Leaders of Modern Industry by G. Barnett Smith: Charles Knight

Note: This is a sub-section of Leaders of Modern Industry by G. Barnett Smith

CHARLES KNIGHT

THE printing industry is one of the greatest and most beneficent enterprises associated with the history of the human race. Milton's noble plea for the liberty of unlicensed printing the most splendid argument to which the world had as yet listened on behalf of intellectual liberty—has been abundantly justified by the developments of the past two centuries and a half. Of all the arts which make for peace, printing has been the most effective and wide-reaching, notwithstanding those momentary periods of aberration when its influence has been cast upon the side of war. If it were not for the gigantic industry of printing, with all the trades affiliated with it, it is not too much to say that England would not be the England of to-day, the majestic mother of free peoples.

In selecting for this biographical sketch one of the pioneers of popular literature, it is not with the intention of exalting Charles Knight above others who have rendered perhaps equal service in the extension of printing, such as William and Robert Chambers and John Cassell; while as regards those great benefactors who have done so much towards the mechanical perfection of the printing press, we cannot fail to remember with gratitude the names of Konig, Cowper, Walter, Clowes, Hoe, Marinoni, and others.

I have chosen Charles Knight because there is a good deal in his character that is typically English — for example, his energy, perseverance, straightforwardness, and his courage under difficulties. Then, again, his career has a double interest, because he was thrown into contact with most of his eminent contemporaries. Knight may be viewed in a triple capacity, as author, printer, and publisher. His life was a long, useful, and honourable one, and his name and services eminently deserve to be perpetuated.

Some entertaining facts concerning book-producers and the book-trade antecedent to the time of Knight may be cited before I pass on to the record of his own labours. Book-selling as a trade was of little moment until the invention of printing. Before that most books were lent, not sold, for they were not within the means of any but the wealthy. Caxton's labours soon led to a change, but the first real impetus given to bookselling was the great demand for Bibles caused by the Reformation. Yet on the Continent books had become such an important feature of commerce that in 1450 a guild of booksellers, copyists, and allied trades was formed at Antwerp, while four years later the guild acquired a footing at Bruges. Gutenberg's partners, Fust and Schoffer, conveyed the productions of the Mainz press to Paris and Frankfort.

The earliest printers were generally learned men, and in some cases they were the authors of the works produced. They acted both as printers and booksellers, but in the fifteenth century the two branches of the industry began to be divided. Mr. Robert Cochrane, who has compiled statistics on the book-trade, notes that the founder of the Stephens family of printers and publishers settled in Paris in 1502; Louis, the first of the Elzevirs, was settled as a bookseller and bookbinder in Leyden in 1580; the Aldine Press printed 908 different works between 1490 and 1597; and the Plantin Press of Antwerp, 1514-89, had sometimes twenty presses at work.

In England, the early booksellers were known as ‘stationarii’, or stationers, from taking their stand or station at a fair. In the sixteenth century the restriction as to giving the price of a book on the last page was frequently enforced by Government. Between the years 1476 and 1600, 350 printers were at work in England and Scotland, and at least 10,000 distinct works were printed during that period. From 1623 to 1664 only two editions of Shakespeare were issued, but there was so much religious and political controversy between 1640 and 1660 that the British Museum is able to boast of more than 2,000 tracts — embracing 30,000 separate publications issued during that period. It is computed that the loss to booksellers in the vicinity of St. Paul's, in consequence of the great fire of 1666, was no less than £200,000 - an enormous sum for those days.

The book-trade was greatly harassed by legislation, royal patents, and proclamations, by ordinances of the Star Chamber, and by the granting of monopolies. The Stationers' Company of London, constituted by Royal Charter in 1557, exercised an arbitrary censorship of the press. An Act called the Licensing Act, passed in 1673, gave to the Crown control over the issue of books; but this Act, with its renewals, ultimately expired in 1694. In 1710 the first Copyright Act afforded protection to authors, and absolved both them and the publishers from the authority of the Stationers' Company.

Power was given to certain high public functionaries, however, to regulate the prices of books, and to fine those who sought higher prices. These provisions remained in force until 1738, when an Act was passed which made the book-trade free. Among famous booksellers and publishers, who were either authors or intimately associated with authors, may be mentioned Thomas Guy, founder of Guy's Hospital; John Dunton, whom the Pretender threatened to hang if he ever came to the throne, 'for having writ forty books to prove him a Popish impostor'; Jacob Tonson, Dryden's publisher, and the populariser of Shakespeare and Milton; Lintott, the publisher of Pope's editions of the Iliad and the Odyssey; Curll the notorious and the pilloried; Samuel Richardson, novelist and printer Cave, the founder of the Gentleman's Magazine; Millar, the publisher for Fielding, Thomson, and Hume; Newbery, who was associated with Goldsmith; Griffiths of the Monthly Review; Dodsley of the Annual Register: and Joseph Cottle, of Bristol, the friend of Coleridge, Southey, and Wordsworth. The names of at least a hundred enterprising English and Scotch publishers in the nineteenth century — worthy successors of the best of those above - mentioned instinctively rise to the mind, but they are so well-known as to need no recapitulation.

School-books, encyclopaedias, educational and religious publications, maps, atlases, etc., indicate further important developments in the book-trade. Excellent cheap editions of popular works were inaugurated by an Edinburgh publisher named Donaldson about 1760-7o, and he was closely followed in London by John Bell, who issued his British Poets in 1777. This led to a meeting of the book-trade, and the publication of Johnson's Lives of the Poets. Then came C. Cooke's admirable cheap reprints at the close of last century, which were succeeded by Suttaby's, Sharpe's, Walker's, and Dove's pocket editions.

Many cheap periodicals and newspapers appeared between 1800 and 1820, a considerable number of them leading to prosecutions for seditious libel. The Mirror, an illustrated weekly sheet of another type, issued in 1822, achieved a permanent success. Five years later the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge began to publish its popular scientific treatises, while Archibald Constable inaugurated his valuable series of works under the title of Constable's Miscellany. A short time afterwards Messrs. Chambers began their Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge followed with the Penny Magazine, and the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge with the Saturday Magazine. Then came in rapid succession various popular ventures by Charles Knight, W. & R. Chambers, and John Cassell.

At this point I take up the story of Charles Knight. He was the son of a Windsor bookseller, and was born in the year 1791. The house in which he first saw the light was close to the great entrance to the lower ward of Windsor Castle — called, after its builder, Henry the Eighth's Gateway. He has recorded how, as a boy of nine, he went to bed on the night of the 31st of December, 1800, expecting to find the house shaken to its foundations by the boom of artillery. Not only was the next morning the beginning of a new year, but the beginning of a new century — one of the most momentous in the history of the world. There was no boom of artillery, however, for the King had forbidden it, lest the new painted window by Mr. West, at the east end of St. George's Chapel, might be broken by the concussion. But the bells in the belfry of St. George's Chapel and the bells of the parish church rang out a merry peal. On the morrow, the sun shone brilliantly on the new Standard of England raised over the Round Tower. The arms of France had disappeared from the Standard, for the King's title now ran, 'George the Third, by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, King, Defender of the Faith.' Some said the change was ominous of the departing glory of Old England, but Britain still stands where she did. On that memorable 1st of January, 1801, the bells of Windsor, as of many other towns and cities, hailed the commencement of the legislative Union between Great Britain and Ireland.

When only two years of age Charles Knight had lost his mother. She was the daughter of a wealthy yeoman named Binfield, of Iver, in Buckinghamshire. The boy was the sole companion of a somewhat moody and eccentric father, though one withal of an enlightened mind, and who consequently fostered in him studious habits. Young Knight was educated at the school of the cultured Dr. Nicholson, of Ealing. Writing of his pupil to Mr. Knight in 1804, Dr. Nicholson said: 'With an excellent disposition and good temper, he has very superior abilities, and will shine in a learned profession. I wish particularly to call your attention to his Latin verses and English themes, in which I am confident he goes much beyond your expectations. It would be a pity to bury such talents in an office or a counting-house.'

Compositions executed by Charles Knight at thirteen show a singular maturity of thought and expression. From eight years of age Knight was a frequent attendant at that smallest of playhouses, the Theatre Royal of Windsor; and in his Passages of a Working Life he gives an amusing picture of the visits paid by 'Farmer George' and his Queen to the theatre:—

That honoured playhouse no longer exists. The High Street exhibits a dissenting chapel on its site, whose frontage may give some notion of the dimensions of that cosy apartment, with its two tiers of boxes, its gallery and its slips. It was not an exclusive theatre. Three shillings gave the entrance to the boxes, two shillings to the pit, and one shilling to the gallery. One side of the lower tier of boxes was occupied by the Court. The King and Queen sat in capacious armchairs with satin play-bills spread before them. The orchestra, which would hold half a dozen fiddlers, and the pit, where some dozen persons might be closely packed on each bench, separated the Royal Circle from the general parties in the opposite tier of boxes. With the plebeians in the pit the Royal Family might have shaken hands, and when they left there was always a scramble for their satin bills, which would be afterwards duly framed and glazed as spoils of peace.

As the King laughed and cried "Bravo, Quick!" or "Bravo, Suett!" — for he had rejoiced in their well-known mirth-provoking faces many a time before — the pit and gallery clapped and roared in loyal sympathy; the boxes were too genteel for such emotional feelings. As the King, Queen, and Princesses retired at the end of the third act to sip their coffee, the pot of Windsor ale, called Queen's ale, circulated in the gallery. At eleven o'clock the curtain dropped. The fiddles struck up "God save the King," their Majesties bowed around as the house clapped, and the gouty manager, Mr. Thornton, leading the way to the entrance (carrying wax-lights and walking backward with the well-practised steps of a Lord Chamberlain), the flambeaux of three or four carriages gleamed through the dimly-lighted streets, and Royalty was quickly at rest.

During one of his holidays Knight was taken to call upon Mr. Stratford Canning, afterwards the distinguished diplomatist Lord Stratford de Redcliffe. He was managing editor of The Miniature - a successor after a long interval of the Eton Microcosin — which the elder Knight was printing and publishing. This is an interesting glimpse of Stratford Canning, as well as of some other persons whose names became well known to the world:

How well I remember his tall figure and handsome face, with the down upon his chin. Some forty years afterwards, at an entertainment given upon a trial-trip of a frigate that had been built for the Sultan, I was introduced to Sir Stratford Canning. I had much talk with the great diplomatist about the progress of education and of popular literature, in the efficacy of which he did not appear to have any confident belief. He talked, too, of that literary production of his boyhood with which he associated my name. Of course he spoke slightingly of it, as men who have made their mark in the world generally do of their juvenilia. There were, however, some literary matters of more importance arising out of the forgotten Eton periodical. "Your father," said Mr. Murray to me once after dinner, "helped to make my fortune. When I kept a little trumpery shop in Fleet Street, Dr. Rennell, the Master of the Temple, told me one day that his son and young Canning owed an account for printing The Miniature to their publisher, who held a good many unsold copies. I took the stock, paid the account, made waste paper of the numbers, brought out a smart edition which had few buyers, got the reputation of being a clever publisher, was introduced to George Canning in consequence of the service I had rendered to his cousin, and in a few years set up the Quarterly Review."

