Passages of a Working Life during Half a Century
Chapter II
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CHAPTER II.
WE have no sufficiently clear record of the commerce of books in
the days of Pope and Addison, to be enabled to say that there was a marked Publishing Season.
The fact that there was a Long Vacation may lead us to conclude that when “Chambers
in the King’s Bench Walk” were deserted, Mr.
Tonson was entertaining the Kit-Cat Club in his Thames-side Villa, and that
Mr. Lintot had left the custody of his
“rubric posts” to his shop boys. Whatever may have been the custom in the reign
of the first George, undoubtedly the publisher of any
note asserted his right to a Season in the reign of George
IV. For the three months of autumn, the Circulating Libraries were
indifferently supplied with Travel and Romance; but great were the preparations for the
coming campaign. Manuscripts were in critical hands, proofs were circulating by post,
negotiations were on foot, advertisements were being prepared, mysterious hints about
“the Journal of a noble lady, that had been read to a select circle of
fashionables,” appeared in the papers. Like the mighty ones of my craft, I
was glad that the Season had come to an end, in the July of 1825. With me it was closed by
the publication of a work of unusual importance. Milton’s Latin Treatise on Christian Doctrine, having been discovered in the State Paper Office, was
placed ![]()
| Ch. II.] | THE SECOND EPOCH. | 29 |
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in the hands of the Librarian and Historiographer to
George IV., for the laudable purpose of giving to the world an
unpublished work of one of the greatest of English poets. That office was held in 1824 by
the Rev. Charles Richard Sumner. The original, and a
translation, were printed at the Cambridge University Press, and I was selected as their
Publisher.* At the time of its publication the editor and translator was D.D., and a
prebendary of Canterbury. In 1827 he succeeded Dr.
Tomline, as bishop of Winchester. I cannot advert to the confidence which
Dr. Sumner placed in me, and bear in mind the whole nature of my
intercourse with him, without a feeling of affectionate gratitude to a most zealous and
constant friend, whose kindness was never alloyed by any of the condescension of
patronage—who, when he had arrived at almost the highest ecclesiastical dignity, preserved
the same frank and amiable demeanour that he had exhibited when I first knew him at
Windsor—who, a year or two later, won my heart by his public spirit, as well as by his
personal kindness,—for it was he, in his diocese of Llandaff, who, in a letter of
interrogatories sent round to his Clergy, asked a question which became
famous—“Are there infant schools in your parish—and, if not, why
not?” It is in me an act of simple justice here to record a circumstance which
has been misunderstood in connection with the translation of
Milton’s posthumous work.
In 1824 I went with Mr. Sumner to
Cambridge, to arrange for the printing of the original Latin MS. at the University Press.
Marvellous to relate, there
* A reprint of the translation has been published by Mr. Bohn. |
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| 30 | PASSAGES OF A WORKING LIFE: | [Ch. II. |
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was no functionary of that printing office who was competent to see
that the corrections upon the proofs as they passed out of the hands of the editor were
properly attended to. I had the pleasure of introducing Mr.
Sidney Walker to Mr. Sumner, and it was agreed that he
should undertake this duty. The printing of the Latin edition, and of the English
translation, was completed in the course of a twelvemonth. The Preface by the translator
contains the following paragraph: “He cannot conclude these preliminary remarks
without acknowledging his obligations to W. S. Walker, Esq.,
Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, who has not only discharged the greater part of
the laborious office of correcting the press, but whose valuable suggestions during the
progress of the work have contributed to remove some of its imperfections.”
The Rev. J. Moultrie, in his Memoir of Mr. Walker,
prefixed to his “Poetical
Remains,” says of this incident in his friend’s literary career,
“The work being printed at the University Press, Walker
was selected as resident on the spot, and eminently qualified for the office, to revise
and correct the proof sheets. In the performance of this task he considerably
overstepped the limits of his commission, reviewing not only the printer’s but
the translator’s labour, and leaving upon the work the indelible impress of his
own masterly scholarship and profound appreciation of the author’s
genius.” Compared with this statement the acknowledgment by Dr.
Sumner of his obligations to Mr. Walker may appear not
only cold, but insufficient. It is my duty to state that not only had the accomplished
Fellow of Trinity “considerably overstepped the limits of his
commission,” but ![]()
| Ch. II.] | THE SECOND EPOCH. | 31 |
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had concealed the fact of having done so
till the printing of the work was completed. He was fastidious to excess in his critical
scholarship. His clandestine mode of proceeding was to be attributed to his utter want of
decision of character. To me he at length made the tardy communication of his error.
“I ought properly to address Mr. Sumner, but I cannot
muster confidence to make the communication to him. The truth is, that I have been
guilty of great and unwarrantable liberties with regard to the translation of Milton. I understood it to be his wish that I should
make no alterations, except such as were approved of by him; and with this wish I
conformed for a short time, except some minute encroachments after
the sheet was returned from Windsor; but as I went on, so many instances
occurred to me in which, so I thought, the translation might be bettered, that at last
I dropped all remorse and altered without compunction. The truth was, that although the
translation would in any case have been quite as good as is generally thought proper to
bestow on modern works, written in foreign languages—so that the public would not have
complained,—I could not be satisfied, unless it were something better.” Many,
he says, may think he had too rigid ideas of the duties of a translator. His justification
was to be found, he maintains, in the desire he felt “that the work might be, not
good in a certain stated degree, but as good as it could be made.”
