NEWSPAPERS THIRTY-FIVE YEARS AGO.

A word or two of D. S. He ever appeared Post" newspaper stood then just where it to us one of the finest-tempered of Editors

The length of no paragraph was to exceed seven lines. Shorter they might be, but they must be poignant.

Perry, of the Morning Chronicle, was equally but, above all, dress, furnished the material. pleasant, with a dash, no slight one either, of the courtier. S. was frank, plain, and English all over. We have worked for both these gentlemen.

It is soothing to contemplate the head of the Ganges; to trace the first little bubblings of a mighty river,

With holy reverence to approach the rocks,
Whence glide the streams renowned in ancient song.

A fashion of flesh, or rather pink-coloured hose for the ladies, luckily coming up at the juncture when we were on our probation for the place of Chief Jester to S.'s Paper, established our reputation in that line. We were pronounced a "capital hand." O the conceits which we varied upon red in all its Fired with a perusal of the Abyssinian prismatic differences! from the trite and Pilgrim's exploratory ramblings after the obvious flower of Cytherea, to the flaming cradle of the infant Nilus, we well remember costume of the lady that has her sitting on one fine summer holyday (a "whole day's upon "many waters." Then there was the leave we called it at Christ's hospital) sal- collateral topic of ankles. What an occasion lying forth at rise of sun, not very well pro- to a truly chaste writer, like ourself, of visioned either for such an undertaking, to touching that nice brink, and yet never trace the current of the New River-Middle- tumbling over it, of a seemingly ever approxitonian stream!--to its scaturient source, as we mating something" not quite proper ; " while, had read, in meadows by fair Amwell. like a skilful posture-master, balancing beGallantly did we commence our solitary twixt decorums and their opposites, he keeps quest for it was essential to the dignity of the line, from which a hair's-breadth deviaa DISCOVERY, that no eye of schoolboy, save tion is destruction; hovering in the confines our own, should beam on the detection. By of light and darkness, or where "both seem flowery spots, and verdant lanes skirting either;" a hazy uncertain delicacy; AutoHornsey, Hope trained us on in many a lycus-like in the Play, still putting off his baffling turn; endless, hopeless meanders, as expectant auditory with " Whoop, do me no it seemed; or as if the jealous waters had harm, good man!" But, above all, that dodged us, reluctant to have the humble spot conceit arrided us most at that time, of their nativity revealed; till spent, and and still tickles our midriff to remember, nigh famished, before set of the same sun, we where, allusively to the flight of. Astræa sate down somewhere by Bowes Farm near - ultima Calestûm terras reliquit—we proTottenham, with a tithe of our proposed nounced-in reference to the stockings still labours only yet accomplished; sorely con--that MODESTY, TAKING HER FINAL LEAVE vinced in spirit, that that Brucian enterprise oF MORTALS, HER LAST BLUSH WAS VISIBLE was as yet too arduous for our young IN HER ASCENT TO THE HEAVENS BY THE TRACT OF THE GLOWING INSTEP. This Not more refreshing to the thirsty curio- might be called the crowning conceit: and sity of the traveller is the tracing of some was esteemed tolerable writing in those mighty waters up to their shallow fontlet, than it is to a pleased and candid reader to go back to the inexperienced essays, the first callow flights in authorship, of some established name in literature; from the Gnat which preluded to the Æneid, to the Duck | reassume their whiteness, and left us scarce which Samuel Johnson trod on.

shoulders.

In those days every Morning Paper, as an essential retainer to its establishment, kept an author, who was bound to furnish daily a quantum of witty paragraphs. Sixpence a joke and it was thought pretty high toowas Dan Stuart's settled remuneration in these cases. The chat of the day, scandal,

days.

But the fashion of jokes, with all other things, passes away; as did the transient mode which had so favoured us. The ankles of our fair friends in a few weeks began to

a leg to stand upon. Other female whims followed, but none methought so pregnant, so invitatory of shrewd conceits, and more than single meanings.

Somebody has said, that to swallow six cross-buns daily, consecutively for a fortnight, would surfeit the stoutest digestion. But to have to furnish as many jokes daily, and

upon the pillow; but to get up, as he goes on to say,

-revocare gradus, superasque evadere ad aurasand to get up moreover to make jokes with malice prepended-there was the "labour," there the "work."

that not for a fortnight, but for a long twelvemonth, as we were constrained to do, was a little harder exaction. "Man goeth forth to his work until the evening "-from a reasonable hour in the morning, we presume it was meant. Now, as our main occupation took us up from eight till five every day in the City; and as our evening hours, at that time of life, had generally to do with anything rather than business, it follows, that the only time we could spare for this manufactory of jokes-our supplementary livelihood, that supplied us in every want beyond mere bread and cheese-was exactly that part of the day which (as we have heard of No Man's Land) may be fitly denominated No Man's Time; that is, no time in which a man ought to be up, and awake, in. To speak more plainly, it is that time of an hour, or an hour and a half's Reader, try it for once, only for one short duration, in which a man, whose occasions twelvemonth. call him up so preposterously, has to wait for his breakfast.

