( U!? ) 



ADVICE TO CONTRIBUTORS. 



Literature, which at one time was confined to royal and monastic 

 retreats, has now become so widely diffused, that it may fairly lav claim 

 to the rank and title of a learned profession. The extensive rano-e of 

 reading which it embraces, the seductive investigations of natural phi- 

 losophy, and the splendid but abstruse science of metaphysics, give it 

 additional claims to precedence over some of those which are called, par 

 excellence, learned. It is, indeed, a gratifying fact, that genius and 

 literary industry now find a ready mart. There are few who pretend to 

 literature that may not now, with little more than ordinary care, rise, 

 by the aid of that magic engine, the " gray-goose quill," from indi- 

 gence to comparative independence. Genius of every cast has an 

 almost boundless field in the increasing number of periodicals, where 

 merit is rarely neglected. 



Few, however, have commenced a literary career unassailed by diffi- 

 culties of one kind or another, most, if not all, of which may be 

 fairly ascribed to causes apparently trifling ; and as I cannot better 

 describe them than by giving some brief account of how I fared when 

 I started with quill in hand, I shall here, for the assistance of youno- 

 men, who with few friends to direct them in their first appeals to the 

 tender mercies of editors, and with no other knowledge of the world 

 than what they may have picked up from books, state some of the 

 obstacles which strewed my road, " thick as leaves in Valambrosa." 



I was, unfortunately, by the death of both my parents, thrown at a 

 very early age upon my own resources. During tlie lifetime of my 

 father, 1 had often heard that, with prudence and perseverance, a man 

 of tolerable quickness might secure, by the exercise of his pen, in 

 London, a comfortable mode of living. The mill-horse work of profes- 

 sional life had always for me the greatest horror ; and it may easilv be 

 supposed, that, freed as I no\v was from any obligation of filial duty, 

 I should not willingly devote myself to the drudgery of office. Mv 

 mind thus unshackled by the routine habits of any fixed calling, I 

 plunged heedlessly into the precarious field of periodical literature, and 

 full of the dreamy anticipations of youth, I started for the metropolis. 



It is almost impossible to convey to the mind of a Londoner, sur- 

 rounded as he is, from his cradle up, with friends and connexions of 

 one kind or another, an idea of the feelings which London, with its 

 living panorama of faces, leaves on the mind of a friendless, moneyless 

 adventurer. It is a wilderness of living beings without one feelino- in 

 common. Though I was perfectly conscious that I had not one to 

 whom, even as a directing friend, I might appeal in this world of place, 

 yet, when I moved through its gay and fashionable crowds, a feeling of 

 despondency came over me. I had often heard of the old saw, of a 

 great city being a great wilderness ; I now for the first time felt its 



