Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: authors with a good deal of impatience, and that he was even guilty of breaking in upon them with the irreverent chaunt which Hood describes. It is hard for me to refrain from quoting much more from Hood, and particularly from giving in full his description of a typical meeting of the contributors to the London al the hospitable dinner-table of the publishers. Hood is but little read nowadays, so that were I to quote all that part of the " Literary Reminiscences " which relates to Lamb and the London Magazine, it would be new to three-fourths of my readers ; but " Hood's Own " is a very accessible book, and therefore I refrain. The London seems at first to have prospered under Messrs. Taylor and Hessey's management ; but after a year or two the want of a capable editor, and the other causes which Hood enumerates, began to tell upon its fortunes. It still contained many excellent articles, and it was difficult to say exactly what was wanting in it; but every one felt that there was a falling-off in its attractiveness. Under Scott's management the talents of the contributors were so used as to advance the general good of the magazine, whereas under the new management each contributor appeared to be striving only for himself. So may a very talented company of actors, each individually excellent, but careless of the general effect, give a much less satisfactory representation of a play than an inferior company which has been schooled by a competent stage- manager to work together so as to produce a smooth and harmonious performance. It does not seem that Lamb, though he was already known to Scott as a contributor to the Champion, was enlisted from the first among the contributors to the London Magazine. At all events I cannot discover any article from his pen in the first sev...