This dissertation has been microfilmed exactly as received 6 8- 8893

WASHINGTON, William David, 1917- THE PENNY MAGAZINE: A STUDY OF THE GENESIS AND UTILITARIAN APPLICATION OF THE POPULAR MISCELLANY. The Ohio State University, Ph,D., 1967 Language and Literature, general

University Microfilms, Inc., Ann Arbor, Michigan THE PENNY MAGAZINE: A STUDY OF THE GENESIS

AND UTILITARIAN APPLICATION OF THE POPULAR MISCELLANY

DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University

B y William D.‘ Washington, B.A., M.A.

******

The Ohio State University 1967

Approved by

(ZiLa.^'b' » Adviser Department of English Foreword

The Penny Magazine of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge (1832-1845) represents a nineteenth-century union of two closely related streams of popular literature in England, namely, literature created to help the inferior ranks of society along the road to self-betterment and that which carried with it the additional function of indoctrina­ ting them with certain economic, political, and religious views of their betters. This study begins with the development of such reading matter during the Renaissance and culminates in an intensive examination of the manner in which the philosophy responsible for its existence was manifested in the Penny Magazine, a miscellany of moral, scientific and general information, published under the superintendence of the Society for the

Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. The group, organized in 1826 and guided for two decades by Henry Brougham, had among its members some of the most prominent philanthropists, scholars, and politicians of the day, all motivated by the belief that dissemination of information through reading would improve

the thinking and manners of the masses.

ii Because of the Society's noisy role in the nineteenth- century march of mind, the Penny Magazine entered the field of popular literature with more fanfare than did its leading competitors, Chambers1s Edinburgh Journal and the Saturday Magazine, the latter sponsored by the Church-controlled Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. All three mis­ cellanies, however, shared the task of establishing the kind of publication that brought cheap, decent periodicals within the purchasing range of the lower classes. In general, I have treated the group of philosophical radicals organized under the name of the Useful Knowledge Society as authors of the Penny Magazine, although little of its content derived from their pens. The justification is manifold. First, the organization strove constantly to pre­ sent a united front; consequently it swallowed up individual authorship into the anonymity of the Society. Moreover, the Penny Magazine was founded to propagate the collective philosophy of the group and to manipulate the public along the lines the Society dictated. The editors of the Penny Magazine were completely in agreement with the thinking of their employer, and by careful selection and diligent rewriting, they saw to it that the content of the Society's miscellany expressed the viewpoint of the organization. As a final authority, a Committee sat in judgment of all that was printed under the supervision of the Society. Thus it may be properly concluded that the iii voice of the Penny Magazine was the voice of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. The Penny Magazine grew out of the Society's concern over a wave of democratic agitation stirred up among the working classes by the Reform Bill which was introduced in Parliament by Lord Russell in 1831 and in February, 1832, was passing through Committee in the House of Commons. But the Useful Knowledge Society took aim at its audience somewhat in the same manner a Kentucky mountaineer aims upwind at a squirrel, allowing for windage to make sure his shot travels its intended course. Although it was convinced that egali­ tarian notions stemmed primarily from the imperfect education of the lower classes, the Society directed the Penny Magazine at the more literate middling classes, in the belief that the best way to improve the commonality was to elevate the intel­ lectual and moral level of the class immediately above them, for each social class is eager to mimic the superior class

to which it is most closely allied. The experience of earlier philanthropic groups had proved the difficulty of using the printed word to improve directly the manners, morals, and social attitudes of a highly illiterate working

class. The Useful Knowledge Society's minutes, along with other pertinent documents, were preserved at the Library of the University of London, but they were damaged during World War II and unavailable for photographic reproduction when this study was started. A thesis written by Monica Grobel at the iv University of London in 1933 is based largely on these papers, but Miss Grobel is said to be contemplating publication of her work and will not permit microfilming. I was fortunate, however, in obtaining permission to use a 1943 Oxford thesis, "A History of the Society for Diffusion of Useful Knowledge" by Thomas L. Jarman, whose study is based largely on Miss Grobel1s work. In addition, I found helpful a London Univer­ sity thesis, "A Life of Charles Knight" (1943), by A. C. Cherry, who also made extensive use of Miss Grobel1s study. For the most part, however, I have relied on the pub­ lished proceedings of the Useful Knowledge Society and infor­ mation about the group in publications that were contemporary with it. In addition, the memoirs of several men associated with the organization provided an important source of information. The question remains: is the Penny Magazine significant enough to warrant serious study? I can only answer that I believe it is. Any publication is significant that under

the sponsorship of such an eminent assemblage managed to

reach a weekly circulation of some 80,000 copies at a time when mass-produced reading matter was in its infancy. The content of the Penny Magazine represents what many of the leading thinkers of the day considered proper reading for a large segment of English society. Therefore the Penny Maga­ zine of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge represents an important stage in the history of popular reading. v VITA

November 3, 1922 Born - Indianapolis, Indiana 1949 ...... B. A. , Howard University, Washington, D.C 1951 ...... M.A., Howard University, Washington, D.C 1954-1959 .... Instructor, Southern University, Baton Rouge, Louisiana 1959-1964 .... Assistant Instructor, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 1964-1967 .... Instructor, Howard University, Washington, D. C.

FIELD OF STUDY

Major Field: English TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

CHAPTER I 1

CHAPTER II 35

CHAPTER III 81

CHAPTER IV 112

CHAPTER V 168

CHAPTER VI 240

BIBLIOGRAPHY 300

vii Chapter I

The English popular literature that blossomed in the

late 1790’s had its beginnings in the fifteenth century with the introduction of the printing press into England from the Continent, mahing possible the rapid reproduction of books to meet the growing Renaissance demand for know­ ledge. The availability of knowledge written in the ver­ nacular gave every man who could read his native tongue the opportunity to become his own teacher and thereby satisfy his curiosity in a variety of fields without the help of a formal education. Since knowledge was a means of raising its possessor above the shoulders of the crowds, ambitious men who for one reason or another lacked the advantages of a full education constantly worked to lessen the gap between themselves and those who did. During the Renaissance, the main concern for self-education was centered within the ranks of a socially ambitious merchant class, whose members observed that "learning bringeth preferment, yea even to 1 them which are but basely borne." It was natural, then,

Quoted from A memorial of the famous Monuments and Charitable almes deedes of the right worshipful Maister William Lambe Esguire (1580) in Louis B. Wright, "The Renaissance Middle class Concern over Learning," Philological Quarterly, IX (1930), 264. See also Hardin Craig, "A Con­ tribution to the Theory of the English Renaissance," Philo­ logical Quarterly, VII (1928), 321-33.

1 2 for the tradesman, who frequently was somewhat deficient in formal schooling to worry about increasing not only his material stock, but also his store of occupational and to a lesser extent, cultural knowledge. In England before the Renaissance, the scarcity of books and the predominance of Latin as a written language made the task of self-education a formidable one, but the printing press and the spread of literacy ushered in a new era for the self-made man. Evidence of these two forces at work appears in various kinds of reading matter that issued from the early presses as a result of popular demand. In 1480, for example, Caxton printed Dialogues in French and English, a book con­ sisting of everyday conversational French with the English translation in a parallel column. This little volume sup­ plied the need for a self-teaching manual which would enable British merchants to learn enough French to carry on business transactions across the channel. The popularity of Caxton's Dialogues was attested to by the subsequent publication of improved versions by Wynkyn de Worde and Richard Pynson, two of Caxton*s disciples. These later works were in the form of French-English dialogues dealing with trade and sundry circumstances apropos to buying and selling. Both men added to their treatises an essay for children on English and French manners and a collection of model business letters 2 written in both languages, thereby creating the earliest

2 Henry S. Bennett, English Books and Readers, 1475 to 1557 (Cambridge, 1952), pp. 93-94. English forerunners of -the letter writer that became popular

during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In 1481, Caxton augmented the list of self-teaching books for the partially educated (i.e., those who had not been taught Latin), by printing in the vernacular a prose translation of a thirteenth century poem, The myrrour of the wprlde, by Gautier de Metz, a work, that dealt with the seven liberal arts, the second of the four elements (air), geography, astronomy, and God. Several years later, Wynkyn de Worde produced an English version of De proprietatibus rerum, a treatise by Bartholomaeus Anglicus, that ranged from a dis­ cussion of the nature of God to directions for laying a table. These encyclopedic works, however, were cumbersome and expensive, and smaller volumes soon appeared that dealt 3 with individual fields of knowledge. So rapid was the in­ crease of these small treatises and so great was the demand for them that London booksellers found it profitable to dis­ tribute their stock to Oxford, Cambridge, York, Hereford, and Edinburgh, and the bookseller became a familiar figure at the fairs at Oxford and Cambridge. In 15 20, John Dorne, a bookseller at Oxford, was able to carry on his shelves, in addition to the customary Latin works, cheap editions of elementary books on cooking, carving, husbandry, and care of

