Page:A history of booksellers, the old and the new.djvu/382

342 342 BUTTERWORTH AND CHURCHILL. The language of the Lancet was as violent as the many abuses it attacked could justify; and Cobbett, who was a friend and adviser of Wakley's, was adopted as a model, while a barrister, named Keen, used to join the party on printing nights to see that the free strictures were not legally liable as libels. An active, though unpaid, member. of the staff, was Lawrence, who, however, forsook his reforming principles when once he became a placeman, and was succeeded by Wardrop, whose scurrility, wit, and venom did much in giving the Lancet a lasting reputation for raciness of style and satirical power. They were shortly after- wards joined by Mr. J. F. Clarke, who edited the periodical for upwards of forty years, and to whose amusing and graphic autobiography we are indebted for much of the preceding details. The success of the Lancet soon enabled Wakley to enter Parliament as a representative of Finsbury, and he actually combined together the work of the legislator, the coroner, and the editor, often toiling unremittingly for eighteen conse- cutive hours. By the time the Lancet was thus firmly established, Churchill, long out of his apprenticeship, had com- menced medical publishing on his own account ; and from his famous shop, in New Burlington Street, issued most of the standard works upon the subject ; and, en- couraged by the success of the Lancet, he determined to make his establishment the centre of periodical, as well as more permanent, medical literature. In 1836, was started therefrom the British and Foreign Medical Review, conducted first by J. Forbes, and afterwards by J. C. Conolly. In 1848, it was merged into the Medico-Chirurgical Reinew t which, from 1824 to 1847,