cipal contributors to the paper had agreed to dine together at Sablonière's Hotel in Leicester Square, and at Colonel Greville's special request, the dinner was to be a specimen of French cookery. With the single exception of the colonel, we were all too John Bullish to find any thing palatable upon the table, but our most patriotic abhorrence was reserved for an unfortunate fricandeau, which, as one of the party declared, was only fit to be given to a dog. "A dog, sir," exclaimed Cumberland, pushing away his plate with a look of infinite disgust, "not even fit for that, unless it were a French dog."

While I am in my anec-dotage, let me record an occurrence to which I cannot even now recur without a smile. Calling at Hatchard's one evening, I found the printers in great tribulation, owing to their not having received from Combe, the editor, the political article, which he had promised for the following morning's paper. They had not been able to find him at his residence in St. George's Fields, the other contributors were out of town; there was no time to lose, and the publisher assured me that if I did not sit down, then and there, and write the leading article, the paper could not appear. Necessity has no law, so I hurried into a back room, seized sympathetically a goose quill, and sate myself down before a most appropriate sheet of foolscap. This was in 1803, when the public were intensely interested in the probability of renewed hostilities with France, so that I was at no loss for a subject. Thank Heaven! I have forgotten what I wrote; but that I, an ignorant youngster, made grave use of the solemn and mysterious We,--that I bespattered Buonaparte with a rampant and rancorous loyalty, predicting his speedy downfall and the glorious triumph of old England, if he dared us to a renewal of the war, I have not the smallest doubt. Cicero (what a sceptical fellow!) wondered that one Roman haruspex could ever look another in the face without smiling; and I must confess, that when I recall my own editorial vaticinations, and peruse the leading articles of our political soothsayers, a sense of the ridiculous will sometimes relax my muscles.

Let me here record a circumstance which has equally shaken my confidence in the "original letters" of celebrated persons. Combe, who made no secret that he wrote the two volumes of Lord Lyttleton's letters, occasionally gave the Pic-Nic Paper the benefit of a spurious original, by inditing, whenever he was at a loss to fill up a column, an epistle from STERNE, dated from Sutton or Coxwould, so closely imitating the eccentricities of that mannerist, that no one doubted its authenticity. Combe was by means an over-scrupulous person. When employed by the booksellers to write a volume upon the River Thames, with illustrations and views of the seats visible from the water, he called with his credentials at the mansions so situated, for the ostensible purpose of collecting materials, and being a gentleman and a scholar, he was not only often invited to dinner, but occasionally requested to prolong his visit for a day or two. Having calculated, however, that if he strictly obeyed his commission, by merely taking the seats within view of the river, his list of hospitable boards would soon be exhausted, he pretended that his instructions extended to the vicinity of the Thames, and thus enlarged his dinner chances ad libitum. On complaint being subsequently made by some of the parties whose mansions were never noticed, and who had thus been most unwarrantably defrauded of their meals, he excused one untruth by

another, writing them word that the publisher, finding his materials too voluminous, had been obliged to alter his original plan, and contract the range of the work. The author of this discreditable hoax affected to think that he had done his victims a favour, and would say, with a smile, "Confound the blockheads! if I did not give them a place in my book, I gave them my company, and they ought to feel highly honoured in having a literary man at their tables."

Notwithstanding his occasional abuse of an author's privilege, Combe was tenacious of the respect due to the profession. I remember supping with him at his lodging in the Rules, when Colonel Greville, whose familiarity was sometimes exchanged for hauteur, applied some supercilious remark to our host, who immediately rose from his chair, tapped the colonel on his shoulder, and said, in an austere tone, "May I trouble you, sir, to accompany me for one minute into the next room?"

The invitation was accepted, the door was closed, and the guests looked at each other with some anxiety, for though we could hardly suspect that the author, a bald-headed old man, would assault the gallant colonel, we were not without fear of some unpleasant altercation. No loud or angry words however were heard, the parties presently returned to us with amicable faces, and I subsequently learnt that Combe, on shutting the door behind them, pointed to a shelf containing a goodly row of books, and said to his companion, Sir, I beg to inform you that I wrote every one of those volumes. Do you think such a man ought to be treated with indignity? If you do, I pity you. If you do not, I am sure you will be sorry for what you have just said." With these words he rejoined the company, followed by Greville, who had so far benefited by the rebuke, as to avoid similar cause of offence during the remainder of the evening.

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In his memoirs, published in 1806, Cumberland omits all mention of his contributions to the Pic-Nic and Cabinet, but he republished some of the shorter poems, as well as the whole of John de Lancaster, portions of which were originally inserted in those newspapers.