The days before “Murray”—the days when the
tourist went groping his way through foreign towns without the friendly aid of the famous
“Hand Books for Travellers”—seem to belong to an
era when the majority of Britons were, in some sense, “almost ![]()
| 32 | PASSAGES OF A WORKING LIFE: | [Ch. II. |
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separated from the whole world.” Yet, in 1825, these excellent books would
have been before their time. Travelling had not then become a fashion. The. modes of
conveyance were tedious, uncertain, and expensive. An opportunity was presented to me in
the August of that year of seeing Paris under agreeable circumstances; and I persuaded
myself that through a personal intercourse with French publishers I could unite business
with pleasure. I joined a family, of which the mother had been the friend of my
childhood—whose elder daughter was growing into the elegant and accomplished woman—whose
two sons were Etonians, full of spirit and curiosity. We travelled through Picardy with a
calèche and pair of horses that we had hired at Calais; accomplishing about forty miles
each day, with ample opportunities of seeing the country and observing the manners of the
people. The Diligence often passed us or met us. We could never want a hearty laugh whilst
the postilion diverted us with his jackboots and his pigtail. We drew up beneath the
hedge-row apple-trees as he cracked his leathern whip with the noise of a little
blunderbuss. We rather pitied the poor creatures, who, in the hottest of weather, were shut
up in the interior of that machine. We did not even envy the uninterrupted prospect of the
few who sat aloft with the conducteur in the cabriolet. So we leisurely journeyed, pleased
with all we saw; enjoying the quails and partridges, which we often found at dinner or
supper, although the glory of bread-sauce was reserved for our own country, according to
the belief of Lord Devon; mightily relishing the wine
which we always thought surprisingly cheap; and well inclined to believe that ![]()
| Ch. II.] | THE SECOND EPOCH. | 33 |
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there were no bad inns upon the road which the English were wont to
use in the days of leisurely travelling. They are gone,—for the tourist from Boulogne to
Paris of 1864—the Diligence, the Malle poste, the colossal boots, and
the queues. He cannot enjoy, as we enjoyed, the quiet dinner at Montreuil; the nice supper
at Abbeville; the market day at Beauvais, amidst smiling vendors of eggs and poultry in
their wondrous caps and sabots, who did not seem as if they ever toiled in the harvest time
as we had seen some of their hard-worked country-women. We now rush from London to Paris in
twelve hours, and fancy we have seen France.
The Paris of Charles X. was as
suggestive of political and social contrasts to the Paris of the first Napoleon, as its physical aspects gave no promise of the wonders that
might be effected under a sagacious despotism during the lapse of another generation. There
was a constitutional Government; a vigorous opposition; an unlicensed Press. There were
earnest speakers in the Chamber of Deputies; bitter satirists in prose and verse; Beranger was on all lips, and Courier might be read in castrated editions; the officers of
the Crown instituted proceedings against journalists, but the tribunals refused to condemn
them. There was then an open straggle between the narrowest bigotry and the broadest
licence in matters of religion. The priestly and ultra-royalist parties, with the Court at
their head, were despised. They were “les infiniment
petits” whose fall would be a Revolution. I saw the King and
the Royal family walk from the Tuileries in procession to Notre Dame, on the Feast of the
Ascension of the Virgin, amidst a population intent upon a holiday ![]()
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and
in tolerable good humour. But there was no enthusiasm, and there were significant shrugs of
the shoulders. While the King was marching through the streets at the head of an army of
priests, the people were discussing the atrocity of the law of sacrilege which was being
debated in the Chamber of Deputies, under which law the profanation of the sacred utensils
was to be punished with death. Nevertheless, all was gaiety in this beauteous summer time.
There were then noble trees on the Boulevards, beneath whose shade we sipped our ices, or
lingered till the deep blue sky was gemmed with stars. The gardens of the Tuileries and the
Champs Elysées were filled with crowds of idlers. Versailles, with its Grandes Eaux, was to us a place of wonder and delight.
