Page:A history of booksellers, the old and the new.djvu/267

231 WILLIAM BLACKWOOD. 231 of the press, and was instrumental in bringing a better spirit to critical discussion. After Mr. Scott's death, the proprietorship of the London Magazine was transferred to Taylor and H essay, the poetical publishers. The first of these gentlemen was the original proclaimer of Francis as the author of the " Letters of Junius ;" the second will ever be remembered for his kindliness to John Keats. Mindful of the success of Blackwood, they retained the editorship in their own hands, and, again like him, were most liberal in their payments a pound a page for prose, and two pounds for verse, was the honarium of ordinary contributors ; Charles Lamb receiving, very fitly, two or three times that amount. It is Charles Lamb's name that is now most intimately connected with the London Magazine, for here it was that the famous " Essays of Elia " first appeared. Among the other contributors we find many celebrated names ; Hazlitt furnished all the articles upon the drama, Mr. Carlyle contributed the "Life and Writings of Schiller" to the last three volumes, and here De Quincey first published his " Confessions of an English Opium-Eater," filled with the weirdest fancies and the loveliest word-pictures in our literature. Here, too, Tom Hood fleshed his maiden sword ; and among the other writers we find the names of Keats, Landor, Hartley Coleridge, Barry Cornwall, and Bowring. Such an array of talent did not, however, avail, without steady editorial skill, to win a wide popularity, and in 1825 the publication was suspended. We have seen that Maginn had accompanied Lock- hart to the south. In 1827 the Standard newspaper was founded, and he was installed in the editorial