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Rh becoming his besetting failing of intemperance. He was sent off to Paris as foreign correspondent, but, says Dr. Smiles, ‘proved better at borrowing money than writing articles.’ He was brought back as editor of the lighter portion of the paper at 700l. a year, and is accused of having hastened its inevitable catastrophe by imprudent paragraphs. While at Paris he had begun a novel apparently more serious and elaborate than usual with him, which David Macbeth Moir, to whom the chapters were shown by Blackwood, considered ‘full of power, originality, and interest.’ It was never completed, and appears to be lost. Returning to England, he became joint editor of the ‘Standard’ along with Dr. Stanley Lees Giffard [q. v.], a position which would have insured him a competence but for the unfortunate habits which not only destroyed his health and his means, but overstrained the forbearance and confidence of his creditors. His powers nevertheless were still unimpaired, as he proved by his irresistibly grotesque and delightfully absurd extravaganza, ‘Whitehall, or the Days of George IV,’ 1827, and a singular contrast, the dignified and impressive story of ‘The City of the Demons’ in ‘The Literary Souvenir’ for the following year. It was intended as the forerunner of a series of rabbinical tales which never appeared. Maginn's editorial connection with the ‘Standard’ does not seem to have been of long duration, and it was probably upon its termination that he formed a less reputable and more permanent one with the ‘Age,’ then edited by the notorious C. M. Westmacott.

The suspension for some unexplained reason of his contributions to ‘Blackwood’ in 1828 left him free for the most memorable of his undertakings, the establishment of ‘Fraser's Magazine’ in 1830. Having allied himself with Hugh Fraser, a clever Bohemian of the day, from whom, and not from the publisher, the magazine received its appellation, Maginn walked with his confederate into the shop of James Fraser (d. 1841) [q. v.], produced a quantity of manuscript ready for the printer, and arranged on the spot for the appearance of the periodical. The first three or four numbers were principally from Maginn's pen, but he never acted as editor. The new magazine was in the main an imitation of ‘Blackwood,’ whose characteristic features it equalled or surpassed; but the junction of Carlyle, Thackeray, and other men of genius, soon gave it an independent character, and for many years it stood decidedly at the head of English monthlies. None of its features, probably, was more generally popular than Maginn's ‘Gallery of Literary Characters,’ where his humorous letterpress, made incisive by the necessity for condensation, kept pace with Maclise's perfectly inimitable sketches, enough of caricatures to be laughable, enough of portraits to be valuable memorials of the persons depicted. Maginn wrote at his best; his parodies of Disraeli and Carlyle are especially excellent. His deliberate unfairness to political and literary adversaries passed unnoticed, if not applauded, at a time of violent excitement. ‘The Fraserians’ and the ‘Report on “Fraser's Magazine”’ were also remarkable contributions; others, though even more amusing, were founded on practical jokes which a man of refined feeling would not have permitted himself. Resuming his connection with ‘Blackwood’ in 1834, he wrote for it ‘The Story without a Tail,’ and his masterpiece in humorous fiction, ‘Bob Burke's Duel with Ensign Brady.’ In 1836 his coarse and unjustifiable attack—credibly stated to have been written in an hour in Fraser's back-parlour, ‘when the whole party were heated with wine’—upon the Hon. Grantley Berkeley's worthless novel of ‘Berkeley Castle’ led to a most brutal assault upon the publisher by the exasperated author, and to a duel between him and Maginn, in which shots were thrice exchanged without effect [see ] The following year, 1837, is indicated by Maginn's biographers as the commencement of his decadence, when his constitution began to yield to the effects of prolonged dissipation, and his embarrassments amounted to absolute bankruptcy. His literary talent, nevertheless, for a time showed no signs of decay. Drawing upon the stores of erudition which he must have accumulated while yet at Cork, he produced about this time his mock review of Southey's ‘Doctor,’ justly described by Professor Bates as ‘a farrago of Rabelaisian wit and learning,’ and his three essays on the ‘Learning of Shakespeare,’ ‘brilliant in treatment and discursive in illustration,’ says the same critic, ‘though leaving Farmer's essay where it found it.’ The pleasantness of Maginn's disquisition is somewhat marred by his aggressive tone towards his predecessor, and the unfounded notion under which he seems to labour, that ignorance of the classics was imputed to Shakespeare as a defect. He also contributed essays on Shakespeare, as well as other articles, to ‘Bentley's Miscellany,’ the prologue to which was written by him. In 1838 he began to publish in ‘Fraser’ his ‘Homeric Ballads,’ versified episodes from the ‘Odyssey,’ whose value depends entirely upon the point of view from which they are regarded. As exercises in the ballad style