The Palace of the Grand Monarque, before Louis
Philippe had dedicated its saloons to the glories of the Consulate and the
Empire, presented historical memorials more interesting than picture after picture of
battle fields, most of them bad and all wearisome. The streets of Paris were fertile in
remembrances of a past generation of comparative uncivilisation. The stinking gutter
stagnated in the middle of the causeway, which had no trottoirs. The rope stretched from side to side, with the lamp in
the centre, made us understand the meaning of à la
lanterne. I was awakened every morning at five o’clock by the
cleaving of wood in the Rue Richelieu, for the winter supply of the Hôtel des Princes, in
which I had the misfortune to be lodged in a front bed-room. In spite of some
discomforts—even in a first-rate hotel—which have now vanished, we were well pleased with
our fortnight of sight-seeing; were not discomposed by assisting at the representation of
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| Ch. II.] | THE SECOND EPOCH. | 35 |
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three farces at the Theatre des Variétés, in which the chief
humour was a burlesque of English manners. At the Theatre Français I saw Talma in Sylla, and lost my belief that French dramatic poetry was essentially a
conventional and tame affair. The great tragedian united, as I then felt, the majestic
impressiveness of Kemble with the passionate energy
of Kean. I am afraid that I was too much pleased and
excited in Paris to attend very profitably to business. I found the publishers with whom I
had negotiations very obliging and unpretentious; living plainly in their houses of
business; and not affecting to be anything grander than dealers in books, who had a shrewd
eye to a bargain. We travelled homeward through Normandy, where the green fields and the
pretty churches reminded us of English scenes. We rested for a night at Neufchâtel, where
we tasted the delicious little cheeses fresh in the place of their production—a luxury made
just then somewhat famous by the mistake of a worthy alderman of London, who, having first
seen the delicacy at a great man’s table, said he would order a hundred of his
correspondent, and was astonished by the delivery at his door of a ton or two of the hard
cheeses of Switzerland, almost as big as a cart wheel. May I dare to say, that some of the
leisure of the ladies of our party was employed in sewing sundry yards of French silk
within the lining of my cloak. Smuggling was then deemed a venial offence. Huskisson’s great measure removing the prohibition
upon the importation of foreign silks was not to take effect till 1826.
When I returned in September, my family were at Windsor. I had the
opportunity, in company ![]()
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with Dr.
Sumner, of seeing the progress of the great improvements of the Castle, and
of listening to the clear explanations of his plans, which Mr.
Wyatville gave with the straightforward simplicity characteristic of his
practical genius. In the previous summer, soon after the commencement of the works, I had
gone into the old building with Mr. Britton. We had
found the architect sitting alone surrounded with demolished walls at the north-east angle
of the Terrace front, deeply engaged in the study of a ground plan. His idea of the
beautiful octagon tower, called Brunswick, was then shaping itself into that harmonious
combination of somewhat incongruous parts which he so happily effected in many portions of
the fortress-palace of Edward III., by the careful
preservation of old features and the happy adaptation of new. I could not long linger at
Windsor in the enjoyment of a beautiful autumn, but had to be much in London, as the
publishing season was approaching. Every day was then giving birth to some new project for
the employment of capital, although during the Session of Parliament, which closed on the
6th of July, two hundred and eighty-six private bills had been passed for schemes of local
improvement, chiefly to be effected by the agency of Joint Stock Companies. You could
scarcely meet a man in the city who had not something to say about the rise or the fall in
shares—shares in Canals, in Rail-roads, in Packets, in Gasworks, in Mines, in Banks, in
Insurance Offices, in Fisheries, in. Sugar and Indigo cultivation, in Irish Manufactures,
in Newspapers. At the beginning of the Session the King had “the happiness of
congratulating” his Parliament on “general and in-![]()
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creasing prosperity;” at the end of the Session the same prosperity
“continues to pervade every part of the kingdom.” These sanguine
views gained for the Chancellor of the Exchequer the title of “Prosperity Robinson.” Turning aside from thoughts of
French translations and other productions of ephemeral Literature, I had devised a large
and comprehensive scheme of a “National Library”—a cheap series of books which
should condense the information contained in voluminous and expensive works. I prepared a
Prospectus, in which I truly said, “It is to be remarked that, with some few
striking exceptions, the general Literature of our country is either addressed to men
of leisure and research, and is, therefore, bulky and diffuse; or it is frittered down
into meagre and spiritless outlines, adapted only for juvenile capacities.” I
settled the subjects of about a hundred volumes, in History, Science and Art, and
Miscellaneous Literature. I submitted this Prospectus to Mr.
Colburn, who expressed his desire to join me in the undertaking, in
conjunction with some wholesale house. It was settled that Mr.
Whittaker should be applied to, and accordingly the general terms of an
agreement were soon arranged between us.
During November I applied myself assiduously to the preparation of a
complete scheme to go before the public. I obtained the opinion of judicious advisers. I
made overtures to writers. I received a letter from my old friend the Rev. J. M. Turner, in which he says, “I hear from
Mr. Locker that you are about to undertake
an extensive scheme of publication something like that which Constable is advertising so assiduously. I shall be
very glad ![]()
| 38 | PASSAGES OF A WORKING LIFE: | [Ch. II. |
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to enlist as a contributor to your stores.
Constable’s programme seems very imposing, but like all
comprehensive sketches it is both deficient and redundant.” My own plan was
no doubt open to the same objection. It was more systematic than
Constable’s, and, therefore, perhaps less attractive. I was
in high spirits at the prospect of congenial occupation in the editorship of this series,
and in a probable source of profit with a limited responsibility. Mr. Whittaker was as sanguine as myself. We had contracted
an intimacy as members of a Club of a peculiar character, of which there was no previous
example, and which, as far as I know, has had no imitators. “The Publishers’
Club” included under that comprehensive name Authors as well as Publishers proper. Mr. Jerdan, in his
“Autobiography,”
describes this Club as “The Literary Club,” but I never knew it under any other
name than “The Publishers’.” Our monthly dinner was at the Albion, in
Aldersgate Street. It was an exceedingly pleasant association, even when the proceedings
were not enlivened by invited guests, such as the great comedians Munden and Mathews.
