We have already seen, in our short sketches of the Bells, the Cookes, the Donaldsons, and the Constables, some endeavour—neither faint nor altogether unsuccessful, yet not more than a trial venture, for education was still a monopoly of rank and riches—to render books the property and the birthright of the people. In our present chapter, however, we come to a new phase in the history of bookselling. The schoolmaster, as Brougham said, was abroad; the repressive taxes on knowledge either were, or were about to be, removed; learning, or a smattering of learning, was within the reach of most. The battle of future progress was to be fought out with the pen, just as the triumphs of early civilization had been achieved with the lance and with the sword. The public writer henceforth was to occupy the preacher’s pulpit, and his congregation, far above the limits of any St. Peter’s or St. Paul’s, was to be told only by millions. Books were to be no longer the curious luxuries of the rich man’s library, or the hoarded and hardly-earned treasures of the student’s closet, but were to be fairly placed at the disposal of the many.

Talent certainly, if not genius, is only the product of the requirements of the time and place; and as soon, therefore, as cheap books were in real request, men thoroughly competent and thoroughly earnest came forward to supply the want—fighting bravely, with all the strong energy of their wills, to do the work that each had chosen, and yet each as certainly acted upon invisibly, insensibly, and inevitably, by the true, if word-worn, laws of supply and demand.

The means by which this end was to be attained were many, and the labourers in the new fields of cheap literature numerous; but in our present chapter, as elsewhere, we have selected the representative men and the typical means. The names of Chambers, Knight, and Cassell (the latter certainly in a less degree) are inextricably woven into the movement, of which at present we have only seen the commencement; and the plan by which the most expensive treasures of literature, the choicest garnerings of our knowledge, were placed at the disposal of the meagrest purse, was almost universally that of distribution into small weekly or monthly parts, at an infinitesimal cost—a method that may with justice be styled the people’s intellectual savings bank; and it is to the early history of the people’s intellectual savings bank that we now address ourselves.18

Robert Chambers was born at Peebles, on the banks of the Tweed, on 10th July, 1802, two years later than his brother William, with whom his whole career is intimately connected. They were the sons of James Chambers, at one time a prosperous muslin weaver, employing some hundred looms. Their father is described as “a lover of books, a keen politician, and an open-hearted friend;” but having already been generous beyond his means to the poor French prisoners in Scotland, he was completely ruined by the introduction of machine-weaving looms, and was compelled to sell his modest patrimony, and remove with his family to Edinburgh, with only a few shillings in his pocket on which to start life afresh. But before this the young lads’ education had commenced. At Peebles there were certainly no newspapers; but their old nurse sung ballads and told them legendary stories of the former exploits of the warriors of the country side; and then there was old Tam Fleck, a host in himself, who had struck out a wandering profession of his own, a “flichty chield,” who went about with a translation of Josephus (Lestrange, 1720) from house to house. “Weel, Tam, what’s the news the nicht?” would one of the neighbours say, as Tam entered with the ponderous volume under his arm. “Bad news, bad news,” replied Tam. “Titus has begun to besiege Jerusalem—it’s gaun to be a terrible business.” At the little village school, too, William was introduced to Latin for the fee of five shillings a quarter, and Robert was well grounded by Mr. Gray in English for two shillings and twopence. Robert was a quiet, self-contained boy, unable from a painful weakness in his feet to join heartily in the usual games of his schoolfellows. “Books,” he writes in the preface to his collected works, “not playthings, filled my hands in childhood. At twelve I was deep, not only in poetry and fiction, but in encyclopædias.” Receiving his first education at the Burgh Grammar School, he acquired afterwards, at the Edinburgh High School, under the tuition of Mr. Benjamin Mackay, the usual elements of a classical education, embracing, indeed, as much Latin as enabled him in after-life to read Horace with ease and pleasure.

After months of pence-scraping and book-hoarding, Robert succeeded in collecting a stock worth about forty shillings; and with nothing but these, his yearning for independence, and his determination to write books by-and-by, and at present to sell them, the young boy of sixteen opened a little shop or stall in Leith Street. His brother William, after serving an apprenticeship to a Mr. Sutherland, also started as a bookseller and printer in the immediate neighbourhood; and from this time forward—a time when most boys were cursing the master’s ferule and the Latin syntax—they were both independent. Of this period Robert gives the following graphic and almost painfully accurate account in a letter to Hugh Miller, written in 1854:—

