quotations; but then they are always directly apposite and judicious. But, Mr. Heron, I fear I have intruded too long upon your valuable time;" and, so saying, the bookseller took his leave, fully impressed with an idea of the extensive reading of Mr. Heron, and that gentleman's devotion to the classics.

Mr. Heron did not rely entirely upon his own talents, however great in his own estimation. In addition to the usual establishment of parliamentary and law reporters, he availed himself of the literary assistance of Dr. Wolcot, then known to the public as Peter Pindar; Doctor John Mason Good; and other members of the Wittinggemot, as also several others with whom he had become acquainted in his visits to Paternoster Row; but, what may appear extraordinary, the two papers, instead of rising in public estimation, as be anticipated, never presented a more discouraging aspect, or stronger marks of mismanagement. They were become, in fact, a wretched farrago, destitute of taste, talent, and intelligence. Whether owing to inexperience, the novelty of his position, want of physical power, excessive excitement, or a combination of them all, the man was overwhelmed with the weight of his labours; and his mind, distracted between the two newspapers, became a mass of confusion. Of the utter incapacity and negligence which they displayed, the following instance may afford an idea. The readers of the British Press were surprised one morning with the following announcement, displayed with all the pomp and circumstance of a leading article:-" It is with deep regret, with unfeigned sorrow, it becomes our duty to announce, that His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales was last night taken ill with a complaint in his bowels." The same announcement obtained the same distinguished place and honours in the evening Globe of the same day; and, as if the intelligence had not been thus sufficiently impressed upon the mind of the reader, the same announcement was repeated in precisely the same form on the following morning, in the British Press. It would be,

perhaps, impossible to adduce an instance of greater negligence and stupidity than this in the whole range of the public press, since the first appearance of the first newspaper; but in justice to Heron, it is only fair to presume that the blame may not wholly attach to him, and that some one of his numerous assistants may be entitled to share it. Doctor Good may have furnished the news of his royal highness's bowel complaint in the first instance; and the printer, who received a salary of five guineas a-week for his eye over the concern, should have prevented a repetition of the alarming intelligence. In this miserable state the two papers continued to struggle for a period of about a fortnight; when the original editor received an invitation to meet the proprietors at the Chapter Coffeehouse. At the interview which followed, they acknowledged their errors, and proposed to him to resume the management of the concern, upon very liberal terms; by one of which it was left to his sole guidance, and by another he was granted a seventh share in the whole property. An arrangement was then made with Heron and his friends, all of whom, except Messrs. Massey and Sandell, retired; and the original editor being thus reinstated, the two papers continued to be successfully conducted by him, as a joint concern, for a long series of years, at the expiration of which they were sold, and fell into the hands of two distinct sets of proprietors, by whom they were severed, and carried on as distinct and separate establishments. The British Press, like a fish thrown out of the living stream upon a muddy bank, floundered and flounced for a short time, and then perished from actual exhaustion. The Globe was united to another evening paper, the Traveller, and has ever since been carried on under the joint title.

This article commenced with pledging itself to shew, "How to make a newspaper without credit or cash." The pledge has been redeemed, as evinced in the cases of the British Press and the Globe, of which Heron may be justly deemed the virtual, if

1

not the actual founder. If in his embrace they did not warm into life, grace, and beauty, he gave them a substantial form, a principle of vitality, and a local habitation.

Honour to the shades of Guttenberg, of Schoeffer, of Faust, and of the Aldine line! You did much in your lives for the children of Cadmus. Honour to Paternoster Row, their great nurse and patroness! Honour to the steam-engine and to the machine, by which they have been rescued from the smeared pressman, with his filthy ball. Their comely faces are no longer disfigured by blurs and blots received at his hands. No monk nor friart now offends the eye, or mars the sense. Behold the smooth roller, clad "in its inky cloak and customary suit of solemn black," how gracefully it glides

over the level surface of the type, dispeusing its favours to all alike, giving to every letter its due, and leaving none to complain of prejudice or partiality! The whole impression is uniformly beautiful, and free from blemish. But all this patronage and improvement did not contribute to the growth of newspapers; on the contrary, the steam-engine and the machine have a tendency to monopoly and centralisation. It is the reduction of the duties that has caused the great increase, by diminishing the amount of capital requisite for the undertaking. The present article, in which it is shewn how a newspaper can be made without any capital whatsoever, either credit or cash, must give a still greater impulse to the growth of newspapers.

AN OLD JOURNALIST.

