genuineness began to be considered as more than questionable by the time the whole impression was disposed of. But our bookseller and his colleague were entirely callous to the exposures which commonly followed their impostures. To apply to them the language of Dryden-'they lived by selling titles and not books; and if that carried off one impression they had their end, and valued not the curses they met with from their bubbled chapmen!'

The secrets to which this veteran admitted me as to the various modes of wheedling and humbug, were eminently worth the trouble of initiation; and, although they were occasionally, to the vulgar ken, dark and incomprehensible as the Eleusinian mysteries themselves, nothing could be more simple than each enigma when light had been thrown upon it by his edifying explanations. There were few subjects on which the Doctor either was not, or did not, affect to be informed. He has, at various times, furnished me with 'Essays on the morbid diseases of the Lungs,' professing to come from a Member of the College of Physicians, (he was an L.L.D.) ; Meteorological Observations, dated from the Bahamas (he never was ten miles from St. Paul's Cathedral in his life), and notices of the progress of vocal music in England, although his acquaintance with that enchanting science was barely sufficient to enable him to distinguish 'God save the King' from Rule Britannia!'

It was about this time that the seeds of that mighty revolution which has since sprung up in Magazine literature, began to germinate. Editors could no longer inflict upon their readers the same dull repetition of crossquestions and crooked answers; the same endless reiteration of nonentities, with impunity. Another and a healthier taste was beginning to manifest itself. My publisher, and I, therefore, determined upon closing our accounts with some of our long-winded contributors. Sophonisba's Tale was brought to an end; Philo-Logos was no longer permitted to be wordy; The Quarrels of Quince and Flute were amicably adjusted; Several writers on Education were instructed to improve themselves; the ears of our Gleaner were reduced, whilst the eyes of our Observer were directed to more interesting objects than had hitherto occupied their attention; the Memoirs of a Sad Dog were curtailed; Detector was himself threatened with exposition; Miranda's Pleasures of Fancy were abridged to one Fytte; Mercury was dismissed; the writer of the Cornucopia requested to make himself scarce; Doctor Balaam superannuated; and the lucubrations of the rest of our contributors-sent to the devil!

Here then was the earnest of as radical a reform as the most determined

stickler could have ventured to propose. Unfortunately, however, we had dissolved our little cabinet, and sent our prime minister the Doctor to the right about, without duly considering how the deficiencies were to be supplied. In this dilemma we resembled those visionaries who would overturn religious and political institutions before they have provided others in their stead. But the blow was struck. Our advertisements had gone forth, teeming (as usual), with the most magnificent promises. A thousand reams of paper, of a texture not easily to be paralleled, were already purchased; a fresh printer engaged; his steam engines charged, and nothing wanting but the articles of which our phoenix of Magazines was to be composed.

The publishers of periodicals,' says Mackenzie, in one of his papers on the Mirror, may be compared to the proprietors of stage coaches, who are

Now we hap

compelled to run their vehicles with or without passengers!' pened to be at this juncture exactly in the latter predicament. Our oldfashioned and crazy family vehicle' was about to be metamorphosed into a spruce mail coach on the newest principle; intended to carry eight inside; and as many out as we could get. We even went to the expense of fresh painting the concern, and changing the colour of its pannels, on which we had emblazoned a beautiful fac-simile of the Saracen's head. All these improvements, however, had been repeatedly announced, and as yet we had booked very few passengers for the journey. But an expedient presently occurred to us, which was not only to carry all who might be disposed for a cast free of expense, but to give them a dinner, wine, and a present of money into the bargain! No sooner had the intimation been issued, than a crowd collected about our office doors, (for many of whose carcases a common stage waggon would have been a more eligible conveyance), and loudly demanded the fulfilment of our stipulation. Never, surely, until this occasion, had mortal eyes beheld so motley a groupe. There were Barristers from the Temple (not of the Muses) with their green bags' filled even to repletion, not with briefs, but with elegies. gouty Magistrates of the Quorum, with compilations from Burn's Justice, heavy as themselves, lisping in the prettiest undertones immaginable,— 'We're a' treading, tread, tread, treading! Sheriffs' Officers, from Cur sitor-street, liberal of copy, thundering forth declamatory speeches about liberty' and prison-discipline.' Pawnbrokers from the purlieus of Covent Garden and Drury-lane, groaning beneath an accumulated burthen of last year's unredeemed pledges.' Prentices from Bucklersbury and Aldgate bawling Eastward Hoe! Tun-bellied Aldermen from the Ward of Farringdon without, with huge Essays on the love of the Turtle.' Dramatists without action, as fat but by no means as witty, as George Colman the younger. Parodists, weighing twenty stone, cumberously flippant, and lugubriously good humoured.