I remember an evening of rare enjoyment, when I sat by Munden—a man of
the most exquisite humour—a great actor when asked for an exercise of his art, but
returning naturally to take an intelligent share in general conversation. On ordinary
occasions, Mr. Croly harangued in a style which some
deemed eloquence; Mr. Jerdan made puns which some regarded as wit; and Dr. Kitchener pronounced dogmatic opinions upon cookery
and wine. Hood, a few years before, had spread his
fame far and wide in his “Ode to Dr.
Kitchener;” but I was not quite ![]()
| Ch. II.] | THE SECOND EPOCH. | 39 |
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aware of our
Vice-Chairman’s greatness in the world of gastronomy till I saw the rich landlord of
the Albion address himself to the sage physician, whose maxim to ward off dyspepsia was
“masticate, denticate, chump, and chew.” As he sat, eagerly looking
for the remove, with his pocket-case of sauces by his side, Mr. ——
humbly requested that he would deign to taste of a certain dish which the genius of his chef had recently produced. The fiat of approval was given.
Henceforth the luxury would be classical.
The first meeting of our Club season of 1825 was joyous. The second meeting
was dismal. The commercial world was in alarm. How well I remember the anxious face of
Mr. James Duncan, one of the most prudent and
sagacious of publishers! Even such a man
“Drew Priam’s curtain in the
dead of night, And would have told him, half his Troy was burnt.” |
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Duncan would have told us, had he dared, that half the Row was shaky.
Few of our Club after this meeting were in the humour for a monthly festivity. The Panic
had come, passing over all our tribe like the Simoom, bringing with it general feebleness,
if not individual death. Scott, in the blind confidence
which he felt, even whilst he and Constable were
signing “sheafs of bills,” writes in his Journal of November 25th,
“After all, it is hard that the vagabond stock-jobbing Jews, should, for their
own purposes, make such a state of credit as now exists in London.” If the
“pleasant vices” of speculative men had not found work for the
stock-jobbing Jews, there would have been no panic to become one of ![]()
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the “instruments to scourge us”—the humblest subjects, and the highest
potentates, of “the realms of print.” The house of Whittaker succumbed very early, and its affairs were
righteously administered by Trustees, who in a few years restored it to its old position.
Hurst and Robinson fell, never to rise again, and pulled down
Constable and Ballantyne
with them. Then began the heroic period of Walter Scott’s life,
when we might almost envy him his misfortunes and mistakes, in the contemplation of the
grandeur of his efforts to retrieve them.
On the 6th of December I had been at Windsor. Returning to London by the
afternoon coach, I learnt that the banking-house of Williams & Co.
had stopped payment. They were the bankers who transacted the business of Messrs. Ramsbottom and Legh,
the partners in our sole Windsor bank, and large brewers. I was upon intimate terms with
both these gentlemen, and I dreaded the consequence to them of this unexpected calamity.
Late at night they both arrived at my house in Pall Mall East. We spent several hours in
anxious consultation; but it was at length agreed that Mr. Legh should
immediately return to Windsor, to countermand an order that had been given for the closing
of their bank on the morning of the 7th. It had seemed impossible upon the first receipt of
the disastrous intelligence to prevent a fatal run upon them; for their resources, beyond
the regulated supply of specie and banknotes to pay their own well-worn pieces of paper—the
ordinary currency of the town and neighbourhood—were now locked up in the unfortunate
London house. Mr. Ramsbottom was one of the members for the borough,
very ![]()
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popular, and of unimpeached credit. He and I set out on an
excursion, west and east, to seek the assistance of bankers and other capitalists, his
friends. In the Albany we found the partners of one firm, that of Messrs.
Everett, deliberating by lamp-light. A few words showed how
unavailing was the hope of help from them: “We shall ourselves stop at nine
o’clock.” The dark December morning gradually grew lighter; the
gas-lamps died out; but long before it was perfect day we found Lombard Street blocked up
by eager crowds, each man struggling to be foremost at the bank where he kept his account
if its doors should be opened. We entered several of the banks where the counters were
surrounded by the presenters of cheques; and were witnesses to the calm which sustains the
honest English trader in the hour of difficulty, even as it has sustained many a naval
commander when the ship has struck upon a sunken rock, and his own safety is the last
consideration. There was a London office of Messrs. Ramsbottom’s
brewery; and here we found a considerable sum that, through the prudence of the principal
clerk, had not been paid in on the 6th to their banking agents in Birchin Lane. We decided
upon a plan of action, the artifice of which was justified by the necessity of the case. I
took my seat in a postchaise with my treasure—something less than a thousand pounds—and was
whirled to Windsor in a couple of hours by four horses. As I changed horses at Hounslow, or
stopped at turnpikes, I proclaimed, “funds for the Windsor Bank.” The
news spread down the road in that extraordinary way in which news, good or bad, is
promulgated. I drove triumphantly into the yard ![]()
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of the Bank, amidst
the hurrahs of a multitude outside, to whom I had proclaimed my mission. There was a
meeting at the same time taking place at the Town Hall, at which my townsmen entered into
resolutions declaring their opinion of the solvency of the firm, and the necessity of not
pressing upon them in the hour of difficulty. The bank was saved. Its failure would have
spread general dismay and misery; especially as several of the tradesmen largely employed
in the alterations of the Castle depended upon advances for wages upon their credit
accounts with Messrs. Ramsbottom. I went the next day to Dr. Sumner, and represented to him that a prompt payment
of arrears from the Board of Works would be an immense relief. With a ready kindness he
applied to the highest quarter. The King’s intervention,—then, perhaps, more potent
in overcoming obstacles of routine than in the present day—quickly accomplished this
object. Williams & Co. resumed payments in a few weeks.