Knight was taken away from school in 1805, and put to learn printing and bookselling. He resented this, for he was desirous of being a scholar. However, his father indulged him during his apprenticeship, for we read of his often galloping his pony along the glades of the forest; or watching his little boat, hour after hour, from the Thames bank at Datchet or at Clewer; or wandering, book in hand, by the riverside. He read old novels and poems, the classics, Scott's new poems, the newspaper, and anything in the shape of literature he could lay hold of. Before he was seventeen he had become quite a book hunter. On one occasion he so pleased an old bibliopole, for whose library he was negotiating, that he was rewarded by the gift of a first-folio Shakespeare — a sadly defective copy, it is true, but still a first-folio.

When in his eighteenth year, the youthful enthusiast drew up a list of ambitious works he intended composing himself, and actually produced various essays, poems, and sketches. He seems to have been of a devotional temperament, and frequently prayed for strength to shake off the allurements of sloth and to despise the seductions of idleness. An 'Arrangement of Study for a Month,' which he drew up, left the mornings for original composition, with allowance of an hour for chronology, geography, logic, or rhetoric; the evenings were to be devoted to reading aloud history, voyages, etc., or works in polite literature, with one hour for Greek, Latin, Italian, or French. The Old Testament in English was to be read on Sunday mornings, and in the evenings the New Testament in Greek; the rest of the Sunday being spent in reading moral and religious authors, or in studying natural religion, etc. Knowledge was to be systematised, and in order to acquire it he rose before six o'clock in the morning. It was his settled conviction that 'he that leaves his studies or occupations to chance, suppresses his memory and darkens his judgment, by giving too much leisure to the imagination.'

Knight had a sharp temper but a sensitive heart, and in his diary there are such entries as the following, relating to a fellow-workman: 'This day has been disgraced by some excesses towards Meyrick. Let me keep in mind that a want of understanding demands our pity, not our contempt; and though I may inwardly despise vain ignorance and obstinacy, let me not commit myself by vulgar railing and harsh invective.'

When only eighteen, Charles Knight began a Reading Society in Windsor, and read an address before it on the use of such institutions. He also invented two new printing-cases, and collected materials for a life of Bartholomew Las Casas, and other works. He was further commissioned by the Countess of Orkney, who occupied Cliefden, to make a catalogue of a large collection of books which had long been neglected. In the year 1812 he founded, with his father, the Windsor and Eton Express, a weekly newspaper, which he edited for fourteen years. In addition to this he became editor of the London Guardian, a literary and political paper. The Windsor and Eton Express of the 3rd of December, 1814, contained a paragraph which Knight had copied from The Times of the 29th of November. It had strongly excited his wonder and curiosity, as to the probable consequences of what The Times described as 'the greatest improvement connected with printing since the discovery of the art itself.' Well knowing the great bodily exertion hitherto required of two men, working at the common press, to produce two hundred and fifty impressions of one side of a newspaper in an hour, Knight might well be surprised when he read as follows:- 'The reader of this paragraph now holds in his hand one of the many thousand impressions of The Times newspaper which were taken off last night, by a mechanical apparatus. A system of machinery almost organic has been devised and arranged, which, while it relieves the human frame of its most laborious efforts in printing, far exceeds all human powers in rapidity and despatch.' The process was then briefly described, and it was added that 'the whole of these complicated acts were performed with such a velocity and simultaneousness of movement, that no less than eleven hundred sheets were impressed in one hour.'

The printing machine thus inaugurated was the one invented by Konig. But as the machine was complicated, expensive, and liable to derangement, Mr. Walter did not relax his efforts until he had still further perfected and simplified his printing machines. These new processes were destined to have a marked effect upon Charles Knight's future, for he was always ready to avail himself of any new ideas on the subject of printing.

Knight was sufficiently successful in his business career as to enable him to marry at a comparatively early age. But while he was very much attached to the domestic fireside, he was deeply interested in public affairs, working also energetically at parish affairs, and infusing a new spirit into them. He further found time to compose poems, some of which gained the warm commendation of Leigh Hunt, and which may even now be praised for their smooth versification and placid yet poetic spirit. As for his continued devotion to study, he remarks: 'I may truly say — and I say it for the encouragement of any young man who is sighing over the fetters of his daily labour, and pining for weeks and months of interrupted study — that I have found through life that the acquisition of knowledge, and a regular course of literary employment, are far from being incompatible with commercial pursuits. I doubt whether, if I had been all author or all publisher, I should have succeeded better in either capacity.'

Knight and other friends of the drama built a new theatre at Windsor, at a large cost, and with consequently small dividends to the shareholders, of whom the elder Knight was the principal. It was opened in August, 1815; and Charles Knight wrote a Prologue, which was not conciliatory to the bigoted opponents of the stage, who regarded their proceedings as criminal. The time was still far distant when Shakespeare would be quoted in the pulpit. The new Windsor Theatre was commodious; but the manager, like many succeeding ones, could not draw audiences without stars. Here is a reminiscence of the famous Edmund Kean:--

In 1817 I became acquainted with Edmund Kean, on his visit to Windsor at our Christmas season. I was an enthusiastic admirer of his genius; and wrote most elaborate criticisms on his Othello and Shylock, his Sir Giles Overreach, and Sir Edward Mortimer. I had often then what I considered the great privilege of supping with him after the play. He was always surrounded by two or three followers who administered to his insatiable vanity in the coarsest style; applauded to the echo his somewhat loose talk; and stimulated his readiness to "make a night of it." My unbounded admiration for the talent of the actor was somewhat interrupted by a humiliating sense of the weakness of the man. Nevertheless the attraction was irresistible as long as he strove to make himself agreeable. How exquisitely he sang a pathetic ballad! The rich melody, the deep tenderness, of his "Fly from the World, 0 Bessie, to me," were to live in my memory, in companionship with the exquisite music of his voice in his best days, when he uttered upon the stage, in a way which no other actor has approached, the soliloquy ending with "Othello's occupation's gone."

Charles Knight was very active as a promoter of popular education, but a severe check to this and other reforms which he advocated was administered in 1819, as the result of the political tumults of the time. The effect which the serious events of the period had upon his thoughts and aspirations he has thus described:

There were riots and arrests; and at length came what is called "The Manchester Massacre." The country was thoroughly frightened. Parliament was called together to make new laws; and it produced what Lord Campbell describes as "the unconstitutional code called the Six Acts."

At the Christmas of 1819 every journalist went about his work under the apprehension that, if he wrote what, by the uncertain verdict of a jury might be construed into a seditious libel, he would not only be subjected to very terrible fine and imprisonment, but, if convicted a second time, would be liable to be transported beyond the seas. I looked with dread towards a struggle which would end either in anarchy or military government. Like Sydney Smith, I regarded democracy and despotism as equally dangerous results of a contest between power and mob violence: "In which of these two evils it terminates is of no more consequence than from which tube of a double-barrelled pistol I meet my destruction."

The effect of these circumstances upon my political opinions, during several succeeding years, is not altogether satisfactory to look back upon. In my hatred and contempt of the demagogues and profligate writers who were stirring up the ignorant masses to revolt and irreligion, I turned somewhat aside from regarding the injustice that was at the root of a desire for change. I panted for improvement as ardently as ever. I was aspiring to become a popular educator. But I felt that one must be content for a while to shut one's eyes to the necessity for some salutary reforms, in the dread that any decided movement towards innovation would be to aid in the work of lopping and topping the sturdy oak of the constitution till its shelter and its beauty were altogether gone. I believe this was a common feeling, not only with public writers who did not address the passions of the multitude, but with statesmen who were not subservient partisans. Thence ensued a reticence in writing and in speaking, which looked like a distrust of the progress of improvement even with many of decided liberal opinions. I think this was amongst the worst results of those evil days in which we had fallen in the last months of the reign of the old King. I had to drag this chain of doubtful timidity in my first attempt to address the humbler classes.

However, Knight resolved to do something towards stemming the tide of evil caused by the numerous injurious cheap publications; and his first venture as editor and publisher into the region of popular literature is to be traced to a paper which he wrote in the Windsor Express of December 11, 1819, entitled Cheap Publications. Cobbett's Twopenny Register, Wooler's Black Dwarf and even worse publications, were having it all their own way; and Knight set forth, as one of the most fearful signs of the times, the excessive spread of publications whose chief aim was to inspire hatred of the Government and contempt for the religious institutions of the country. It ought to be said here that Cobbett and his friends were not originally to blame, for England was really suffering at this juncture under one of the most oppressive and tyrannical of Governments. However, Knight saw chiefly the excesses to which their reactionary policy had led, and this is the way in which he sought to overcome them by the diffusion of useful literature:—

Knowledge must have its worldly as well as its spiritual range; it looks towards Heaven, but it treads upon the earth. The mass of useful books are not accessible to the poor; newspapers, with their admixture of good and evil, seldom find their way into the domestic circle of the labourer or artisan; the tracts which pious persons distribute are exclusively religious, and the tone of these is often either fanatical or puerile. The "two-penny trash," as it is called, has seen farther, with the quick perception of avarice or ambition, into the intellectual wants of the working-classes. It was just because there was no healthful food for their newly-created appetite, that sedition and infidelity have been so widely disseminated. The writers employed in this work, and their leader and prototype, Cobbett, in particular, show us pretty accurately the sort of talent which is required to provide this healthful food. " Fas est ab hoste doceri."

They state an argument with great clearness and precision; they divest knowledge of all its pedantic incumbrances; they make powerful appeals to the deepest passions of the human heart. Let a man of genius set out upon these principles, in the task of building up a more popular literature than we possess; and let him add, what the seditious and infidel writers have thrown away, the power of directing the affections to what is reverend and beautiful in national manners and institutions — tender and subduing in pure and domestic associations — sacred and glowing in what belongs to the high and mysterious destiny of the human mind—satisfying and consoling in the divine revelations of that destiny, —and then, were such a system embodied in one grand benevolent design supplementary to the Instruction of the Poor, National Education, we sincerely think it would go on diffusing its blessings over every portion of the land, and calling up a truly English spirit wherever it penetrated. Neglect this provision, and we fear that no penal laws will prevent the craving after knowledge from being improperly gratified, and then—but the evidence of the danger is before us.

Translating his ideas into action, Charles Knight began the issue of The Plain Englishman, in February, 1820. He had the assistance of his friend Edward Hawke Locker, Commissioner of Greenwich Hospital, who thoroughly sympathised in Knight's objects, and wrote for the new periodical Lectures on the Bible and Liturgy. Other contributors included Dr. John Bird Sumner (afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury), who wrote a series of articles called Conversations with an Unbeliever; Mr. John Cole, a well-known surgeon, wrote on Cleanliness and Ventilation; Mr. John Steer, on Popular Law; the Bishop of Calcutta, on Naval Victories; while Knight himself contributed a Monthly Retrospect of Public Affairs. Selections were also given from the best writers under such headings as The Christian Monitor, The British Patriot, and The Fireside Companion. It is rather amusing to note this sentence from one of the health articles written by Mr. Cole — the forerunner of Southwood Smith and Chadwick: 'Those who can be brought to venture on so unheard of a thing as to wash the whole of their bodies, will generally be induced to repeat the experiment from the comfort it affords.' The contemporaries had heard that there was 'Death in the Pot,' and they evidently believed also that there was 'Death in the Bath.' 'You have killed my mother,' said a good housewife of the Lake District to Miss Martineau; 'she had never washed her feet till you persuaded her, and this is the end on't.' Mr. Cole gave very good advice on such subjects as Ventilation, Cooking, and the Management of Infants, and Sanitary Dwellings.

