REMINISCENCES OF “FRASER’S MAGAZINE.”

Globe, Volume XXI, Issue 1790, 15 November 1879, Page 3

REMINISCENCES OF “FRASER’S MAGAZINE.”

This well-known magfzine, which is but a very little short of fifty years old, entered npon a new series recently, under the editorship of Principal Tulloch. The latter gentleman, in an introductory article on 11 Our Past and Our Future," states that the first number of “Fraser” was published in Feb., 1830. A cartoon by Macliso was prefixed to the opening number of 1835, and afterwards reproduced as the frontispiece to the “ Beliques of Father Prout." In this cartorn the chairman is Dr. Maginn, and the contributors to the magazine also delineated are Barry Cornwall, Southey, Thackeray, Macnish, Ainsworth, Coleridge, Hogg, Galt, Dunlop, Jordan," 1 Edward Irving, Mahony (Father Prout), Gleig. Carlyle, Allan Cunningham, Count d’Orsay, Moir, bir David Brewster, Lockhart, and Theodore Hook. Deferring to this combination of able writers, Principal Tullooh observes —“ We cannct imagine a more brilliant staff, or a more catholic or genial one—from Edward Irving, 4 the enthusiastic, the learned, the honest, the honorable, the upright, and the good,’ to Francis Mahony, the quaint, learned, and witty 1 Father Prout,’ whoso prose and verse alike sparkled with an unceasing flaw of exuberant mirthfulness.” The " Preface to our Second Decade,” which opened the January number of 1840, also gave a list of contributors, amongst which we find the names of Gillies, Oroker, lady Bulwer, lady Mary Shepherd, Byron, Shelley, Churchill, Charles Apper’ey, the famous “ Nimrod," and Percy Weldon Banks. Mr James Fraser, the publisher of the magazine, ■died in 1841, from the effects “of a ruffianly attack made upon him by Mr Grautley Berkeley in requital for a review of his novel of ‘Berkeley Castle,’” Dr. Maginn was the avowed writer of the review which had such sad and serious consequences. Mr Fraser was of an Inverness family, but had early settled in London, The magazine, however, did not derive its title from him, hut from Mr Hugh Fraser, by whom, together with Dr. Maginn, the early numbers •were almost entirely written. Mr Carlyle, the “ Sage of Chelsea,” Dr Gleig, Mr Ainsworth, and Mr Heraud alone survive, we are told, of the band of writers connected with IHr Fraser in 1835. Dr. Maginn died within a year of Mr Fraser, and it is sad to think that one with so gifted an intellect should almost have closed his days as an inmate of the debtors’ prison, in Fleet street. A touching appeal was made on his behalf, but the dying scholar left his incarceration only to die forsaken, without knowledge of the fact that Sir Robert Peel had generously forwarded £IOO, a gift which only arrived in time to pay the burial fees of the admired literary genius. “ Father Prout ’’ survived .for many years, but his connection wi h “Fraser” ceased after 1847, in which year he went to Borne to act as correspondent of the “ Daily News,” which had been shortly before started under the editorship of the late OharLs Dickens. In later years he was chiefly connected with tho “ Globe,” and spent the latter period of his life in Paris. One who saw him occasionally at this time has the following personal reminiscence : He was “very fragile in appearance, shrunken and dried up, always untidy, always Bohemian, but with a quaint, rusty ecclesiaaticism about him which was halfcomic, half pathetic. So much knocking about the world, so many strange Eoanea that he had passed through, had never obliterated the tonsure. He sent in when he called on me a very highly glazed and considerably crumpled visiting card, with an elaborate coat of arms charged with innumerable quarteringa in the corner. I saw him most in the society of a lady, as old and as shrunkfn as himself, with the remains of old beauty and old finery, yellow laco and limp satin, and cheeks more yellow still. I don’t know what the relations between them were, or had teen. In their old age they were the faithfullest of friends, spending their evenings always together. One evening, in a Parisian salon half way np to the skies, she made him sing his ‘ Bells of Shandon ’ for my gratification, which he did, seated by the fire, his fine pale, priestly head, relieved againt the heavy mantel piece with all its gloomy decorations, in a voice which was cracked by age, yet retained here and there a mellow tone. The old man singing, the old lady |nodding her haggard, picturesque head, in time, the half light of the dim candles, and the little room encumbered with faded furniture —all come before me like a picture.” In 1847 the contributions of Charles Kingsley come upon the scene, and several of the earlier tales by tho sturdy cleric ran their course in the pages of 41 Fraser’s Magazine.” His “ Hypatia” was published in 1851, and in that year too the late George Whyte Melville began his connection with the magazine, in the pages of which the best work he ever produced was given to the world. Amongst the later contributors were the late John Stuart Mill, and Mr Henry Thomas Buckle.