O those head-aches at dawn of day, when at five, or half past five in summer, and not much later in the dark seasons, we were compelled to rise, having been perhaps not above four hours in bed-(for we were no go-to-beds with the lamb, though we anticipated the lark ofttimes in her rising we like a parting cup at midnight, as all young men did before these effeminate times, and to have our friends about us-we were not constellated under Aquarius, that watery sign, and therefore incapable of Bacchus, cold, washy, bloodless-we were none of your Basilian water-sponges, nor had taken our degrees at Mount Ague-we were right toping Capulets, jolly companions, we and they) but to have to get up, as we said before, curtailed of half our fair sleep, fasting, with only a dim vista of refreshing bohea, in the distance-to be necessitated to rouse ourselves at the detestable rap of an old hag of a domestic, who seemed to take a diabolical pleasure in her announcement that it was time to rise;" and whose chappy knuckles we have often yearned to amputate, and string them up at our chamber door, to be a terror to all such unseasonable rest-breakers in future

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"Facil" and sweet, as Virgil sings, had been the "descending" of the over-night, balmy the first sinking of the heavy head

No Egyptian taskmaster ever devised a slavery like to that, our slavery. No fractious operants ever turned out for half the tyranny which this necessity exercised upon us. Half a dozen jests in a day, (bating Sundays too,) why, it seems nothing! We make twice the number every day in our lives as a matter of course, and claim no Sabbatical exemptions. But then they come into our head. But when the head has to go out to them-when the mountain must go to Mahomet

It was not every week that a fashion of pink stockings came up; but mostly, instead of it, some rugged untractable subject; some topic impossible to be contorted into the risible; some feature, upon which no smile could play; some flint, from which no process of ingenuity could procure a scintillation. There they lay; there your appointed tale of brick-making was set before you, which you must finish, with or without straw, as it happened. The craving Dragon—the Public

like him in Bel's temple-must be fed; it expected its daily rations; and Daniel, and ourselves, to do us justice, did the best we could on this side bursting him.

While we were wringing out coy sprightlinesses for the Post, and writhing under the toil of what is called "easy writing," Bob Allen, our quondam schoolfellow, was tapping his impracticable brains in a like service for the "Oracle." Not that Robert troubled himself much about wit. If his paragraphs had a sprightly air about them, it was sufficient. He carried this nonchalance so far at last, that a matter of intelligence, and that no very important one, was not seldom palmed upon his employers for a good jest; for example sake-" Walking yesterday morning casually down Snow Hill, who should we meet but Mr. Deputy Humphreys! we rejoice to add, that the worthy Deputy appeared to enjoy a good state of health. We do not ever remember to have seen him look better." This

in the paper, we were transferred, mortifying exchange! to the office of the Albion Newspaper, late Rackstrow's Museum, in Fleet street. What a transition-from a handsome apartment, from rose-wood desks, and silver inkstands, to an office-no office, but a den rather, but just redeemed from the occupation of dead monsters, of which it

gentleman so surprisingly met upon Snow commencement of the present century. Even Hill, from some peculiarities in gait or the prelusive delicacies of the present writer gesture, was a constant butt for mirth to the the curt "Astræan allusion"—would be small paragraph-mongers of the day; and thought pedantic and out of date, in these our friend thought that he might have his days. fling at him with the rest. We met A. in From the office of the Morning Post (for Holborn shortly after this extraordinary we may as well exhaust our Newspaper rencounter, which he told with tears of Reminiscences at once) by change of property satisfaction in his eyes, and chuckling at the anticipated effects of its announcement next day in the paper. We did not quite comprehend where the wit of it lay at the time; nor was it easy to be detected, when the thing came out advantaged by type and letter-press. He had better have met anything that morning than a Common Council Man. His services were shortly after seemed redolent-from the centre of loyalty dispensed with, on the plea that his paragraphs of late had been deficient in point. The one in question, it must be owned, had an air, in the opening especially, proper to awaken curiosity; and the sentiment, or paragraph-maker, together at one time, sat moral, wears the aspect of humanity and good neighbourly feeling. But somehow the conclusion was not judged altogether to answer to the magnificent promise of the premises. We traced our friend's pen afterwards in the "True Briton," the "Star," the "Traveller,”—from all which he was successively dismissed, the Proprietors having

"no

further occasion for his services." Nothing was easier than to detect him. When wit failed, or topics ran low, there constantly appeared the following-"It is not generally known that the three Blue Balls at the Pawnbrokers' shops are the ancient arms of Lombardy. The Lombards were the first money-brokers in Europe." Bob has done more to set the public right on this important point of blazonry, than the whole College of Heralds.

The appointment of a regular wit has long ceased to be a part of the economy of a Morning Paper. Editors find their own jokes, or do as well without them. Parson Este, and Topham, brought up the set custom of "witty paragraphs" first in the "World." Boaden was a reigning paragraphist in his day, and succeeded poor Allen in the "Oracle." But, as we said, the fashion of jokes passes away; and it would be difficult to discover in the biographer of Mrs. Siddons, any traces of that vivacity and fancy which charmed the whole town at the

and fashion, to a focus of vulgarity and sedition! Here in murky closet, inadequate from its square contents to the receipt of the two bodies of Editor, and humble

in the discharge of his new editorial functions (the "Bigod" of Elia) the redoubted John Fenwick.

F., without a guinea in his pocket, and having left not many in the pockets of his friends whom he might command, had purchased (on tick doubtless) the whole and sole Editorship, Proprietorship, with all the rights and titles (such as they were worth) of the Albion from one Lovell; of whom we know nothing, save that he had stood in the pillory for a libel on the Prince of Wales. With this hopeless concern-for it had been sinking ever since its commencement, and could now reckon upon not more than a hundred subscribers-F. resolutely determined upon pulling down the Government in the first instance, and making both our fortunes by way of corollary. For seven weeks and more did this infatuated democrat go about borrowing seven-shilling pieces, and lesser coin, to meet the daily demands of the Stamp office, which allowed no credit to publications of that side in politics. An outcast from politer bread, we attached our small talents to the forlorn fortunes of our friend. Our occupation now was to write treason.

Recollections of feelings-which were all that now remained from our first boyish heats kindled by the French Revolution, when, if we were misled, we erred in the