Commodores, with timber toes, a sailing from their latitudes,

And Blues from Lady Morgan's corps all sprawling into attitudes! Of course we could not carry the whole bevy and their lumber at once. We, therefore, made an election of as many as our vehicle would accommodate, and entered the rest in our books for a future day. Thus freighted, although some alarming apprehensions were entertained lest we should topple over or break down on the road, we reached the place of our destination in perfect safety, amid the jeers and witticisms of the mob collected to witness our arrival. One person compared us (i. e. our Magazine), to a lumbering French Diligence; another, (meaning, of course, to glance at our capaciousness), to an improved edition of Pickford's Fly Van; and a third (in all probability seduced into this simile by our having around us so many ' gentlemen in black,' members of the learned professions), likened us to a hearse and four, bereft of its pageantry of woe,' and returning from a funeral. Amid this shower of impertinence I maintained a dignified silence. I looked lightning at my assailants, conceiving it most becoming to treat with silent contempt the envious gibes of each pedestrian churl. To apply the forcible language of the noble poet I have just quoted, I remained

6

With a most voiceless thought sheathing it like a sword.

For this endurance we were amply repaid by the vociferated commenda

tions of one of our inside passengers, (a lady, who, truth to say, had been rather scurvily treated by some of our brother Whips), who repeatedly declared, and subsequently permitted our Proprietor to mention it in his advertisements, that ours was the coach of coaches, the only vehicle in which a Blue of any distinction could set her foot!

To be less metaphorical, and somewhat more intelligible, Teucer and I found, to our cost, that there was in these days no way of conciliating contributors of the slightest pretensions, without addressing ourselves to their pockets, and proposing to remunerate them handsomely, according to the extent of service performed. We, therefore, resolved to pursue a very different plan from the one by which we had hitherto been guided. We proposed to engage writers of some reputation in the literary world, however small, and thus endeavour to effect, by the promulgation of their names, what their positive talents might not have enabled us to accomplish. In some instances we were content with becoming the lessee of a popular name, to which we forthwith affixed a prosing paper prepared for the occasion. The effect was all that could have been desired. The production was voted admirable. No sooner was the author mentioned than How the wit sparkled,-how the sense refined!

It is now that I have to mention an occurrence which fell like a wet blanket upon my editorial hopes. Just at the period when my services were most in request, a sudden blight overtook my faculties, which rendered me inadequate to the production of a single line, either of prose or verse, without the most distressing elaboration. Is my reader addicted to

dreams? If so, cannot he call to mind some vision of fear, in which, just as he was about to be despatched by half-a-dozen ruffians (such for instance as Mrs. Radcliffe's Spalatro), and he attempted to make his situation known as far as his strength of lungs would permit, he discovered, to his infinite horror, that his voice had deserted him when he had most need of it, and that his yell of murder and thieves' dwindled into a genteel drawingroom whisper. Such was the calamitous situation to which I found myself reduced. Many a time since this afflicting deprivation, have I poked out my fire and snuffed out my candle, (nothing assists the mind more effectually in the parturition either of prose or poetry than poking the fire and snuffing the candle), in the attempt to produce the most trivial Editorial paragraph, or notice to a correspondent,' my genius had undergone a complete sterilization. I had no longer the pen of a ready writer.' My capabilities had suffered an untimely frost. There was a polar winter in my pericranium, which I vainly endeavoured to thaw. I took an occasional bumper to assist me in my cogitations, but this only made confusion more confounded.' I grew nervous and discomposed.

Megrims invested my belaurelled skull, Spleen laid embargoes on my appetite! I was no longer the happy Editor I had once been. The prodigious increase of my duties just at the moment when I was least capable of performing them; their recurrence month after month, without the most distant prospect of alleviation, began to weary out my patience, and a thousand disagreeable sensations took the place of those feelings of ardent satisfaction with which I had begun my career. Add to this the provoking civility of my printer, who was eternally inflicting upon me his calculations as to the precise period at which he should be standing' for want of food

for his insatiable presses. At every ring of the bell I started with nervous apprehension, lest it should be a devil' sent to importune me for a fresh supply of copy; and even in my walks the image of this my evil genius seemed to follow me like my shadow. Nor did the return of night afford me any respite; when I sought refuge in sleep from the oppressive cares to which my waking hours were subjected, the appalling words ORIGINAL COMMUNICATIONS, REVIEWS,' and MORE COPY,' (the latter in characters terrible as those which appalled the voluptuous Belshazzar, and much more easily to be deciphered), seemed to glitter in letters of petrifying brilliancy on the foot curtains of my bed. It was in vain that I attempted to close my eyes; for no sooner had I began to dose, than a thousand spectres, arrayed in blurred sheets of the Magazine, were passing like Banquo's line of ghosts, in appalling review before my eyes. Even the pug face that surmounted the knocker of my door seemed, whenever I entered, to put on the looks of my tormentor, grin horribly a ghastly smile,' and extend its supplicating jaws for ARTICLES for my pen! Fortunately, I had by me, ready cut and dried, a few papers, the fruits of happier hours, which I husbanded as well as I was able; taking care, that they might last the longer, to distribute them at respectful distances from each other,