3Ibid., pp. 109-110. 4 horses. By 1523, John Fitzherbert had several inexpensive but informative books on husbandry and surveying to the ex­ panding collection of treatises written specifically for the common citizen. Wynkyn de Worde soon followed with The boke of husbandry, and a little past the middle of the sixteenth century, Thomas Tusser published in verse his Five Hundred

Pointes of Good Husbandrie (1557) , portions of which the Penny Magazine thought worthy of reprinting three centuries later. Before the end of the century, a number of relatively cheap treatises had appeared in the vernacular, dealing with grafting, tree planting, horse keeping, hunting, arithmetic, and popular science. A typical example of the latter group was Dr. Robert Recorde1s The qrounde of Artes (c. 1542), written for the "simple ignorant" who were interested in self- education. The reader was advised to study the book systema­ tically, "for if you lepe the seconde parte before you have sene perfectly the fyrst. . . , you shal never prosper ne g profette in this arte." Yet when Dr. Recorde spoke of the "simple ignorant," he had in mind the untutored from all ranks of society. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, education did not adhere as closely to class lines as was later to be the case. For

4 Ibid., p. 22. 5 Or perhaps it was Anthony Fitzherbert. ^Quoted in Bennett, pp. 110-111. one thing, social mobility was more of a reality than it had been during the Middle Ages. It was not unusual for a commoner to distinguish himself in civil or military affairs and overnight find himself a courtier, having of course carried his ignorance to the top with him. This group was certainly included in Sir Thomas More's 1523 estimate that "farre more than four partes of all divided into tenne, could never reade english yet, and many now too olde to begynne to 7 goe to schoole." In spite of More's somewhat discouraging figures, evi­ dence points to a substantial increase in the size of the reading public between 1350 and the last quarter of the fif­ teenth century. After 1351, for instance, all laymen who could read enjoyed benefit of clergy, but lay readers in­ creased so rapidly that by 1489, a distinction had to be made between laymen and bona fide clergymen by branding the former after conviction for their first offence and relieving them 8 of their "clergy." As the ability to read spread throughout the general population, literacy increased among the lower ranks. Furthermore, the evidence indicates that until the seventeenth century and perhaps later, the women of the inferior classes formed a proportionately larger group of

7 From More's Apology. Quoted in Bennett, p. 19. 8 J. W. Adamson, "The Extent of Literacy in England in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries," The Library, 4th Series, X (1929-30), 168. 6 9 readers than did their menfolk. As early as 1534, the parish sidesman in the remote village of Langham was forced to use abusive language (an indication that he was dealing with the lower classes) when it became his duty to turn out of church a group of girls who sat in their pews on Ascension Day reading matins from an English primer.10 Lady Margaret Hoby, the wife of a prosperous sixteenth-century merchant, wrote in her diary that when she was too busy to read, her maids and serving women read to her, and in 1596, a work en­ titled A Booke of Curious and Strange Inuentions stated in the preface that although the book "beseemth Queens," it was 11 also quite proper reading for townsmaids. The battle of the clergy to prevent the lower classes from reading books unsanctioned by the church indicates that there were enough readers to warrant official concern. In May, 15 30, Bishop Nix of Norwich wrote, "I am accombred with such as keepeth and readeth these erroneous bookes in English. . . . I have done that ,/sic? lieth in me for the suppression of such persons; but it passeth my power or any spiritual man 12 for to do it." The lay officer who had trouble with the

9 See Louis B. Wright, "The Reading of Renaissance English Women," Studies in Philology, XXVIII (1931), 67-88.

l0Adamson, pp. 169-170. 11Louis B. Wright, Middle-Class Culture in Elizabethan England (Chapel Hill, 1935), pp. 109-110.

1^Adamson, p. 170. 7 girls at Langham reported having to "take parte against many and dyverse other monge us more for using to reade pryvy- ledgede bookes." Since persons who had attended grammar school could read Latin, the reading of privileged books was primarily a sin of the semi-literate, especially of the lower classes, as is evidenced by an Act of Henry VIII in 1543 which prohibited from reading the Bible in English women of the lower classes, artificers, apprentices, journeymen, serv­ ing men, husbandmen, and laborers. Moreover, the Lollards, whose ranks were made up primarily from the inferior classes, were frequently held suspect for having the ability to read a book in English, or at least for having one in their posses- 13 sion. In spite of the trend toward self-education, the in­ crease in the number of schools was the underlying factor in the spread of literacy. As early as 1179, the Third Lateran

Council decreed "that every Cathedral Church have a teacher who is to teach poor scholars and others." Soon there sprang up schools in monasteries, collegiate churches, hospitals, guilds, and chantries, the latter, perhaps, being the most numerous. In many parishes, it was a common practice for the chantry priest, when not singing masses for departed souls, to devote a great part of his leisure hours to teaching

13 Ibid., p. 178. See also Margaret Deanesley, The Lollard Bible (Cambridge, 19 20). 8 14 village children how to read and write. On the other hand, grammar schools connected with the churches were first insti­ tuted to train prospective priests, but during the fifteenth century, many such institutions began to give pragmatic in­ struction to "all manner of persons" in addition to teaching the curriculum provided for boys who intended to enter the clergy. Robert Stillington, Bishop of Bath and Wells, for instance, established a. school at Acaster near Bath where in addition to the masters of grammar and music, he hired a third master to teach writing "and all such things as be­ longed to Scrivener Craft . . . openly and freely without 15 exaction of money." In setting up a similar school at

York, Archbishop Thomas Rotherham observed that the "country­ side brings forth many youths endowed with the light of keen wit and not all of them wish to attain the lofty dignity of priesthood." Therefore, the Archbishop ordained a third fellow who was skilled in writing and keeping accounts in English to render young men who so desired "more capable for 16 the merchant arts and other worldly affairs." In An His­ torical! Description of the Islande of Britayne (1557),

William Harrison wrote: "... There are a great number of

■^Arthur F. Leach, English Schools at the Reformation (Westminster, 1896), p. 7. 15Adamson, p. 17 5.

16Ibid., p. 176. Grammar schooles through out the realne, and those verie liberallie indued, for the better reliefe of poore scholars, so that there are not raanie corporat townes now vnder the queenes dominion, that hain not one Grammar schools at least with a sufficient liuing for a maister and vsher appointed 17 to the same." These grammar schools, nevertheless, were not universally free. In one case at least, pupils attended "half-free"; that is, those learning grammar paid 8d- per 18 quarter, and those only learning to read, 4d. The reading taste of these poor scholars when they had reached adulthood poses a problem for the literary historian The small self-help volumes put out by printers like Pynson and de Worde might perhaps have satisfied the wants of an occasional reader struggling to grasp some point of theology or philosophy or interested in solving a particular problem.

But what about the indigent reader with a voracious appetite for the printed page whose taste ranged between morality and self-help on the one hand and imaginative literature on the other? The full-size books that came from the early presses were expensive, the cost of one volume representing a con­ siderable portion of an artisan's weekly income. The price of a newly-published octavo edition, for instance, ran from one to four shillings bound. In comparison, an ordinary

Wright, "The Renaissance Middle-Class Concern over Learning," pp. 274-75. 18 Leach, p. 82. 10 clergyman earned less than a pound a week, a farmer, 16s. 4d. , a shopkeeper, 17s. 4d., and artisans and handicraftsmen, 14s. 19 7d. Perhaps a book that could help a man better himself was considered a solid investment by these less wealthy citi­ zens, but more likely, the reader with limited means seldom bothered with regularly-printed and bound books. From the late Renaissance down through the eighteenth century, there was a variety of literature that included lives of famous people, courtesy and conduct books, proclamations, broadside ballads, newsbooks, almanacs, prognostications, and the like that could be had for a penny or so and constituted the bulk of the poor man's reading matter. The lives of the saints were one of the oldest forms of printed popular literature. The genre originated during the days of Aelfric, who translated some of his Latin homilies into the vernacular at the "repeated urgings" of his friends. Out of the saints' lives grew a whole body of biographies which were considered by the Renaissance as practical guides to better living. At the end of the seventeenth century, the didacticism that Richard Baxter hoped for in the biography of Joseph Alleine, the devout Quaker, was little different from what the fifteenth century expected from personal history, namely: "To teach me better how to live and die, in Faith,

Richard D. Altick, The English Common Reader (Chicago, 1957), pp. 22-23. 11 20 Hope and Love, is that for which I read this narrative."

