Down to the ground, Vyvyan Joyeuse, do I bow to your surpassing genius. But for three months, Vyvyan, have I been listening in vain for the bounding step of your gaiety, and preparing to hold both my sides at the exquisite points of your wit. You have left me, Vyvyan, to the consolations of a "virgin muse," or an infant spectator. What is it to me, when two sheets are kept open for you, that you have been occupied with rubbers, and occupied others with rhetoric—that you have been dreaming of an article at the feet of a little angel at Lady --'s, or have lent your manuscript to a superlatively critical Johnian? Vyvyan, I love you; but may the fiends that have haunted me come, in heaven's good time, across your pleasures!—may you know the miseries of that "hope deferred," over which your unhappy Editor has been weeping any day since the first of April.
        My dear friend, Haselfoot, your criticism is full of grace and philosophy;—you write like an ardent admirer of the tasteful and the true. There is no ill-nature in your censure, and there is no daubing in your commendation. But, Haselfoot, there is a fearful delay in your epistles, and a terrific gap in your MS. Are you conscious of an awful chasm between pages 10 and 17, which no labour or ingenuity of mine can ever hope to fill? Has the post failed, or has the coach broken down? Has your messenger sold his precious packet to some watchful rival, or has he worn it to threads, like Sancho, between his heel and his shoon? O! I cry you mercy—I did not understand you were as absent as Parson Adams. Who would have thought that eight solid pages of your fairest copy would have lain perdus for three weeks in the first volume of your Stephens's Thesaurus?
        Gerard Montgomery, my "tower of strength"—my glorious Troubadour, who will lead me in your train to gather the honours

                "Of all maner of mynstralsye
                That any man can specifye,"

you are the most punctual of contributors; your "heart is inditing," and you have therefore no tardy pen. But, Gerard, how have you periled me! There is not a line of you that even a Thomson would have blotted;—but we live in a canting age, Gerard; and a man must write in gyves to please the votaries of waltzing and the praisers of pirouettes. Gerard, there are three sentences and a half of your delightful Tryamour that will not escape the microscopes of the prudes. These virtuous ladies will never rest till they have hunted out a

                "Cytherea all in sedges hid:"

Lady Mary laughs at them all;—but they have worried me into a bilious fever, Gerard.
        And why, Haller, could you not let the calm light of your ennobling philosophy shine out, and the full stream of your historical knowledge flow on, without disturbing us with a hit at the Whigs?—And you, Merton, was it necessary to interrupt the glorious rush of your eloquence, to make a sly fling at the Tories!—You will not part with these passages. Well, sirs, I respect every man's opinions when they are founded on principle;—but if you get me into broils, be the sin and the danger upon your own heads!
        And now that I have disgorged my spleen, let me hail my friends, with the courtesy of a Sylvanus Urban.
        Gentlemen Contributors, we shall amply redeem the hopes that ourselves and the public have cherished. One and all I thank you. I am a very Hotspur in my anticipations. When some cold-headed proser has said to me, "the purpose you undertake is dangerous; the friends you have named uncertain; the time itself unsorted; and your whole plot too light,"—I have answered the lack-brain that "our plot is as good a plot as ever was laid; our friends true and constant; a good plot, good friends, and full of expectation." Though Montagu, and Ellis, and Heron, and Payne, and Frazer, and Tell, and Bruce, and Mills, and Medley, and Lovell, have not yet brought up their forces,—is there not Villars, and Cecil, and Merton, and Montgomery, and Heaviside, and Murray, and Aymer, and Joyeuse, and Courtenay, and a dozen "great unknowns" in the field? "We are prepared." For myself, I will say with honest Skelton,

                "Holde up the helme, loke up—
                I wolde be merrie, what winde that ever blowe."

        Gentlemen Contributors, once more I thank you;—our bark is launching—our fates are intertwined—let old Michael Drayton declare how:—

                "Like as a man on some adventure bound.
                        His honest friends, their kindness to express,
                T'encourage him, of whom the main is own'd,
                        Some venture more, and some adventure less;
                That if the voyage happily be good,
                        They his good fortune freely may partake;
                If otherwise it perish in the flood,
                        Yet, like good friends, their's perish for his sake."

Preface

by Anna Maria Hall.

Originally published in St. James's Magazine (W. Kent) vol.1 #1 (Apr 1861).

I am called upon to write a Preface to the First Volume of the "St. James's Magazine." But I have little to say: my only duty, at present, is to express my grateful sense of the support I have thus far received—such support having led to a success very largely exceeding my expectations, even my hopes.
        I cannot therefore doubt that I have accomplished my leading purpose, by producing a Magazine that will "Promote the Interests of Home, the Refinements of Life, and the Amusement and Information of all Classes."
        I calculated on the cordial and zealous aid of many eminent and popular Authors. It has been obtained. To them I am mainly indebted for the popularity and prosperity of the "St. James's Magazine;" and I am quite sure the list will be augmented.
        I am justified therefore in believing that the work I have the privilege to conduct has found favour with the Public; but it is certain that to obtain is more easy than to maintain success. The friends of this Magazine will find the efforts of its Proprietor, Editor, and Contributors in no degree relaxed: whatever it is possible to do to gratify and satisfy its readers will be done; all parties interested in its welfare bearing continually in mind, that "its fate must depend entirely on its merits."

