1879.

CHAPTER X.

THE ATHENÆUM, 1879—1882.

THE six illustrated volumes of Old and New

Old and New London,' the first two volumes by Walter

London.'

Thornbury, and the remaining four by Edward Walford, are reviewed on the 15th of February. "The antiquities of the City proper are exhaustively described......Cheapside, with its cross and its two conduits, forms a most interesting record, and Mr. Thornbury tells many a merry jest and some tragic tales connected with the history of departed Lord Mayors. In 1681 the Duke of York had sufficient influence to put a Lord Mayor (Sir Patience Ward) in the pillory, and to get at the same time, from a venal jury, the preposterous sum of 100,000l. as damages in an action of slander which he brought against Alderman and Sheriff Pilkington. We are reminded that the City did not forget those things when the Revolution came. The dagger' in the City arms does not represent the historic weapon of Sir

William Walworth, as popularly supposed, but the sword of St. Paul, the City's patron saint. ......It would take columns to follow Mr. Walford through the West End and the suburbs, but we have said enough to show that Old and New London' is a book of no ordinary interest, and that it is capable of being made almost all that an itinerary should be."

The second volume of Mr. George Jacob Holyoake's History of Co-operation' is noticed on the 22nd of February. In this Mr. Holyoake deals with "what he calls the constructive period, or that between 1845 and 1878...... Mr. Holyoake's general attitude may be gathered from the last pages of his book. He there distinctly states his strong opposition to state socialism, and his opinion that those men are mere adventurers who have tried to teach the working people distrust of the middle class, who are nearest to them in sympathy and industry, and who alone stand between the people and sole rule. When this distrust was well diffused, these skilful professors of sympathy with the people, who had been their enemies in all their contests for freedom, asked for their confidence at the poll, which, as soon as it was obtained,' was used as a means to personal government. 'State socialism means

History of Co-operation, by Mr. G. J. Holyoake.

Charles J.
Wells.

his Brethren.'

the promise of a dinner, and the bullet whenever you ask for it......Co-operation is the discovery of the means by which an industrious man can provide his own dinner (without depriving any one else of his), and the certainty of eating it with pride, security, and independence.' Mr. Holyoake is an able and industrious friend of co-operation, and those who sympathize with it or who desire to understand it cannot do better than consult his book."*

Mr. Charles J. Wells died at Marseilles on the 17th of February in his seventy-eighth year, and an obituary notice, by Mr. Theodore Watts, appears on the 8th of March. On

the 8th of April, 1876, Mr. Watts had given an account of A New "Curiosity of LiteraJoseph and ture," being the story of the book 'Joseph and his Brethren,' by Charles J. Wells. The work was first published, "under the pseudonym of H. L. Howard, by Whittakers, of Ave Maria Lane, in 1824." Wells went to live on the Continent, and "everybody, the author

* This book is at the present time (1888) in increasing demand. A few months back Mr. Holyoake sent a copy to the Prince of Wales, who in acknowledging it expressed the highest satisfaction to learn that the movement continues to make such encouraging and satisfactory progress.

book.

especially included, had forgotten all about it, Story of the -everybody except the author's old Edmonton schoolfellow. When Horne, who, himself, has never received proper recognition, became editor of the Monthly Repository, he managed to give a long notice of Wells (New Series, No. 123, for March, 1837); and afterwards, in the New Spirit of the Age, he made a passing allusion to him in an article on Festus.'...... Mr. D. G. Rossetti was led by Horne's notice to look up Wells's poem at the British Museum, and, on coming away, he startled every one by declaring that he had found a poem which was more Shakspearean than anything out of Shakspeare......Mr. Swinburne, then at Oxford, was even then more learned in Elizabethan poetry than most of those who make the special study of it the occupation of their lives. Swinburne's enthusiasm exceeded Rossetti's own. He wrote an article upon it, which was sent by a friend to Fraser's Magazine. Mr. Froude, however, declined the article. So 'Joseph and his Brethren' had thirteen years more in the dust-bin before mentioned......At last, it occurred to a friend to try Messrs. Chatto & Windus. Mr. Chatto, on reading Mr. Swinburne's rejected article, and the copious extracts from the poem which it contained, offered at once to publish it, suggesting that

Good Words

and the Sunday

the article should first be printed in some magazine, in order to prepare the public for the poem. This was done: the article appeared in the Fortnightly Review, where it attracted considerable attention. And now the poem itself—in the revised form-is before the public, to win for it cannot again miss-its place in English literature.”*

Good Words and the Sunday Magazine, it is stated on the 15th of March, 1879, "have Magazine, been bought by Messrs. Isbister & Co., Limited, for nearly 30,000l.”

'Life of the Prince

The fourth volume of the 'Life of the Prince Consort.' Consort,' by Theodore Martin, is reviewed on the 10th of May. The review states: "In this instalment of his narrative of the Prince Consort's life and its surroundings, Mr. Martin has devoted more than 500 pages to less than three years, and the story of the last two years remains to be told." The following refers to the present German Emperor, who in 1859, on the proved imbecility of his brother, was Letter to the appointed Prince Regent of Prussia: "On Regent of that occasion Prince Albert sent to his cousin a long letter full of excellent advice. One

Prince

Prussia.

*The review of the book on the 5th of February, 1876, thus closes: "At any rate, a poet has been saved from oblivion, and the present and succeeding generations will be richer by a work they could ill afford to lose."