Lockhart, in his life of Scott, relates that in January, 1826, Constable, awakening from his dream of safety from
impending ruin, had come to London with the resolution of applying to the Bank of England,
“for a loan of from 100,000l. to 200,000l. on the security of the copyrights in his
possession.” Copyrights, in that perilous season, were a most unmarketable
commodity; and the Governor and Company of the Bank of England, or indeed any other
bankers, would have regarded such securities, and even the most valuable stock of a
publisher, as so much waste paper. My own credit was unassailed amidst suspicions on every
side. I had no engagements that had arisen out of the system of ![]()
| Ch. II.] | THE SECOND EPOCH. | 43 |
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accommodation bills,—those treacherous allies who pull down the strongest in the hour of
mortal conflict. Such desperate help in tiding over difficulties was fully developed in all
its evils by that unsparing Panic. I had trade engagements that would have been duly met,
if a paralysis of commerce had not been eventually as dangerous as its apoplexy; chronic
decay as fatal as sudden extinction. The publications of 1825 would no longer sell in 1826;
the new works projected, written, half printed, advertised, must wait for a more propitious
time. The “tender leaves” would not endure that “killing frost.”
This was the reasoning of most of us—of nearly all, with the exception of Mr. Colburn, who pushed his new works with great vigour,
having the market of light literature almost wholly to himself. He was perhaps more right
than his fellows, in following a course which the most wonderful Common-sense, lifted into
the noblest poetry by the power of Imagination, has prescribed as well for publishers as
for statesmen:— “To have done, is to hang Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail In monumental mockery.” |
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For myself, I saw and heard so much of commercial misery, of fear that kills, of
unmerited suspicion troubling the sleep of the most prudent, that the spring was passing
into summer, and I began to look upon 1826 as a lost year of business. I could not resolve
to “take the instant way”—to “keep the path.” I had
achieved something like a position in 1825. I could scarcely hope to regain it by following
the usual course of publishing books that might ![]()
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live their little hour
of novelty and then pass to the trunk-makers. Every day made me sick of my occupation.
“The Brazen Head,” of which I
have spoken, dropped upon the town like a leaden lump. Credit was whispered away. Harsh
judgments were pronounced upon the unlucky. In this dark season I sometimes heard the
raven-croak of a man who peeped into every corner, and was nightly exhibited in his peeping
attitude to laughing play-goers. The Paul
Pry of Liston was a chubby, rosy-faced,
good-natured, but essentially mischievous meddler, known as Tom
Hill. He would lay hold of your button in the streets, and detain you by
some such talk as this:—“Do you know if W— has given up his
hunter? I asked one of his porters, and he wouldn’t tell me . . . . . Isn’t
it suspicious to see —— and Co. sending a waggon load of stock from their warehouse? .
. . . Do give a hint to your friend in —— Street, that his servants are very
extravagant. I looked down his area and saw them having hot rolls for
breakfast.” I got away from this moral fog of London as soon as I could. I was
shut up, moody and irresolute, at Windsor, in the summer, projecting, planning,
re-arranging my “National Library” scheme, which had been stifled by the panic
before its birth; adding a book here and there, or curtailing the list, already too long. I
was about to return to London with no more preparation for a coming campaign than half a
dozen various prospectuses of this work. It had become a fixed idea with me, to the
exclusion of all minor purposes of business or literary occupation.
In the autumn of 1826 Mr. Brougham was
organizing his “Society for the Diffusion of Useful ![]()
| Ch. II.] | THE SECOND EPOCH. | 45 |
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Knowledge.” The Long Vacation was at an end, and in that November, the prospectus of
the new society was privately circulated. It said,—“The object of the Society is
strictly limited to what its title imports, namely, the imparting useful information to
all classes of the community, particularly to such as are unable to avail themselves of
experienced teachers, or may prefer learning by themselves.” Here, then,
appeared an opening for the nurture of my cherished scheme, of which I ought to avail
myself. At Windsor, in November, I received a letter from Mr. M.
D. Hill, wishing me to come to town immediately, as he had mentioned my plan
of popular books to Mr. Brougham, and to a committee for the
encouragement of such a project, and that he thought great things might be done. Of course
this communication brought me instantly to London; and I was very quickly introduced by
Mr. Hill to Mr. Brougham. That interview is
indelibly impressed upon my memory with all its attendant circumstances. I had never come
across the renowned orator in private life, or had seen him under an every-day character.