        Bannon Lodge, Boltons, West Brompton,
                                                July, 1861.

The National Magazine

Originally published in The National Magazine (National Magazine Company, Ltd.) vol.1 #1 (Nov 1856).

[As many of our readers may not have seen the Prospectus of the National Magazine, we here republish its principal portions.]

The Conductors seek to establish, with the aid of the best minds, and at the cheapest rate, a Journal devoted to Literature and Art, and equally an organ of both,—an Art-Paper, but not one to which Literature is merely incidental; a Literary Paper, but not one to which Art is a mere adjunct.
        Making no claim to the peculiarities of a professed review, they purpose to examine systematically the chief current events in these two great departments of intellectual endeavour, with a view to point out in them whatever may be most worthy and characteristic. Within the bounds allotted, they will strive to emulate their most generous contemporaries; to recognise excellence at once, though unheralded by a name; and to shun that critical commonplace which affects to deliberate because it cannot decide—cold to genius while it needs encouragement, blind to its faults when it has achieved success.
        The tone of the Paper, it is hoped, will be at once liberal and reverential. While leaving to more appropriate spheres of discussion all doctrinal differences in theology, while avoiding all party and class aims in politics, it will by no means exclude the religious spirit that lies at the root of all noble action and life, nor ignore those broad questions of policy which vitally affect social well-being.
        Attractiveness of subject and of treatment will be studied in every department. Tales will occupy considerable space, as the names in the published list of Contributors will readily suggest. Essays, varieties of Travel and Adventure, humorous Sketches, and occasional reports of Public Amusements, will find due place. In a word, the Conductors hold that through amusement to instruction is the law of success, and that Wisdom and Mirth are not necessarily unmarriageable personages.
        The features thus indicated will show that great variety is aimed at. But this variety, the Conductors trust, will be pervaded by oneness of design, giving to each detail its appropriate place, and its due bearing upon a general result. They would have their mental edifice resemble a spacious, well-built, and richly-furnished Palace, where one passes from the grave council-chamber to the social banqueting-hall, not by a step, but by gradual approaches; where even the pleasant chat of the ante-room touches at times upon august themes; where terrace and balcony not only adorn but dignify; and where from some grand commanding site the horizon lies open like a noble future.

A Word at the Start

Originally published in Harper's New Monthly Magazine (Harper and Brothers) vol.1 #1 (Jun 1850).

Harper's New Monthly Magazine, of which this is the initial number, will be published every month, at the rate of three dollars per annum. Each number will contain as great an amount and variety of reading matter, and at least as many pictorial illustrations, and will be published in the same general style, as the present.
        The design of the Publishers, in issuing this work, is to place within the reach of the great mass of the American people the unbounded treasures of the Periodical Literature of the present day. Periodicals enlist and absorb much of the literary talent, the creative genius, the scholarly accomplishment of the present age. The best writers, in all departments and in every nation, devote themselves mainly to the Reviews, Magazines, or Newspapers of the day. And it is through their pages that the most powerful historical Essays, the most elaborate critical Disquisitions, the most eloquent delineations of Manners and of Nature, the highest Poetry and the most brilliant Wit, have, within the last ten years, found their way to the public eye and the public heart.
        This devotion to Periodical writing is rapidly increasing. The leading authors of Great Britain and of France, as well as of the United States, are regular and constant contributors to the Periodicals of their several countries. The leading statesmen of France have been for years the leading writers in her journals. Lamartine has just become the editor of a newspaper. Dickens has just established a weekly journal of his own, through which he is giving to the world some of the most exquisite and delightful creations that ever came from his magic pen. Alison writes constantly for Blackwood. Lever is enlisted in the Dublin University Magazine. Bulwer and Croly publish their greatest and most brilliant novels first in the pages of the Monthly Magazines of England and of Scotland. Macaulay, the greatest of living Essayists and Historians, has enriched the Edinburgh Review with volumes of the most magnificent productions of English Literature. And so it is with all the living authors of England. The ablest and the best of their productions are to be found in Magazines. The wealth and freshness of the Literature of the Nineteenth Century are embodied in the pages of its Periodicals.
        The Weekly and Daily Journals of England, France, and America, moreover, abound in the most brilliant contributions in every department of intellectual effort. The current of Political Events, in an age of unexampled political activity, can be traced only through their columns. Scientific discovery, Mechanical inventions, the creations of Fine Art, the Orations of Statesmen, all the varied intellectual movements of this most stirring and productive age, find their only record upon these multiplied and ephemeral pages.
        It is obviously impossible that all these sources of instruction and of interest should be accessible to any considerable number even of the reading public, much less that the great mass of the people of this country should have any opportunity of becoming familiar with them. They are scattered through scores and hundreds of magazines and journals, intermingled with much that is of merely local and transient interest, and are thus hopelessly excluded from the knowledge and the reach of readers at large.
        The Publishers of the New Monthly Magazine intend to remedy this evil, and to place every thing of the Periodical Literature of the day, which has permanent value and commanding interest, in the hands of all who have the slightest desire to become acquainted with it. Each number will contain 144 octavo pages, in double columns: the volumes of a single year, therefore, will present nearly two thousand pages of the choicest and most attractive of the Miscellaneous Literature of the Age. The Magazine will transfer to its pages as rapidly as they may be issued all the continuous tales of Dickens, Bulwer, Croly, Lever, Warren, and other distinguished contributors to British Periodicals: articles of commanding interest from all the leading Quarterly Reviews of both Great Britain and the United States: Critical Notices of the current publications of the day: Speeches and Addresses of distinguished men upon topics of universal interest and importance: Notices of Scientific discoveries, of the progress and fruits of antiquarian research, of mechanical inventions, of incidents of travel and exploration, and generally of all the events in Science, Literature, and Art in which the people at large have any interest. Constant and special regard will be had to such articles as relate to the Economy of Social and Domestic Life, or tend to promote in any way the education, advancement, and well-being of those who are engaged in any department of productive activity. A carefully prepared Fashion Plate, and other pictorial illustrations, will also accompany each number.
        The Magazine is not intended exclusively for any class of readers, or for any kind of reading. The Publishers have at their command the exhaustless resources of current Periodical Literature in all its departments. They have the aid of Editors in whom both they and the public have long since learned to repose full and implicit confidence. They have no doubt that, by a careful, industrious, and intelligent use of these appliances, they can present a Monthly Compendium of the periodical productions of the day which no one who has the slightest relish for miscellaneous reading, or the slightest desire to keep himself informed of the progress and results of the literary genius of his own age, would willingly be without. And they intend to publish it at so low a rate, and to give to it a value so much beyond its price, that it shall make its way into the hands or the family circle of every intelligent citizen of the United States.