“Your autobiography has set me a thinking of my own youthful days, which were like yours in point of hardship and humiliation, though different in many important circumstances. My being of the same age with you, to exactly a quarter of a year, brings the idea of a certain parity more forcibly upon me. The differences are as curious to me as the resemblances. Notwithstanding your wonderful success as a writer, I think my literary tendency must have been a deeper and more absorbing peculiarity than yours, seeing that I took to Latin and to books both keenly and exclusively, while you broke down in your classical course, and had fully as great a passion for rough sport and enterprise as for reading, that being again a passion of which I never had one particle. This has, however, resulted in making you, what I never was inclined to be, a close observer of external nature—an immense advantage in your case. Still I think I could present against your hardy field observations by frith and fell, and cave and cliff, some striking analogies in the finding out and devouring of books, making my way, for instance, through a whole chestful of the “Encyclopædia Britannica,” which I found in a lumber garret. I must also say that an unfortunate tenderness of feet, scarcely yet got over, had much to do in making me mainly a fireside student. As to domestic connections and conditions, mine being of the middle classes were superior to yours for the first twelve years. After that, my father being unfortunate in business, we were reduced to poverty, and came down to even humbler things than you experienced. I passed through some years of the direst hardship, not the least evil being a state of feeling quite unnatural in youth, a stern and burning defiance of a social world in which we were harshly and coldly treated by former friends, differing only in external respects from ourselves. In your life there is one crisis where I think your experiences must have been somewhat like mine; it is the brief period at Inverness. Some of your expressions there bring all my own early feelings again to life. A disparity between the internal consciousness of powers and accomplishments and the external ostensible aspect led in me to the very same wrong methods of setting myself forward as in you. There, of course, I meet you in warm sympathy. I have sometimes thought of describing my bitter painful youth to the world, as something in which it might read a lesson; but the retrospect is still too distressing. I screen it from the mental eye. The one grand fact it has impressed is the very small amount of brotherly assistance there is for the unfortunate in this world.... Till I proved that I could help myself, no friend came to me. Uncles, cousins, &c., in good positions in life—some of them stoops of kirks, by-the-by—not one offered, nor seemed inclined to give, the smallest assistance. The consequent defying, self-relying spirit in which, at sixteen, I set out as a bookseller with only my own small collection of books as a stock—not worth more than two pounds, I believe—led to my being quickly independent of all aid; but it has not been all a gain, for I am now sensible that my spirit of self-reliance too often manifested itself in an unsocial, unamiable light, while my recollections of ‘honest poverty’ may have made me too eager to attain and secure worldly prosperity.”

This period of struggle, however, opened his heart in after-life to all who were battling in like circumstances, for those who knew him well say that “many young literary men owed much to his help, for he was ever ready with kindly counsel as well as in more solid assistance when needed.” It is pleasant to think that his little ciphering book, still in existence (the handwriting of which is extremely neat, so neat indeed that the young penman was employed by the civic authorities to engross on vellum the address presented to George IV. on his visit to Edinburgh in 1822), containing his first year’s account of profit and loss, shows a balance small, certainly, but amply sufficient for his modest wants, for their united daily household expenses did not exceed one shilling.

Once a bookseller, Robert speedily found opportunity to become an author, and he undertook the editorship of a small weekly periodical called the Kaleidoscope; while his brother William, in order to do all the manual work connected with it, taught himself the art of printing, and with an old fount of type, and a clumsy wooden press, which he had purchased for three pounds, composed and worked off all the impressions; his own contributions, some of them poetical, “finding their way into the stick without the intervention of copy.” Here he was often seen, “a slim, light-eyed boy in his shirt-sleeves, tugging away with desperate energy at his old creaking press.” When his very small and imperfect fount was inadequate to the demand for larger letters, he would sit up, after his long day’s labour for half the night, carving the requisite capitals out of a piece of wood with his penknife. This first venture was necessarily short-lived, and died in the January of the year 1822—at which date they both gave up their bookstalls and took regular shops.

Nothing daunted by the untimely fate of his first effort, Robert entered the field again, and from his connection with the Tweed, and with the assistance of friends from that quarter, who aided him in the identification of some of Scott’s characters, he produced a book that seemed likely to be popular—“Illustrations of the Author of Waverley,” consisting of descriptive sketches of the supposed originals of the great novelist. The book was a success, not so much from a pecuniary point of view, but as introducing the author to the kindly notice of several literary men, and gaining him the friendship of Scott, still the anonymous “Wizard of the North,” who mentions him in his diary as “a clever young fellow, but spoils himself by too much haste.”

In the following year, when he was still only twenty years of age, he produced the “Traditions of Edinburgh”—a book that is, of his many contributions to the social and antiquarian history of his native land, still, perhaps, the most popular. Every type of it was set up, every sheet of it pulled at press, by his brother, and the first edition, dated 1823, presents a curious contrast to the handsome copy published in 1869. The Traditions was a book the immediate popularity of which raised the author in public esteem, though its value is greater still at the present day, when many of the interesting associations connected with scenes and places are rapidly changing their character, or have been swept away altogether. Others than Scott even then expressed their wonder “where the boy got all his information.” In a sketch of Robert Chambers, by the son of one of his earliest friends, that appeared in Lippincott’s Magazine for July, 1871, an amusingly frank letter is quoted, which shows that the young writer was already getting into the “swim” of authorship:—“You may depend upon a copy of the ‘Traditions of Edinburgh,’ and a review of them as soon as they are ready. I am busy just now in writing reviews of them myself, for the various works I can get them put into, being now come to a resolution that an author always undertakes his own business best, and is indeed the only person capable of doing his work justice. I stood too much upon punctilio in my maiden work, the ‘Illustrations,’ and left the review of it to fellows who knew nothing about the subject, at least had not yet thought of it half so much as I had, who was quite au fait with the whole matter.”