During the summer and autumn of the first year's issue of The Plain Englishman, Knight occupied a cottage on the bank of the Thames. But in the ensuing winter he settled in a house at Windsor which was most interesting in its connexion with the dim antiquity of the Castle. Its entrance was in the smaller cloisters to the north of St. George's Chapel, but its principal rooms were over the great cloister on the east of the chapel. In his study, which had a richly-carved ceiling, he could frequently hear the swelling tones of the organ. Yet, beautiful and unique as the dwelling was, the want of free air made it unfit for healthful existence. A daughter was born to him there, but there also he unfortunately lost a son, Charles James. His dear friend Matthew Davenport Hill passed some happy hours with him at Christmas. But before Easter, Knight had to record his first grief:—

I was then, as I am now, as little disposed as Coriolanus was, to show my wounds in the market-place; but my feelings overflowed into a paper which I printed in The Plain Englishman. Two sentences will be sufficient to mark this passage in my life. "Until I had reached my thirtieth year I had known nothing of what I can properly term sorrow. The evils of mortality had not begun to come home to me. The wings of the destroying angel had rested upon the dwellings of my neighbours; but death had never yet crossed my threshold, and sickness seldom. I had heard the voice of misery like the mutterings of a distant storm, but the thunder had not yet burst over my head — I had not covered my eyes from the passing lightning " . . . "I now knew, for the first time, what it is to have death about our hearths. The excitement of hope and fear in a moment passes away; and the contest between feeling and reason begins, with its alternation of passion and listlessness. It is some time before the image of death gets possession of the mind. We sleep, perchance, amidst a feverish dream of gloomy and indistinct remembrances. The object of our grief, it may be, has seemed to us present, in health and animation. We wake in a struggle between the shadowy and the real world; and we require an effort of the intellect to believe that the earthly part of the being we have loved is no more than a clod of the valley."

While believing in the regenerating power of the press, Knight dreaded the advent of cheap scurrilous newspapers and periodicals. His forebodings proved unfounded, and years afterwards he frankly admitted that he 'could scarcely have imagined that some distant age of cheapness would have been an age when the impure, seditious, violent, intolerant, and libellous writer would have become a rare exception amongst journalists.' On the 3rd of March, 1821, Knight created a new department of newspaper literature, by publishing in The Guardian the first of a series of monthly articles, entitled 'Magazine Day.' Nearly two years later he sold the above newspaper, and took up his position as a publisher in Pall Mall East.

Knight had some time before been thrown into contact with many choice literary spirits, for in 1820 he had brought out The Etonian, which had for its editors Walter Blunt and Winthrop Mackworth Praed. The other contributors included William Sidney Walker, a youth of brilliant promise, John Moultrie, and Henry Nelson Coleridge. The publication continued for about two years, and then it was succeeded by Knight's Quarterly Magazine. In addition to the writers above-named, the new periodical counted among its contributors De Quincey, Macaulay, Derwent Coleridge, and Henry Malden. Praed's opening article in the magazine was called Castle Vernon, and Knight's only prospectus of his new periodical was this very whimsical extract from the article:—

To the Lady Mary Vernon, the Mistress of all Harmony, the Queen of all Wits, the Brightest of all Belles, we, the undersigned, send greeting: "We, the undersigned, are a knot of young men, of various forms and features — of more various talents and inclinations; agreeing in nothing, save in two essential points — a warm liking for one another, and a very profound devotion for your Ladyship.

"Some of us have no occupation.
"Some of us have no money.
"Some of us are desperately in love.
"Some of us are desperately in debt.
"Many of us are very clever, and wish to convince the public of the fact.
"Several of us have never written a line.
"Several of us have written a great many, and wish to write more.
"For all these reasons we intend to write a book.
"We will not compile a lumbering quarto of Travels, to be bound in Russia, and skimmed in the Quarterly, and bought by the country book-clubs;— nor a biting Political Pamphlet, to be praised by everybody on one side, and abused by everybody on the other, and read by nobody at all;— nor a Philosophical Essay, to be marvelled at by the few, and shuddered at by the many, and prosecuted by His Majesty's Attorney-General; nor a little Epic Poem in twenty-four books, to be loved by the milliners, and lauded in the Literary Gazette, and burnt by your Ladyship.

"But a book of some sort we are resolved to write. We will go forth to the world once a quarter, in high spirits and handsome type, and a modest dress of drab, with verse and prose, criticism and witticism, fond love and loud laughter; everything that is light and warm, and fantastic, and beautiful, shall be the offering we will bear; while we will leave the Nation to the care of the Parliament, and the Church to the Bishop of Peterborough. And to this end we will give up to colder lips and duller souls their gross and terrestrial food; we will not interfere with the saddle or the sirloin, the brandy- bottle or the punch-bowl;—our food shall be of the spicy curry and the glistening champagne; our inspiration shall be the thanks of pleasant voices, and the smiles of sparkling eyes. We grasp at no renown—we pray for no immortality; but we trust that in the voyage it shall be our destiny to run, we shall waken many glowing feelings, and revive many agreeable recollections; we shall make many jokes and many friends; we shall enliven ourselves and the public together; and when we meet around some merry hearth to discuss the past and the future, our projects, and our success, we shall give a zest to our bottle and our debate by drinking a health to all who read us, and three healths to all who praise."

Amid many lighter things in the magazine was an article by Macaulay on West Indian Slavery, in which he sternly combated the evil which his father, Zachary Macaulay, and other philanthropists, did so much towards abolishing. To later numbers Macaulay contributed his 'Ivry,' and other fine lyrics, 'Dante,' 'The Athenian Orators,' and other prose articles. There were likewise fine contributions by other writers, but the periodical was a loss and a trouble to its conductor, and its career closed with the sixth number. Another venture of a similar character, The Brazen Head, edited by Knight and Barry St. Leger, was brought out in the Spring of 1826, but it only lasted for four weeks. Nevertheless, those few numbers contained poems by Praed which have acquired a permanent fame. In one of them, 'The Chaunt of the Brazen Head,' occur these well-known lines:—

I think that friars and their hoods,
Their doctrines and their maggots,
Have lighted up too many feuds,
And far too many faggots;
I think while zealots fast and frown,
And fight for two or seven,
That there are fifty roads to town,
And rather more to Heaven.

I think that very few have sigh'd
When Fate at last has found them,
Though bitter foes were by their side,
And barren moss around them;
I think that some have died of drought,
And some have died of drinking,—
I think that naught is worth a thought,
And I'm a fool for thinking!

Charles Knight's Plain Englishman continued to appear for three years, faithfully supporting the Constitution in Church and State, and supplying pure and wholesome literature. But the patronage of the public at large not being such as would enable its conductors to continue the work without serious loss, the venture was given up. The freedom of the press was an unknown quantity early in the century. John and Leigh Hunt were prosecuted in 1812 for libelling the Prince Regent in the Examiner. They had simply called him 'an Adonis in loveliness' and 'a corpulent gentleman of fifty,' yet for these mild phrases they were fined £1,000 each, and imprisoned for two years in separate prisons. Again, in May, 1821, John Hunt was prosecuted for a libel on the House of Commons, and sentenced to two years' imprisonment. Charles Knight himself was the subject of vexatious actions on grounds for which he would be applauded now. The actions arose out of articles published in the Windsor Express, and Knight, writing about the affair in 1865, remarks:—

Imagine, at the present day, the Lord Chief Justice of the Court of Queen's Bench trying an action for libel, — with two leaders, such as Mr. Denman for the prosecution, and Mr. Scarlett for the defence, — the alleged libel being the report in a country newspaper of a flagrant case of cruelty which was a notorious subject of local indignation. The libel consisted in terming that "a brutal assault" upon which the assailants were held to bail. Imagine that the persons whose characters were thus defamed were a pig-keeper and his wife, who let lodgings to poor people; and having a dispute with a family of which the mother had only been confined a week, threatened to pull the bed from under her, and turn her into the street. Imagine a London jury finding a verdict for the plaintiff with £50 damages. Imagine a second action for the same libel being brought by the wife. Imagine ten several actions against ten London papers, for reporting the trial in the King's Bench with a few words of just comment upon the scandal of such litigation, when there was no "private malice" or "gross negligence." Imagine a hungry attorney, prowling for prey, at the bottom of all these actions, who had no object to attain but the heavy costs which he pocketed. These verdicts cost me £500 in 1825. Is not the newspaper press in a better condition than it was in, forty years ago?

At the time of Lord Byron's funeral, Knight was involved in a matter of public interest connected with the deceased poet. Five days before he witnessed the poet's funeral procession, on the 12th of July, he was served with a Chancery injunction to restrain him from publishing certain letters of Lord Byron. It appears that Robert Charles Dallas, who was connected by marriage with the family of the poet, prepared a volume with the object of presenting a faithful delineation of Byron's character as he had personally known it. After the poet's death, Dallas remodelled his memoir into Correspondence' of Lord Byron, and this work Charles Knight purchased for a large sum. It was already advertised for publication, when Mr. Hobhouse and a friend called upon Knight and protested against the issue of the work. Although Knight assured the family and the executors that they need feel no apprehension as to the character of the work — which was intended to elevate Lord Byron's moral and intellectual character, legal proceedings ensued. The Vice-Chancellor granted an injunction upon the affidavits of Mr. Hobhouse and Mr. Hanson, co-executors, that such contemplated publication was 'a breach of private confidence and a violation of the rights of property.' There was an appeal, and after two months of anxiety for Knight, Lord Chancellor Eldon gave judgment to the effect that the owner of the letters had no right of publication in them. However, after the death of Dallas, in 1824, Knight published a trustworthy and authentic volume entitled Recollections of Lord Byron, edited by Dallas's son, the Rev. Alexander Dallas. Besides the annoyance and loss to Knight, it was not a pleasant thing for him to see Moore reap the full advantage of the suppressed correspondence, by filling many pages in 1829 with the letters of Dallas and Byron which the executors had thought fit to suppress in 1824.

Brougham was busily engaged in organising the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge in the autumn of 1826, when M. D. Hill informed him of Charles Knight's scheme for the issue of popular books. An interview was speedily arranged between the great lawyer and the publisher. That interview was indelibly impressed on Knight's memory, and it had also much to do with moulding his future. Knight gives this graphic picture of their first meeting:—

There was an image in my mind of the Queen's Attorney-General, as I had often beheld him in the House of Lords, wielding a power in the proceedings on the Bill of Pains and Penalties which no other man seemed to possess equivocating witnesses crouching beneath his withering scorn; mighty peers shrinking from his hold sarcasm; the whole assembly visibly agitated at times by the splendour of his eloquence. The Henry Brougham I had gazed upon was, in my mind's eye, a man stern and repellent not to he approached with any attempt at familiarity; whose opinions must be received with the most respectful deference; whose mental superiority would be somewhat overwhelming. The Henry Brougham into whose chambers in Lincoln's Inn I was ushered on a November night was sitting amidst his briefs, evidently delighted to be interrupted for some thoughts more attractive. After saluting my friend with a joke, and grasping my hand with a cordial welcome, he went at once to the subject upon which I came. The rapid conception of the features of my plan; the few brief questions as to my wishes; the manifestation of a warm interest in my views without the slightest attempt to be patronising, were most gratifying to me. The image of the great orator of 182o altogether vanished when I listened to the unpretentious and often playful words of one of the best table-talkers of 1826, — it vanished, even as the full-bottomed wig of that time seemed to have belonged to some other head than the close-cropped one upon which I looked. The foremost advocate of popular education made no harangues about its advantages. He did not indoctrinate me, as I have been bored by many an educationist before and since, with flourishes upon a subject which he gave Mr. Hill and myself full credit for comprehending. M. Charles Dupin said to Mackintosh, after a night in the House of Commons, "I heard not one word about the blessings of liberty." "No, no," replied Mackintosh; "we take all that for granted." So did Henry Brougham take for granted that he and I were in accord upon the subject of the Diffusion of Knowledge. He was then within a few days of the completion of his forty-seventh year; full of health and energy — one who had been working without intermission in literature, in science, in law, in politics, for a quarter of a century, but one to whom no work seemed to bring fatigue; no tedious mornings of the King's Bench, no sleepless nights of the House of Commons, able to " stale his infinite variety."