Prospectus of The Leader

A Weekly Newspaper, price 6d.

Originally published in The Leader (Joseph Clatton, junr.) vol.1 #1 (30 Mar 1850).

The master principle of the paper is, the right of every opinion to its own free utterance. It is a fact which will be confirmed by the observation of every man, that the expressed opinion of the day, as set forth in public discussion, in journals, or in books, does not represent the actual opinion of the day as it exists in the convictions of the most elevated, the most active, and boldest intellects. The truly pregnant portion is suppressed in deference to some political expediency, social routine, or mercenary prejudice. Before it attains expression opinion is bated down to an average; and thus the country is debarred from enjoying the full force of the influences growing within it. To take the lead in opening the issue, by offering a free utterance to the most advanced opinions, is the object of The Leader.
        The specific principles which will guide the writers in political affairs will accord with that main principle. Freed from the necessity to clip our words, or clothe our meaning in occult language, we shall endeavour to go straight to the heart of every public question, to deal with its substance, to declare our conviction in plain and unmistakeable terms, and to seek for our opinion the suffrages of the People. We hold that such a course can be maintained in a spirit to win the confidence of all classes. As our convictions will be given in a positive rather than a negative form, so we shall proceed by constructive rather than destructive methods; less striving to destroy the works which the past has built up for us, than to develope the influences which will build up the institutions of the future. Revolutions are the violent rents made in the artificial crust of society by the unrecognised institutions growing beneath: it is only by thorough freedom for the inherent powers of a country that it can proceed from a glorious Past, through a tranquil but energetic Present, to a more glorious Future.
        It is the perception of that truth which reconciles a conservative and reverential care for the achievements of the Past with a hopeful and vigorous working for the Future. We will apply these principles to every institution and every class. In Home Politics, while pointing out the services by which the heirs of ancient honours and of wealth may regain the goodwill of their countrymen, we shall stand up for the right of the whole People to a voice in the laws by which they are governed, and therefore to Universal Suffrage, with its accompanying reforms of shortened parliaments and protected voting; to the means of securing a knowledge of those laws as well as of the laws of Nature and of God, and therefore to secular education; to the free exercise of their industry, and therefore to amended laws of master and man; to "a subsistence out of the soil," and therefore to an effective poor-law, as the corelative of private property in land.
        As the relative rights of Capital and Labour, whether skilled or unskilled, cannot be ascertained by haphazard antagonism, but by equitable and judicious combination, we shall, without pledging ourselves to any special system of social reform, endeavour to elicit the best means by which those rights, apparently conflicting, but really identical, may be reconciled; and we shall encourage all well-directed efforts on the part of individuals, or of societies, to effect their reconciliation.
        Meanwhile we shall advocate freedom of trade until the example of this country shall be completed in itself, and consummated in the reciprocal acceptance of other countries. Perfect free trade means a federation of the civilised globe in the works of industry.
        Though insisting on the right and duty of the state to provide the means of secular education for every individual who may think fit to take advantage of it, we shall do homage to the efforts of every class or sect to extend education in accordance with its own peculiar tenets, if such be made in a spirit of candour and toleration. And we shall more especially notice and forward those endeavours to extend refinement and knowledge which are made by bodies of men united under the titles of Athenæums, Public School Associations, or Literary, Scientific, and Mechanics' Institutions.
        But in promoting the claims of the people, we hope to show that the satisfaction of such rights, and the deliberate anticipation of their peremptory demand, will be conducive to the peace, the power, and the prosperity of the country.
        In a class of subjects that overrules every other—affairs of Religion—we shall claim equal freedom of utterance: every persuasion will meet with respect—with the sympathy due to conscience seen in action; but the pure religion, the soul of which is faith in God obeyed in love to man,—which is superior to all sects and comprehends them all, will animate the unceasing and strenuous endeavours for its own complete emancipation. Sympathising with all honest conviction, we shall be free to discuss all forms of religions influence and working—ecclesiastical institutions, clerical laws, social conflicts of faith and practice. In short, we will realise in our intention the old unperformed promise of "religious equality."
        We shall also advocate the removal of disabilities which press on any class of religioniets among our fellow-countrymen (such, for instance, as those of the Hebrew persuasion), and which, by their remaining on the statute-book, recal the periods of intolerance and exclusiveness that gave them birth, and stand out in open opposition to the universal tendencies of the age. In this advocacy we shall tell every British subject, of whatever creed, that he stands equal in rights, in privileges, in esteem.