From this period Robert Chambers’ books were marketable productions, and publishers began to seek out the young author. On the occasion of the great fires in November, 1824, when hundreds of poor families were rendered destitute, having no money wherewith to aid the victims, he wrote an account of the historical “Fires in Edinburgh,” and assigned the profits, which were considerable, to the fund collected for the benefit of the sufferers; and from this time books flowed from his pen in rapid succession. In 1825, he composed, for a bookseller, his “Popular Walks in Edinburgh,” partly the result of rambles in the nooks and corners of the quaint old city, in company with Sir Walter Scott. In 1826, he published his “Popular Rhymes of Scotland,” and then started on foot, as if to cure his ailment by pedestrianism, on a rambling journey through the country, and published the result of his explorations in his “Pictures of Scotland,” which passed through several editions, and is still a lively companion to the tourist. In this same year, 1827, he contributed to Constable’s Miscellany the five volumes containing his “Histories of the Scottish Rebellion”—of which, that concerning the affairs of 1845, while true to facts, had all the glowing charms of a romance—and a “Life of James I.,” in two volumes. Next appeared three volumes of “Scottish Ballads and Songs,” followed by a “Biographical Dictionary of Eminent Scotsmen”—the four volumes being commenced in 1832 and concluded in 1835—one of the most trustworthy and most entertaining books of reference in existence. A supplementary and fifth volume was afterwards added by the Reverend Thomas Thomson. Besides writing these various works, and giving some attention to his ordinary business, he found time to act as editor of the Edinburgh Advertiser.

In 1829, Robert Chambers married Miss Anne Kirkwood, of Edinburgh, a lady of very congenial qualities and attainments, and whose musical accomplishments constantly supplied him—after his heavy daily labours—with the recreation essential to one so passionately fond of music.

William Chambers was toiling away busily in his little shop in the Broughton suburb—writing, printing, and selling books. After some minor efforts at authorship, he wrote the “Book of Scotland,” giving an account of the legal constitution and customs of his native country. This was followed by the “Gazetteer of Scotland,” written in conjunction with his brother, which, from the then scanty printed material at their disposal, must have cost them an immensity of labour.

In 1832 came the turning point of the cause of the two brothers. The struggle for parliamentary reform had awakened a necessity for the spread of education. The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge had already been doing good service to the cause, with Lord Brougham as its president, and Charles Knight as its manager. And on the 4th of February, 1832, appeared the first number of Chambers’ Edinburgh Journal. Mr. William Chambers has himself, in a letter to the editor of the Athenæum (April 1st, 1871), replied to a statement in a former number, that upon seeing a copy of the prospectus of the Penny Magazine, he put forward several suggestions to one of the chief promoters, and that his self-love being wounded by receiving no reply to his letter, he determined to realize his unappreciated ideas himself. The following, in his own letter, is, of course, the accurate history of the origin of the periodical.

“In the beginning of January, 1832, I conceived the idea of a cheap weekly periodical devoted to wholesome popular instruction, blended with original amusing matter, without any knowledge whatever of the prospectus of the Penny Magazine, or even hearing that such a thing was in contemplation. My periodical was to be entitled Chambers’ Edinburgh Journal, and the first number was to appear on the 4th of February. In compliment to Lord Brougham as an educationist, I forwarded to him a copy of my prospectus, with a note explaining the nature of my attempt to aid as far as I was able in the great cause with which his name was identified. To this communication I received no acknowledgment, but no self-love was wounded. My work was successful, and I was too busy to give any consideration as to what his lordship thought of it, if he thought of it at all. The first time I heard of the projected Penny Magazine was about a month after the Journal was set on foot and in general circulation.”

The success of the new Journal was unprecedented; it immediately obtained a circulation of 50,000, and by 1845, when the folio, after a trial of the quarto, was exchanged for the octavo form, 90,000 copies were required to supply the demand. Started six weeks before the Penny Magazine, it is still the most successful and the most instructive of the cheap hebdomadal periodicals. At the very first flush of success, Robert Chambers’ assistance was called in as editor, and in a short time the brothers finally entered into partnership as publishers; and their triumphs were henceforth achieved conjointly—“both of them,” says an able writer in an old number of the Dublin University Magazine, “trained to habits of business and punctuality; both of them upheld in all their dealings by strict prudence and conscientiousness; and both of them practised, according to their different aims and tendencies, in literary labour.”

Seldom, if ever, have two members of a publishing firm been so admirably fitted for their business.

From the very outset the brothers were thrown entirely on their own resources; they had no literary jealousy, and eagerly enlisted on their staff most of the young aspirants in Scotland, who have since achieved a world-wide reputation. It was, however, to Mr. Robert Chambers’ contributions that the Journal was primarily indebted for success, his delightful essays, æsthetic and humorous, permanently fixing the work in public esteem. Gifted with a keenly-accurate observation, with a grave yet kindly humour, his vignettes of life and character, under the nom de plume of Mr. Baldestone, were so truthful and so “telling,” that they met with a very favourable reception, when republished separately, in seven volumes, in 1844. “It was my design,” he says in the preface, “from the first, to be the essayist of the middle class—that in which I was born and to which I continue to belong. I, therefore, do not treat their manners and habits as one looking de haut en bas, which is the usual style of essayists, but as one looking round among the firesides of my friends.” This was, doubtless, the primary secret of their success.

When Leigh Hunt, in 1834, established his London Journal, he announced that he intended to follow the plan of Chambers’ Edinburgh Journal, “with a more southern element” added. This compliment, from a veteran so famous and so experienced, led to an interchange of editorial courtesies, in the course of which Robert Chambers claimed the distinction for his brother William—which had been somewhere awarded to Leigh Hunt—of having been the first to introduce cheap periodical literature of a superior class. Leigh Hunt, in reply, while upholding his own title to priority by the indubitable evidence of the dates of his Indicator, Tatler, &c., cordially admitted that his young rivals had more wisely achieved the desired end by interesting a wider and less educated public.