Under the auspices of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, Knight began the issue of the British Alumnac. In 1827, which was soon followed by the Companion to the Almanac, and he continued the work for thirty-seven years, writing many original articles himself. Up to this time almanacs had been of a very inferior type, but Knight now supplied useful and trustworthy information. He had gathered together a number of scientific men, who were able to deal with such subjects as Astronomy, Meteorology, Tides, Eclipses, etc. Knight was not so successful, however, with his scheme for a National Library. It was at first taken up by the Society, but difficulties arose, and Knight finally arranged with Murray the publisher to carry out the idea for a series of cheap volumes, which should condense the information only to be found in voluminous and expensive treatises. The Prospectus set forth that 'the divisions of Popular Knowledge in which the National Library is arranged will comprehend, in distinct Treatises, the most important branches of instruction and amusement. They will present the most valuable and interesting articles of an Encyclopaedia in a form accessible to every description of purchaser.' But various things soon began to militate against the undertaking; differences of opinion arose about the editorial responsibility for the series; no satisfactory arrangements could be made regarding the projector's old stock and copyrights; and Murray became frightened at the magnitude of the plan. The scheme was consequently abandoned, to Knight's great loss. In fact, he was absolutely crippled for a time. A private trust administered his affairs, whose only concern was to realise, at any cost, land, house, newspapers, stock, copy-tights, etc. In the end he walked forth from his business homes in London and Windsor a poor man, and one who had to begin the battle of life afresh.

Finding a home at Brompton, with his wife and four little girls, he soon began to look hopefully on life again, though under changed circumstances. He obtained an engagement as a writer on James Silk Buckingham's new paper, The Sphinx, but abandoned it. Buckingham was not only difficult to work with owing to his conceit, but he at length disgusted Knight by proposing an amended scale of remuneration for literary criticisms, which began at half-a-crown and rose to a guinea, according to the length of the article. Happily a more worthy course of industry was soon to open out for Charles Knight, though before the time arrived he had a little experience in producing Friendship's Offering; one of the numerous Annuals which were then so much in vogue. For this periodical, Praed wrote his fine poem, The Red Fisherman.

Before the work of the day commenced, Charles Knight was fond of taking a walk through Kensington Gardens. He did this frequently during the summer of 1827 when all Nature had put on the garb of loveliness - and in the course of one of these walks he witnessed a peaceful and happy scene in which the Princess Victoria, the future Queen of these realms, was the central though youthful attraction. 'In such a season,' he wrote in his Passages of a Working Life, 'when the sun was scarcely high enough to have dried up the dews of Kensington's green alleys, as I passed along the broad central walk, I saw a group on the lawn before the Palace, which, to my mind, was a vision of exquisite loveliness. The Duchess of Kent, and her daughter, whose years then numbered nine, are breakfasting in the open air — a single page attending upon them at a respectful distance, — the matron looking on with eyes of love, whilst the "fair, soft English face" is bright with smiles. The world of fashion is not yet astir. Clerks and mechanics passing onward to their occupations are few, and they exhibit nothing of that vulgar curiosity which I think is more commonly found in the class of the merely rich, than in the ranks below them in the world's estimation. What a beautiful characteristic it seemed to me of the training of this royal girl, that she should not have been taught to shrink from the public eye — that she should not have been burthened with a premature conception of her probable high destiny — that she should enjoy the freedom and simplicity of a child's nature - that she should not be restrained when she starts up from the breakfast table and runs to gather a flower in the adjoining parterre — that her merry laugh should be as fearless as the notes of the thrush in the groves around her. I passed on and blessed her, and I thank God that I have lived to see the golden fruits of such training.'

A new departure of great importance to Charles Knight was initiated on the 26th of July, 1827. On that date there was a general meeting of the Committee of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, with James Mill in the chair, when Knight was appointed to undertake the superintendence of the Society's publications. At that time the only publications of the Society were the treatises in the Library of Useful Knowledge, issued fortnightly in sixpenny numbers. Brougham had most successfully opened the series with his 'Discourse on the objects, Advantages, and Pleasures of Science.' It was intended to follow this up with manuals for self-education - clear, accurate, but not to be mastered without diligence and perseverance. Those which were issued made it clear that there was a great body of students — whether in colleges or Mechanics' Institutes, in busy towns or quiet villages – to whom such guides were welcome. Knight was general editor and manager of the series, as also of the Almanacs of the Society, to which reference has already been made. Throughout England and Scotland a great number of unstamped almanacs were surreptitiously sold by pedlars and hawkers, as well as privately in shops. Knight prepared a report on the subject which led to the total repeal of the Almanac Duty. In March, 1828, Knight became part proprietor of the London Magazine. To the first number of a new series, begun in April, he contributed an article on the Education of the People,' distinguished for its liberality and breadth of view.

In the interest of the Society's publications, Knight visited the principal towns of the kingdom Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield, York, Nottingham, etc. The progress of humanising and elevating efforts on behalf of factory workers, and the working-classes generally, he thus describes in connection with a visit paid to Manchester:

When I visited Manchester in 1828, five years were to elapse before children and young persons working in factories would be protected by law from working an unreasonable number of hours, and when Government Inspectors would watch over the preservation of their health and enforce the necessity for their education. The first Factory Act did not come into operation till January, 1834. It may well be imagined, therefore, that in the mills I looked upon male and female children, from seven years of age till seventeen (the employment of children under nine years was not then prohibited), who, scarcely coming under the cognisance of the masters, for such children were subject to the control of the spinners, were growing up in bodily weakness, in ignorance, and in vice. There was then little of kindly intercourse between the employers and the employed. The means of mental improvement for adults were very limited. A Mechanics' Institute and a Mechanics' and Apprentices' Library were indeed established in 1826. The "Atheneum" was built several years later. It was remarked in 1842 that there was no public park or green in which the labouring population could enjoy healthy exercise and recreation. "The Peel Park," the first of those free pleasure-grounds which have removed this disgrace from Manchester, was not opened till 1846. So rare was any endeavour to advance the condition of the workers, to promote their innocent enjoyments, to cherish and instruct their children in the spirit of a common humanity, that when two letters to Mr. Horner, printed in a periodical work of 1840, recorded what had been done in a new mill in 1832, erected near Manchester by Messrs. Greg, there was a good deal of incredulity as to the probable results of such a deviation from the usual course of neglect. These gentlemen had built cottages for the operatives; they had attached a garden to each house; they had Sunday-schools; they had arranged outdoor exercises for the hours of leisure. They had provided hot and cold baths; they had evening parties, to which the young people were invited by their employers. This solitary example soon had its imitators. A factory, whether for cotton, linen, or woollen fabrics, is not now a region especially suited for the cultivation of all the suspicions and hatreds that in former times made the relations between the capitalist and the labourer the most dangerous aspect of our social state.

By Midsummer, 1829, Knight was again established in Pall Mall East as a publisher, though still retaining his connection with, and preparing works for, the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. The Society included on its committee or among its members, Henry Brougham, Lord John Russell, William and Thomas Tooke, James Mill, Henry Hallam, Admiral Sir Francis Beaufort, Henry Bellenden Ker, Matthew Davenport Hill, Dr. Roget, Charles Bell, Dr. Neil Arnott, Dr. Maltby (afterwards Bishop of Durham), William Allen, the philanthropic Quaker, John William Lubbock, Lord Wrottesley, George Long, A. de Morgan, Leonard Horner, Herman Merivale, George Cornewall Lewis, Spring Rice, George Denman, Lords Auckland and Althorp, and Sir Henry Parnell. The reader will recognise among these many steadfast friends of education, as well as men who became eminent in various spheres. After the Reform era, it was no uncommon thing for five Cabinet Ministers to sit down at the Society's monthly dinner.

George Lillie Craik was one of the most valuable writers connected with the Society, and his work entitled The Pursuit of Knowledge under Difficulties did great service among the working-classes, and attained a large sale. During the spring of 1830, Charles Knight vigorously pushed forward the monthly issue of the Library of Entertaining Knowledge - a series of half volumes which began in 1828, and to which Knight himself contributed two volumes on The Menageries, and Craik other two on Paris and its Historical Scenes. Brougham, although he had been appointed Lord Chancellor in December, 1830, prepared an edition of Paley's Natural neology, with Notes and an Introductory Discourse.

The Society began the issue of a small series of shilling volumes, entitled The Working Man's Companion. Knight wrote a volume on The Rights of Machinery for which he received the special thanks of the Useful Knowledge Committee. The book achieved a wonderful amount of good in convincing workmen, infuriated by the introduction and multiplication of machinery, of the groundlessness of their fears. It was a sober and argumentative little treatise, which contained no appeals to the passions, but rested the strength of its assaults against long- cherished prejudices upon a battery of facts. Printers and bookbinders were amongst those who long opposed the improvements in machinery, and The Times had great difficulties to encounter when its proprietors first made use of machinery.

The Useful Knowledge Society began the issue of the Quarterly journal of Education in January, 1831. Charles Knight, as publisher, bore the risk of the undertaking. Professor Long was the editor, and the Journal was regularly continued for five years. It numbered among its contributors men of such eminence as Dr. Whately, Dr. Thirlwall, and Dr. Arnold, and it is scarcely necessary to add that the 4,000 pages of which the work consisted embraced a mass of information of original value and general interest. 'There was a great work to be accomplished to take the education of all classes out of the hands of incompetent and prejudiced instructors, and to free the young, upon whose judicious training the welfare of another generation would depend, from that discipline which united the extremes of laxity and severity, and that routine which, relying upon forms, so constantly neglected essentials.'

In 1831, Knight again directly addressed himself to workmen in a volume which he wrote under the title of The Rights of Industry, which had for its second title, Capital and Labour. This book exhibited the rights of workmen in connection with their duties, by proving that the interests of every member of Society, properly understood, were one and the same. It was ready for publication when the fatal riots at Bristol occurred, and the author added a stirring appeal to the great masses of the people to discountenance violence and outrage, which were the sure precursors of national decay and ruin. This volume was afterwards amalgamated with the one on machinery, and published under the title of Knowledge is Power.