There was an image in my mind of the Queen’s Attorney-General, as I had often beheld
him in the House of Lords, wielding a power in the proceedings on the Bill of Pains and
Penalties which no other man seemed to possess—equivocating witnesses crouching beneath his
withering scorn; mighty peers shrinking from his bold sarcasm; the whole assembly visibly
agitated at times by the splendour of his eloquence. The Henry
Brougham I had gazed upon was, in my mind’s eye, a man stern and
repellent; not to be approached with any attempt at familiarity; whose ![]()
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opinions must be received with the most respectful deference; whose mental superiority
would be somewhat overwhelming. The Henry Brougham into whose chambers
in Lincoln’s Inn I was ushered on a November night was sitting amidst his briefs,
evidently delighted to be interrupted for some thoughts more attractive. After saluting my
friend with a joke, and grasping my hand with a cordial welcome, he went at once to the
subject upon which I came. The rapid conception of the features of my plan; the few brief
questions as to my wishes; the manifestation of a warm interest in my views without the
slightest attempt to be patronizing, were most gratifying to me. The image of the great
orator of 1820 altogether vanished when I listened to the unpretentious and often playful
words of one of the best table-talkers of 1826,—it vanished, even as the full-bottomed wig
of that time seemed to have belonged to some other head than the close-cropped one upon
which I looked. The foremost advocate of popular education made no harangues about its
advantages. He did not indoctrinate me, as I have been bored by many an educationist before
and since, with flourishes upon a subject which he gave Mr. Hill and
myself full credit for comprehending. M. Charles
Dupin said to Mackintosh, after a
night in the House of Commons—“I heard not one word about the blessings of
Liberty.”—“No, no,” replied
Mackintosh, “we take all that for granted.” So
did Henry Brougham take for granted that he and I were in accord upon
the subject of the Diffusion of Knowledge. He was then within a few days of the completion
of his forty-seventh year; full of health ![]()
| Ch. II.] | THE SECOND EPOCH. | 47 |
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and energy—one who had been
working without intermission in literature, in science, in law, in politics, for a quarter
of a century, but one to whom no work seemed to bring fatigue; no tedious mornings of the
King’s Bench, no sleepless nights of the House of Commons, able to “stale
his infinite variety.” From that hour I felt more confidence in talking with
perfect freedom to him who worthily filled so large a space in the world’s eye, than
to many a man of commonplaces, whose depths I had plumbed and had found them shallow. That
first interview with Mr. Brougham was an event that had a marked
influence upon many subsequent passages of my life.
It would be a fruitless and wearisome story of private affairs, were I to
detail the circumstances under which my unfortunate “National Library,” having
been at first taken up by the Society of which Mr.
Brougham was President, and negotiations having been opened with their
publishers, was finally adopted by Mr. Murray, with
an earnestness which was to me very assuring, after my long term of enforced idleness and
dark apprehensions. The eminent West-end publisher was committed to the enterprise, by the
issue of the Prospectus in his own name, which I had so carefully prepared. In my original
Prospectus, which I had submitted to Mr. Murray in February, 1826, I
had said, “It is our peculiar object to condense the information which is
scattered through voluminous and expensive works, into the form and substance of
Original Treatises.” In the Prospectus issued on the 24th of December, it was
set forth that “the divisions of Popular Knowledge in which the National Library
is arranged, will![]()
| 48 | PASSAGES OF A WORKING LIFE: | [Ch. II. |
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comprehend, in distinct Treatises, the most
important branches of instruction and amusement. They will present the most valuable
and interesting articles of an Encyclopædia, in a form accessible to every description
of purchaser.” This final Prospectus is printed, , in Goodhugh’s
“English Gentleman’s Library
Manual,”—published in May, 1827. Differences of opinion about the
editorial responsibility of the series too soon arose. Quis
custodiet was answered by the apparition of a very solemn divine,
who talked as a “Sir Oracle.” Arrangements
regarding my old stock and copyrights, which it was considered—I may say perfectly
understood—were to be taken at a valuation, when I was about to merge my business in the
great house of Albemarle Street, presented new obstacles. Thus were my prospects clouded in
a few weeks of 1827. I was heartsick at last, and abandoning the whole scheme left it for
the imitation of others of more independent means. The Society for the Diffusion of Useful
Knowledge produced their “Treatises” in March, and Messrs. Longman their Lardner’s “Cabinet Cyclopædia” a few years afterwards. Mr. Murray, I had reason to believe, had become frightened at the magnitude
of my plan. He several times said to me, “where will you find the men to write
these books?” In my maturer experience I came to perceive that this was the
real difficulty in such undertakings.