        in Foreign Politics we shall endeavour to be the true exponent of the meaning and bearing of the various European movements, keeping always in sight the actual opinions and wishes of the real nations. For this we have special means, enabling us to give a trustworthy information, not only as to foreign events, but also as to the views and capacities of the Peoples.
        In Colonial Affairs we shall advocate the local independence of the Colonies, in order to the union of the whole with the parent country in a great imperial federation; sound colonisation redistributing the powers of the whole empire for their more effective development.
        The Leader will be thoroughly a news-paper: the news of the week is the history of the time as it passes before our eyes, informing and illustrating political and social science. The space devoted to news will be so appropriated as to present the fullest accounts of whatever events command the interest of the week. None will be overlooked as alien or inferior to the regard of the true politician: the news should reflect the life of our day, as it is; its materials must be accepted from whatsoever source—from the Parliament or the police-office, from the drawing-room or the workhouse. The utmost care of experienced journalists will be used to collect for the reader every striking incident in the eventful story of Humanity, and to convey it in such manner as to combine fulness of statement with the avoid of offence. Free utterance of opinion demands free access to knowledge; free promulgation of opinion demands an organ possessing an interest for every class.
        On commercial and monetary affairs information will be procured from undoubted sources, at the latest hour previous the publication of the paper.
        Our Literature will not be confined to reviews of books: there will be as full, distinct, and impartial as we can make them, but the department will also include a current review of the actual state of literature, at home and abroad; the influence of literature or of eminent works, as they appear, on society; and events, public or personal, bearing upon literature—in short, the contemporary history of literary affairs for each week. The free utterance of opinion will lend its own inherent strength to our review of literature: we shall not be debarred from noticing books, nor obliged to cramp our notice in straitened or ambiguous language, from the fear of offending against established doctrine or veteran prejudice. We shall rely on the desire which we know to exist for out-speaking; we shall trust to sincerity of purpose; we shall repose that faith in our readers which we shall ask of them.
        The Arts will be treated in a congenial spirit. Art is the work performed by cultivated feeling; its office is to train the very aspirations and wishes of the mind, as distinguished from reason or calculation. It is a great element of social discipline. To be effectively developed, it must be true to itself; to be rendered so, its discussion must be openhearted. We shall endeavour to describe art as it is, and to keep in view the eternal principles which lead to perfection. Our notice of the Drama will be descriptive as well as critical; in Music, we shall wed science to natural feeling; in Painting and the sister arts, while checking error, we shall strive to foster every indication of growing power.
        The progress and incidents of Science and Natural History will be reported as they happen, with the freest exposition, so as to make their bearing popularly understood.
        Illustrations will be thrown in whenever they may be needed to assist the comprehension of the reader, to elucidate the text, or even to fortify an argument.
        Original composition, in prose or verse, will complete the round. Essays on literary or social topics, Verses animated by the living interests of the day, Fiction expressing what of life eludes mere newspaper intelligence, political or literary discussion—these will lend their help to our main purpose—to the free utterance of opinion, and the restoration of heart-feeling to the business of life.
        We will not enforce upon others the exclusiveness we deprecate. An Open Department will be reserved in our paper, for the expression of any opinions, however opposed to our own, on the sole condition that the contributions accord in length with the exigencies of our space, in language with the decorum of tone and spirit that we shall enforce throughout our columns. We thus offer a free port to all Nations and all Faiths; satisfied that the peaceful conflict of Opinion can only perfect the emancipation of Truth.
        Our sketch of the paper as we mean it to be is brief, and therefore imperfect. We intend it for a direct reflex of Life, as it exists—in its triumphs and in its trials, in its errors and in its achieved truths, in its relics of the past, its enduring influences, and its eternal hopes. We shall strive to animate those hopes and the endeavour which they inspire. For the struggling nationalities abroad, we will offer a voice from among the English people; in the English people we will strive to reawaken a frank and wise nationality; so that the Present, which discerns the wasted efforts of the Past, may learn to know its own opportunities and expedite the achievements of the Future. The boldness of our out-speaking we justify by a reverential spirit, and by a hopeful faith that trusts less to the contrivances of man, than to the immortal influences whose freest action we shall seek to promote.
        London; Published by Joseph Clayton, jun., 265, Strand.

