| EDWARD BRIGHT. WEIGHT 42½ STONE. FROM THE ‘GENTLEMAN’S MAGAZINE’ FOR FEBRUARY, 1751. |
The Gentleman’s Magazine attracted the notice and admiration of Dr. Johnson before he came to London as a literary adventurer. He afterwards became a regular contributor to its pages, and for many years it was his principal source of income. His first contribution was a complimentary Latin poem addressed to Sylvanus Urban, and when Cave died Johnson wrote an account of him in the magazine. Dr. Johnson told Boswell ‘that when he first saw St. John’s Gate, the place where that deservedly popular miscellany was originally printed, he “beheld it with reverence.”’
Edward Cave was born at Newton, in Warwickshire, Feb. 29th, 1691; he died Jan. 10th, 1754. ‘He was peculiarly fortunate,’ says Boswell, ‘in being recorded by Johnson; who of the narrow life of a printer and publisher, without any digressions or adventitious circumstances, has made an interesting and agreeable narrative.’
The Gentleman’s Magazine still exists, but retains nothing of its original character beyond the name.
Within a year the success of the Gentleman’s Magazine brought into being the London Magazine, and, in 1739, the Scots Magazine, published in Edinburgh. In the second volume of the latter, under date March, 1740, there is a larger version of the woodcut of the taking of Porto Bello, already described. The account also is given, quoted, however, from the London Evening Post, and not from the Daily Post, where the woodcut appeared. Maps, plans, and views of places occasionally occur in other volumes of the Scots Magazine. In vol. iii. there is a plan of the harbour, city, and forts of Cartagena, and the number for July, 1743, contains a plan of the battle of Dettingen.
[1] New Quarterly Magazine, January, 1878.
CHAPTER VII.