In 1832, following closely upon the appearance of Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, began the issue of the Penny Magazine under the auspices of the Useful Knowledge Society. Knight was appointed editor, and he likewise undertook the risk of publication. These were ventures in the right direction. Working-men soon began to look as eagerly for their mental food in the Penny Magazine as they did for their daily bread. Nothwithstanding the great initial difficulties which had to be surmounted, the Magazine was soon an established success, and by the end of 1832 the sale had reached no less than 200,000 in weekly numbers and monthly parts. This meant in all probability a million readers. Such a result must have been most gratifying to the projectors, for throughout the work there was no sentence that could inflame a vicious appetite, and no paragraph which could minister to prejudices and superstitions hitherto so common. There were no excitements for the lovers of the marvellous — no tattle or abuse for the gratification of a diseased taste for personality, and, above all, no party politics. The writers included Long, De Morgan, Craik, Macfarlane, Pringle the traveller, and John Kitto. The last-named came to occupy important relations towards Knight, for whom he executed a vast amount of good editorial work. Fourteen volumes in all were published of the Penny Magazine, before it was discontinued in 1845.

The Society then projected the Penny Cyclopaedia, its greatest undertaking. The publication began in January, 1833, in weekly numbers and monthly parts. The work was entirely original, and with its supplement was completed in 1846. The total cost for literature and engraving was £42,000. The result to the originator was, unfortunately, a loss of £30,000. Had he not been hampered by the Society this disastrous result might have been averted. The work was under the superintendence of the Society, however, and soon after it began, the Committee determined that it must be enormously enlarged in its scope, and the price of the weekly numbers doubled. The extension of the quantity of the Cyclopaedia destroyed its commercial value. Had it been a careful compilation, instead of an original work furnished by nearly two hundred contributors, it would have proved a fortune to Knight - instead of which it lost him one. The sale of the first year was double that of the fourth year, and that of the fourth double that of the eighth year. It then found its level, and became steady to the end, with a regular sale of 20,000. In the outset the sale had been 75,000 copies. Charles Knight told the story of this great publication in a volume entitled, The Struggles of a Book against Excessive Taxation. His revelations not only showed the difficulties he had to contend with, but demonstrated the amazing impetus which the undertaking must have given directly and indirectly to the printing industry. The following details are full of interest:—

The Penny Cyclopaedia and its Supplement were completed in 1846. The two works contain 15,764 pages, and the quantity of paper required to produce a single copy is two reams, each weighing thirty-five pounds. At the period of its completion the entire quantity of paper consumed was fifty thousand reams, the total weight of which amounted to one million seven hundred and fifty thousand pounds. Of this weight, twenty thousand reams, or seven hundred thousand pounds, paid the Excise duty of threepence per pound, amounting to £8,750; and the remaining thirty thousand reams paid the reduced duty of three-halfpence per pound (commencing in 1837) upon one million and fifty thousand pounds, amounting to £6,562. The total duty paid up to the completion of the Cyclopaedia in 1846, was £15,312. Since that period, two thousand reams of paper have been used in reprinting, to correct the inequalities of the stock, making an addition of seventy thousand pounds, excised at £437. But further, the wrappers for the monthly parts have used fifteen hundred reams of paper, taxed at £500, and the milled boards employed in binding the volumes have been also taxed about £300. The total payment to the Excise by the Penny Cyclopedia has been £16,500.

Having thus opened his case, Knight went on to elaborate it as follows:-

I propose to show-

1st. That the excessive burthen upon the great work, to which I have devoted seventeen years of toil and anxiety, has been the primary cause that the enterprise has not yet been remunerative.

2nd. That the continuance of the paper, at the present rate of three halfpence per pound, prevents me undertaking the publication of a new and improved edition, upon its first plan of a continuous alphabetical arrangement.

I. The positive burthen of £16,500 imposed by the State upon the publication of the book, is far from representing the difficulty and loss which the payment has entailed upon the undertaking.

It is well known that the amount of a duty upon raw material by no means represents the amount of the charge which it entails upon the manufacturer. Mr. MacCulloch and Mr. Porter rightly state that the price for a ream of one particular sort of printing paper was, in 1831, twenty-four shillings; in 1843, fifteen shillings and sixpence. From 1833 to 1837 the price of a ream of Penny Cyclopaedia paper was thirty-three shillings; from 1838 to 1846 it was twenty-four shillings. The difference in price was nine shillings per ream; the amount of reduced duty was four shillings and fourpence-halfpenny. The paper-makers and the stationers doubled the tax. Mr. Mill, in his Principles of Political Economy, writes: "Whatever renders a larger capital necessary in any trade or business limits the competition in that business; and by giving something like a monopoly to a few dealers, enables them to keep up the price beyond what would afford the ordinary rate of profit."

But even at the reduced rate it has been satisfactorily shown by my fellow-labourers, the Messrs. Chambers, that the duty enters one-third into the price. If the duty were removed, I could buy a ream of similar paper for seventeen shillings. The tax, preventing competition and giving undue advantage to capitalists, had the effect of making me pay for my paper, from 1833 to 1837, sixteen shillings a ream more than the price of untaxed paper would be, or £16,000 upon twenty thousand reams; and from 1838 to 1846, seven shillings per ream more than I should otherwise have paid, which upon thirty thousand reams amounts to £10,500. The tax, therefore, operated as a burthen upon any publication to the extent of £26,500, during its long and difficult progress to completion. The paper since used for reprints, and the paper for wrappers, has been raised in price £2,500 by the same process.

The struggles of one book against excessive taxation are, up to this point, to be measured by a burthen of £29,000.

But I have not yet done. The tax has been working against the Penny Cyclopaedia for seventeen years, in the chronic form of interest and compound interest.

It was not very long before the periodical sale settled into a regular quantity. The work became too extensive for the great bulk of purchasers. For the first few months of the publication the sale was double what it was at the end of the year. The sale of the first year doubled that of the fourth year. The sale of the fourth year doubled that of the eighth year, and then found its level and became steady to the end, reduced from fifty-five thousand at the commencement to twenty thousand at the conclusion. Every publisher of a periodical work knows the accumulation of stock that must inevitably take place with a falling demand. There never was a period after the third year of which I had less than five reams of the Penny Cyclopaedia in my warehouse; upon which duty had been paid for some portion at the high rate, and for some at the low, averaging £1,500. In 1841 there were in my warehouse twelve hundred reams upon which the high duty, expiring in 1837, had been paid. I consider the accumulating interest in this investment, in actually paid duty, upon dead stock, to have amounted, in the seventeen years during which I have been labouring to sell that stock, to £1,500, and, including the interest upon the extra price charged by the paper manufacturer, to a charge of £3,000.

And here, then, will the usual conclusion arise, that the publisher has not borne this load of thirty-two thousand pounds imposed by the State upon the Penny Cyclopaedia, but the purchasers of the Penny Cyclopaeia. My answer is very, direct. Had that sum of £32,000 been actually saved to me, I should not have been a pound richer by the publication of the Penny Cyclopaedia. But with the saving I should not have been to that amount poorer. The outlay was so great, that it could never pay its expenses under a sale of thirty-six thousand copies with the high duty. In the first five years that average number was printed but the accumulation of stock locked up £10,000. Under the low duty it paid its expenses at thirty thousand copies. The actual average sale during the nine years of that duty was twenty thousand. It would have required that there should be no Paper Duty at all to have paid its expenses on a sale of twenty thousand. Had the duty not been reduced by one-half at the end of 1836, I could not, by any possibility, have carried on the work. As it was, I struggled to the end.

2. The reduced Paper Duty, as I have undertaken to show, prevents me making the best use of the valuable copyright which remains to me, now that the accumulated stock is in great part exhausted.

I was advised to propose a subscription for an entirely new edition. The highest personage in the realm accorded me her support, and so did her admirable Consort, who is doing for Science and Industry what is worth far more than any money value. Some of the most eminent in the walks of intellect also came forward to aid me. Of the support of the members of the Legislature which taxed me during fourteen years, I have not much to boast. I have given up the design. Upon a sale that would have merely returned my new outlay, the Paper Duty would have burthened the work to the extent of £3,000. Its abandonment would have lightened my task to the extent of making the work yield me as high a profit from three thousand subscribers as from four thousand subscribers with the duty continued. With this encouragement I should have gone on.

There is a steady demand for the existing edition of the Penny Cyclopaedia, to the extent of two hundred and fifty sets annually. The Paper Duty prevents me meeting this demand with any moderate commercial profit. The technical explanation is not difficult to be understood. If I print two hundred and fifty copies only, I use five hundred reams of paper, of which the duty is 4/6 each, and the necessary increase of manufacturer's price 2/6, making a charge, arising out of the duty, of 7/- per ream, or £175 upon two hundred and fifty copies. But in printing only two hundred and fifty copies I have to pay for the press-work as high as 15/- per ream, whereas if I printed five hundred, I should only pay 10/-. As the number of a book first printed increases, the cost of press-work or machine-work diminishes; and for this reason the tax upon a raw material of a book or paper, increasing the risk of printing a large impression, compels a smaller impression at a higher cost. But if there were no Paper Duty I should print five hundred copies, by which I should save £350 in the price of paper, and £250 in the price of press-work, making a saving of £600. This outlay of £600 is imposed upon me absolutely by the existence of the Paper Duty; and that fact will possibly compel me to give up reprinting a book which has done more for the achievement of sound knowledge and general education in these kingdoms than any work ever produced in any country. That £600 saved would afford me an income which would allow me to invest capital in such a reprint. Printing only two hundred and fifty copies at the present price of paper, a set of this book would cost me £1,000. My net profit upon that outlay would not be ten per cent.

And with all this danger and difficulty — with "this lion in my path - I am not yet beaten. I have my valuable copyright of the Penny Cyclopaedia remaining to me; and I have passed many an anxious hour in seeing how I can best turn it to account. I am about to publish a series of separate cyclopaedias, with large improvements, and I begin with a Cyclopaedia of British Geography, and a Cyclopedia of Arts and Industry. Let me show the exact track which "the lion in my path" drives me to seek; and then some of those legislators who find that a fashionable novel, sold at a guinea and a half, pays about fourpence Paper Duty, and thence conclude that it is the lightest of taxes, and by all means should be preserved especially as books, as they hold, are not necessaries of life — some of those who

“Hate not learning worse than toad or asp”

may know what it is to maintain a tax upon knowledge, struggling to preserve its high rank and its useful extension amidst the widest competition of cheapness.

Upon these four volumes, estimated to contain about three thousand pages, I shall expend £1,500 upon new editorial labour. I shall further expend about £1,000 upon new plates and maps. The printer's charge for setting up the types will be £800, and the cost of stereotyping will be £500. Add for advertising, £200, and I have thus to expend £4,000 as first outlay, whether I sell five hundred copies or five thousand. At the present cost of paper, three thousand copies (the least number I could print with advantage) will amount to £1,500, the press-work will cost £500; total, £6,000. The three thousand copies, produced upon this scale, will exactly cover my outlay, without a shilling profit. But let us see how the account would stand with the price of paper reduced one-third by the abolition of the duty. My course would then be to print four thousand copies, and not stereotype, which process is chiefly employed to save the outlay of capital in taxed paper. The first outlay is, therefore, £3,500; the paper for four thousand copies, at the lower untaxed price, would cost me £1,333; the press-work £600 (reduced per ream on account of the larger number). I produce, therefore, four thousand copies for £5,433, instead of three thousand copies for £6,000. I expend less by £567, and I have one thousand copies left to sell for my profit. I could sell four thousand copies, under these circumstances, more easily than three thousand as I now stand, for I could afford to advertise more freely, and to offer higher inducements to retailers. This is something different from a four-penny tax upon a fashionable novel.