In a few years all Edinburgh proved to be equal only to produce the Scotch edition of the Journal, a branch house was established in the English metropolis, the command of which was entrusted to a younger brother, Mr. David Chambers, who was born in the year 1820, and who was afterwards taken into partnership. Unlike his brothers, he had little taste for literature. In connection with the subsequent conduct of the Journal, we may mention the names of T. Smibert and Leich Ritchie (both deceased), and Mr. W. H. Wills, and Mr. James Payn, the sensational novelist, who for many years has had the leading conduct.

In 1844, Robert Chambers published a work written in conjunction with Dr. Carruthers, afterwards greatly enlarged, which takes a far higher rank than any preceding compilation of a similar character. This was Chambers’ “Cyclopædia of English Literature,” in which no less than 832 authors are treated critically and biographically, specimens of their most characteristic writings being quoted in addition. From the intrinsic value of the contents, and the marvellous cheapness of the price, a great popularity was attained, and in a few years 130,000 copies were sold in England alone, while in America it was at least as popular.

Among his other works at this period we may mention a labour of love—a chronological edition of Burns’ poems, so arranged with a connecting narrative as to serve also as a biography. The proceeds of the sale went towards securing a comfortable fortune for the poet’s sister. We must mention, also, in passing, “The Domestic Annals of Scotland,” and a dainty little volume of verse, printed for private circulation only, in 1835.

A book appeared about this time entitled, “Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation,” which was written to prove that the Divine Governor of this world conducts its passing affairs by a fixed rule, termed natural law. The orthodox party professed to be alarmed at the temerity of the writer, and by them the book was hailed with contumely. It was known that the proof sheets had passed through the hands of Mr. Robert Chambers, and on no better authority than this, not only did the public believe the story, but the “Vestiges” was entered in the catalogue of the British Museum under his name. A writer in the Critic boldly stated, “on eminent authority,” that George Combe was the author, and though this was contradicted, and though the authorship is still a mystery, it would appear that Combe had, at all events, something to do with the work. In 1848, Robert Chambers was selected to be Lord Provost of Edinburgh; he was requested to deny the authorship, but his refusal to plead, and his consequent retirement, were probably due to his contempt for people who could make the authorship of a book a barrier to civic honours. His brother William, however, afterwards filled the office with such satisfaction to his fellow-citizens, that he was re-elected, after serving the prescribed term of three years.

Many of Robert Chambers’s earliest essays in his Journal had been upon geology, and to this branch of science he became more and more addicted, and as a geologist and antiquarian he turned to good account a somewhat extensive course of foreign travel. In 1848 he visited Switzerland; in 1849 Sweden and Norway; and in later years Iceland and the Faroe Isles, Canada, and the United States. One of the results of these travels was a volume on “Ancient Sea Margins”—containing a new theory, that had previously been propounded by him in a paper read before the “British Association,” and had attracted no little attention.

To supplement what their Journal could not supply to the reading public, he and his brother also wrote, with not very much assistance, and, of course published, “Information for the People,” “Papers for the People,” and a series of miscellaneous tracts: 200,000 of the first named are said to have been sold.

During all this hard work Robert Chambers helped to conduct one of the largest printing and publishing concerns in Scotland. One of the chiefest triumphs of the brothers was “Chambers’s Educational Course,” an educational project so complete that few men could have ever hoped to realize it. This series begins with a three-halfpenny infant primer, and goes onward through a whole library of grammars, dictionaries, histories, scientific, and all primary class books, and cheap editions of standard foreign and classical authors, till it culminates in a popular “Encyclopædia” in ten thick volumes. This “Encyclopædia” was originally founded on the “German Conversations’ Lexicon,” but the articles were in all cases either re-written or thoroughly revised. It admirably supplies the wants of those readers for whom the “Penny Encyclopædia” was in the first instance devised, before its expansion into the present more expensive form.

Literary honours fell fast upon Robert Chambers. He enjoyed the rare distinction of being nominated into the Athenæum Club by its committee of management, and was elected a member of many scientific societies; and finally the University of St. Andrews conferred on him the degree of Doctor of Laws.

In 1864 appeared his first real work, the “Book of Days,” but the success that attended it was dearly bought. He had found it necessary to reside for some years in London, in order to avail himself of the inexhaustible treasures of the British Museum, but on his return to Scotland he was often heard to say “that book is my death-blow.” His nervous system was shattered, and literary labour was at an end. After the completion of seventy volumes, and innumerable articles, compelling almost incessant mental effort for five-and-forty years, the overworked brain at last demanded repose. The descendants of Smollett, the novelist, offered him the use of some hitherto untouched family documents, and he was tempted once more to essay the long-loved task of composition; the volume was printed in 1867, and is said to bear painful marks of the undue strain from which his mind had suffered.

The very last years of his life were spent at St. Andrews, where on March 17th, 1871, he died, saying, “Quite comfortable—quite happy—nothing more!” leaving a family of nine children, one of whom, Mr. Robert Chambers, has for some time been a partner in the firm. His second wife (his first had died in 1863) did not survive him.

Few men have worked so hard as Robert Chambers; his life, busy in its threefold capacity of author, editor, and publisher, can scarcely have known an unprofitable hour; few men have worked so well, for not a line that he has written, not a book that he has published, but has tended in some way to the education and social improvement of the people; and few men have reaped such an honourable and profitable reward for their labours.

Dr. Carruthers, his colleague in the “Cyclopædia of English Literature,” says, “His worldly prosperity kept pace with his acquirements and his labours; he was enabled to practise a liberal hospitality and a generous citizenship; strangers of any mark in literature or science were cordially welcomed, and a forenoon antiquarian ramble with Robert Chambers in the old town of Edinburgh, or a social evening with him in Doune Terrace, were luxuries highly prized and long remembered. Thus we have an instance of a life meritorious, harmonious in all its parts, happy, and benefiting society equally by its direct operation and its example.”