In the wake of Aelfric's homilies, a number of transla­ tions were often published in large collections, but a number of smaller, inexpensive treatises appeared that dealt with the life of a single saint. Frequently, these lives were in verse and came from the pens of Osbern Bokenam, John Capgrave,

John Lydgate, and Chaucer. Throughout the Renaissance, lives of the saints increased in popularity even though they often 21 left much to be desired in biographical accuracy.

The same period marked the beginning of the chronicles based on the lives of the English kings; however, these books were generally written in Latin and had little popular appeal. Around the middle of the sixteenth century, however, fictional lives written for popular consumption began to make their appearance. Among the earliest representatives was John Awdeley's Fraternity of Vagabonds (1551), a work that described all kinds of vagabonds, cozeners and shifters and presented the "qualities" of each in the form of a brief character. In 1567, Thomas Harmon based his Caveat or Waren- ing for Commen Cursetors on Awdeley’s book, and Robert Greene followed in 1591 with The Groundwork of Coney-Catching which contained one chapter of original writing and a reprint of

Donald A. Stauffer, English Biography before 1700 (Cambridge, Mass., 1930), p. 282. 21 Ibid., p. 22. 12

the entire Caveat for Commen Cursetors. All of these books provided character sketches. Harman, for instance, mentions twenty-four distinct kinds of vagrants and provides a sketch of each. The character, however, did not take its final form until the publication of Meric Casaubon's Latin translation 2 (from the Greek) of Theophrastus' Characteres ethici (1592). Character sketches of vagrants were not far removed in content from the adieux, supposedly representing the final words of criminals condemned to death but which in reality were spurious biographies widely distributed in ballad form

during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and perhaps even later. Some purported to be the history of the crimi­

nal's misspent life? some consisted of a general confession of the culprit's sins; still others were in the form of petitions for pardon or warnings for the reader to steer clear of the pitfalls responsible for the plight of the con­ demned. A typical seventeenth century adieu, entitled "A Warning for All Desperate Women. By the Example of Alice Davis who for killing her husband was burned in Smithfield the 12 of July 1628. To the Terror of All the Beholders, 11

begins as follows: Vnto the world to make my moane, I know it is a folly Because that I have spent my time, which haue beene free and jolly,

2 2Edward C. Baldwin, "The Relation of the Seventeenth- Century Character to the Periodical Essay," PMLA, XIX (March, 1904), 95-96. 13

But to the Lord which rules aboue, I doe for mercy crie, To grant me pardon for the crime, for which on earth I dye.23 Popular biography in the form of lives and farewell speeches helped greatly to satisfy one aspect of the desire for inexpensive literature, but the English commoner of the period also had a strong desire "to heare news and tydinges, and to know of strange ambassadours what is done in farre landes." 24 Perhaps the most ardent reader of news in the sixteenth century was the London tradesman, although he sel­ dom showed any discrimination between real and "fictitious" news. He consumed with equal fervor the story of a two- headed sheep in Hampshire or the disclosure of an attempted treason against the Queen. J Printers of the period answered the demand for news with proclamations, broadside ballads, and quarto news books.

Broadside ballads were printed on single sheets until after the Restoration in pursuance of a custom that began before the introduction of the printing press. Proclamations, which generally contained news and official information issued by authority of the crown, were also printed on single sheets to facilitate affixing them to doors, walls,

23Hyder E. Rollins, ed. The Pepsyian Garland (Cambridge, 1922), p. 288. 24 Quoted in Bennett, p. 136. 25 Matthias A. Shaaber, Some Forerunners of the News­ paper in England, 1476-1622 (Philadelphia, 1929), p. 8. 14 posts, and trees, and like the broadside ballad, they were a 26 carryover from the days before the printing press. Quarto news books almost always treated a single event and consisted of eight, sixteen or thirty-two pages of news that was fre­ quently narrated in ballad form. Since news books were not intended to last for any considerable time and had to be pro­ duced at the lowest possible cost in order to hold the retail price to a minimum, they were carelessly printed and seldom bound. These early news media made little distinction between news, miscellaneous information and moral instruction, and practically no attempt to separate truth and fact from specu­ lation and hearsay. Some news was indeed based on newsworthy events in the modern sense. John Nichols relates that during the reign of Queen Mary, single sheets "began to fly about the city of London" containing songs and poems about contem­ porary happenings. One such ballad dealt with the queen's pregnancy. 27 More often, though, real events were pushed aside in favor of alleged miracles and marvelous happenings which were observed with alarming frequer. cy, udging by the number of news books that were printed abouu them. One such news ballad that may be considered as typical is en­ titled "A Description of a Strange {and Miraculous) Fish,

n Bennett, p. 135 and Shaaber, pp. 11-12. 27 Literary Anecdotes■ (London, 1812-16), IV, 38. 15

Cast Upon the Sands in the Meads, in the Hundred of Worwell, in the Country of Chester (or Chesshiere). The Certainty Whereof is Here Related Concerning the Said Most Monstrous

Fish." One of the closing stanzas reads: When he vpon the sands was cast aliue, which was awhile: He yell'd so loud, that many (agast) heard him aboue sixe mile: Tis said the Female fish likewise Was heard to mourne with horrid cryes: O rare beyond compare, in England nere the like. Sometimes the report of an event served primarily as a vehicle to carry the writer's homily. Examples of this cate­ gory are numerous. In 1583, the Rev. John Field published a news pamphlet which he called A godly exhortation, by occasion of the late jugement of God, shewed at Parris-garden, the thirteenth day of Ianuarie: where were assembled by estima­ tion; aboue a_ thousand persons, whereof some were slaine; & of that number, at the least, as is crediblie reported, the third person maimed and hurt. Giuen to all estates for their instruction, concerning the keeping of the Sabbath day. Cer­ tainly the title leaves little doubt about the writer's pur­ pose. Or again, there was a news book by the Rev. Johm Hilliard entitled Fire from Heauen. Burning the body of one John Hittchell of Holne-hurst. .the 26. of Iune last 1613. who by the same was consumed to ashes, and no fire seene,

28 Rollins, p. 438. lying therein smoakinq and smothering three dayes and three nights, not to be quenched by water, nor the help of mans hand. Hilliard's news tract dispatched the death of John Hittchell in two pages and used the remaining twenty-two to "rouse vp the sloathful carelesse, and instruct the filthy 29 forgetful to behold the wonderful workes of the Lord." The courtesy books of the Renaissance exhibited as much morality as did the news ballads, but they dealt with far less fantastic material. This form was introduced into England from Italy in the sixteenth century to improve the civility of newly-made courtiers, but its morality and its practical help in developing good manners made it a favorite with every class of society. In 1561, Castiglione1s The Courtyer was translated by Sir Thomas Hoby? fifty years later, the work was still popular enough for William Martyn, in a book exhorting the sons of the middle class to a life of piety, diligence and thrift, to conclude with a vigorous recommendation to read "euer most praise-worthie worke of Balthazar Castilion who by his choice precepts, hath cast young gentlemen into a fairer moulde then their fathers did." The Courtyer was not itself a popular book, but it in­ spired a number of other translations of less philosophical works that fell more directly in line with the needs of the

29 Ibid., p. 204. 30 Wright, Middle-Class Culture, pp. 123-124. 17 average commoner. In 1576, Robert Peterson, for example, for example, translated Giovanni della Casa's I_1 Galateo which provided the parvenu with practical lessons in how to behave on a wide variety of occasions. Walter Darell considered this translation so valuable that in 1578, he appended it to a manual advising serving men on the kind of social behavior and conduct that would ensure their securing holding reputable 31 positions. For years, Il_ Galateo was considered the stan­ dard work on social decorum for the ordinary citizen. Other courtesy books instructed the reader in polite conversation. Such a work was Stefano Guazzo1s Civile Conversation, the first three books of which were translated by George Pettie and published in 1581, followed by Bartholomew's translation of the fourth book in 1586. In addition to its primary con­ cern, Civile Conversation suggested ways of improving conduct 32 and behavior and of knowing "good companie from ill." Another courtesy book translated by W. Barker under the title of The Fearfull Fansies of the Florentine Cowper, enjoined honest craftsmen not to waste their time in frivolous amuse- 33 ments, but to seek distinction through self-improvement. Although the common man of the Renaissance was somewhat concerned with his own innate boorishness, he was no doubt

