Page:A history of booksellers, the old and the new.djvu/301

261 CHAMBERS, KNIGHT, AND CASSELL. 261 200 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 " Encyclopaedia." 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 per- sonal 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 circum- stances 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