The news of Robert Chambers’s death so affected his brother, Mr. David Chambers, who was at that time confined to his home through illness, that it caused the rupture of a blood-vessel in the liver, and three days after this he followed his elder brother; like him he had been an earnest friend of press reform, and had devoted much of his time to promoting the repeal of the fiscal restrictions upon newspapers.

Mr. William Chambers, who undertook from the first the largest share in the mercantile concerns of the firm, has still found time to accomplish a large amount of literary work. In addition to the book previously mentioned, he has published, among others, “Travels in Italy,” and a “History of Peebleshire,” and the “Memoir of Robert Chambers,” besides contributing freely to the Journal, and other of their serial publications.

Charles Knight was born at Windsor in the year 1791, and was the only child of his father, a bookseller and printer of some importance in that town, who, by his connection with the Microcosm, a paper conducted by Canning, and written by Hookham Frere, “Bobus” Smith, and other Etonians, had made many influential friends. The last number of this schoolboy journal appeared, however, four years before the birth of his son.

Charles was educated at the school of a Dr. Nicholas at Ealing, and his early avidity for reading had, he himself thinks, much to do with rendering his constitution weak and feeble. At the age of fourteen he signed indentures of apprenticeship to his father, and in 1812, when he attained his majority, he was sent up for a few weeks to London to undergo a short term of training in the office of the Globe newspaper, so as to give him practical experience in reporting and other journalistic work; for from early boyhood he had determined to possess a paper of his own. On Aug. 1st of the same year his desire was realized, and, in conjunction with his father, he started the Windsor and Eton Express, the editorship of which he continued up to the year 1827, finding time, however, in the midst of his busy life, to devote to the cultivation of more general literature. In 1813 appeared the first original work from his pen, “Arminius,” a tragedy—which had been offered to the manager of Drury Lane Theatre, and had of course been rejected, but very courteously. During his residence at Windsor he was co-editor, with H. E. Locker, of the Plain Englishman, a miscellaneous journal, which only lasted from 1820 to 1822.

His first venture into the dimly descried regions of popular literature appeared, he says, in the Windsor Express for Dec. 11, 1819, in a paper called “Cheap Publications,” and was followed by others, till, in one of the last numbers of the Plain Englishman, we come across an article entitled “Diffusion of Useful Knowledge”—a straw which shows which way his mind was turning.

Among Mr. Knight’s other literary labours at this time, in 1820, he undertook the editorship of the Guardian, again in partnership with a colleague; and his life, divided between Windsor and London, became one of very pleasurable excitement. His connection, too, with a literary journal, served to render him familiar with the aspects of the publishing trade in London, and at the end of 1822 he sold his share of the Guardian, and took up his position in Pall Mall East, and started as a publisher.

One day, shortly after this, coming back jaded and weary from his London office he found two Eton lads—W. M. Praed and Walter Blunt—waiting at his cottage with an eager proposal that he should publish an Eton miscellany. Generously and sympathetically did Mr. Knight enter into the schemes of the schoolboys; and the plan of the Etonian was forthwith drawn up. Knight found much pleasure in watching and assisting the young periodical, which was a kind of pleasant nursery ground for the growth and display of the youthful talent of which Eton then proudly and unwontedly boasted. “It was refreshing,” he writes, “after the dry labours of his day in town, to watch the bright, earnest, happy face of Mr. Blunt, who took a manifest delight in doing the editorial drudgery; the worst proofs (for in the haste unavoidable in periodical literature he would sometimes catch hold of a proof unread) never disturbed the serenity of his temper. To him it seemed a real happiness to stand at a desk in the composing-room.” But Praed it was, with his sparkling wit, his elegant aptness of expression, and his boyish gallantry that yet smacked of the wise experience of age, who was the life and soul of the project, and his contributions eventually occupied fully one-fourth of the whole miscellany, and when he went to Cambridge it was thought advisable, perhaps found necessary, to terminate the Etonian altogether. Still Mr. Knight’s chief hopes as a publisher were centred in the promise of his young Eton friends, and during a week passed with them at Cambridge the general plan of Knight’s Quarterly Magazine was settled, and he was introduced to Derwent, Coleridge, Malden, and Macaulay, afterwards his chief contributors.

Mr. Knight was his own editor, and with the assistance of such writers, his periodical could not fail to be a success. Even Christopher North, in Edinburgh, was moved to write of them as a hopeful class of “young scholars,” and Knight retorted to this stale accusation of youth by declaring that he had read and rejected seventy-eight prose articles, and one hundred and twenty copies of occasional verses, “all the property of the old periodical press,” while Praed wrote saucily enough, that “Christopher North is a barn from his wig to his slippers.”

After the first two numbers, Macaulay felt constrained to retire, as his father objected to the political opinions of the magazine, but he was luckily induced to alter his mind, and to the future numbers he contributed the best of his early poems—notably, “Moncontoria” and “Ivry” and the “Songs of the Civil Wars.” Here, too, were printed Praed’s most charming jeux d’esprits, so called, though depth of feeling and nobleness of sentiment often lay beneath their airy bantering tone. De Quincey, then almost starving in the streets of London, was made lovingly free of its pages, and the Quarterly Magazine attained a great celebrity as the most classical, and yet the lightest, gayest, and most pleasing periodical of the day.