The Gallery of Portraits, which Knight next published under the superintendence of the Society, was also next to the Cyclopedia in its costliness of production. The task of selecting subjects occupied the Committee from the beginning of 1832 to the Midsummer of 1834, and British and foreign statesmen, warriors, divines, men of science and letters, and artists were all assigned their due place of honour in the work. The first monthly number, published at half-a-crown, and containing three Portraits with biographies, appeared in May, 1832. Arthur H. Hallam wrote a number of biographies for the work, and De Quincey contributed a fine memoir of Milton.

Charles Knight was an early opponent of the newspaper stamp, as well as of the Paper Duty, and had much to do with securing their repeal. The 13th of August, 1836, was a day of rejoicing for him, and for the press generally, for on that day two Acts of Parliament received the Royal Assent, which materially influenced all the commercial arrangements for rendering knowledge, political or literary, more accessible to the bulk of the people. The first of these reduced the duties on first-class paper from threepence per pound to three-halfpence, so that the former tax of three-halfpence upon second-class Paper should apply to paper of all descriptions. The second reduced the stamp on newspapers from fourpence to a penny. In his work on Post Office Reform, Rowland Hill observes:

When the expediency of entirely abolishing the newspaper stamp and allowing newspapers to pass through the Post Office for a penny each was under consideration, it was proposed by Mr. Charles Knight, the publisher, that the postage on newspapers might be collected by selling stamped wrappers at a penny each. Availing myself of this excellent suggestion, I proposed the following arrangement, - let the stamped covers and sheets of paper be supplied to the public from the Stamp Office or Post Office, as may be most convenient, and sold at such a price as to include the postage. Letters so stamped might be put into the letter-box as at present.

It would not be far wrong to say that Knight's suggestion led to the adoption of the penny postage stamp.

Early in 1836 Knight issued the first part of the Pictorial Bible. The idea of the work was derived from Germany. John Kitto was editor, and he also furnished notes upon such subjects as had come under his observation during his travels in the East. Fine wood-engravings were given, embracing the scriptural designs of great painters, landscape scenes, eastern costumes, the remains of ancient architecture, and botanical and zoological specimens. The work occupied two years and a half in its publication, and notwithstanding the costliness of the engravings it proved profitable. After its completion came Palestine, a new work undertaken by Dr. Kitto. This was succeeded by The Thousand and One Nights, or the Arabian Entertainments, a new translation from authentic Arabic originals, by Edward Lane, with admirable illustrations by William Harvey. The Pictorial History 0f England — a work of still greater magnitude — was begun in 1840. It extended to eight volumes, and occupied seven years in a regular monthly course of publication. Charles MacFarlane undertook the larger department of civil and military history, and G. Lillie Craik wrote the history of religion, literature, and commerce. Assistance was rendered by other writers in various departments. Half the whole work was occupied with the reign of George the Third only, and this disproportion proved fatal to its success. Still, with its continuations down to the present day, the work holds its own, and has never been superseded by any other.

London, another serial which was begun in 1841 and completed in 1844, included among its contributors Craik, Planche, Fairholt, Saunders, Dodd, and Weir. The story of the great Metropolis is told with wonderful interest, past and present scenes in its history being realised with great skill. It is to Charles Knight we owe that graphic title of The Silent Highway as applied to the Thames. The reign of the watermen is traced from the time of John Norman, first Mayor of London, who was rowed to Westminster instead of riding, to the days when even the watermen had become a portion of the antiquities of London the days of the penny steamboat. Then we get sketches of the Metropolis itself, from Hyde Park in the west to Rag Fair in the extreme east.

In view of the present enormous development of the newspaper and periodical press, it is interesting to note that on Saturday, May 4th, 1844 — exactly half a century ago, —t he number of weekly periodical works issued in London was about sixty. The monthly issue of periodical literature was unequalled by any similar commercial operation in Europe, there being 227 monthly works sent out on the last day of May, 1844, from Paternoster Row, in addition to 38 works published quarterly. The number of newspapers published in the United Kingdom was 447, and of these, 79 were London newspapers. These figures seemed surprising at the time, but they are small indeed compared with present figures. The total number of periodicals and newspapers in the United Kingdom in 1890 was upwards of 3,000, and the newspapers published in London alone numbered 646. The circulation of these counts by millions.

Knight's Pictorial Shakespeare was a work in which the projector took a special interest. It was in eight volumes. The publication began in 1839, and went on for two years. Knight himself wrote the biography of the immortal poet, of whom he was an ardent student and worshipper. Indeed, Miss Alice A. Climes, Knight's granddaughter, in her sketch of the publisher, states that the various editions of Shakespeare which he edited 'were amongst the pleasantest labours of his life.' She adds these personal details concerning Charles Knight: 'The enthusiasm he felt for everything relating to the poet's genius and career never left him, and to his latest day he loved to quote a line here and there from the writing, he knew so well. As children, my brothers and sisters and I listened with perhaps more awe than appreciation, to the quotations, which some chance reference in our idle talk would call forth from the lips of our keen-eyed and sharp-eared grandfather. He very seldom joined in ordinary conversation. When all around him were prattling, as people with the best intentions will prattle, he would sit with his head rather bent down, as if lost in thought but, if any remark beyond the commonplace were uttered, be it by man, woman, or child, the head would be raised and the eye brighten at once, and words of wisdom would be spoken. It was always a trial to him to put up with assumption and ignorance of any kind, and as children we were rather afraid of expressing our youthful opinion in his hearing, which was, no doubt, very good for us.'

Altogether, Knight published eight different editions of Shakespeare. The first of these was followed by a new undertaking called the Store of Knowledge for all Readers. It consisted of a series of original treatises by various authors, dealing with such diversified subjects as Taxation, the Post Office, Europe, the House, the Mineral Kingdom, Schools, Commercial Intercourse with China, etc. At a banquet given at the Albion Tavern in recognition of Knight's services to literature, with special reference to the Penny Cyclopaedia, Lord Brougham took the chair. In proposing the health of the guest, his lordship dwelt 'on the various services which, in connection with the Useful Knowledge Society, he had been enabled to render towards the advancement of society in moral as well as intellectual knowledge; pointed out especially the great service he did to the State in writing and publishing his two little works, The Rights of Industry and The Results of Machinery - two publications which, at a time of great public excitement, were eminently conducive to allaying the reckless spirit which, in 1830, was leading multitudes to destroy property and break up machines. He also pointed out what Mr. Knight had done in editing and illustrating Shakespeare; in the projection and carrying on of the Penny Magazine, and the completion of the Penny Cyclopcedia.'

In publishing an account of this gathering, the Athenaeum added, as equally significant of the change which was coming over the spirit of the age, that the Queen had commanded that copies of Mr. Knight's forthcoming publications, entitled Knight's Weekly Volume, should be supplied to the libraries established at all the Royal palaces. The volumes began with a biography of William Caxton, the First English Printer, by Charles Knight himself. The projector was desirous of seeing the principle of the Book Club established in the Provinces, and in this desire he was cordially seconded by Charles Dickens.

It is curious that one of the first successful efforts to establish a Cheap Book Club was made by Robert Burns. Knight received signal assistance in connection with his Weekly Volumes from Harriet Martineau. In 1845 he began the issue of Knight's Penny Magazine, a vehicle of light but good literature, which was followed in 1846 by a second series. The work was fairly successful for the brief period it ran, but there seemed no hope of its progressing, so it was given up. In the last-named year, the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge announced the suspension of its operations. In doing this, the Committee first alluded to the heavy loss sustained on the incomplete Biographical Dictionary, and then added: 'The Society's work is done, for its greatest object is achieved fully, fairly, and permanently. The public is supplied with cheap and good literature to an extent which the most sanguine friend of human improvement could not, in 1826, have hoped to have witnessed in twenty years.'

But although good literature was now abundant, bad literature was almost equally prevalent, in the shape of blood and thunder romances, which appealed to the passions of the young and the ignorant. Yet there was hope for the future for literature of the higher class, if only the Paper Duty could be removed. Charles Knight remarks on this head: 'My conviction that the cheap press would purify itself was realised in another decade. I had given a name to the wholesome literature for the people, "The Fountain." The noxious I had called "The Sewer." But I contended, as I had ever done, that the Paper Duty was an insurmountable barrier to the diffusion of publications that should combine the qualities of literary excellence and extreme cheapness. I maintained that to thrust out the noxious publications, the supply of the higher class must be abundant. The quality of the writing must be of the best, for to write well for the people is the rarest of literary qualifications; lastly, the price must as nearly as possible approach to the cost of the mischievous production. Whatever interferes with the circulation of the higher periodicals by increasing their price — whatever tends to render a false economy necessary, by lowering their payment for the best literary labour — interferes with one of the most important instruments of National Education, using the term in its highest sense. Such were the injurious consequences of the Paper Duty. That long disputed question has now been settled. The total repeal of this impost took place after my commercial career was in a great degree closed.'

Charles Knight was a determined opponent of the prize system in literature. Originally started with the object of encouraging talent, the system has woefully deteriorated of recent years. Even thirty years ago Knight wrote: 'The Prize system has become one of the notable expedients of publishing quackery. The word prize is altogether a delusion. It tempts scores of uneducated young persons to enter upon a competition for a reward for literary labours which seems to them magnificent. They are wholly ignorant of the nature of the literary market, in which the real prizes are ready to be earned by those who possess the requisite qualifications. Instead of being an encouragement to struggling genius, it holds out a temptation to mediocrity to travel out of its proper road to honour.'

For some years Knight was engaged in disseminating a number of pictorial works in the neighbourhood of the great manufacturing towns and other populous districts, by the class of book-hawkers known as canvassers. Four of these books, forming seven volumes in folio, were of a quite superior order, and were entitled respectively, Pictorial Museum of Animated Nature, Pictorial Sunday Book, Old England, and the Pictorial Gallery of Arts. The working-man's family which could boast of the possession of these volumes was in a very fortunate position. After Knight disposed of them to a firm of canvassing publishers proper they continued to have a large sale.

In 1847 Knight commenced editing and publishing, in monthly parts, his Half Hours with the Best Authors. Each extract was preceded by a biographical sketch of the author, and the compiler states that the work furnished him with a really delightful occupation for fifty-two weeks. The Half Hours still deservedly maintain their popularity, and Knight would be well entitled to lasting remembrance were it but for this one work alone. Yet it is but one claim out of a hundred that he has upon posterity. In 1849 was completed The Land We Live in, an important preparation for writing the history of England. The scope of this work was very wide, for it embraced the courts and offices of government, legislation and the administration of justice; the halls of science, art, and letters; the seats of education; the emporiums of commerce and manufactures; the triumphs of steam and of the locomotive; the havens of maritime power; the material improvements of the day viewed in connection with the moral; the manners and social characteristics of the people; and many other features.

During that year of political turmoil, 1848, Knight set up a weekly journal, The Voice of the People, whose object was to combat the ideas of the Chartists, which were then considered to be dangerous and revolutionary. But the paper was too moderate to make any impression in times of great excitement, and, as it was too honest to be abusive, its career soon came to a close.