31 See Louis B. Wright, "A Conduct Book for Malvolio," Studies in Philology, XXXI (1934), 115-132. 32 Wright, Middle-Class Culture, p. 125. 33 Ibid. 18 more concerned with the difficult problem of acquiring and maintaining good health. As a means to this end, the herbal was introduced into England from the Continent during the last quarter of the fifteenth century, and remained popular for almost two hundred years. Widely circulated in cheap editions, these pseudo-scientific botanical and medical treatises contained descriptions of medicinal plants and pro­ vided formulae for concocting them into potions, salves, and 34 lotions to treat an amazing variety of ills. Perhaps the most highly reputed work of this nature was The qrete herball, printed by Peter Treveris in 15 26 and 15 29 and designed to be used "in vilages where nother surgeons nor phisicians be dwellying nygh by many a myle, as it dooth in good townes 35 where they be redy at hande." The qrete herball stated on the authority of Galen that "many folke that hath bathed them in colde water have dyed" and quoted "Mayster Isaac" as saying "that it is unpossyble for them that drynketh overmoche water in theyr youth to come to the aege that God ordeyned them." For the women, The grete herball contained recipes for hair dye and nail stains, and for the timid and the aged perhaps, 36 formulas to combat fear and forgetfulness.

H. S. Bennett, "Science and Information in English Writings of the Fifteenth Century," Modern Language Review, XXXIX (1944), 1-8. 35Quoted in Agnes Arber, Herbals Their Origin and Evo­ lution, 1140-1670 (Cambridge, 1953), p. 46. 36 Ibid., pp. 131-132. 19

Under the guise of information, the herbals often joined other forms of popular literature in providing accounts of mysterious and fantastic occurrences. In 1596, for example, John Gerade produced an herbal in which he claimed to report only what his eyes had seen and his hands had touched; however, he included the well known bit of popular zoological lore, the barnacle goose, describing a group of rotting trees on a small island off Lancashire that bore shells "in shape like those of the muskle but sharper pointed." Out of these shells, the author reported, came geese. First their legs appeared; gradually the entire bird emerged and fell into the sea "where it gathered feathers, and groweth to a foule, big- 37 ger than a Mallard, and lesser than a Goose." If the sixteenth-century reader could not find the medici­ nal information he wanted in the herbals, he could purchase a variety of other health and medical treatises that were written in simple language to meet the needs of the layman. One such manual was The seynqe of uryrns (1525), written to enable the sufferer to observe his own urine and advise the doctor of any changes he might observe. In 1539, Thomas Moulton produced The myrrour or qlasse of helth, intended for professional surgeons, but printed in the vernacular so that "every man both lerned, and leude, rich and pore" could understand the nature of the plague and take preventative

■^Bennett, p. 105. 20 measures. 3 8 Dr. Andrew Borde's The breuiary of healthe was published in 1552 to inform "simple and unlearned men that they may have some knowledge to ease themselves in thyr 39 diseases and infirmities." For the commoner, there was still another kind of infor­ mative reading that would not overtax his understanding or his pocketbook and at the same time satisfy an important area of his curiosity. This category comprised the almanacs and prognostications. From the Babylonian ages on, the man in the street was a firm believer in astrology, but to read the stars with any degree of accuracy, one needed to have a university training in mathematics and astronomy. Such a qualification was out of the question for the common reader. On the other hand, the services of a professional astrologer were far too dear for a man of modest means, but the prognos­ tications, with their simple pictorial message, served as an adequate substitute.^® In addition to astrological deductions of coming events, almanacs contained a variety of information such as weather forecasts, principal fairs, distances between cities, proper days for blood letting, highways, and dates of movable feasts and ellipses. The title page of a popular almanac compiled

38Ibid., pp. 97-98. 39 Ibid., p. 104. 40 Carroll Camden Jr. "Elizajethan Almanacs and Prognos­ tications, " The Library, 4th Series, XII (1931-32), 83-84. 21 by Leonard Digges (1555) promised the reader "a prognostica­ tion of right good effect, fructfully augmented, contayninge playne, brief, pleasant, chosen rules, to judge the wether for ever, by the Sunne, Moone, Sterres, Comets, Raynbowe, Thunder, Cloudes, with other Extraordinarie tokens, not omit­ ting the Aspect of Planetes, with a Brief Judgement for ever of Plentie, Lack, Sickenes, Death, Warres &c." 41 Almost from the beginning of printed almanacs and prognostications, they were officially frowned upon for containing material that could be interpreted as veiled political prophecy and were therefore considered a source of potential unrest among the "gaping throngs." In 1541 and again in 1549, laws were enacted to prevent publication of any prophecy that was in- tended to create trouble. 42 Yet the almanac remained per­ haps the most widely distributed form of popular reading matter for the next three centuries. This brief survey of cheap, informative literature from Caxton to the end of the sixteenth century reveals that any Englishman of the period who could read was able to augment his fund of general information with a minimum of financial investment. The mere size of the supply of popular litera­ ture indicates a demand at least large enough to make the

41 Quoted in Bennett, p. 120. 42 See M. H. Dodds, "Political Prophecies in the Reign of Henry VII," Modern Language Review, XI (1916), 276-84. 22

production of such works profitable. Louis b : Wright observes that "The Elizabethan commoner was omnivorous in his consump­

tion of the products of the printing press, and as the flair for journalism developed in writers for the people, all the concomitants of modern newspaper and periodical subject matter found their way into the infinitely varied broadside 43 and pamphlet literature." It remains now to examine the progress and development of these early forms of popular literature in the periods immediately following the journalistically invantive Renais­

sance . Many forms of popular literature that originated earlier remained in demand throughout the seventeenth century, but there was an increasing tendency to address much of the reading matter intended for self improvement to the middle class where the greatest upward striving was concentrated. Moreover, popular literature began to de-emphasize the impor­ tance of aping the manners of the idle rich and placed the maior stress on what middle-class moralists considered the ideal life. Richard Braithwait, for example, in The English Gentleman (1630) and The English Gentlewoman (1631) pleads with middle-class merchants and shopkeepers to eschew the idle existence of the aristocracy and take up the philosophy 44 of work.

43 Middle-Class Culture, p. 464. 44 Ibid., p. 128. 23 The growing demand for cheap guides to conduct led to a distillation of the courtesy books into penny broadsides and inexpensive pamphlets dealing with manners and good conduct. Typical of this genre was a ballad called A Table of Good Nurture. Wherein is contained a Schoolmaster1s admonition to his Schoolers to learne good manners; the Father to his Children to learne virtue; and the Householder to his Servants to learne qodlinesse. This ballad advises the reader to "Oppress no man by usury,/ --refuse unlawful gain:/ Give plen- 45 teously to the poore— / Christ will thee pay againe." A similar broadside presents Table-Observations, or Rules for Conduct at Table, put in tabular form, as, Tell Long Tales Take no Tobacco 46 Touch State Matters Under bourgeois and Puritan influences, good manners were fused with good morals; consequently, much of the pious and moral literature of the period advised on external behavior, and books dealing with manners commonly touched upon morals, and the lack of social decorum became tantamount to immorali­ ty. The letter writer was an important contribution toward alleviating this strong middle-class fear of incorrectness in

45Ibid., p. 131. 24 its own ranks and abhorrence of bad manners in the lower classes. This genre was introduced into England from Italy as a means of providing models of correct correspondence. The basic idea was not new, but in the seventeenth century, the letter writer was transformed into a compendium of useful knowledge that in many cases was directed toward improving the working-class reader. For example, The Young M a n 1s Com­ panion: or Arithmetic Made Easy (1631) was basically a letter writer that contained among its models of correspondence letters "From an Apprentice to his Friends in the Country," and "To a Country Chapman." But in addition, The Companion contained "Directions how to Measure Carpenters, Joyners, Sawyers, Bricklayers, Plaisterers, Plummers, Masons, Glaziers and Painters works," and also "The Family Companion for Mark­ ing on Linen, Pickling, Preserving, Ma.king Wine of Fruit; 47 with many approved and experienced Medicines for the Poor." This book presented, moreover, a number of maxims, some of which George Washington considered noteworthy enough to trans­ scribe from his own private copy of The Companion into his notebook. 48 The news book too underwent a metamorphosis during the first quarter of the seventeenth century. Although public interest in the unusual and the pseudo-metaphysical by no