Unfortunately a division occurred among the contributors themselves—their opinions, and the opinions they expressed, were as widely divergent as the four winds of heaven—their supply of matter was quite irregular, varying with the individual amusements of the hour—reaching, Knight tells us, to “wanton neglect;” and after many dissensions, the publisher felt “that he had to choose between surrendering the responsibility which his duties to society had compelled him to retain, or to lose much of the assistance which had given to the Quarterly Magazine its peculiar character.” He could not hesitate in his choice, and with the sixth number the work ceased, being, however, continued under the editorship of Malden, and in the hands of another publisher for a quarter longer, but the panic that ruined Scott and Constable, and shook so many publishing houses, made small work of the transplanted Quarterly.

This period of Knight’s life may be regarded as the time when he sowed his publishing wild oats; henceforth sterner work awaited him. Among, however, the earliest of his distinct publications may be mentioned Milton’s “Treatises on Christian Doctrine,” then first discovered among the documents at the State Paper Office.

Knight had fortunately no bills afloat at the time of the panic which, in connection with his endeavour to assist the Windsor bank, he so graphically describes—“In the Albany we found the partners of one firm deliberating by candle 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 accounts, if its doors should be opened.” Still, Mr. Knight, though not directly involved, found, like many other publishers, that the schemes of 1825 would not sell in 1826, and that the booksellers must, spite of themselves, “hold on” as best they could. Colburn, indeed, was the only one who still continued his ventures, and from the light and soothing nature of his publications, chiefly fictions calculated to allay the torture of reality, he was able to reap a reward for his temerity.

Every day found Mr. Knight more sick of his prospects than the last. The Brazen Head, a weekly satirical and humorous journal of his just started, lightened though it was by the rippling wit of Praed, fell upon the public like a leaden lump.

Mr. Knight’s brain had long been filled with a scheme of popular and cheap literature, and he now made up his mind to start afresh—to tempt the world and bless it with a real “National Library,” so good that all should desire, so cheap that all would buy. Lord Brougham, who was at that moment organizing the “Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge,” heard of this plan and obtained an introduction to the schemer. The idea of the National Library was at first taken up by the Society, but was finally adopted by John Murray. Differences of opinion as to the editorial responsibilities, and the arrangements as to the transfer of his stock to Albemarle Street, presented new difficulties, and thoroughly sick of the whole matter, Mr. Knight suddenly abandoned it. The germ of his idea, however, bore fruit in the “Treatises” published by the Society in March, and in the “Cabinet Encyclopædia,” issued a few years afterwards by Longman. “My boat,” writes Mr. Knight, “was stranded. Happily for me there were no wreckers at hand ready for the plunder of my damaged cargo.” Anyhow, for the time being, publishing was over. To a man of indomitable pluck, and blessed with the pen of a ready writer, journalism presents a tolerably open field, and to newspaper work Mr. Knight again addressed himself; but in a few weeks a document, which Mr. Knight values, he says, as a soldier values his first commission, reached him containing an offer of the superintendence of the Society’s publications, an offer that was forthwith accepted. As a first step, the “Library of Entertaining Knowledge” was commenced, and, in 1828, he started the British Almanac, and the Companion to the Almanac—a wonderful change for the better after the “Poor Robins” and “Old Moores” of the past.

In 1832, Mr. Knight was offered an official position at the Board of Trade, but fortunately for the education and interests of the people he had the courage to refuse it, having the pleasure, however, of being asked to recommend some one else to the post. In the March of this year appeared the first number of the Penny Magazine, subsequent by only a very few weeks to Chambers’s Edinburgh Journal.

The new periodical had been suggested by Mr. Hill in a conversation about the wretched character of the cheap prints of the period. “Let us,” he exclaimed, “see what something cheap and good can accomplish! Let us have a penny magazine!” “And what shall be the title?” asked Knight. “The Penny Magazine.” At once they went to the Lord Chancellor, who entered cordially into the project, and though a few old Whig gentlemen on the committee urged that the proposed price was below the dignity of the Society, and muttered, “It is very awkward, very awkward,” Mr. Knight undertook the risk, and was immediately appointed editor.

The success of the magazine was amazing even to the sanguine editor; at the close of 1832 it reached a sale of 200,000 in weekly and monthly parts—representing probably a million readers, and Burke had only forty years previous estimated the number of readers in this country at 80,000! Among the contributors it will be sufficient to mention Long, De Morgan, Creswick, Allan Cunningham, and Thomas Pringle, whilom editor of the Whiggish Blackwood. One writer, however, stands out from the rest, both by his misfortunes and his attainments—coming not only under the “curse of poverty’s unconquerable ban,” but being completely deaf and almost dumb. Recommended to Mr. Knight as an extraordinary, though unknown genius, who had been brought up in a charity school, stricken with a sudden and melancholy affliction, who had worked his way to St. Petersburg, and thence through Russia to Moscow, and on to Persia and the Desert; who knew French and Italian perfectly; the kind-hearted publisher, from the very first, took a liking to Kitto—soon to be known as an eminent traveller, Orientalist, and Biblical commentator. After the first trial article of “The Deaf Traveller,” Kitto was regularly engaged to assist Mr. Knight personally in his own room; and here in his spare time he managed to acquire German.

In spite of the somewhat scurrilous attacks made upon the Penny Magazine by Colburn in his New Monthly it was a continuous success, and ultimately paved the way to a work infinitely more important—the “Penny Encyclopædia.”