A Preliminary Word

by Charles Dickens (unattributed).

Originally published in Household Words (Bradbury & Evans) vol.1 #1 (30 Mar 1850).

The name that we have chosen for this publication expresses, generally, the desire we have at heart in originating it.
        We aspire to live in the Household affections, and to be numbered among the Household thoughts, of our readers. We hope to be the comrade and friend of many thousands of people, of both sexes, and of all ages and conditions, on whose faces we may never look. We seek to bring into innumerable homes, from the stirring world around us, the knowledge of many social wonders, good and evil, that are not calculated to render any of us less ardently persevering in ourselves, less tolerant of one another, less faithful hi the progress of mankind, less thankful for the privilege of living in this summer-dawn of time.
        No mere utilitarian spirit, no iron binding of the mind to grim realities, will give a harsh tone to our Household Words. In the bosoms of the young and old, of the well-to-do and of the poor, we would tenderly cherish that light of Fancy which is inherent in the human breast; which, according to its nurture, burns with an inspiring flame, or sinks into a sullen glare, but which (or woe betide that day!) can never be extinguished. To show to all, that in all familiar things, even in those which are repellant on the surface, there is Romance enough, if we will find it out:—to teach the hardest workers at this whirling wheel of toil, that their lot is not necessarily a moody, brutal fact, excluded from the sympathies and graces of imagination; to bring the greater and the lesser in degree, together, upon that wide field, and mutually dispose them to a better acquaintance and a kinder understanding—is one main object of our Household Words.
        The mightier inventions of this age are not, to our thinking, all material, but have a kind of souls in their stupendous bodies which may find expression in Household Words. The traveller whom we accompany on his railroad or his steamboat journey, may gain, we hope, some compensation for incidents which these later generations have outlived, in new associations with the Power that bears him onward; with the habitations and the ways of life of crowds of his fellow creatures among whom he passes like the wind; even with the towering chimneys he may see, spirting out fire and smoke upon the prospect. The swart giants, Slaves of the Lamp of Knowledge, have their thousand and one tales, no less than the Genii of the East; and these, in all their wild, grotesque, and fanciful aspects, in all their many phases of endurance, in all their many moving lessons of compassion and consideration, we design to tell.
        Our Household Words will not be echoes of the present time alone, but of the past too. Neither will they treat of the hopes, the enterprises, triumphs, joys, and sorrows, of this country only, but, in some degree, of those of every nation upon earth. For nothing can be a source of real interest in one of them, without concerning all the rest.
        We have considered what an ambition it is to be admitted into many homes with affection and confidence; to be regarded as a friend by children and old people; to be thought of in affliction and in happiness; to people the sick room with airy shapes 'that give delight and hurt not,' and to be associated with the harmless laughter and the gentle tears of many hearths. We know the great responsibility of such a privilege; its vast reward; the pictures that it conjures up, in hours of solitary labour, of a multitude moved by one sympathy; the solemn hopes which it awakens in the labourer's breast, that he may be free from self-reproach in looking back at last upon his work, and that his name may be remembered in his race in time to come, and borne by the dear objects of his love with pride. The hand that writes these faltering lines, happily associated with some Household Words before to-day, has known enough of such experiences to enter in an earnest spirit upon this new task, and with an awakened sense of all that it involves.
        Some tillers of the field into which we now come, have been before us, and some are here whose high usefulness we readily acknowledge, and whose company it is an honour to join. But, there are others here—Bastards of the Mountain, draggled fringe on the Red Cap, Panders to the basest passions of the lowest natures—whose existence is a national reproach. And these, we should consider it our highest service to displace.
        Thus, we begin our career! The adventurer in the old fairy story, climbing towards the summit of a steep eminence on which the object of his search was stationed, was surrounded by a roar of voices, crying to him, from the stones in the way, to turn back. All the voices we hear, cry Go on! The stones that call to us have sermons in them, as the trees have tongues, as there are books in the running brooks, as there is good in everything! They, and the Time, cry out to us Go on! With a fresh heart, a light step, and a hopeful courage, we begin the journey. The road is not so rough that it need daunt our feet: the way is not so steep that we need stop for breath, and, looking faintly down, be stricken motionless. Go on, is all we hear, Go on! In a glow already, with the air from yonder height upon us, and the inspiriting voices joining in this acclamation, we echo back the cry, and go on cheerily!

