REVIEWS AMERICAN REPRINTS. 141 



can readers " at the price of a pair of boots ;" wliile he is beog;ecI to 

 N. B. that the price in Great Britain, of the same five Periodicals, is 

 sS'Sl per annum ! 



That the cost of the Reviews and other high class British periodi- 

 cals, to their publishers, is great, is moii true ; and that much of this 

 arises from the liberal scale of remuneration by which the services of the 

 best authors is secured, is also perfectly correct. Review and other 

 periodical literature is the staii of life to the literary man, especiailv in the 

 earlier stages of his precarious career. By means of well-paid London 

 Quarterly articles Southey secured the literary leisure for his Portugese 

 History, and other laborious unremunerative labours. By his contri- 

 butions to the pages of the Edinburgh and Westminster Reviews, and 

 to Eraser's Magazine, Carlyle has been enabled to add his " Cromwell " 

 and his "French Revolution" to the permanent stock of British 

 Literature ; and it is from among the host of " Magazine Writers," 

 that the veterans of English literature step forth into the great arena 

 of literary toil and triumph, producing the works which posterity will 

 not willingly let die. It is because in the majority of cases the author 

 must be well content to take out his reward for the great work of a 

 life time, in fame, realized or anticipated, that the liberal remuneration 

 he receives for the ephemeral productions of his pen, and the laro-e 

 prices he can command for the brief, though carefully elaborated and 

 condensed Review Article, become of so much importance. They are 

 designated by him, in homely metaphor, his pot-boilers. They keep 

 the wolf from the door, while the busy brain and pen are weavino- im- 

 mortal lays, or dallying lovingly amid the intricacies of divine philoso- 

 phy, or eliminating the national epos from the confused and contradic- 

 tory rubbish-heaps of time. Thus was it with "Aurora Leigh," as we 

 learn from her autobiographic confessions : 



" I had to live, that therefore I might work, 

 And, being but poor, I was constrained, for life, 

 To work with one hand for the booksellers, 

 While working with the other for myself 

 And Art. You swim with feet as well as hands, 

 Or make small way. I apprehended this, — 

 In England, no one lives by verse, that lives ; 

 And, apprehending, I resolved by prose 

 To make a space to sphere my living verse. 

 I wrote for cyclopasdias, magazines, 

 And weekly papers, holding np my name 

 To keep it from the mud. I learnt the use 

 Of the editorial " We " in a review, 