In 1849, and again in 1853, London suffered severely from the cholera scourge. At the latter date Knight was publisher to the General Board of Health, of which the Commissioners were Lord Shaftesbury, Edwin Chadwick, and Dr. Southwood Smith. Finding that the directions given by public bodies and individuals for family guidance under a visitation of cholera were too technical and elaborate to be useful to persons of imperfect education, Knight drew up an address, homely and practical, adapted for all ranks. His Plain Advice was printed as a broadside, and was purchased and distributed throughout the country by the Local Boards of Health. The circulation of this sheet was upwards of one hundred thousand, a fact which demonstrates the possibility of communicating with the public at large on sanitary matters, through the combination of local activity with central regulation.

The movement in 1847 for the purchase of Shakespeare's House at Stratford had a warm supporter in Charles Knight. He took a prominent part in raising the necessary subscriptions, and when a performance was given at Covent Garden Theatre to make up the deficiency which was still found to exist he was requested by the Committee to write a Prologue, to be spoken by Mr. Phelps. When the house had been purchased, Charles Dickens organised a series of amateur performances at the Haymarket, in aid of the fund for the endowment of a perpetual curatorship of Shakespeare's House. Payne Collier, Charles Knight, and Peter Cunningham were directors of the general arrangements, and Dickens himself was stage manager. The Merry Wives of Windsor was performed on the 15th of May, with a cast which included Messrs. Mark Lemon, Charles Romer, Charles Dickens, John Leech, John Forster, Frank Stone, G. H. Lewes, Dudley Costello, Frederick Dickens, Henry Cole, George Cruikshank, Augustus Dickens, Augustus Egg, and F. Eaton; and Mrs. Cowden Clarke, and Misses Fortescue, Kenworthy, Romer, and Robins. Performances were given in the provinces as well as in London

Difficulties arose as to the appointment of a curator at Stratford, so Dickens and his friends bought an annuity with the proceeds of their labours for Sheridan Knowles, the well-known dramatic author. From this time forward Dickens and Knight had many pleasant relations together, and both were members of the Amateur Company of the Guild of Literature and Art, matured at Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton's seat of Knebworth in November, 1850, when there was an amateur performance of Every Man in his Rumour, under the management of Dickens. Various town and country performances were afterwards given, and with the proceeds the Guild erected a number of houses for literary men on Bulwer Lytton's estate, near Stevenage.

The first Great Exhibition in 1851 was hailed by Charles Knight as a welcome advance in the free intercourse of peoples, and in 1855 he acted as a juror at the Paris Universal Exhibition. Among the Reports on this Exhibition laid before Parliament was one written by Knight, on Letter Press and Copper-plate Printing. When Parliament met in 1855 there was a general impression that the penny duty stamp would be entirely abolished, except for the purpose of transmitting a newspaper by post. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir George Cornewall Lewis, requested Charles Knight to inform him what was the greatest circulation of each number of the Penny Magazine at any time. In giving him this information Knight referred him to a little work he had just published on The Old Printer and the Modern Press, in which he had taken a rapid view of the circulation and character of penny periodicals at the beginning of 1854. Of four of these a million sheets were then sold weekly.

In his letter to the Chancellor of the Exchequer the author said: 'The change in the character of Penny Periodicals during the last five or six years, from the lowest ribaldry and positive indecency to a certain propriety — and of which frivolity is the chief blemish — is an assurance to me that the cheapening of newspapers by the removal of the stamp will not let in that flood of sedition and blasphemy which some appear to dread. The character of the mass of readers is improved. In my little book I have opposed the removal of the stamp, chiefly on the ground that a quantity of local papers would start up that would be devoted to mere parish politics and sectarian squabbles, instead of being national in their objects; and that would huddle together the worst of criminal trials and police cases, without attempting to suggest any sound principles of politics, or furnish any useful information. To provide a corrective to this, I have devised the plan detailed in the circular which I left with you. I sent out an intelligent traveller into the Midland districts last week, confidentially to explain this plan to active printers in towns that had no local paper; and his report shows that the principle will be eagerly adopted.'

The plan which he had devised was founded upon his old newspaper experience, during which, for several years, three-fourths of the local papers of Berkshire and Buckinghamshire were printed at the Express Office at Windsor and one-fourth at a branch office at Aylesbury. In connection with a highly respectable printing firm he began the publication of the Town and Country Newspaper immediately upon the repeal of the Stamp Duty in 1855. The complex and expensive organisation required for supplying a few impressions for certain districts prevented the plan from becoming a success at that time, but it has since been largely adopted, and hundreds of provincial newspapers are now partly printed in London, or else receive columns of stereotyped matter from London. In 1855 there were 35o populous towns in Great Britain without a local paper of any kind. This condition of things was remedied within a few years after the repeal of the Stamp Duty. There were many timorous persons, however, who thought that the influence of the newspaper press was inimical to good and quiet government. Arnold of Rugby was not one of these, for long before this period he wrote to the Archbishop of Dublin: I think that a newspaper alone can help to cure the evil which newspapers have done and are doing.'

Turning to the publication of useful and interesting books, we find that the number of works published under the names of collections, libraries, series, etc., increased enormously from 1835 to 1863. The compiler of the English Catalogue, issued in the latter year, adduced these remarkable facts on the subject: 'Nearly all the leading publishers appear to have engaged, during this period of twenty-eight years, in a species of publication in which Constable led the way. We have four Library Series by Bentley: one of Standard Novels; cheap editions of celebrated publications, by Blackwood. We have eleven libraries and Series issued by Bolen Antiquarian; British Classics; Cheap Series; Classical Library; Ecclesiastical Library; English Gentleman's Library, Extra Volumes (not ladies' reading); Historical Library; Illustrated Library; Philological and Philosophical Library; Scientific Library; and Standard Library. It cannot be doubted that many of Mr. Bohn's volumes, which may be counted by hundreds, have brought books of authority, whose scarcity or high price precluded their general circulation, within the reach of the great body of readers. William and Robert Chambers, with whose useful labours during more than thirty years the world is well acquainted, have their Educational Series, their Library for Young People, and their People's Editions. Chapman & Hall have their Standard Editions of Popular Authors, in which we find the works of W. H. Ainsworth, Mrs. Gaskell, Miss Mulock, Thackeray, and Trollope. Murray's Family Library of eighty separate books is still in demand — his Home and Colonial Library, his Railway Reading, and his British Classics, of later date, hold their place amongst the books that have not a mere ephemeral popularity. Knight takes his place as a publisher of The Library of Entertaining Knowledge; of Classics; of Journey Books; of the Library for the Times; of Weekly and Monthly Volumes. Longmans have Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopaedia of 132 volumes, now issued at a reduced rate, as the collections of many other publishers have been reduced, to meet the pressure of new competition. They have the more modern series of the Traveller's Library, comprising about 150 books. The Parlour Library, chiefly of novels, good, bad, and indifferent, comprises about 300 separate books. The Religious Tract Society has an extensive series of volumes, not professedly religious, in which it is very difficult to see what is the difference between their adopted children and the best of their secular competitors. The same may be said of the general publications of the Christian Knowledge Society. Routledge has collections and libraries almost bewildering from their extent, — American Poets, Books for the Country, British Poets, Cheap Series of 269 works, Railway Library of 327 works, amongst which we find Bulwer's novels, purchased at what was deemed an extravagant price for the right of reprinting, but the value of which concession was better estimated by the publisher than by his critics. Routledge gives us another series of Standard Novels; and, by way of a "half-pennyworth of bread to this intolerable deal of sack," we have the Useful Library. Smith, Elder, & Company have their Shilling Series of Standard Works of Fiction. I conclude this enumeration with Weale's Rudimentary Series, which comprises 144 works, chiefly on scientific subjects.'

Since 1863 the book trade of the United Kingdom has advanced by still more rapid strides. Taking the issue of books in series and single books, there were three times as many books published in 1853 as there had been in 1828. The annual production in the period 1877-87 averaged 4,000 volumes; of new editions, 1,400. The number of new books issued in 1887 was 4,410; the new editions, 1,276. In 1892 the issue exceeded 6,000. The number of copies issued of these works by all the publishing houses is reckoned by tens of millions annually. Indeed, some idea of the total gigantic sale may be gathered from the fact that in 1885 one London publisher alone reported that he printed, in round numbers, 6,000,000 books annually, of which 4,000,000 were bound, being at the rate of about 14,000 books per day. Weekly and monthly periodical literature has advanced by equally rapid strides. At the end of 1831 there were issued 177 monthly publications; in 1833 there were 236; in 1853, 362; and in 1888, 1,500. The number at the present time exceeds 2,000, and the annual sale reaches millions of copies. The sale of newspapers in the United Kingdom has increased at a still more astounding rate, and a year's issue from the whole of the newspaper press would amount to thousands of millions. Charles Knight was one of the worthy pioneers of the vast industries represented by the book, periodical, and newspaper trades.

The two most important works of Knight's later years were the English Cyclopaedia and the Popular History of England. With regard to the former work, Knight says: 'The new Cyclopedia was arranged in four divisions:— Geography, Natural History, Biography, Arts and Sciences. The first two of these divisions were proceeding at the same time, and were each completed in two years and a half. What a store of new materials had been gathering together for the use of the geographer and the naturalist that required to be set forth in the remodelled Cyclopaedia! These two divisions were succeeded by that of Biography. If no other additions had been required than the introduction of names of living persons, the new literary labour would have been of no small amount—sufficient, indeed, to form a separate book, not so large but essentially as complete as the Biographie des Contemporains. This Biographical division, in six volumes, was completed in 1858. The division of Arts and Sciences included a great number of miscellaneous subjects, not capable of being introduced into the more precise arrangement of the three previous departments. It was completed in eight volumes in 1861. In my introduction to the eighth volume I said: "It has been produced last in the series, that nothing of new invention and discovery in Science nothing of progressive improvement in the Arts might be omitted."'