47 Katherine Gee Hornbeak, The Complete Letter Writer in English, 1598-1800 (Northhampton, Mass., 1934), p. 66.

^3Ibid. 25 means flagged, the Thirty Years' War and a series of politi­ cal upheavals at home stimulated the common man's curiosity about happenings that stood to affect his physical and politi- cal welfare. 49 The coranto, which represented the first sus­ tained effort in factual reporting in English, was first pub­ lished for the benefit of a small colony of Englishmen in 50 Holland on December 20, 1620. At that time, George Veseler, an Amsterdam printer, issued a single-sheet coranto which appeared at irregular intervals until at least September 18, 1621. In the autumn of the same year, the corantos, dealing principally with foreign news, made their appearance in Lon- 51 don and were enthusiastically received by the common readers although some professional writers vociferously ob­ jected to them. For example, a person who signed himself A. H. in an appendage to John Davis's A Scourge for Paper Persecutors (1625) particularly disliked the corantos of a London printer, Nathaniel Butter. Incidental to his denun­ ciation of Butter and the corantos in general, A. H. leaves a rather detailed summary of the latter1s content: . . . But to behold the wals Butter'd with weekly News compos'd in Pauls, By some Decaied Captaine, or those Rooks, Whose hungry braines compile prodigious Books,

^Daniel Neal, The History of the Puritans (London, 1884), I, 413. 50Joseph Frank, The Beginnings of the English News­ papers, 1620-1660 (Cambridge, 1961), pp. 3-4.

^Shaaber, pp. 314-317. 26

Of Bethlem Gabors preparations, and How termes betwixt him and th1 Emperor stand: Of Denmarke, Swede, Poland, and of this and that, Their Wars, Iars, Stirs, and I wote not what: The Duke of Brunswicke, Mansfield, and Prince Maurice, Their Expeditions, and what else but true is, Yea of the Belgique state, yet scarcely know, Whether Brabant be in Christendome or no: To see such Butter euerie weeke besmeare Each public post, and Church dore, and to heare These shamefull lies, would make a man in spight Of Nature, turne Satyrist, and write Reuenging lines, against these shameless men, „ Who thus torment both Paper, Presse, and Pen. In contrast to the news books which were built around one news event, the corantos carried several stories, each bear­ ing a specific dateline; thereby, they formed an early link between the news book and the modern newspaper. When the Civil War broke out in the Spring of 1642, Charles I fled to York and later set up headquarters at Oxford. Both Royalist and Puritan presses clattered into action, flooding the country with news pamphlets "big with scandal" against both sides. According to an early nineteenth-century his­ torian, "there appeared Mercurius Rusticus, Pragmaticus, Publicus, diurnals and intelligences without number." 5 3 In­ deed, the newspaper battle between London and Oxford was as violent as the conflict on the fields of battle. On March 6, 1642-43 and again on June 14, 1643, the Long Parliament attempted to throttle the press by censorship. The powers already held by the Stationers' Company were

^2Quoted in Wright, Middle-Class Culture, pp. 98-99. 53 Neal,,I , 413. 27 reaffirmed, and a Committee of Examiners was appointed to assist the Stationers in ferreting out 'ini i.censed presses.

Among the committees set up to examine the content of printed matter prior to publication were special censors for small pamphlets, pictures, almanacs, prognostications, newspapers, 54 and the like. Although this major effort to censor the press drove some printers out of business and others out of the country, it had little real effect on those of a deter­ mined sort, who developed stratagem after stratagem to avoid the axe of the censor. Presses were carted about the city of London and concealed in out of the way attics and cellars. A printer whose establishment was closed one day often joined another printer, and together they came out with an unauthor­ ized paper the next. An impressive number of papers did not survive beyond five numbers, suggesting a hectic period in t 55 the history of printing. The period was responsible for a certain uniformity in the newspaper trade. Most newspapers of the Civil War period were printed with inferior type on cheap paper. Generally, they consisted of eight pages, with the first page devoted to the title and a synopsis of the news. The majority of these papers were timed to appear on Monday to catch the Tuesday mail to the North. In London, newspapers sold for a

54 Ibid., p. 456. 55See Frank, Appendix D. 28 penny, but elsewhere, shipping postage made them somewhat higher. A penny for a paper, in 1642, however, was rela­ tively expensive, being equivalent to the price of a quarter pound of beef or mutton.^ Although the common people left few accounts of their willingness to sacrifice a penny for a newspaper, in all probability they considered the money well invested. As Samuel Sheppard wrote in Mercurius Mastix in 1652, "...

Then they /newspapers/ talk of decay of Religion or of Trade, the more lamented loss of the two: the good Citizen himself is caught with this snare; and when he hears a thing which so much concerns his particular, he cannot chuse but put a 57 finger in the money-box and buy it. . . ." But while the people anxiously grabbed not only the newspapers, but all the cheap literature that the popular press produced, certain educated groups were becoming alarmed about readers' lack of discrimination. Perhaps the first serious concern of this nature came not from the religious groups as might be expected, but from professional writers whose books were ignored by the average wage-earning reader. Prompted perhaps by jealousy, several seventeenth-century authors retaliated by heaping ridicule on popular literature and the people who read it. W. Parkes, for example, in the

56 Ibid., p. 234. 29

preface to The Curtaine-Drawer of the World (1612), longs for the old days when the area between Paul's and the Temple Bar was not cluttered with idle pamphlets and pamphlet stitchers. Henry Parrot, in The Mastive, or Young Whelps of the Olde- Doqqe (1616), requests that his book not be sold along with

ballads at playhouses, and also . . . that on Posts, by the Eares it stand not fixt, For euery dull-Mechanicke to beholde. Last, that it come not brought to Peddlers racks. To common Fayres of Countrey, Towne, or Cittie: Solde at a Booth mongst Pinnes and A l m a n a c k s . ^8

In an attack on the lower-class reading taste of his day, Henry Fitzgeffrey, in Satyres: and Satyricall Epigrams (1617), pours out vituperation on such popular literature as Breton's

letter book, Dekker’s rogue pamphlets, the miscellaneous hack books of Samuel Rowland and John Taylor, pamphlets about the Lord Mayor's pageants, the wonder books, the farewells, col­ lections of anecdotes, and almanacs. Then in a fine fit of

snobbery, Fitzgeffrey concludes: Let not each Peasant, each Mechanick Asse, That neer know further then his Horn-booke crosse. Each rauin-Rusticke: each illiterate Gull; Buy of my Poesie, by pocket full. Bookes like Made-Dishes may for Daintyes goe, Yet will not euery pallate taste 'em so.59

And finally, A. J., in the same addendum to A Scourge for Paper Persecutors that expressed disgust with the

58Wright, Middle-Class Culture, p. 95.