Like angels visits few and far between.

When this my cruise of oil and measure of meal shall be exhausted, heaven only knows what is to become of me; abdication from my editorial throne is the only alternative that will remain to me. My last article is now in the press; but I cannot take my final leave of that public by whom I have been fostered and encouraged, without endeavouring to justify myself as far as may be in their sight, I have, therefore, committed to paper the foregoing memoranda to be published, and read when I shall be numbered with departed EDITORS.

A SKETCH.

I SAW her in the morn of life-the summer of her years,

Ere time had stole a charm away, or dimmed her smile with tears;
The blush of morn was on her cheek-the tender light of even
Came mellowed from her azure eye, whose sphere reflected Heaven.

I saw her once again, and still her form was young and fair,
But blight was with her beauty blent-its silent trace was there;
Her cheek had lost its glowing tint-her eye its brightest ray,
The change was o'er her charms which says the flower must fade away.

Oh then her tender bloom might seem the shadow of the rose,
Or dying gleam of sunset-skies, scarce tinging stainless snows,
And clustering round her brow serene her golden tresses lay
As sunbright clouds on summer lakes are hung at close of day.

Yet-yet once more I saw her face and then she seemed to sleep
In bright and beautiful repose—but, ah, too still and deep—
Far, far too deep for lovely dreams, for youthful eyes too long,
O'er which the morn may vainly break with all her light and song!

J. M.

NOTICES OF NEW PUBLICATIONS.

JANUS; or, the Edinburgh Literary Almanack.-Oliver and Boyd. Post 8vo. p. p. 544

The Prospectus of this long-looked for volume promised that its contents should be of a very different order from those of other annual publications, and we must admit that this pledge has been most piously redeemed; for the dullest and least meritorious of the works to which the projectors of the Janus appeared so contemptuously to allude, will be found to contain matter of a far more interesting character than is to be met with in their muchvaunted publication; to say nothing of the variety of splendid illustrations which are included for the same price as they have the conscience to ask for their periodical. We are forced in some degree into this comparison by the pompous pretensions with which the volume has been ushered before the public. For our own parts, we confess that we did expect a book of very different description, both as it regards style and matter, from the tone of self-gratulation with which it was announced some months ago. We supposed, naturally enough, that it would be an agreeable miscellany, consisting for the most part of light and elegant literature, here and there interspersed with an essay, on some subject of permanent interest.' We looked, in fact, for a beau ideal of a volume of Blackwood's Magazine, steering alternately

From grave to gay, from lively to severe.

6

Instead of this however we have upwards of five hundred pages of lumbering essays on education,' the rise and decline of nations,'beauty,' antiquity, medals, the study of history,' action and thought, religion,' country life,' prosperity,' pins,' 'poetry,' and the like! Who in the name of taste can be expected to wade through a series of tedious and elaborate articles upon such trite, old-world subjects. Then there is a perpetual hankering after German sentiment and German literature which is really absolutely sickening. The philosophy of the book is German, even the graver articles are full of German metaphysics, and those which are meant to be of a lighter character are, for the most part, either translated from the German, or constructed upon German models. Out of about twenty copies of verses ten are translated from the German, the rest being with some four or five exceptions, versions from the Latin, Dutch, French, and Gallic. A considerable portion of the prose is also either translated from, or founded on, German productions, and partakes largely of the dulness and dreaminess of its origin. But we shall waive general criticism and give our readers a brief analysis of the contents of the book.

The Hints Concerning the Universities extend to no less than forty-three pages. This essay sets out with praises of Mr. Brougham for his activity in promoting the establishment of Mechanics' Institutes, and designates all opponents to the learned gentleman's system as hypocrites' who have ‘a base desire to uphold, at the expense of ignorance and degradation, something felt to be incapable of standing its ground were the light fairly let in upon it.' After twaddling through upwards of forty pages, the illuminatus who is the author of this article makes some very important discoveries, viz. that the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge educated more young men in

F