Preface

Originally published in The Labourer (Northern Star Office) vol.1 #1 (Apr 1847).

        We are fortunate in being able to say that our Preface is warranted in being short. We have no lengthy explanations to give with regard to pledges broken, or promises not realized. We have set ourselves a task—we hare performed it honestly and to the best of our abilities, and, in issuing this First Volume of "The Labourer" to the public, we look back with pleasure to the hour when we first became acquainted with our Readers, and with confidence as to the results of our future intercourse.
        Our object has been more instruction than amusement—we, however, had one great goal before our eyes—the redemption of the Working classes from their thraldom—and to this object we have made the purpose of each article subservient. Yet, convinced that all which elevates the feelings or heightens the aspirations, can but strengthen the political power of a people, we have placed poetry and romance side by side with politics and history. In the "Insurrections of the Working-classes" we are shewing how the People were mastered and oppressed in former times; in the "Romance of a People," how they are injured in the present day; in the "Confessions of a King," how they may be used as the tools of ambition; while a series of political articles has been the connecting link of bringing these lessons to bear on our present prospects and position.
        We are not of those who boast of what they have done, or of what they will do, but in acknowledging the success which has attended our undertaking, we may, perhaps, be permitted to observe, that "The Labourer" is one of the very few magazines which supply their readers with entirely original matter—and the only one which fully and fearlessly stands forward as the advocate of democracv—and the exponent of popular grievances and popular rights. We have devoted a considerable portion of our space to the Questions of the Land and the Bank, convinced that in these we behold two of the levers destined to remove the dead weight of monopoly from the shoulders of the people; and we now conclude these prefatorv remarks, with which we lay the fruit of our labours before the Reader, in the hope that we may be cheered and encouraged in our onward course by the best stimulant to exertion that we can receive: that of beholding democratic spirit and democratic power spreading and prospering among the ranks of the oppressed.

Prophecy Heard on Tower Hill[1]

By Xit.

Originally published in Ainsworth's Magazine: A Miscellany of Romance (Chapman and Hall) vol.2 #1 (Mar 1842).

                On that red, ghastly night, when London's Tower
                Seemed all in flames,—and Terror, being there,
                Threaten'd to hold dominion everywhere—
                I stood on the old Hill, from hour to hour,
                In fear, and hope, and awe,—and in a show'r.
                Gazing, I thought of him who late laid bare
                Each dark recess, then fill'd with fiery air,
                And wrote the "Tower of London," tale of power!
                When sudden through the throng a cry was sent;
                A word predicting Brilliancy unseen,
                Foretelling Agitation;—on it went;
                A cry forbidding men to be serene;
                A word prophetic of this day's event—
                An universal cry—"The Magazine!"

---

        1. As we do not dislike a little puffery of ourselves, we readily give insertion to the above.

On Writing for the People

Originally published in Knight's Penny Magazine (Charles Knight & Co.) vol.1 #1 (1846).

