The heartiness of our wishes for the good of the readers of this Magazine will be found in our efforts to make its pages interesting and instructive. We have adopted measures, and shall carry them out, to maintain the pre-eminence of position which our Magazine has acquired. And while we look to the increased patronage of the public, we shall continue to hold at a proper elevation the standard of Literature, Morals and Truth.
A Nut to Crack for ’49.—With, we think, a very just estimate of the position of Graham’s Magazine, in the eye of the American public, we do flatter ourselves that the January number, will in no degree be equaled by any cotemporary, or that we will in the least lesson our own dignity, if we boast a little about it. There has been so much talking on the part of our would-be rivals about their books, and an effort so manifestly strained to catch our tone and look, that we shall let out a link or two—or, as the horsemen say, “shake out a step faster, if the mettle is in the other nag.”
The truth is, that there is a very great mistake made in efforts to assimilate to Graham’s Magazine—for, in the first place, all competition must be distanced by our superior facilities, derived from circulation; and in the next, the effort ends in playing second fiddle, to the great loss of reputation and time. There is—there ought to be at least—some unexplored field in which these rivals of ours may try their unfledged wing, where our own magnificent flight may not be seen in humiliating contrast, by these gentlemen and their friends.
Suppose now, for instance—having tried a magazine after Graham—they confess the “distance,” and give us a touch at a magazine made up exclusively of translations from the French, with such copies of the illustrations as may be picked up in Paris, or can be done here. We really think something could be done with this hint profitably, but this blundering and dodging along after another magazine, which crowds every avenue, and presents itself for contrast at every turn, must be most humiliating and vexatious, and cannot but be a losing concern in shoe-leather and temper. The stereotype promises of our friends, which appear with the “snow-birds” every January, have lost their value, and as a standing joke might be relished well enough, but it strikes us that it is a sort of eccentricity in amusement, harmless only because nobody is deluded.
It is unfortunate that one half the world takes its notions of business, as it does its opinions, from the other half, and vainly supposes that the high road to success is a beaten track. Nothing can be more absurd; and the history of the leading penny commercial and weekly papers in large cities attests this. In magazines the world does not take unfledged genius and untried promises at par. The magazine world—by which we mean that part of the world that reads magazines—has grown cautious, cute, shrewd, or whatever may happen to be the choicest phrase to designate a careful squint into the “bag” before “buying the pig.” It will not do, therefore, to attempt to gull the good folks, with a supposed rivalry between your buzzard and our hawk—they know the difference, and although “Hail to the chief who in triumph advances,” may charm the ear as Graham for January flutters its golden wings before the bright eyes of all the cherry-cheeked damsels, in all the post-towns, when on his annual visit—his New-Year’s call—to his fifty thousand friends—the tatterdemalion who, under cover, attempts to follow, will assuredly be greeted with the “Rogue’s March,” and achieve disgrace if not the whipping-post. It will not do, this sort of living by wit—this throwing out of a magnificent prospectus like Graham’s, and then following it up with a specimen number in the way of “inducement,” as if the world were one vast fishpool, and people—who are not gudgeons—were to be jerked out, dollars and all, with an adroit fling of the fly, (going a flyer with a prospectus.) The game has been played to every variety of tune—we think—and the gamut—we had like to have said gammon—is exhausted, and with it the public patience.
G.
“GRAHAM” TO “JEREMY SHORT.”
My dear Jeremy,—The coming of the year 1849 must present reflections of a mixed character to “The Trio.” Our memories do not stretch back to “thirty years since,” but fifteen years ago at “Bamford’s,” how vividly fresh in memory, to “You and Joe and I!” Those years of fun, frolic, literature in the bud, (poetic,) and extravagant expenditure of sixpences. Which of us troubled our brains about current rates, while we passed “currant” at “Bamford’s?” What cared we about the opinion of the world? Our “mead of praise” was in bottles. “Imperial!” did you say? You are right there. “Three bottles of it!” Did we ever reach that sublime of extravagant dissipation in those imperial days? I think not. It would have been a sort of royal expenditure, that must have drained the treasury, and rendered us unfit for the grave studies of the afternoon.