59Ibid., p. 97. 30 corantos, expressed alarm over the wide circulation of popular literature among the lower classes. A. H. claimed (with the licensed exaggeration of a satirist) that he had seen in "kitchen-cobweb-nooks, " reading matter of "a Masse and Volume, 60 bigger than would load an Asse." But while professional writers were scorning the litera­ ture that appealed to the common people, the audience for this type of reading matter was rapidly expanding. Except for the period between the Restoration and the 1690's the seventeenth century was generally favorable to the growth of literacy. But the term "literacy" includes such a wide variety of read­ ing skills that it is open to misinterpretation. To compare a person who could read Milton's Areopaqitica with another who could perhaps sound out a street ballad is a meaningless exercise. During the Renaissance, no matter how well an in­ dividual understood the written vernacular, he was considered illiterate unless he could read Latin. In the seventeenth century, however, a shift took place in the concept of literacy. A category of educated persons developed who did not possess a knowledge of Latin but who were proficient in reading their native tongue. As a result, a new semi-literate reader emerged who could not, perhaps, handle complex prose, but who could comprehend simple English of the ABC book variety, the Bible, the catechism (although he probably

60Ibid., p. 98. 31 memorized most of it), and the newsbooks, lives, ballads and the like that we have been discussing. The size of this semi-literate reading public is almost impossible to estimate. Figures are misleading which give the number of people in a community who signed their names to public documents with a cross. In many cases, people who had been taught to read had received no instruction in writing. Even when the charity schools began at the end of the seven­ teenth century, writing was considered an advanced skill and was not taught until the student had shown promise as a

7 reader. One recent estimate places the total number of 62 readers in London at mid-century at 60,000. - How these figures were distributed according to reading efficiency is impossible to say, although the bulk of the proficient readers inevitably fell within the privileged classes. Perhaps some of the best clues to the size and profi­ ciency of the reading public that turned to popular litera­ ture lie hidden in the amount of education that was available to the lower classes during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. During the Commonwealth, the education of

61 See below, p. 62 Frank, p. 157 and Ian Watt, The Rise of the English Novel (Berkeley, 1957), p. 36. Watt bases his conclusion that the reading public was small on the proportion of news­ papers and periodicals sold in relation to total population. He places the total population of England in the 1690‘s at six million. 32

England's youth was carried on with more diligence than had 6 3 been seen during the preceding one hundred years. Continu­ ing a tradition that had begun in the Renaissance, many guilds and private individuals, anxious to spread the Puritan doc­ trine, contributed generously to the establishing and upkeep of private schools. The Long Parliament made considerable effort to prove its belief in the importance of education by leaving virtually undisturbed the existing educational system. Even the cathedral schools were treated with surprising tolerance. On October 14, 1642, for example, a Parliamentary order that sequestered the estates of deans and their chap­ ters was softened in favor of education by directing that allowances out of income designated for charities and scholars not be interrupted. Moreover, a Committee for Plun­ dered Ministers was set up and given the power to relieve poor ministers and schoolmasters out of its proceeds. On April 30, 1649, the deans and chapters were completely abol­ ished, but schools were protected by a clause directing that all payments from chapter revenue which before 1641 had been earmarked for maintenance of grammar schools and scholars should continue unabated. Schoolmasters were allowed to pro­ ceed without interference as long as they did not meddle in politics or take up arms against the Cromwell government. Almost all the good work instituted by the Puritans for

^Trevelyan, History of England (Garden City, 1952), II, 127. the cause of learning was temporarily undone at the Restora­ tion. Revenue that had been channeled into the maintenance of schools and schoolmasters was returned to the prebendaries, bringing an end to state aid to education. So eomplete was this reversal of policy that the master of Durham Grammar School was unique for having been allowed to keep a subsidy of twenty pounds a year as a special favor granted by a letter from the King. All the leniency the Puritans had shown to Anglican schools during the Commonwealth was for­ gotten, for little good will was extended to dissenting schools and schoolmasters. Two of the harshest restrictions that Parliament placed on nonconformists were the Act of Uniformity (1662) and the Five Mile Act (1665) devised to ward off the spread of dissention by prohibiting non-Anglicans from teaching in British schools. After the Toleration Act of 1689, dissenters were given limited privilege to educate their own children, but by 1714, the Tory government felt that this privilege also offered too much of a threat to the Establishment; consequently, Parliament pushed through the Schism Act which took away the privileges of the Toleration Act. The Whigs in the House, however, were strong enough to add to the Act a number of qualifying clauses which lessened its severity. Dissenters were allowed to have schoolmistresses to teach reading and writing and those aspects of arithmetic relating to the 34 64 mechanical arts, but no more. The Schism Act was short­ lived, however, and the first quarter of the eighteenth century saw an enlarged reading public developing from both Anglican and dissenting institutions.

64 "Education," Britannica, 11th Edition. Chapter II

i The concern for education during the last part of the seventeenth century was strongly flavored with religious controversy between Anglicans and dissenters. The beginning of the eighteenth century, however, ushered in an era of Church-dominated efforts to raise the moral standards of the poor through diffusion of Anglican dogma. In practice, the printing press was made a powerful adjunct to the Sunday ex­ hortation; but success was not to be hoped for unless the Church devised a way to teach large numbers of people to read. The logical place to begin was with the children of the lower classes. The Church, therefore, soon found itself in the business of wholesale elementary education. John Locke suggested in A Memorandum on Poor Law Reform (1697) that a workhouse school be established in each parish to accomodate all pauper children between the ages of three and fourteen. Here they would be taught a trade and given religious instruction. Workhouse schools, maintained by donations and local rates, were actually opened at Bristol and Hull and spread to other places under the name of schools

35 of industry. The Blue Coat Hospital in Liverpool was one of the better endowed schools of this sort. Founded around the turn of the century, it had an enrollment of close to a hun­ dred students in 1748. The boys and girls were clothed, housed, and boarded by income derived from interest on invest­ ments and from annual donations and legacies that amounted to three hundred pounds a year. In this factory-school, the boys earned fifty pounds a year by picking oakum and the girls twenty pounds by spinning cotton. The children worked half a day and studied reading, writing, and arithmetic for the 2 remainder of the time. In spite of scattered secular attempts to spread learning among the lower orders, the major eighteenth-century pioneers in the field of popular education were men and women imbued with the idea of improving the condition of the poor by hammering away at them with the teachings of the Church. In essency, these religious educators were not as interested in

^An institution of this sort was operated by Thomas Firmin in Little Britain around 1675. Firmin's establish­ ment was part school, part factory and offered both lessons in reading and training in useful employment. Children were admitted at the age of three and taught reading until they were four. At five, they were able to earn 2d. per day, which was sent home seekly to help relieve the financial distress of their parents. 2 Sarah Trimmer, Some Account of the Life and Writings of Mrs. Sarah Trijrimer with Original Letters and Meditations and Prayers Selected from Her Journal (London, 1814), II, 262-263. 37 diffusing abstract religion as they were in spreading practi­ cal morality/ which as we have seen, had become inextricably associated with manners during the previous century. The self-righteous stance of these middle-class reformers who were concerned with the poor man's immorality while they over­ looked the widespread depravity among the nobility, led Swift and Defoe to take up their pens in behalf of the lower orders. Swift was quick to admit that profaneness and ignorance existed among craftsmen, small tradesmen, and servants, but he argued that an attack should be made on the general lack of morality among the privileged classes and suggested that if the Queen would promote morality at Court, the morals of the lower classes would improve all over the country. Defoe complained that the rich drunkard was not carried before the Lord Mayor; neither was the "Swearing Lewd Merchant fin’d, or set in Stocks. The Man with a Gold Ring and Gay Clothes may swear before the Justice, or at the Justice; may reel home through the open Streets, and no man take notice of it; but if a poor man get drunk, or swear an Oath, he must to 4 the Stocks without Remedy." The objectors, however, were in the minority, and several societies were organized to raise the morals of the

3 "Project for Advancement of Religion and Reformation," The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, ed. Herbert Davis (Oxford, 1939), II, 43-64. ^The Poor Man1s Plea, 2nd ed. (London, 1697), pp. 6-7. 38 lowly, irrespective of depravity among the well-born. Among the first was the Society for the Reformation of Manners, com­ prised of churchmen and nonconformists intent on cleansing the London and Westminster poor of vice. The group, organized in 1692, hired professional snoopers to ferret out lawbreakers, who were afterwards provided with pamphlets called dissuasives from vice. In addition, this society distributed an annual Blacklist that gave the names of convicted criminals and a 5 description of their crimes. The Blacklist served as a vari­ ation of the popular farewell and was among the earliest attempts of one social class to influence the popular audience by imitating a medium that had proved to catch the people1s f ancy. In 1698, the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge was formed to bring under the exclusive wing of the Established Church the work that the religiously-mixed Society for the Reformation of Manners had begun. The two groups attacked the problem of immorality from different directions. The Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge was as much concerned with instilling virtue as it was with abolishing vice. It main­ tained that crime and depravity resulted primarily from an insufficient knowledge of Church doctrine. As a result of this conviction, the latter group argued that indoctrination rather than arrest and punishment should be the main weapon