Writing for the people is either a very high thing or a very low thing, according to the conception formed of it. A low thing it is when the author, assuming a patronizing philanthropy, writes, as he says, down to the comprehension of his audience: a still lower thing it is when, adopting a base servility, he flatters the prejudices and fosters the blind passions of his audience. In the first case he treats grown men as if they were children; in the second, he treats human beings as if they were wild beasts, to be tamed and flattered rather than enlightened and elevated. We have a strong conviction that nothing can be too good for the people; that there is a larger body of readers for works of the highest class of literature and philosophy among the people than among the other classes. But this is a new development of social progress; it is a development which has taken place in the present generation.
        Before proceeding farther, let us agree as to the meaning of words. Nothing like a strict definition for preventing confusion and misapprehension, What is meant by the word People? We answer that, in a literary sense, the people cannot simply mean the populus. Writing a book for the people is writing a popular book; and a popular book is contradistinguished from a professional book, inasmuch as it requires from the reader no special education; it only requires intelligence and ordinary culture. This special education, which the works not professedly popular assume in the reader, is of two kinds, classical and mathematical. We use these as types: mathematics being the basis of almost all scientific investigation, and the classics being the basis of almost all literary culture, the two may very well stand as representatives of the scientific and literary education.
        Works written for professional people—and we include among them all who profess to follow a particular study—are not intelligible to the people, i.e. to all non-professional readers. The language used, the acquirements assumed, the very method of exposition, are barriers to the people. And here we may see that by the people cannot be meant merely the artisans and the shopkeepers; for the gentleman and the collegian are equally excluded from the circle of the initiated. No amount of literary culture will enable a man to comprehend a work of science written for scientific men. No amount of mathematical attainments will enable a man to comprehend a scientific work on physiology, unless he have previously studied anatomy. A work on physiology, therefore, which should be written for the people, would be addressed to the collegian as to the artisan—to the man of "liberal education" as to the man who is self-educated. The artisan and the gentleman are here on an equality.
        The people are generally spoken of as the uneducated. We propose to simplify the question by calling them the public not specially educated. Education is only laying the basis. It is a preparation. A liberal education, which includes a knowledge of languages, dead and living, and of mathematics, forms the best groundwork for the appreciation of works of literature and science, because these works assume those attainments in the reader. But it is obvious that the knowledge is but a preparation, and that thousands content themselves therewith. These are the people, whatever may be their social position. They, no less than the artisan, need to be specially educated in a science, or in literature, before they can understand works not professedly popular. The only advantage the educated man has is, that if he and the uneducated man begin the study of a science at the same time, he has already accomplished the necessary preparation; he knows the alphabet and can spell, though he has not yet learned to read.
        The circle of professional readers is necessarily small. Within that small circle, moreover, there are other circles. Thus among mathematicians, the majority cannot master Newton's 'Principia;' and Playfair used to declare that there were not six men in England capable of understanding Laplace's 'Celestial Mechanics.' It must always be so. There will be few who attain the summits, and those few must have works written only for them. But the people form an ever-widening circle.
        In the early ages of the world knowledge was confined to the priests. They imparted it only to their own castes, because the people were unfitted to receive it. Even in democratic Athens the philosophers had two modes of instruction; one destined for the initiated, the other destined for the people. And the people there were similar to our middle classes. The working classes were slaves. Socrates was the first to bring knowledge into the market-place. He was the first to strip philosophy of its professional language, and to bring it home to the understandings of all men. Luther, by his translation of the Bible into the vernacular, gave the people a literature. The circle gradually widened. First, the priests were the sole cultivators of knowledge. Next, in Greece and Rome, the nobility and gentry cultivated it as an elegant distinction. Then, colleges and schools having multiplied, every well-born man was forced to make some slight pretension to cultivation. Now, cheap literature has so widened the circle, that all mankind can share in the "feast of reason."
        The people, then, in a literary sense, may be regarded as comprising the whole mass of the intelligent public—all who are not specially educated. We say, therefore, let your reader be artisan or nobleman, when you do not address the professional few, you are writing for the people. Write clearly, and avoid the language of the schools, then all men will understand you; but do not write down to any imaginary standard of dulness unless you are addressing children. Write out the conviction that is labouring within you; utter the thoughts that lie deepest in the language that is fittest; only do not assume that the reader is familiar with the language and distinctions of the schools; remember he is not one of the profession.
        Such is the diffusion of knowledge, and such the activity of intelligences, that, even among the artisans, the gravest and greatest works of the gravest and greatest minds find eager students. We will not instance Shakspere; we will content ourselves with Locke. Every Mechanics' Institute in the kingdom will prove how many readers there are for the 'Essay on Human Understanding.' If Plato had been translated in a readable style, he would have been popular. It is not sympathy, it is not intelligence which is deficient; it is simply education. The people are as those who have never learned a foreign language. The remedy is simple: translate what is in the foreign language into the vernacular; then all men will understand it: the screen which was before their eyes is removed, and they see.
        If the people, the populus, be compared to those entirely ignorant of a foreign language; the educated, who are not the specially educated in science or literature, may be likened to that numerous class of persons who have been taught the language, but know so little of it that they can neither read nor write it with efficiency. To them also translation is necessary; for them also works should be popular. Their knowledge, such as it is, is no more than preparatory; they cannot master the works written for the professional.
        We are coming to something like firm ground. Except in the higher branches of science and philosophy, the difficulty lies rather in the language than in the matter. The abstruseness does not arise from the ideas, but from the form in which they are expressed. We are addressed in a foreign language, and do not comprehend what is said, Translation is the only remedy.
