Originally published in Fraser's Magazine (James Fraser) vol.2 #7 (Aug 1830).
We beg the attention of our readers for a few sentences—we shall not detain them longer.
Mr. Eugenius Roche was for many years connected with the press, in various capacities. For fifteen years he was sub-editor of the Morning Post, for the couple of years before his death he was editor of the New Times, and finally of the Courier. He was a gentleman of considerable talent, the most kindly disposition, and the most unwearied industry. No man in his situation, it may be averred, without fear of contradiction, laboured more earnestly, and, in many instances, more successfully, in advancing the interests of those to whom his influence or his purse might be of advantage.
He married twice; by his first wife he left behind him eight children—by his second wife, married not more than a year and a half before his death, an additional infant. His professional income of course ceased with him, and the real property which he left behind is mortgaged to Mr. Stewart, of the Courier, as the payment for the twenty-fourth share of that paper, which Mr. Roche had covenanted to take. The price of this twenty-fourth share is fixed at 5,000 guineas, and it absorbs the whole of the proceeds of Mr. Roche's estate.
It may be that the twenty-fourth share of the Courier will return to Mr. Roche's family a full equivalent for the five thousand guineas claimed by Mr. Stewart, but in the mean time that family is in the most dire distress, amounting even to the want of actual means of subsistence. There is a poem of Mr. Roche's coming out, called London in a Thousand Years hence, with other smaller poems, for which a subscription is getting up; and we hope our readers will assist it as far as they can. The poems, we assure them, are better than a thousand others of finer names; but if they were worse than —'s [fill the blank, good readers, as you please] is it not a good thing to help the widow and the orphan?
Lest any persons should think that newspaper services done to ministers are remembered when the day of service is gone by, and that therefore the case of Mr. Roche's widow and orphans may be safely left in the hands of the Treasury, we have only to say that there is no hope there. We do not wish to prejudice, in any quarter, the cause we are here advocating, and we add no more. Government may be very right in rejecting all petitions on behalf of their literary retainers—that we do not dispute; but we hope that the literary world will feel itself the more called upon to assist those for whom we write this appeal, by the certainty that they have no other interest to appeal to.