The second important work, the Popular History of England, extended to twelve volumes. Its publication began in 1855, and it was completed in 1862. The origin and nature of this undertaking have been explained by Knight in this interesting passage:—

In 1854 I was instigated by an article in The Times seriously to contemplate the task of writing a general history of England. Lord John Russell had delivered an address at Bristol on the study of history, and the leading journal took up the subject of the noble speaker's complaint "that we have no other history of England than Hume's"— that "when a young man of eighteen asks for a history of England, there is no resource but to give him Hume." I had published The Pictorial History of England some years before — in many respects a valuable history, but one whose limits had gone far beyond what, as its projector, I had originally contemplated. I altogether rejected the idea of making an abridgment of that history. Many materials for a History of the People had been collected by me without any immediate object of Publication. The remarks of The Times led me to depart from my original design of writing a Domestic History of England apart from its Public History. Upon a more extended plan I would endeavour to trace through our long-continued annals the essential connection between our political history and our social. To accomplish this, I would not keep the People in the background, as in many histories, and I would call my work The Popular History of England. For more than a year I was gradually preparing for my task, and was ready to begin the printing at the end of 1855. It was to be published in monthly parts. My publishers desiring that the first part should contain an introduction setting forth the objects of a new history of England, I was induced to explain my motives for undertaking it, with a sincerity which perhaps may be deemed imprudent. It may be as imprudent for the historian as for the statesman to make any general profession of principles at the outset of his career. The succession of events in either case might modify his past convictions. But I have no reason to depart in letter or spirit from what I wrote: "The People, if I understand the term rightly, means the Commons of these realms, and not any distinct class or section of the population. Ninety years ago, Goldsmith called the 'middle order of mankind' the 'People,' and those below them the 'Rabble.' We have outlived all this. A century of thought and action has widened and deepened the foundations of the State. This People, then, want to find, in the history of their country, something more than a series of annals, either of policy or war. In connection with a faithful narrative of public affairs, they want to learn their own history — how they have grown out of slavery, out of feudal wrong, out of regal despotism, into constitutional liberty, — and the position of the greatest estate of the realm." In the summer of 1858 I had completed four volumes of my history, reaching the period of the Revolution of 1688. In the postscript to the fourth volume I endeavoured to illustrate the principle, so well defined by my friend, Mr. Samuel Lucas, in a lecture on Social Progress, that the history of every nation "has been in the main sequential" — that each of its phases has been "the consequence of some prior phase, and the natural prelude to that which succeeded it." I pointed out that the early history of the Anglican Church was to be traced in all the subsequent elements of our ecclesiastical condition; that upon the Roman and Saxon civilisation were founded many of the principles of government which still preserved their vitality; that the Norman despotism was absorbed by the Anglo-Saxon freedom; and that the recognition of the equal rights of all men before the Law was the only mode by which feudality could maintain itself." From the despotism of Richard the Second to the abdication of James the Second, every act of national resistance was accomplished by the union of classes, and was founded upon some principle of legal right for which there was legal precedent. Out of the traditional and almost instinctive assertion of the popular privileges have come new developments of particular reforms, each adapted to its own age, but all springing out of that historical experience which we recognise as Constitutional."

The preparation of his Popular History occupied Knight unremittingly for a seventh part of his working life. With the exception of three chapters on the Fine Arts, the work was wholly written by himself. In its composition, he endeavoured to set forth the inestimable advantages of liberty; to look with a tolerant judgment even upon those who had sought to govern securely by governing absolutely; to trace with calmness the efforts of those who had imperilled the national independence by foreign assault or domestic treason, but never to forget that a just love of country was consistent with historical truth; and to carry forward, as far as within the Power of one who had watched joyfully and hopefully the great changes of a generation, that spirit of improvement, which had been more extensively and permanently called forth in the times of which his concluding volume treated than in the whole previous period from the Revolution of 1688. In breaking a lance in defence of his History, Knight observed that 'to trace the course of long and fierce struggles between the Crown and the Barons; of grievances producing rebellion; of conflicting claims of royal houses; of political factions engrafted on theological sects; and of factions again fermenting—this is not necessarily to minister to a democratic spirit, as those would infer who choose to mistake the true intent and meaning of the word Popular as applied to a History of England.'

In 1864, Knight completed his autobiographical work entitled, Passages of a Working Life during Half a Century. It was divided into three epochs, and opened with a Prelude of Early Reminiscences. The last words of this record run as follows: 'To my Wife; to her who has been the best friend, the adviser, the sympathiser, the consoler, during half a century of my working life, I inscribe this record, with a grateful heart to the Giver of all Good.' In the course of this biographical sketch, I have quoted several passages from Knight's autobiographical work; and I now reproduce a final extract from it, which may be taken as the author's apologia, in going down the hill of life:—

A political economist, who professes to speak the opinion of "the middle class" of this country, says that "the life of a man who leaves no property, or family provision, of his own acquiring, at his death, is felt to have been a failure." I do not accept the doctrine as a true expression of the genera feeling. There are thousands of the commercial class and the professional class who have not been inordinately anxious to gather together "muckhills" of riches, to be spread abroad when their accumulators are gone. Nevertheless, these have not been like the "wicked and unprofitable servant," who buried the one talent which his Master entrusted to him. Few of them, probably, have neglected to make some modest provision against absolute poverty which the system of Life Assurance affords. But, if they have wisely incurred a liberal expenditure of capital upon the education of their children; if they have placed their sons in positions where they may "learn and labour truly to get their own living "; if they have qualified their daughters to discharge sensibly and gracefully, whether as child, wife, or mother, the private and public duties which render the English lady the promoter of all social dignity and enjoyment, they have been amongst the most provident accumulators. They have laid up a profitable fund out of their consumption, by preserving their families, whilst they have lived amongst them, in the highest point of efficacy for future production. This doctrine may not he strictly the science of "the wealth of nations," but I believe that it has something to do with "the happiness of the greatest number."

In many worldly respects my own life has not been "a failure." It was probably a blessing in disguise, that circumstances, over which I had little control, long ago taught me that it was not for me to make a fortune, or to indulge in the ostentation of ample means. I have been content with the "plain living" that the philosophic poet sets above a life "only drest for show." If "high thinking" has not been altogether wanting, I owe this to a love of books, and perhaps not less to the companionship of educated and intelligent friends. I believe that I have made very few enemies. Within my own proper sphere I have had as much social enjoyment as is compatible with the belief that "the chief end of man" is duty and not pleasure. The fiftieth anniversary of my marriage has just passed. Half a century of congenial wedlock is a blessing accorded to few. It brought with it the further blessing of a family united in love; of a home where cheerful faces ever welcomed me. During forty years I had known no great sorrow. I had not been bereft of any one of those who were the joy of my manhood and the comfort of lily age. A dark cloud has cast its solemn shadow over my Golden Bridal; but I feel that our griefs, and the consolations which should come with them, are for ourselves, and not for the outer world. Taken as a whole, my life has been a happy one.'

In 1865 Knight wrote and published a volume entitled Shadows of the Old Booksellers; in 1868 he made a selection from the great letter-writers under the title of Half-Hours with the Best Letter-Writers and Autobiographers; and the same year he prepared, for the last time, the Companion to the Almanac for 1869, his concluding contribution to it being a paper on Mural Records of Pedestrian Tourists. He had an excellent memory, and worked rapidly, and it was only towards the last that he was compelled to dictate what he wrote, in consequence of failing sight. His last original work was a novel in one volume, written in 1867, and entitled Begg'd at Court. It was founded on historical facts, which his retentive memory had enabled him to store up for future use.

His granddaughter thus writes of Knight and his friends:

I can recall him, in later middle life, or earlier old age, as incessantly working. Nothing was ever allowed to interfere with his daily routine of writing, except his frequent attacks of illness, which would incapacitate him for only a day or two. Never a strong man, he was debarred from the pleasure of much social intercourse, although greatly enjoying the society of a few chosen friends. Amongst these may be mentioned, at various periods of his life, the names of Leigh Hunt, John Moultrie, Winthrop Mackworth Praed, Barry St. Leger, De Quincey, Macaulay, Lord Brougham, the Coleridges, Archbishop Sumner, John Wilson Croker, Henry Malden, Augustus de Morgan, Professor Wilson, Professor Long, Professor Key, Miss Martineau, E. H. Locker, J. R. Planche, George Lillie Craik, Matthew Davenport Hill, Sir Rowland Hill, Thackeray - but with him the acquaintance was only slight, — Charles Dickens, Douglas Jerrold, George Cruikshank, etc., etc. A strong attachment existed between Charles Knight and Douglas Jerrold. At a dinner-party at which they were both present, the conversation had turned upon epitaphs. Douglas Jerrold, on rising to take leave, said, shaking hands with Charles Knight "We have given epitaphs for each one here; I will now give one to you — Good-(K)night!" On the day of the great humorist's death, Charles Knight walked up and down in front of the house until the blinds were drawn down.

The published letters of Dickens, Jerrold, Moultrie, Croker, De Quincey, De Morgan, Shirley Brooks, and other friends, show the high esteem with which Knight was regarded by his contemporaries. Happy was it for the busy old man that he could work almost to the end. When for a brief closing period he was unable to do this, he would take a keen delight in listening to a simple old English ballad: 'There would come to the aged face, bent down, with the eyes half closed, and the long silvery hair thrown back from the high and wide forehead, a look once more of enjoyment and of interest.'

There still remain a few personal details to note in connection with Knight's life and character. Although he was fond of change — especially in regard to his residences — he retained to the last a vivid interest in Windsor, as the place of his birth and his early home. When he first left Windsor, he lived in Pall Mall; from thence he went to the once countrified suburb of Brampton; subsequently he dwelt for a time at Highgate and St. John's Wood respectively; next we find him at Hampstead; then between 1860 and 1871 he chiefly resided at Ventnor, in the Isle of Wight, to which charming place he went for his daughter's health; and lastly, in 1871, he removed to Addlestone, in Surrey, where he remained until his death. He rarely went abroad — one or two visits to Paris; one or two visits to Germany, once in company with Professor Long, and on another occasion with his daughter and her future husband, Mr. Clowes; one to Ireland with Douglas Jerrold; a short tour, with two of his daughters, through a portion of France; one or two visits to Scotland; and various expeditions through England — these completed the list of his travels.

In his closing years he took delight in recounting his experiences and friendships in the past; and in reading, or having read to him, novels by Jane Austen and Sir Walter Scott. He was also deeply impressed by the sermons of Robertson of Brighton. Sometimes he would converse with his relatives on the subjects he had long deeply loved, learning and literature, but by-and-by conversation, and the busy memories it evoked, became too much for him, and he would ask to be taken from the room. He gradually and peacefully passed out of life, dying at Addlestone, on the 9th of March, 1873, a few days before completing his eighty-second year. He was buried at Windsor, in his father's grave. Six years later his wife was laid to rest beside him. She belonged to the family of the Eliotts of Stobs, in Roxburghshire, one of whom, Lord Heathfield, was the defender of Gibraltar. One of his lordship's nieces married William Vinicombe, a London architect, and son of a country gentleman in Devonshire; and it was their daughter Sally who married Charles Knight. She appears to have been a lady of a sweet and noble nature, unselfish to a remarkable degree, and endowed with strong common-sense, a high spirit, and a singular power of endurance and hopefulness. When eighty-seven years of age, her eyes were not dim, neither was her form bowed or withered. She could not have a more beautiful tribute than that 'she never gave up a sinking cause or an erring person.'

I have already referred to many 'of the works written or edited by Charles Knight, and may now add that the volumes of which he was the author numbered no fewer than thirty-seven. The separate works edited or conducted by Knight amounted to sixty. One of these, known as the series of Monthly and afterwards of Weekly Volumes, consisted of one hundred and eighty-six volumes, while many of the other works ranged from three up to twelve volumes. In the columns of Punch, Tom Taylor justly celebrated the veteran worker after his death as one of the truest soldiers of Captain Pen, and one who had borne the flag of 'Peace, goodwill to men,' foremost and farthest of the sacred band of literary workers.

A copy of the bust of Knight, executed by Durham in 1865, was presented by his daughters to the National Portrait Gallery. But one wonders why the nation which he so long served did not honour his memory more, or more generously recognise his great services while he was yet alive. When such honours as that of knighthood are lavishly distributed on the vaguest and most insufficient grounds, it does seem strange that one who battled so courageously against ignorance, and on behalf of a pure and free press, for upwards of half a century, should not have received some worthy mark of the nations gratitude. However, he will have his reward from posterity. Good and cheap literature has been sown broadcast, and knowledge is free, and for these beneficent reforms we are indebted in no inconsiderable degree to the lifelong labours of Charles Knight.

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