"To suckle fools and chronicle small beer."
True, ladies sighed not then for periodicals—but there, in the depths of their ignorance, lay their utter wretchedness. What! keep pickling and preserving during the whole mortal life of an immortal being! Except when at jelly, everlastingly at jam! The soul sickens at the monotonous sweetness of such a wersh existence. True that many sat all life-long at needlework; but is not that a very sew-sew sort of life? Then oh! the miserable males! We speak of times after the invention, it is true, of printing—but who read what were called books then? Books! no more like our periodicals, than dry, rotten, worm-eaten, fungous logs are like green living leafy trees, laden with dews, bees, and birds, in the musical sunshine. What could males do then but yawn, sleep, snore, guzzle, guttle, and drink till they grew dead and got buried? Fox-hunting won't always do—and often it is not to be had; who can be happy with his gun through good report and bad report in an a' day's rain? Small amusement in fishing in muddy water; palls upon the sense quarrelling with neighbours on points of etiquette and the disputed property of hedgerow trees; a fever in the family ceases to raise the pulse of any inmate, except the patient; death itself is no relief to the dulness; a funeral is little better; the yawn of the grave seems a sort of unhallowed mockery; the scutcheon hung out on the front of the old dismal hall, is like a sign on a deserted Spittal; along with sables is worn a suitable stupidity by all the sad survivors.—And such, before the era of Periodicals, such was the life in—merry England. Oh! dear!—oh! dear me!
We shall not enter into any historical details—for this is not a Monologue for the Quarterly—but we simply assert, that in the times we allude to (don't mention dates) there was little or no reading in England. There was neither the Reading Fly nor the Reading Public. What could this be owing to, but the non-existence of Periodicals? What elderly-young lady could be expected to turn from house affairs, for example, to Spenser's Fairy Queen? It is a long, long, long poem, that Fairy Queen of Spenser's; nobody, of course, ever dreamt of getting through it; but though you may have given up all hope of getting through a poem or a wood, you expect to be able to find your way back again to the spot where you unluckily got in; not so, however, with the Fairy Queen. Beautiful it is indeed, most exquisitely and unapproachably beautiful in many passages, especially about ladies and ladies' love more than celestial, for Venus loses in comparison her lustre in the sky; but still people were afraid to get into it then as now; and "heavenly Una, with her milk-white lamb," lay buried in dust. As to Shakspeare, we cannot find many traces of him in the domestic occupations of the English gentry during the times alluded to; nor do we believe that the character of Hamlet was at all relished in their halls, though perhaps an occasional squire chuckled at the humours of Sir John Falstaff. We have Mr. Wordsworth's authority for believing that Paradise Lost was a dead letter, and John Milton virtually anonymous. We need say no more. Books like these, huge heavy vols. lay with other lumber in the garrets and libraries. As yet, Periodical Literature was not; and the art of printing seems long to have preceded the art of reading. It did not occur to those generations that books were intended to be read by people in general, but only by the select few. Whereas now, reading is not only one of the luxuries, but absolutely one of the necessaries of life, and we now no more think of going without our book than without our breakfast; lunch consists now of veal-pies and Venetian Bracelets—we still dine on Roast-beef, but with it, instead of Yorkshire pudding, a Scotch novel—Thomas Campbell and Thomas Moore sweeten tea for us—and in "Course of Time" we sup on a Welsh rabbit and a Religious Poem.
We have not time—how can we?—to trace the history of the great revolution. But a great revolution there has been, from nobody's reading anything, to every body's reading all things; and perhaps it began with that good old proser Richardson, the father of Pamela, Clarissa, and Sir Charles Grandison. He seems to have been a sort of idiot, who had a strange insight into some parts of human nature, and a tolerable acquaintance with most parts of speech. He set the public a-reading, and Fielding and Smollett shoved her on—till the Minerva Press took her in hand—and then—the Periodicals. But such Periodicals! The Gentleman's Magazine—God bless it then, now, and for ever!—the Monthly Review, the Critical and the British Critic! The age had been for some years literary, and was now fast becoming periodical. Magazines multiplied. Arose in glory the Edinburgh, and then the Quarterly Review—Maga, like a new sun, looked out from heaven—from her golden urn a hundred satellites drew light—and last of all, "the Planetary Five," the Annuals, hung their lamps on high; other similar luminous bodies emerged from the clouds, till the whole circumference was bespangled, and astronomy became the favourite study with all ranks of people, from the King upon the throne to the meanest of his subjects. Now, will any one presume to deny, that this has been a great change to the better, and that there is now something worth living for in the world? Look at our literature now, and it is all periodical together. A thousand daily, thrice-a-week, twice-a week, weekly newspapers, a hundred monthlies, fifty quarterlies, and twenty-five annuals! No mouth looks up now and is not fed; on the contrary, we are in danger of being crammed; an empty head is as rare as an empty stomach; the whole day is one meal, one physical, moral, and intellectual feast; the Public goes to bed with a Periodical in her hand, and falls asleep with it beneath her pillow.
What blockhead thinks now of reading Milton, or Pope, or Gray? Paradise Lost is lost; it has gone to the devil. Pope's Epistles are returned to the dead-letter office; the age is too loyal for "ruin seize thee, ruthless king," and the oldest inhabitant has forgotten "the curfew tolls."—Blackwood's Magazine.
THE SELECTOR, AND LITERARY NOTICES OF NEW WORKS.
DR. LARDNER'S CYCLOPAEDIA.
History of Scotland. By Sir Walter Scott, Bart. Vol. I.