It will be essential here to understand the position of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.

This Society was founded in 1826 by Lord Brougham and other gentlemen, described by Mr. Knight as the leading statesmen, lawyers, and philanthropists of the day. “It was a blow aimed at the monopoly of literature—the opening of the flood-gates of knowledge.” At first the Society possessed no charter, but obtained one in May, 1832, not probably a very useful or essential gift, nominating Brougham as president, Lord John Russell as vice-president, and William Tooke, Esq., treasurer. No subscriptions were called for, or rather these means had been at once abandoned, and the “arrangements made with the publisher since the beginning of the Society have gone upon the principle of leaving the committee as far as possible free from risk, and unencumbered with commercial responsibility; but at the same time deriving a fair proportion of pecuniary advantage from the ultimate success of the undertaking.” The publisher in the first instance paid down a certain sum for the copyright, sufficient to cover the disbursements to the authors by the committee, who, after a limit of sale, received a royalty of so much per thousand copies. At first the Society’s publications abounded in almanacs; “The British Almanack,” “The British 4d. Almanack,” “The Penny Sheet Almanack,” and “The British Working-man’s Almanack.” Then came the Penny Magazine, the British Quarterly Journal of Education, and the “Penny Encyclopædia,” the first number of which was issued in July, 1833. It was originally projected to form a moderate-sized book of eight volumes, and every article was to be written expressly for the work. This limited size was found to be incompatible with original work by the best writers, and after a year the price and quantity were doubled; after three years more, quadrupled. In the present form, and according to the original scheme, the issue would have taken thirty-seven years. But this increase of matter, while it largely enhanced the intrinsic value of the work, was utterly fatal to its commercial success. The committee got, says Mr. Knight, the credit of the work, without incurring any of the risk; and the expenditure on literary matter alone amounted to £40,000. The sale, owing to the increase of matter and price, rapidly declined: at first consisting of 75,000 copies, it fell at the increase to twopence to 55,000, in the second year to 44,000, and at the close of the fourpenny period it was actually reduced to 20,000; and this chronic loss entailed upon Mr. Knight for the duration of eleven years absorbed every other source of profit in his extensive business. This loss was still further augmented by the enormously heavy paper duty of threepence per pound, but which was reduced in 1836 to half that price.

Mr. Knight was originally associated with Mr. Long in the editorial duties, but soon wisely gave up the management of the literary department.

Mr. George Long, who is now leaving a Professorship at Brighton College for Chichester,19 had been bracketed with Macaulay and Professor Malden for the Craven Scholarship—a fact that says something, were it necessary, for his attainments—and was able to gather together the most able men of the day on his staff, all of whom, whether belonging to the Society or otherwise, were handsomely remunerated for their labour. Upon De Morgan rested, perhaps, after the editor, the heaviest labour, for he undertook the whole department of Mathematical Science. The Biographical portion was chiefly due to G. C. Lewis, G. Long himself, P. and W. Smith, and Donaldson. It is impossible, necessarily, to mention many out of the 200 contributors, and it will suffice for our purpose to enumerate the names of Professors Craik, Forbes, and Donaldson, and Messrs. Ellis, Lewis, and Kitto, as writers on all general subjects; and Mr. W. J. Broderip as taking the Natural History department. Quite a new feature in the composition of the staff was the introduction of foreign writers of eminence, who composed either in their own language or in ours, all the articles being revised by the editor and his assistants, and rendered into perfectly good English.

We must follow Mr. Knight’s own publications, remembering that their issue was contemporary with the “Encyclopædia.” Next to that in costliness was the “Gallery of Portraits,” issued in monthly parts at half-a-crown each, to which, among other authors, Hallam and De Quincey contributed.

The connection between Mr. Knight and Kitto was still very strong and affectionate. In January, 1834, we find him detailing pleasantly the amount of work he had to do for £16 a month—“a most comfortable sum for me”—and later on we come across him asking Mr. Knight’s advice in regard to his proposed marriage. “I have felt it prudent and proper to postpone it for awhile until I should have consulted with you.... I have hitherto been so connected in my employments with those who took a strong personal interest in my affairs, and to whom I am accustomed to talk freely about them, that I am led to trouble you more about myself and my circumstances than is warranted by my existing relations. If so, I doubt not your kindness will readily excuse the absence in a dumb man of those little proprieties with which he has not had much opportunity of becoming acquainted.” A curious subject on which to consult one’s publisher, but then Mr. Knight was something more, and immediately promised such remuneration and regular employment as would free Kitto’s entrance into wedded life from the charge of imprudence.

The “Bilder Bibel,” then publishing in Germany, suggested to Mr. Knight his “Pictorial Bible;” and Kitto, after having tested his own fitness for the work thoroughly, boldly undertook to execute the whole task, giving up, of course, all other work, and receiving £250 a year during the progress of the book, and on completion such a sum of money as seemed a small fortune. This completed—and it was one of the most remunerative works upon which Mr. Knight was ever engaged—he commenced his “Palestine,” and in such subjects Kitto found at last his true vocation.

The “Pictorial History” occupied seven years in coming out, in parts, of course. Mr. Craik wrote the social, religious, and commercial portions, and Mr. C. Macfarlane undertook the larger department of civil and military history; many other gentlemen also contributed. The same fault occurred here as in the “Penny Encyclopædia”—it was too long for serial publication. By an error of judgment on the part of the editors, four of the eight volumes were devoted to the reign of George III.; the subscribers became weary, and the project turned out to be a commercial failure.