EIGHTEEN hundred and thirty-nine! Nine! mark that nine! Nine is like the last day of the materialist--it leads to nought. Next year, we shall lose the thirty clean out of our chronology for another hundred years--and forty will be the order of the day. Of all the barbarous middle ages, the most barbarous, according to Lord Byron, is that mezzo cammin della nostra vita recorded of Dante, of which forty is the date. The quadrigenarians may reasonably object, that as Lord Byron only lived to seven-and-thirty, he could not be a competent judge on the matter; and that at forty, if a man, as Young suggests, confesses himself a fool, he is a fool for so doing. However, there is

by Mrs. Southey. And who is Mrs. Southey?--who but she who was so

no concealing the fact, that a change from thirty to forty is rather nervous, and on the wrong side. As for ourselves, we started with the thirties, and we have now fairly run them down. Next year we open a new score, and shall not fail to give our readers an account of our reckoning; but here we have something else to attend to. Like the swans, we intend now to conclude in song. In less metaphorical words, we wish to ease our library-table of certain parcels of rhyming rubbish, with which it is at present encumbered.

It is not all rubbish, however; for the very first book on which we put our hands, is,

HOURS,

long known, and so great a favourite as Caroline Bowles, transformed by the

that part

gallantry of the laureate and the grace of the parson into her present matrimonial appellation? Southey, so long ago as the 21st of February, 1829, prefaced his most amatory poem of All for Love with a tender address, that is now, perhaps, worth reprinting:

"To CAROLINE BOWLES.

"Could I look forward to a distant day, With hope of building some elaborate lay, Then would I wait till worthier strains of mine

Might have inscribed thy name, O Caroline!

For I would, while my voice is heard on earth,

Bear witness to thy genius and thy worth. But we have both been taught to feel with fear,

How frail the tenure of existence hereWhat unforeseen calamities prevent, Alas, how oft! the best-resolved intent; And therefore this poor volume I address To thee, dear friend, and sister-poetess. "ROBERT SOUTHEY.

"Keswick, Feb. 21, 1829."

The laureate has his wish; for in duty he is bound to say, that worthier strains than his now bear inscribed the name of Caroline connected with his own--and, moreover, she is something more than a dear friend and sisterpoetess. By the way, we request Southey to consider that, as there can be no such thing as a brother-poetess, he ought not to have allowed the rhyme to prevent him from using the more sensible form of sister-poet, without the ess.

Many of the compositions here gathered have appeared in magazines; and this is their second edition. We notice this fact, to account for the title of Solitary Hours, which otherwise would appear somewhat odd, as the name of a work published by a lady during the first year of her marriage. Her hours now cannot be solitary;

and we trust they are as happy as the day is long. The laureate is a fortunate man, his queen supplies him with butts, and his lady with Bowls : then may his cup of good fortune be overflowing. Is there not something exquisitely beautiful in the following?

"The Mariner's Hymn.

"Launch thy bark, mariner!

Christian, God speed thee!
Let loose the rudder bands-
Good angels lead thee!
Set thy sails warily,
Tempests will come;
Steer thy course steadily—
Christian, steer home!

Look to the weather.bow,

Breakers are round thee;
Let fall the plummet now,
Shallows may ground thee.
Reef in the foresail, then!

Hold the helm fast!
So let the vessel wear-
There swept the blast.

What of the night, watchman?
What of the night?
'Cloudy-all quiet-

No land yet-all's right!'
Be watchful, be vigilant;
Danger may be

At an hour when all seemeth
Securest to thee.

How! gains the leak so fast?
Clear out the hold;
Hoist up thy merchandise,
Heave out thy gold.
There-let the ingots go;
Now the ship rights:
Hurra! the harbour's near-
Lo, the red lights!

Slacken not sail yet
At inlet or island;
Straight for the beacon steer,
Straight for the highland:
Crowd all thy canvass on,
Cut through the foam :
Christian, cast anchor now-
Heaven is thy home!"

Our next is a Brummagem bard, who shall speak for himself:

"In the memoir of a son of the Rev. W. Griffin, of Portsea, there is an anecdote of a child who was cautioned to keep from the water's edge, lest Rawhead and Bloody-bones should have him. He trespassed, notwithstanding, and fell and, on being rescued, told his friends

in;

that he went to look for the aforesaid monsters, but did not see them. The author is in a somewhat similar position. He had been told that publishing poetry would injure him as a medical practitioner; but, in one of those brief remissions of practice which every one must occasionally experience, he, nevertheless, resolved to venture. He has ventured, and, like the child, has failed to discover

the bugbear-unless, indeed, the appointment to a professional lectureship, and a practice steadily increasing in extent and respectability, which have been consentaneous with the publication, may be regarded as the Raw-head and Bloodybones he sought for.

"He is convinced that the only reason why medicine and poetry have been deemed incompatible, is simply that the cultivation of the latter has been allowed to induce inattention to the active duties of the former; but that this need not be the case it will be his aim to exemplify, though increasing engagements render it more than probable that this will be his last as well as his first public appearance as a poet."