        What translation is to literature, popular treatises should be to science, It is obvious that in both cases something must be lost in the process. The charm of style, the easy grace of negligence, the happy phrase, and the idiomatic turn of language can rarely be preserved in translation. The nicety of precision, and the brief suggestiveness of mathematical formulæ and technical terms, must be lost in the popular treatise. Granted; but in both cases a rough cast is thought worthy of purchase by those whose fortunes would never give them the original. Popular literature and popular science are not meant to replace or to do away with higher works, no more than the translation of a French work is meant to do away with the study of French. The superiority of the original no one disputes. The question is, Are those who have not learned French, and who have no time to learn it, to be, therefore, deprived of the benefit of the ideas which Frenchmen may put forth? In the same way we would ask, Are those who have never studied anatomy, and who have no time to study it, to be debarred from understanding the general laws of organized beings; are those who have no proficiency in mathematics never to learn the laws of astronomy?
        Let there be anatomical works written for the profession; let there be astronomical works written for the scientific. We would not abate one jot of terminology, nor banish a single formula that was not mere ostentation. No person competent to form an opinion can dispute the utility of technical terms and algebraical formulæ.
        But these are works for the specially educated. For the people—i.e. for all men not so educated—let there be works written with a steady conception of the important point; that although the acquirements of the reader are not to be assumed, the intelligence is; if he must not be supposed to understand a foreign language, he may be supposed to understand its meaning if translated.
        The objections to most works of popular science is, that they are popular trash. They are trivial and false;—written by men who ought to be learners instead of teachers, who write "down" to the people, simply because they could not write up to scientific men. They make a virtue of their own defect; superficial, they declaim against pedantry and obscurity; ignorant of mathematics, they proclaim formulæ to be useless paraphernalia. Unable to write sense, they endeavour to be childish—and succeed.
        That profound science and complete mastery of a subject can be combined with the simplest, clearest exposition, has been signally proved by Professor Airy's treatise on 'Gravitation,' and by Dr. Arnott's priceless 'Elements of Physics.' This latter book has been one of the most popular (in every sense) ever written, It has been translated into every language of Europe. It has been studied by men and women of all grades of intelligence. It has been often imitated; but not one of the imitations has ever made the least stand: they all wanted either that mastery of the subject, which alone can make a book live, or that power of exposition, clear without childishness, which alone can make a book attractive.
        That there is no royal road to science is very true; no mastery is attained in any department without courageous effort. But there is a royal road to the understanding of the general laws of nature; and to make that road all popular treatises should attempt. Science is abstruse; nothing can make it intelligible at a glance. But with regard to literature and philosophy, writing for the people is a much simpler matter. The author's motto should be, not to assume acquirements, but only intelligence, in the reader. To assume that the reader should understand your Greek and Latin quotations, or all your allusions to things classical and historical, is unwarrantable. Quote as much as you please—but always translate; illustrate as much as you can, but be plain, and avoid allusions which presume a classical education. Any other mode of writing down to the reader is insulting. The intelligence of the people is not so trivial as many of the pretended teachers assume. Nothing can be too good for the people; no literature can be too high for them. Clearness, which is perhaps the highest excellence of prose, is the only demand made by the people. It is the demand which all men should make. There are many who fancy that fine writing is difficult; but the fact is that no difficulty is greater than that of clearness, and only the great writers are clear. Pompous periods, involved sentences, shadowy epithets, ambiguous words, and obscure allusions are easy enough. Moreover, they throw a veil over vanity. By screening their meaning from the light of day, they prevent all men seeing how trivial that meaning is. Whereas the writer who labours to bring his meaning forth into the light mast be conscious that it deserves inspection. In literature lustre is seldom without weight; and as Chesterfield says, "weight without lustre is lead." Hence you will find, as a general rule, that the greatest writers are the clearest writers; and that the clearest writers are the clearest thinkers.
        Politics, morals, and metaphysics are subjects which, inasmuch as they require continued effort of thought, may be called abstruse. Can abstruse subjects be fitted for the people? If by this question be meant, Can abstruse subjects be otherwise than abstruse? we answer, Certainly not. Those who are incapable of any continued effort of thought will be incapable of following any abstruse speculations. But to write for such persons would be idle. No one thinks of addressing them. If, however, by the above question be meant, Can abstruse subjects be so treated as only to require an ordinary effort of thought to be continued, in order that the subject should be intelligible? we answer, Yes. Hobbes, Locke, Adam Smith, and Paley are examples. They are profound thinkers, and clear writers; they are intelligible to all intelligent minds. And to show how vast is their superiority in these matters, we need only cite the name of the German philosopher, Kant, who, treating of the subject which Locke made so easy of comprehension (at a time when the philosophy of mind was in its infancy), failed not only in making himself intelligible to the people, but even to professed metaphysicians. The abstruseness here lay not in the subject, but in its treatment. This mode has become very generally adopted both in Germany and France. No man now thinks of writing on philosophy in a clear intelligible manner. The old scholastic forms, with a cumbrous paraphernalia of verbiage, darken the meaning. Instead of the effort of thought, which the subject itself demands, the reader is called upon for a twofold effort: first, to interpret the language, and afterwards to examine the ideas. The abstruse is made repulsive.
        For those who do not pride themselves upon their unattractiveness, who will consent to labour for the enlightenment of mankind at large, and not simply for the gratification of a few, we would say, Endeavour to be intelligible. To be so, there is no need of keeping back abstruse ideas; the only requisite is, that the expression be not also abstruse. The deepest thinkers of modern times, Descartes, Bacon, Hobbes, Locke, Hume, Adam Smith, Reid (to mention only the philosophers), have been universally intelligible. As to the folly of writing down to the people, you will not heed it. The people resent the insult. If you are above them, draw them up to you; if you are on their level, cease the assumption of superiority.
        We shall speak hereafter of the other part of our subject—the servility of the popular writer.