This was followed in 1843 by the “Illustrated London,” certainly the best and most trustworthy history we yet have in extenso of the great metropolis.

The issue of the “weekly volumes” was also in progress, commencing with a “Life of Caxton,” by Mr. Knight himself; but the series soon became the “shilling volumes.”

The Penny Magazine terminated on the 27th Dec., 1845, and its continuation, Knight’s Penny Magazine, proving but barely remunerative, the hint was taken, Mr. Knight declaring that it should never be said of him, “Superfluous lags the veteran on the stage.”

The “Penny Encyclopædia” terminated in December, 1843, and though a ruinous loss to Mr. Charles Knight, was at the same time, as regards the general public, perhaps the greatest publishing triumph that had yet been accomplished. The banquet given in his honour by the contributors was, Mr. Knight tells us, the proudest moment in his life, and was certainly a tribute as well earned as it was unique.

Into the next and grandest venture of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge Mr. Knight could not afford to take part—fortunately, indeed, for the scheme, magnificent but futile, proved a deathblow to the Society. The “New Biographical Dictionary” was intended to assume proportions beyond anything of the kind hitherto attempted; but to the astonishment of the committee it was found that when the letter A was completed seven half volumes had been filled, and a loss of £5000 had been incurred. This was bad enough, but when contributors were requested to send in suggestions as to the letter B, one man alone forwarded more than 2000 names. By this time the Society had exhausted its available funds, and, frightened by the prospect, thought itself quite justified in retiring from the public scene. “Its work is done, for its greatest object is achieved—fully, fairly, and permanently. The public is supplied with cheap and good literature to an extent which the most sanguine friends of improvement could not in 1826 have hoped to witness in twenty years.”

In 1843, Mr. Knight had published his “Life of Shakespeare,” a work by which, as a valuable history of Elizabethan times, and a charming, though necessarily an imaginary, sketch of our greatest poet, the author will, we think, though multitudinous in his writings, be most distinctly remembered. His edition of Shakespeare, which for reverent love and editorial labour is almost unrivalled, has appeared in various guises, as the “Popular,” the “Library,” the “National,” the “Cabinet” (three editions), the “Medium” (three editions), and the “Stratford” (three editions).

By far the most remarkable of Mr. Knight’s labours, and perhaps the most useful, was his “Shilling Volumes for all Readers” (1844–1849), 186 volumes, 16mo., in all; for though his editorial labours were terminated when about two-thirds of the work was completed, he still considered himself responsible as regards the general character of the works. “I may confidently state,” he says, “that in this extensive series, no single work, and no portion of a work, can be found that may not safely be put into the hands of the young and uninformed, with the security that it will neither mislead nor corrupt.” In a postscript to the last volume he adds: “I now venture to believe that I have accomplished what I proposed to do. First, I have endeavoured to produce a series of books which comprehends something like the range of literature which all well-educated persons desire to have at their command.” Without attempting any very exact classification of the various subjects of the volumes, they may be thus distributed into large departments of knowledge:—

After this noble endeavour in a good cause, it is literally heartrending to read Mr. Knight’s candid confession that not twenty volumes of the series achieved a circulation of 10,000 copies.

As soon as the Poor Law Board was established, Mr. Knight became officially connected with it as an authorized publisher, and from that time he almost entirely gave up general publishing, and his works were entrusted to the care of other firms.

The copyright of the “Encyclopædia” remained in his possession, and was turned to good account in the “National Encyclopædia,” and later on in the “English Encyclopædia,” in which, however, nothing was reprinted without thorough revision, many of the articles being entirely new.

Several of Mr. Knight’s productions, such as “The Land we Live in,” commenced in 1847, turned out, in the hands of the “copy publisher,” to be perfect mines of wealth.

In 1854 appeared the “Popular History of England;” it was completed in 1862.

In 1851 we find Mr. Knight going about as joint manager with Mr. Payne Collier, of that band of illustrious amateur actors who have become so famous. Among them we find Charles Dickens, Mark Lemon, G. Cruikshank, Wilkie Collins, and R. H. Horne. “A joyous time, this,” writes Mr. Knight, who had played the part of “One Tonson, a bookseller,” “left-legged Jacob” having, he adds, “but a paltry representative.”

Among Mr. Knight’s chief literary labours, we must instance his “Half-Hours with the Best Authors”—a book that has achieved a world-wide popularity; “Once upon a Time;” and “Passages of a Working Life for Half a Century” (in 3 volumes), a charming and interesting autobiography, to which we are indebted for most of the facts in this short notice of his life.

Full of years and of honours, Mr. Knight died at Addlestone, in Surrey, on the 9th of March, 1873, aged eighty-one; and five days afterwards was buried in the family vault at Windsor. The funeral was very large, from the number of literary men attending, who wished to show their feeling of affection and respect for the deceased. In the newspaper notices, too, the tribute of praise was unanimous and hearty; and it was resolved that the gratitude of writers and readers should not stop here. A committee has been formed to erect some kind of memorial, and many of the leading men of letters, as well as some of the leading publishers, are taking part in it. It has been hoped that this memorial may assume the shape of a free public library for London, and thus initiate a movement that, to our shame, has made such successful way in our great provincial towns. Nothing else could so appropriately perpetuate the memory of a life so earnest in its purpose of spreading cheap literature far and wide, so brave in difficulty, so utterly unmindful of self-gain in the work planned out and done; that none who know its story can gainsay Douglas Jerrold’s most happy epitaph, “Good Knight.”