Let me hasten to close these recollections of the spring of 1827. Scott writes of old letters, somewhere in his Diary,
“they rise up as scorpions to hiss at me.” So may I write of the
documents by which I trace this crisis of my life. My abortive efforts to begin a new
career, shaking off future responsibilities ![]()
| Ch. II.] | THE SECOND EPOCH. | 49 |
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of trade, made the
responsibilities which remained more onerous. My boat was stranded. Happily for me there
were no wreckers at hand ready for the plunder of my damaged cargo. A private trust
administered my affairs, whose only concern was to realize—to sell, to the best advantage,
land, houses, newspaper, stock, copyrights. I would not be a burden. I would earn my own
bread. I walked forth from my business homes in London and Windsor, after the fashion of a
man represented in a wood-cut in a title-page of one of the old printers (I think it was a
work of Budæus) which comes into my thoughts—a man, not bowed down by
age or sorrow, moving forward, not briskly, but not unsteadily, with his stout staff, and
his small wallet, and a label of four words,—“Omnia
mea mecum porto.”
Joseph Addison (1672-1719)
English politician and man of letters, with his friend Richard Steele he edited
The Spectator (1711-12). He was the author of the tragedy
Cato (1713).
James Ballantyne (1772-1833)
Edinburgh printer in partnership with his younger brother John; the company failed in the
financial collapse of 1826.
Pierre-Jean de Béranger (1780-1857)
French printer and composer of revolutionary songs; he published
Chansons morales et autres (1815).
Henry George Bohn (1796-1884)
London bookseller who began publishing independently in 1831; his “Standard Library”
began appearing in 1846.
John Britton (1771-1857)
English autodidact, antiquary, and topographer; he published
Beauties
of Wiltshire (1801) and
Autobiography, 2 vols (1850,
1857).
Henry Peter Brougham, first baron Brougham and Vaux (1778-1868)
Educated at Edinburgh University, he was a founder of the
Edinburgh
Review in which he chastised Byron's
Hours of Idleness; he
defended Queen Caroline in her trial for adultery (1820), established the London University
(1828), and was appointed lord chancellor (1830).
King Charles I of England (1600-1649)
The son of James VI and I; as king of England (1625-1649) he contended with Parliament;
he was revered as a martyr after his execution.
Charles X, King of France (1757-1836)
He was King of France 1824-1830 succeeding Louis XVIII; upon his abdication he was
succeeded by Louis Philippe, duc d'Orléans.
Henry Colburn (1785-1855)
English publisher who began business about 1806; he co-founded the
New
Monthly Magazine in 1814 and was publisher of the
Literary
Gazette from 1817.
Archibald Constable (1774-1827)
Edinburgh bookseller who published the
Edinburgh Review and works
of Sir Walter Scott; he went bankrupt in 1826.
William Courtenay, ninth earl of Devon [Kitty] (1768-1835)
The son of William Courtenay, viscount Courtenay of Powderham Castle (d. 1788); his love
affair with William Beckford made him a social outcast and he lived much of his life
abroad.
George Croly (1780-1860)
Anglo-Irish poet, novelist, and essayist for Blackwood's; his gothic novel
Salathiel (1828) was often reprinted.
James Duncan (1784 c.-1850)
Edinburgh bookseller who became a wholesale publisher in Paternoster Row after working
for John Murray.
William Goodhugh (1798 c.-1842)
He was an Oxford Street bookseller, antiquary, biblical scholar, and bibliographer who
published in the
Quarterly Review.
Matthew Davenport Hill (1792-1872)
English barrister, the brother of Sir Rowland Hill; he was MP for Hull (1833-35),
recorder of Birmingham (1839) and a reformer of criminal laws.
Thomas Hill (1760-1840)
English book-collector who entertained members of Leigh Hunt's circle at his cottage at
Sydenham in Kent. He was a proprietor of the
Monthly Mirror and
later a writer for the
Morning Chronicle. Charles Lamb described him
as “the wettest of dry salters.”
Thomas Hood (1799-1845)
English poet and humorist who wrote for the
London Magazine; he
published
Whims and Oddities (1826) and
Hood's
Magazine (1844-5).
Thomas Hurst (1770 c.-1842)
Originally a bookseller in Leeds, he began working in London late in the eighteenth
century; in 1804 he partnered with the firm of T. N. Longman. He died in the
Charterhouse.
William Huskisson (1770-1830)
English politician and ally of George Canning; privately educated, he was a Tory MP for
Morpeth (1796-1802), Liskeard (1804-07), Harwich (1807-12), Chichester (1812-23), and
Liverpool (1823-30). He died in railway accident.
William Jerdan (1782-1869)
Scottish journalist who for decades edited the
Literary Gazette;
he was author of
Autobiography (1853) and
Men I
have Known (1866).
Edmund Kean (1787-1833)
English tragic actor famous for his Shakespearean roles.
John Philip Kemble (1757-1823)
English actor renowned for his Shakespearean roles; he was manager of Drury Lane
(1783-1802) and Covent Garden (1803-1808).
William Kitchiner (1778-1827)
English miscellaneous writer and epicure; he published
The Cook's
Oracle (1817) and other works. He was a friend of William Jerdan.
Dionysius Lardner (1793-1859)
Lecturer on science and contributor to the
Edinburgh Review; he
published the
Cabinet Cyclopaedia (1829-1846).
William Legh (1771 c.-1854)
Of Windsor; he was a brewer, banker, wine-dealer, and mayor of Windsor (1835) who died a
bankrupt.
