Page:Dictionary of National Biography. Sup. Vol I (1901).djvu/35

 Rh secure a fitting editor for the new venture—Tom Hughes was among those who were invited and declined—that he appealed to Thackeray to fill the editorial chair. He proposed a salary of 1,000l. a year. Thackeray consented to take the post on the understanding that Smith should assist him in business details. Thackeray christened the periodical 'The Cornhill' after its publishing home, and chose for its cover the familiar design by Godfrey Sykes, a South Kensington art student. The 'Cornhill' was launched on 1 Jan. 1860. The first number reached a sale of one hundred and twenty thousand copies. Although so vast a circulation was not maintained, the magazine for many years enjoyed a prosperity that was without precedent in the annals of English periodical publications.

Thackeray's fame and genius rendered services to the 'Cornhill' that are not easy to exaggerate. He was not merely editor, but by far the largest contributor. Besides his novel of 'Lovel the Widower,' which ran through the early numbers, he supplied each month a delightful 'Roundabout Paper,' which was deservedly paid at the high rate of twelve guineas a page. But identified as Thackeray was with the success of the 'Cornhill'—an identification which Smith acknowledged by doubling his editorial salary — Thackeray would have been the first to admit that the practical triumphs of the enterprise were largely the fruits of the energy, resourcefulness, and liberality of the proprietor. There was no writer of eminence, there was hardly an artist of distinguished merit (for the magazine was richly illustrated), whose co-operation Smith, when planning with Thackeray the early numbers, did not seek, often in a personal interview, on terms of exceptional munificence. Associates of earlier date, like John Ruskin and George Henry Lewes among authors, and Millais, Leighton, and Richard Doyle among artists, were requisitioned as a matter of course. Lewes was an indefatigable contributor from the start. Ruskin wrote a paper on 'Sir Joshua and Holbein' for the third number, but Ruskin's subsequent participation brought home to Smith and his editor the personal embarrassments inevitable in the conduct of a popular magazine by an editor and a publisher, both of whom were rich in eminent literary friends. When, later in the first year, Ruskin sent for serial issue a treatise on political economy, entitled 'Unto this Last,' his doctrine was seen to be too deeply tainted with socialistic heresy to conciliate subscribers. Smith published four articles and then informed the author that the editor could accept no more. Smith afterwards issued 'Unto this Last' in a separate volume, but the forced cessation of the papers in the magazine impaired the old cordiality of intercourse between author and publisher.

The magazine necessarily brought Smith into relations with many notable writers and artists of whom he had known little or nothing before. He visited Tennyson and offered him 5,000l. for a poem of the length of the 'Idylls of the King.' This was declined, but 'Tithonus' appeared in the second number. Another poet, a friend of Thackeray, who first came into relations with Smith through the 'Cornhill,' was Mrs. Browning, whose 'Great God Pan,' illustrated by Leighton, adorned the seventh number (July