Praed wrote “Castle Vernon,” the introductory portion of the new Magazine, of which, for some numbers, he may be considered to have been the guiding spirit, although the responsible editorship was vested in Knight himself. The principal contributors were Winthrop Mackworth Praed, who used two noms de plume (Peregrine Courtenay, and Vyvyan Joyeuse), Thomas Babington Macaulay (Tristram Merton), John Moultrie (Gerard Montgomery), Derwent Coleridge (Davenant Cecil), William Sidney Walker (Edward Hazelfoot), Henry Maiden (Hamilton Murray), and Henry Nelson Coleridge (Joseph Haller). Praed’s prose style is bright and lively. The “Castle Vernon” papers show it at about its best, but their interest generally is very local and ephemeral. There are some clever little caricatures of some of the principal contributors sketched in here and there, one of which, as an early portrait of Macaulay, it may be worth while to reproduce:—
“‘Tristram Merton, come into court!’ There came up a short, manly figure, marvellously upright, with a bad neckcloth, and one hand in his waist-coat pocket. Of regular beauty he had little to boast; but in faces where there is an expression of great power, or great good-humour, or of both, you do not regret its absence.
“‘They were glorious days,’ he said, with a bend and a look of chivalrous gallantry to the circle around him, ‘they were glorious days for old Athens when all she held of witty and of wise, of brave and of beautiful, was collected in the drawing room of Aspasia. In those, the brightest and noblest times of Greece, there was no feeling so strong as the devotion of youth, no talisman of such virtue as the smile of beauty. Aspasia was the arbitress of peace and war, the queen of arts and arms, the Pallas of the spear and the pen; we have looked back to those golden hours with transport and with longing. Here our classical dreams shall in some sort wear a dress of reality. He who has not the piety of a Socrates may at least fall down before as lovely a divinity; he who has not the power of a Pericles may at least kneel before as beautiful an Aspasia.’
“His tone had just so much of earnest, that what he said was felt as a compliment, and just so much banter that it was felt to be nothing more. As he concluded he dropped on one knee and paused.
“‘Tristram,’ said the Attorney-General, ‘we really are sorry to cramp a culprit in his line of defence; but the time of the court must not be taken up. If you can speak ten words to the purpose’———
“‘Prythee, Frederic,’ retorted the other, ‘leave me to manage my own course. I have an arduous journey to run; and, in such a circle, like the poor prince in the Arabian Tales, I must be frozen into stone before I can finish my task without turning to the right or the left.’
“‘For the love you bear us, a truce to your similes: they shall be felony without benefit of clergy; and silence for an hour shall be the penalty.’
“‘A penalty for similes! horrible! Paul of Russia prohibited round hats, Chihu of China denounced white teeth, but this is atrocious!’
“‘I beseech you, Tristram, if you can for a moment forget your omniscience, let us——’
“‘I will endeavour. It is related of Zoroaster that——’”