The doctor need not have made any apology. Does he not know that Apollo himself was at once the god of medicine and the muses? In our own literature, have we not Garth, and Akenside, and Darwin; to say nothing of John Keats or Sir Richard Blackmore? Some of Beddow's poems might be useful in his medical practice as anodynes. To any of his patients, afflicted by jointracking rheums, be there administered a dose of the Sacred Melody, for instance, and sleep, as balmy as ever any in Homer, will immediately ensue. Just try the experiment of the following, chanted to a psalm tune, with a finely nasal accent and intonation :-

"Into the nostrils of a form of clay
That breath diffuses life, and man appears
Robed in the majesty of innocence,
As image and vicegerent of his God ;—
His voice is heard it is the voice of

With sweeter melodies than erst they used.

Man hears himself proclaimed their noblest charge,

The destined heritor of heavenly bliss; He knows himself the favourite of heaven, And while he holds communion with his God,

A loftier anthem gushes from his lip, And seraphs add another golden string To their triumphant harps, that they may keep

Appropriate symphony to mortal song.”

There! listen!-the patient is infallibly in a snore. The recipe is

infallible.

The doctor's themes are generally professional "The Destruction of the First-born," "The Death Song," Sickness," Sepulchres," "Mors Janua Vitæ," "The Tomb of Pétion,” "The Dying Infidel," "The Mourner,” and many other poems of the same kind, grace his collection. It is, indeed, as becomes him, a grave book. With true professional indifference, he also chooses his subjects from occasions which less scientific poets might scruple to touch. For example:

"The Plague of Lice.

"Obedient to the voice of Judah's God,

The prophet lifts his hand once more, And smites the dust on Egypt's shore, Which, quickening into life beneath his rod,

To man and beast that instant clings,
A loathsome swarm of living things.

The insect myriads speed from man to beast ;

The highway and the lonely field Alike the creeping torment yield; The holy places these are spared at least?

The magi's tower?-oh, dark despair! The lice are gathering even there.” And so forth. The sensibility of the magi under the affliction of the creeping torment, when

"Oh, dark despair! The lice are gathering even there,"

is in the last degree pathetic. This, we should say, is the crack poem of the book.

The Compact, its author tells us, "Was begun

the

elapsed since its completion. Those who revert to the above-named epoch, and formed

against an able and honest minister, will, perhaps, be inclined to recognise a propriety in the subject chosen; while in the fact that the play was not sooner published may be found the best apology for its publication now ;-if, indeed, the uniform tenor of late events has not long since made apology superfluous. Certainly, by those who quarrel with the title-page, the choice of theme will be thought to need a separate and previous justification;-and after the much which may be urged with this view - and Heaven knows how much! - the old words, Facit indignatio versum,' may possibly be worth it all."

So far so good. As to its literary merits, we agree with the writer himself:

"For the play, viewed as a composition, the author feels that it needs every indulgence. Often thrown aside, and under the stimulus of events as often resumed, an unconnected or disjointed air may attach to it as a whole. He has found it necessary to sacrifice the unities; and between the third and fourth acts there may be, as regards stage-effect, an hiatus, which a chorus only could supply; this, however, is, perhaps, to the mere reader, compensated by a greater historical fidelity; there being scarcely an incident throughout the work which has not its warrant in some record; while almost the identical language of the chroniclers of the time has in some instances been adopted. As it would have been foolish . with the ground pre-occupied by other writers

to make the interest turn upon a conspiracy; so again the action of the play (which, taken as a whole, is rather action in character) but ill adapts it to theatric representation; if indeed it be not still more disqualified by the nature of its subject."

We have always thought, that a play not qualified to be performed is something of the same kind as a song not qualified to be sung; and we are sure that the author would have done better in making his Compact an historical essay, not a play. James I. cuts a considerable figure in the tragedy, and we extract the closing speech of the British Solomon as a specimen of the whole :

To cleave futurity the mental insight. But hoary men, whose waning moons sum up

Accounts 'twixt heaven and them, have more than all

The prophet's pow'r, and most the grave and prudent.

Such was your father, Cecil! and these words

His coming death forestall'd: that' England's fate

Should ne'er be seal'd but by her parlia ment!'

What meant they else, but that this land possess'd

So full the means of happiness; such seeds

Of growing greatness in her, with the light

Of this pure Faith to guide and guard her senate,

That nought but some bold plunge of theirs from out

The track of beaten virtue could divorce The realm from puissance: as 'whom gods would ruin,'

Of old 'twas said, some guilty madness strikes them?'

I thank him in his tomb-- albeit with awe;

For such forebodings own this double force,

To warn, and yet approve them true by