The next literary undertaking in which I had the honour of being associated with this distinguished writer, was a new edition of "Bell's British Theatre," in small numbers, published by Cooke, a bookseller, then living in Paternoster Row. Cumberland was the editor, and the critical prefaces to each play were announced as coming from his pen; but his other avocations at that time, not giving him leisure to compose them, he applied to one of my near relations and to myself for assistance, which we were proud to supply, receiving his high laudations for the manner in which we executed our task, as well as for our refusal to share the liberal remuneration which he received from the publisher.

The worthy bibliopolist had built himself a Tusculum in some sequestered part of Epping Forest, where there was a great difficulty of procuring water; to guard against which inconvenience he constructed a lofty tank of brickwork,-a peculiarity which, in conjunction with other architectural oddities, procured for the structure the name of Cooke's Folly. When I mentioned this to Cumberland, he exclaimed,

My dear boy!" (such was his usual mode of addressing me,) "it 1 be called our folly, not his; for it is we who enable him thus to the fool. Ha! the bookseller in his carriage splashes the poor trian author who put him into it, and lolls, like Tityrus, under the

beeches of a Tusculum, for which a Grubb-street scribbler, perchance, has furnished the purchase-money. Sic vos non vobis mellificatis apes.

The Scandinavian warriors in the hall of Odin were much more honest and humane. They drank their wine out of the skulls of their enemies only, but these ruthless fellows drink out of the skulls of their best friends. Cooke's Folly, indeed! Why, if the man had no brains, how could he contrive to feast upon ours?"

"But they cannot rob you of your laurels," I remarked.

"Oh, no!” replied my companion, bitterly; "they allow their victim to wear a chaplet when they sacrifice him."

This was a question which deeply concerned him, both as a matter of principle and of interest. The monstrous inequality in the division of the profits of literature; the system which enables the brainless drones to monopolise the brain-honey of the working bees; the outwitting of the witty by the witless; the triumph of craft over genius, of Mercury over Minerva, these were subjects upon which Cumberland, who was usually quiet and sarcastic, rather than declamatory, could not speak without vehement indignation. Nothing, indeed, can be more anomalous as well as unfair than the basis of the book-trade. At a time when other men of business are generally adopting the practice of quick returns and small profits, the publishers, giving long-winded credits, will allow a deduction to booksellers of twenty-five per cent., or even more, charging, moreover, a commission of ten per cent., with an ad libitum addition for minor expenses, to any man who ventures to publish on his own account; so that the public, who pay full price, are victimised in the first instance to the extent of about fifty per cent. That they really suffer to a much larger amount, is manifest from the fact that a publisher, after exacting a guinea and a half for three volumes, will republish the same, word for word, in a single volume, for five or six shillings, out of which reduced sum he will still derive a profit. With the maintenance of these exorbitant advantages; with the concomitant increase of an educated population; with constant addition to our reading-rooms, until every petty village has at least one circulating library,—it might reasonably be expected that the value of authors' copyright should be maintained; whereas it is notorious that in the last few years it has gradually dwindled away, until it has ceased to be worth the attention of any man who is not prepared to enroll himself among the penny-a-liners of the press, or to play at chuckfarthing with booksellers' helots. Does any man doubt the fact, that authors are the slaves who dig the gold for the enrichment of their hard task-masters? Let him show me a single living man of literature, who has realised even a moderate fortune by his writings. I could point out half-a-dozen publishers who are opulent; and it is well known that the late Mr. Longman, as well as Mr. Tegg, to say nothing of less recent instances, died in the possession of enormous wealth. He who would contrast such easily-won opulence with the utter destitution in which several, even of our most popular writers, have lately sunk under their labours, have only to recall the names of Laman Blanchard, of Thomas Hood, and of J. T. Hewlett, none of whom, be it remembered, were men of self-indulgent or unthrifty habits.*

* Lord Brougham, in his "Life of Hume," states that Dr. Robertson only re ceived 6007. for his "History of Scotland," the publishers having cleared 6000/For "Charles V.," and his "America," he received respectively 3600l. and 2400l., while 50,000l., at least, must have been realised by the sale of those works! April.-VOL. LXXIX. NO. CCCXVI, 2 M

Nor are the injurious effects of this system confined to the two apparent victims-authors and the public, for the standard of literature is reduced to the degraded standard of copyright. Quality is diminished, in order to increase the quantity; and the writer who used to produce one sterling, because well-paid, work in a year, now furnishes three washy ones, justly urging in his defence, that they are at least worth what he gets for them. Periodicals pay better than any other description of literature; as a natural consequence, they have been less deteriorated; and our best novelists, as the columns of the New Monthly and Ainsworth's Magazines strikingly testify, now pass their best works through the pages of a magazine.

