THE POUNDS, SHILLINGS, AND PENCE OF LITERATURE.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXX, Issue 4440, 12 June 1875, Page 3

THE POUNDS, SHILLINGS, AND PENCE OF LITERATURE.

Perhaps no man of letters working five or six hours a day at his desk through a long life made less by his labor than the author of “Roderick/’ and “Kehama.” Yet when Southey began his career the pay of the magazines and of the newspapers was at its lowest rate. Coleridge could hardly keep body and soul together by writing articles and squibs four or five days a week for the Morning Post ; and the utmost that Charles Lamb could make by his contributions as its chief jester was <£loo a year. Hazlitt’s rate of remuneration upon the Public Advertiser was ss. a column, and Perry’s first engagement upon the Press was as assistant editor of the London Evening Post at a salary of 75 guineas a year. Sir J. Mackintosh once made £lO in a week by working night and day, translating French and German newspapers, and writing original articles for the Oracle ; but the proprietor was scared at the end of the week at the amount of Mackintosh’s bill, ran about his office telling everybody that no paper could stand that, and in the end put Mackintosh upon a salary. But perhaps the most striking proof of the low estimate in which political writing was held at the close of the last century, and at the beginning of this, is supplied by the fact that Mackintosh wrote his powerful and eloquent reply to Burke’s “ Thoughts on the French Revolution,” the “Vindicuo Gallicas,” for a £lO note. It was Archibald Constable, the publisher of the Edinburgh Review, who changed all this, and to no man, not even to Miller, are authors under greater obligations than to the Napoleon of publishers. Till he appeared—to quote Lord Cockburn—the publishing trade was at nearly its lowest ebb, partly because there was neither population nor independence to produce or to recognise a vigorous publisher, and partly because the publishers we had were too spiritless even for their position. Constable began as a lad in Hill’s shop, and had hardly set up for himself when he reached the summit of his bxisiness. He rushed out aud took possession of the open field, as if he had been aware from the first of the existence of the latent spirits which a skilful conjuror might call from the depths of the population to the service of literature. He contributed in no slight degree to render letters a remunerative profession, and through the Edinburgh Review he helped to make an epoch in the history of the periodical literature of Great Britain. By means, first of the “ Encyclopaedia Britannica,” and later, by “ Constable’s Miscellany,” he developed a fresh branch of literary enterprise, and laid the foundations by the latter of the movement in cheap popular literature that was afterwards to be extended to proportions greater than even he dreamed of. Abandoning the old, timid, and grudging system, Constable stood out as the general patron and payer of all promising publications, and confounded not merely his rivals in trade, but his very authors, by his unheard of prices. Ten, even twenty guineas a sheet for a review, £2OOO or £3OOO for a single poem, and £IOOO each for two philosophical dissertations, drew authors from dens where they would otherwise have starved, and made Edinburgh a literary mart, famous with strangers, and the pride of its own citizens. Yet when in 1802 Sydney Smith recommended Constable to fix the salary of the editor of the Edinburgh Review at £2OO a year, and the rate of remuneration at 10 guineas a sheet, Constable hesitated, and Messrs. Longman asked if it was possible to make a review pay with such an expensive staff of miters. The scalewasunparalleled. Yethigh as it was then thought, even this scale was doubled in less than five years ; aud in 1820 Jeffrey was drawing a salary of £7OO a year, and dividing close upon £3OOO among his staff of contributors. Lockhart's salary as editor of the Quarterly Review was £I2OO a year, and £ISOO if lie wrote three articles in the course of the year. AH the regular contributors of the first rank were paid one hundred guineas each for their contributions, and Southey and Croker frequently received one hundred and fifty guineas for theirs. The pay upon the second and third rate magazines, however, continued for many years to be eight and ten guineas a page. These were the original rates of Blackwood and Fraser , of the New Monthly , and the Metropolitan. Half-a-guinea a page was all that Charles Dickens asked the editor of the New Monthly for his “ Sketches by Boz,” and the original stipulation with Messrs. Chapman and Hall for “Pickwick” was 15 guineas per number, each number to contain thirty-two pages. This, scale, however, was only adhered to through the first four or five numbers, and after these Dickens was paid in proportion to the profits, making in all £4OOO by his work, and the publishers, it is said, £20,000. Thackeray’s contributions to Fraser were paid for at the 10-gulnea rate ; ’ and Charles Lamb’s articles in the London Magazine for a couple of years were all covered by a cheque for less than £2OO. But the 10-guinea scale with the Blackwoods was only a minimum, and one of the most brilliant of the early contributors to Maga owned that he was often embarrassed by the amount he received for his articles. He returned one cheque as out of all proportion with the value of his work according ’to the scale, assuming that it had been sent in error, “No ;it is quite right,” said Mr. Blackwood, returning the cheque. “There is no error, only it is not my rate to pay for literature by the yard,” —The Gentleman’s Magazine for December.