Maurice J. Quinlan, Victorian Prelude, A History of English Manners, 1700-1830 (New York, 1941), pp. 14-15. 39

against wrong-doing. Operating on the supposition that the clergy had for the most part been unable (or unwilling) to communicate effectively with the lower orders, the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge approached its tash by circulating Bibles and religious tracts, naively supposing that this literature could be read by the people it was in­ tended for. Before long, however, the group realized its error and began to thinh in terms of creating a lower-class audience for its publications by means of elementary educa­ tion. Moreover, the struggle between the Church and dis­ senting groups to educate the youth of the day was in full progress, and the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge was quicX to recognize the strategical value of establishing 6 a system of church-controlled schools. George Crabbe's

lines in The Borough aptly sum up this idea behind church-

sponsored education: "’Tis education forms the youthful mind, Just as the twig is bent the tree's inclin'd." How needful then, the tender plant to rear With constant diligence and watchful care. The Society's decision to enter the field of education was also influenced by a growing awareness that ignorance and idleness often go hand in hand, and that both are many times a contributing cause of crime. Thus, the group established

6Ibid., pp. 19-20. ^"Letter XXIV," The Borough. 40

a system of charity schools for children of the poor, to be supported primarily by public subscription. The ostensible purpose of the undertaking that appeared on forms circulated among prospective contributors read: Whereas prophaneness and debauchery are greatly owing to gross ignorance of the Christian religion, especially among the poorer sort; and whereas nothing is more likely to promote the practice of Christianity and virtue than an early and pious education of youth, and whereas many poor people are desirous of having children taught, but are not able to afford them a Christian and useful education, we whose names are underwritten do agree to pay yearly. . . .8 The Society made a great fuss about teaching charity- school pupils to understand, appreciate, and even enjoy their station in life. The addition to the curriculum of humility and contentment with one's social position almost certainly grew out of an uneasiness among the upper classes over educa­ ting the masses beyond the needs of their humble station. Then, too, many had begun to lose faith who once believed that teaching the poor to read their catechisms would immedi­ ately transform them into paragons of virtue. Quite a few a few of the poor could already read, and no such change was as yet apparent. Other opponents argued that God had intended a large portion of society to be drawers of water and hewers of wood. What possible good could there be in teaching them to read, since it would only serve to make them dissatisfied

0 Quoted in Quinlan, pp. 14-15. 41 with their lot? Bernard de Mandeville wrote in his "Essay on Charity Schools" (1723) that "Reading, writing, and arith­ metic, are very pernicious to the Poor. . . . Men who are to remain and end their days in a laborious, tiresome and pain­ ful station of life, the sooner they are put upon it at first, 9 the more patiently they'll submit to it for ever after." In face of such objections to educating the poor, it was expedient for the charity schools to include humility in their curriculum if they were to receive the amount of public support the movement demanded. Isaac Watts captured the spirit of prevailing public opinion when he wrote: "I would persuade myself that the masters and mistresses of these schools among us teach the children of the poor which are under their care to know what their station in life is, how mean their circumstances, how necessary 'tis for them to be diligent, laborious, honest and faithful, humble and sub­ missive, what duties they owe the rest of mankind and in 10 particular to their superiors." Steele called these schools "the greatest Instances of publick Spirit the Age has produced, 1,11 and indeed a good

^The Fable of the Bees, ed. F. B. Kaye (Oxford, 1924), I, 288. ^ Essays Toward the Encouragement of Charity Schools, Quoted in Quinlan, p. 27. i:LThe Tatler, No. 294. 42 deal of truth can be found in what he said if sheer numbers are any indication of greatness. By 1734, there were 132 charity schools in London alone and 1,329 throughout the country, providing education for an estimated 19,506 children between seven and twelve years of age who were financially unable to attend a private school. Some were operated on the order of boarding schools; others were day schools only. On some instances, the children were fed and clothed, depend­ ing on local circumstances. So appealing was the charity- school idea that similar establishments were founded by Roman Catholics and dissenting groups. Shenstone1s eye scanned more than the English private schools when he wrote:

In ev'ry village mark'd with little spire, Embow'r'd in trees, and hardly known to fame, There dwells, in lowly shed, and mean attire, A matron old, whom we school-mistress name; Who boasts unruly brats with birch to tame, They grieven sore, in piteous durance pent, Aw'd by the pow'r of this relentless dame; And oft-times, on vagaries idly bent, 12 For unkempt hair, or task unconn'd are solely shent." Indeed "matrons old" and their male counterparts were almost stock features of the charity schools. The Society for Promo­ ting Christian Knowledge, which maintained a firm supervision over the charity school system, encouraged careful selection and training of reliable masters and mistresses, but the position of charity-school teacher was not attractive, and

12 "The School-mistress," Works, 2nd ed. (London, 1784), I, 334. desirable teachers were hard to find. The average allowance for London schools was but seventy-five pounds a year to cover the master's salary, the rent of the classroom, books, heating, clothing and miscellaneous expenses. Girls' schools received even less. Consequently, the most capable people were usually unwilling to teach in charity schools. It must be noted in passing, however, that the same held true for the cheap private schools. Crabbe's description of Reuben Dixon's school for the poor is a graphic example: Low is his price--the men who heave the coals, And clean our causeways, send him boys in shoals. To see poor Reuben, with his fry beside— Their half-check'd rudeness and his half-scorn'd pride Their room, the sty in which t h ' assembly meet, In close lane behind the Northgate-street; . . . Reuben has no nerves. Mid noise and dirt, and stench, and play, and prate, He calmly cuts the pen or views the slate."13 Doubtless, few of these teachers were lacking in the knowledge of religious principles, which the charity schools stressed above all else. The remaining curriculum consisted of writing, arithmetic, and reading. Some charity schools taught the latter by the alphabet-spelling method as exempli­ fied in Fox's Introduction to Spelling and Readinq, but this system was not approved by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, which called it "irrational and responsible for

"Letter XXIV," The Borough. 44 14 much slow progress and dulness in schools." In its place, the Society recommended the "look and say" method. Writing and arithmetic were taught to boys only after they could read "tolerably well"; girls were not usually given instruction in writing, but rather were taught crafts and household arts. Sarah Trimmer, who supported the idea of the charity schools but did not like the way they were conducted, criticized the institutions for teaching too much by rote and considered the 15 education they provided superficial. In 1799, she published a Charity School Spelling Book, which went about the business of teaching reeding as she thought it should be taught, but it offered little improvement over Fox's primer. There is little doubt that some of Mrs. Trimmer's obser­ vations were valid; however, a glance at the curriculum of the charity schools raises more questions than it answers about the amount of education their pupils actually received. For instance, after laboring through one of the elementary primers, the student was put to reading the entire New Testa­ ment, and when he was finished, he was set to work on the Old Testament. Upon leaving the charity schools, each pupil was given a Bible, a common prayer book, and a copy of The Whole Duty of Man, which were the books he presumably could read.

14 Charles Birchenough, History of Elementary Education in England and Wales from 1800 to the Present Day (London, 1925), p. 254.

15Tr inimer, p. 54. 45

"It is supposed," Mrs. Trimmer ironically commented, "from the years they have been at school, they must necessarily be furnished with a competent share of Christian knowledge, to enable them to read with advantage and improvement as long 16 as they live." Whether they could read "with advantage and improvement" is hard to determine, but barring the possi­ bility of a completely incompetent teacher, a bright student who attended one of these schools regularly for several years should have stood a good chance of being able to read with some degree of proficiency even though it were slight. Their limitations notwithstanding, the charity schools were a great forward step in the march of popular education. An impressive number of legacies and endowments from men who attributed their prosperity and social position to some charity school bear silent testimony that the movement had the potential of now and then educating a willing pupil, even though in many cases it fell short of its goal of mass education. The charity schools reached the peak of their popularity around the middle of the eighteenth century when total enroll­ ment swelled to around 30,000 pupils. It was not long, how­ ever, before a decline set in. The reasons are manifold. Certainly the Industrial Revolution, with its ravenous demand

1 6Quoted in Birchenough, p. 255. 45 for child labor, was partially to blame. 17 In addition, many original supporters of the movement grew disillusioned at the results, for instead of the charity schools producing readers who turned no further than their testaments and The Whole Duty of Man and who exuded humility as did Dickens1 famous charity-school graduate, Uriah Heep, such institutions were producing a breed of readers who read whatever they pleased, including frivolous popular novels and political pamphlets that expressed opinions contrary to those of the Establish­ ment. Consequently, contributions fell off; as a result of increasing administrative apathy, the money that did come in was mishandled on the local level. More than ever, schools were left in the hands of ancient and otherwise incapable masters. Even though charity schools survived to face the criticism of the nineteenth century, their heyday had passed. As enthusiasm waned for the charity schools, the Sunday School Movement gave new hope to eighteenth-century supporters of popular education. Sunday schools had appeared in England around the middle of the seventeenth century, but no concerted effort was made to establish them on a widespread scale until 1730, when Robert Raikes, the editor of the Gloucester Journal, opened a Sunday dame school for delinquent boys in a poor dis­ trict of Gloucester. After a period of experimentation, Raikes