Signal is the instance afforded by France of the benefits derived both by writers and by the public, from a liberal, as compared with a beggarly scale of copyright. A few years ago our neighbours, having few or no novelists of their own, imported and translated all our works of fiction that had obtained any popularity. At length, some of their own writers entered into competition with us; a munificent remuneration tempting others of first-rate genius into the field, they obtained a payment which, to their English brethren, seems almost incredible; and the result is, that the French works of fiction, fully admitting the objection to which some of them may be liable on the score of decorum, which, however, is rather a conventional than a moral question, surpass ours both as to conception and execution, in the full proportion of the difference between the copyrights of London and Paris.

Suffering in his purse from this unequal distribution of literary spoils, as well as stung by a sense of its flagrant injustice, Cumberland determined to form an association for the purpose of preventing, if possible, such wholesale pillage of the auctorial hive. Circulars were forwarded to all the leading writers, -a meeting was called, its summoner took the chair, and, in a speech of some length, propounded his remedy; which was neither more nor less than that authors, discarding all subordinate agents, should sell their own works at their own houses. Alas! "most lame and impotent conclusion!" Many of the aggrieved scribblers had a name without a local habitation which they would choose to avow; Grub-street was not very accessible, garrets still less so; it would be necessary to have agents in every country-town; the local booksellers, deeming the wrongs of authors their vested right, would crush any one who should attempt to invade their monopoly. The project, in short, however praiseworthy as an attempt to remedy a gross and admitted abuse, was found utterly impracticable in detail; and its concoctor contented himself with an energetic appeal to the public; in answer to which, the aforesaid public contented itself with quoting the stanzas of Hall Stevenson :

You think yourself abused and put on,

'Tis natural to make a fuss;

To see it, and not care a button,

Is just as natural for us.

Like some one viewing at a distance,

Another thrown from out a casement,

All we can do for your assistance,

Is to afford you our amazement!

TANCRED.*

THIS new work of fiction, by Mr. Benjamin Disraeli, is well calculated to find favour with the more thinking and feeling portions of the community. Teeming, as it does, with the poetry of politics and the sublimities of religion, it stands on higher and more abstract grounds than mere conventionalities and utilitarianism. It is impossible to peruse the high aspirations and eloquent appeals of a revived antiquity, without a material benefit being derived to both heart and intellect. There is nothing worldly or sectarian in such a revival: the happiness of the whole human race-constantly placed in jeopardy by the conflicting interests of opposing creeds-is as much concerned in this glowing advocacy of a divine emancipation, as is the land of the Holy Sepulchre itself, the shrine before which opposing creeds alone meet in unison.

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"Christendom," says Mr. Disraeli, cares nothing for that tomb now; has, indeed, forgotten its own name, and calls itself enlightened Europe. But enlightened Europe is not happy. Its existence is a fever, which it calls progress. Progress to what?"

Young England, as represented by Sidonia, or Tancred, and Young Syria, as emblemed forth by the Druse Emir Fakredeen, or Francis el Kazin, are in the same religious and political prostration. The native land of each, maintains a certain order of things, but in neither of which can an enduring principle be discerned. There is no such thing as a paramount religious truth; no such thing as a dominating political right; not even is social property safe or secure. If truth is in the established church, why does government support dissent? If the monarch has the right to govern, wherefore is he robbed of his prerogative? If the people are the state, why refuse to educate them? No; money is to be the cupel of their worth, as it is of all other classes. Their welfare is to be tested by the amount of their wages. The least ennobling of all impulses is proposed for their conduct. In nothing, consequently, whether it be religion, or government, or manners, sacred or political, or social life, do we find Faith paramount over Mammon; and if there is no Faith, no leading or divine principle, how can there be Duty? Happiness here below, and the futurity of a nation, are alike prostrated before the golden idol, that has been transferred from the plain of Dura to the great centres of a so-called civilisation.

Tancred, Lord Montacute, the representative of the philosophy of a new crusade, was the only and much-beloved son of the Duke and Duchess of Bellamont. Pale, handsome, tall, and graceful, with "dark brown hair, in those hyacinthine curls which Grecian poets have celebrated, and which Grecian sculptors have immortalised," clustering over his brow, there were marks of deep meditation on that fine countenance, which intimated indomitable will and an iron resolution.

After a college life, in which the young heir had taken the highest honours of his university, during which his moral behaviour had been immaculate, and his habits studious and retired, he had been emancipated by attaining his majority, and his doting parents looked forward with

Tancred; or, the New Crusade. By B. Disraeli, M. P. Author of "Coningsby," "Sybil," &c. 3 vols. Henry Colburn.