Bernard Lintot (1675-1736)
London bookseller who published Alexander Pope and John Gay.
John Liston (1776 c.-1846)
English comic actor who performed at the Haymarket and Covent Garden.
Edward Hawke Locker (1777-1849)
Secretary to the Royal Naval Hospital, Greenwich (1819); he was a painter, editor of
The Plain Englishman (1820-30) and a friend of Robert Southey and
Sir Walter Scott.
John Gibson Lockhart (1794-1854)
Editor of the
Quarterly Review (1825-1853); son-in-law of Walter
Scott and author of the
Life of Scott 5 vols (1838).
Thomas Norton Longman (1771-1842)
A leading London publisher whose authors included Southey, Wordsworth, Scott, and
Moore.
Louis Philippe, king of the French (1773-1850)
The son of Louis Philippe II, Duke of Orléans; he was King of France 1830-48; he
abdicated following the February Revolution of 1848 and fled to England.
Sir James Mackintosh (1765-1832)
Scottish philosopher and man of letters who defended the French Revolution in
Vindiciae Gallicae (1791); he was Recorder of Bombay (1803-1812) and
MP for Knaresborough (1819-32).
Charles Mathews (1776-1835)
Comic actor at the Haymarket and Covent Garden theaters; from 1818 he gave a series of
performances under the title of
Mr. Mathews at Home.
John Milton (1608-1674)
English poet and controversialist; author of
Comus (1634),
Lycidas (1638),
Areopagitica (1644),
Paradise Lost (1667), and other works.
John Moultrie (1799-1874)
Educated at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge, he contributed witty Byronic verse to
the Etonian and Knight's Quarterly before becoming rector of Rugby where he was a friend of
Thomas Arnold.
Joseph Shepherd Munden (1758-1832)
English comic actor and secretary of the Beefsteak Club; he was the friend of Charles
Lamb.
John Murray II (1778-1843)
The second John Murray began the
Quarterly Review in 1809 and
published works by Scott, Byron, Austen, Crabbe, and other literary notables.
Emperor Napoleon I (1769-1821)
Military leader, First Consul (1799), and Emperor of the French (1804), after his
abdication he was exiled to Elba (1814); after his defeat at Waterloo he was exiled to St.
Helena (1815).
Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
English poet and satirist; author of
The Rape of the Lock (1714)
and
The Dunciad (1728).
John Ramsbottom (1778-1845)
Educated at Eton, he was partner with William Legh in a Windsor brewery and bank and was
a Tory MP for New Windsor (1820-45).
Frederick John Robinson, first earl of Ripon (1782-1859)
Educated at Harrow and St. John's College, Cambridge, he was a Tory MP for Carlow
(1806-07) and Ripon (1807-27), Chancellor of the Exchequer (1823-27), and prime minister
(1827-28) in succession to Canning.
George Ogle Robinson (1837 fl.)
London bookseller at one time in partnership with Thomas Hurst; they suffered bankruptcy
in the crash of 1825-26.
Charles Richard Sumner, bishop of Winchester (1790-1874)
The younger brother of John Bird Sumner, archbishop of Canterbury; he was educated at
Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge; he was bishop of Llandaff and dean of St. Paul's
(1826) and bishop of Winchester (1827).
François-Joseph Talma (1763-1826)
French tragic actor and reformer of the stage who was admired by Napoleon.
Sir George Pretyman Tomline, bishop of Winchester (1750-1827)
Tutor of Pitt the younger; he was dean of St. Paul's and bishop of Lincoln (1787) and
bishop of Winchester (1820-27). He adopted the name of Tomline in 1803 in connection with
an inheritance.
Jacob Tonson (1655-1736)
London bookseller and member of the Kit-Kat Club; the elder Tonson published Dryden; his
son, also Jacob Tonson (1682-1735), published Pope.
John Matthias Turner, bishop of Calcutta (1786 c.-1831)
Educated at Christ Church, Oxford, he was a tutor at Eton and vicar of Abingdon and
rector of Winslow, Cheshire, before being appointed bishop of Calcutta in 1829. He
contributed to Charles Knight's
Plain Englishman.
William Sidney Walker (1795-1846)
English poet, translator, and scholar educated at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge; he
suffered from mental disease and his poems and work on Shakespeare's prosody were published
posthumously. He contributed to the
Etonian and
Knight's Quarterly Review.
George Byrom Whittaker (1793-1847)
London bookseller, the London agent for Robert Cadell, who published, among other things,
educational titles and works by Mary Russell Mitford.
Sir Jeffry Wyatville (1766-1840)
English architect, originally Wyatt; after study with his uncle Samuel Wyatt (1737–1807)
he worked at Chatsworth and Windsor Castle.
The Brazen Head. (1826). A weekly newspapered produced by W. M. Praed, Charles Knight and J. B. B. St. Leger; it
survived for only four numbers.
The Courier. (1792-1842). A London evening newspaper; the original proprietor was James Perry; Daniel Stuart, Peter
Street, and William Mudford were editors; among the contributors were Samuel Taylor
Coleridge and John Galt.