17 — — J. L. and Barbara Hammond, The Town Labourer, 1750-1832 (London, 1920), pp. 52-54, 144-147. 47 devised a plan whereby a master was hired to teach reading

and a knowledge of the Bible for two hours on Sunday morning and for a similar period in the evening. The plan, which was publicized in Raikes' paper and in the Gentleman1s Magazine, captured the imagination of the entire country. Individuals and churches in manufacturing towns and country villages were anxious to establish Sunday schools in their communities. In 1785, the Society for the Establishment and Support of Sunday Schools throughout the Kingdom of Great Britain was founded on an interdenominational basis, with local committees made up of an equal number of dissenters and churchmen. Within two years, attendance at Sunday schools was estimated at a quarter of a million. By 1301, the London Society claimed it 19 was educating 156,490 young people in 1,516 Sunday schools. The popularity of the Sunday schools stemmed from the fact that they were cheap to operate, they did not teach too much, and above all, they did not interfere with the work week of the children. A substantial number of contemporary observers praised the Sunday schools on the ground that they provided the only means of education in some areas and sig­ nificantly augmented existing facilities in others. In 1835, witnesses before the Select Committee on Education testified that Sunday schools had been given far too little credit for

18Birchenough, p. 254. His material is based on A. Gregory, Robert Raikes, A History of the Origin of Sunday Schools; J. R. Harris, Robert Raikes, The Man and His Works; and Kirkman Grey, History of Phi1anthropy. 48

the good work they had done, and although many people who had attended a Sunday school read too poorly to enjoy the art, "thousands and tens of thousands" of working people had learned 19 to read fluently at such an institution. Yet the Sunday schools probably deserved much of the criticism that was hurled in their direction. Even if condi­ tions had been favorable (and they frequently were not), it would have been difficult to teach much in a school where students of all ages were thrown together for one day, some learning to read, some learning to write, some expounding what they had read, and some being expounded to. And all this under the supervision of one schoolmaster! The picture indeed seems one of complete chaos.

ii We must shift now from the schools that were available for lower-class education and focus on both the people who attended them and the economic, literary, and social forces of the age that affected the lower-class reading public. Be­ fore the middle of the eighteenth century, a large percentage of the poor were peasants who existed by tilling fallow areas and grazing sheep, cattle, and geese wherever they pleased throughout the countryside. They had no real need for formal

19R. K. Webb, The British Working Class Reader (London, 1955), p. 16. education; most of what they had to know was handed down in the oral tradition of the community. When matters arose that demanded greater intellectual activity, they obtained help from the parson, or some member of the country nobility or the squirearchy, whose traditional duty was to serve as be­ neficent guardians of the poor. The husbandman who sought a school education was exceptional, although a few ambitious men did so. William Cobbett*s father, for instance, attended a night school in the 1740's while he worked as a plowboy for 20 twopence a day. Even with occasional ambition such as this, there was relatively little literacy below the yeoman class in agricultural areas. James Lackington relates that ". . . in giving away religious tracts I found that some of the farmers and their children and also three-fourths of the poor 21 could not read." Such an estimation indicates that although the eighteenth century brought with it more opportunity for education, few rustics felt the need to take advantage of it. Literacy among the lower classes was found mainly among itinerant pedlars, small shopkeepers, apprentices, chairmen, drivers of all sorts, grooms, handicraftsmen, waiters, and

20 Speaking of his father, George, Cobbett wrote; "When a little boy, he drove plough for twopence a-day; and these earnings were appropriated to the expenses of an evening school. What a village school-master could be expected to teach, he had learnt, and had besides considerably improved himself in several branches of mathematics." Life and Adven­ tures of Peter Porcupine (London, 19 27), p. 19. 21 Confessions (London, 1804), p. 175. 50

household servants, many of whom had had benefit of a charity- school education and joined the "men who heaved the coals and cleaned the causeways" in sending their children to charity and cheap pay schools. On the other hand, juvenile servants in families where the children were instructed by tutors learned to read and write along with their young masters or were taught by the mistress of the house or be an elder child. James Lackington learned to read by the latter method although he was obliged to pay his youthful teacher. 22 The novels of the eighteenth century reveal that girls like Moll Flanders and Pamel Andrews had perhaps a better chance of receiving a decent education in their master's household than did some women of higher birth. It is interesting, for example, to compare any of Pamela's letters with the following sample from the pen of Lady Henrietta Wentworth: Just as I came down hear I hard that the Dutchis of Cleeveland's Feelding was dead, and she is in great grief for him. but it was no such thing for insteed of that sho has gott him sent to New­ gate for thretning to kill her twoe sons for taking her part when he beet her and broack open her clossett door and toock fower hundred pd. out. Thear is a paper put out about it. He beet her sadly and she cryed out murder in the street out of the windoe, he shott a blun- derbus at the people. Other evidence points to a fairly literate English

22 Ibid., p. 47.

23The Wentworth Papers, ed. James Cartwright (London, 1883), p. 50. 51 working class of the period. Cesar de Saussure, a French traveller who visited England between 1725 and 1729, was sur­ prised to find workmen habitually going to the coffeehouses each morning to read the news, and he reports having seen choeblacks "and other persons of that class" clubbing together 24 to buy a journal. The condition of the English poor changed with the pas­ sage of the Enclosure Act of 1760. Gradually much of the land which for centuries had supplied subsistence for the peasants was swallowed up into large farms. Without their age-old means of earning a living, many of the poor became paupers. The home craftsmen in rural towns were not severely affected by the Enclosure Act, but their respite from adverse changes was brief. Soon after George III ascended the throne,

James Watt invented the steam engine, fostering the establish­ ment of manufacturing centers against which the cottage indus­ tries could not compete. Many families consequently found themselves completely without income or subsisting on starva­ tion wages. Pushed by conditions in their native villages and attracted by opportunities in the industrial centers, workers flocked from the country and congregated in urban areas, only to be met with almost unbearable living and working conditions.

O A A. E. Dobbs, Educational and Social Movements, 1770- 1850 (London, 1919), p. 102. 52

A work day of fourteen hours, extending from six in the morn­ ing to eight et night, was not unusual. Factory owners demanded housing for their workers, and builders met the demand with plain, unpainted, jerrybuilt structures which were unattractive and before long strewn with filth. There are reports of weavers in Spitalfields sleeping seven or eight to a room in quarters that were small, filthy and far away from 25 their place of employment. Day and night, the workingman's quarters were dark. Candles were expensive even to those earning apprentice pay, 26 which was substantially better than that of a factory worker. In 1798, a window tax, first imposed in 1635, was extended tg include houses of sixwindows or more, thereby encouraging builders to reduce the number of windows to a minimum. Those that were constructed were covered with horn, paper, or green glass. Even if his surroundings had been favorable, the working­ man had little opportunity to read. Industrial workers were allowed holiday time on Christmas, Easter, Whitsun, and Michaelmas. London workers received in addition the eight

25 Trevelyan, III, 148, and James Wellard, "The State of Reading Among the Working Classes in England During the First Half of the Nineteenth Century," The Library Quarterly, V (1935), 95-96. 2 6The baker who hired James Lackington forbade him a candle in his room, forcing the future bookseller to read by moonlight. Lackington, Memoirs of the First Forty-five Years of the Life of James Lackington (London, 1791), p. 65. 53 27 hanging days at Tyburn. Seldom, however, did the general run of workingman use this time for reading. Most of them squandered their leisure in drinking, gambling, and fighting. On Sundays and holidays, many sought solace in the gin shops, where diversion was cheap (a quart of gin at mid-century cost somewhere between 6d. and 8d.); others flocked to the fields "in their dirt and deshabille" to match their cocks or dogs. An observer reported having counted twenty such contests while 23 he was on a Sunday afternoon walk. Indeed, during the final years of the eighteenth century, social and economic conditions of the working classes were less conducive to reading than at any time since the Renais­ sance. Yet the situation was not entirely bleak. A small core of readers among factory workers sought comfort in Metho­ dist literature and were particularly attentive to revolu­ tionary pamphlets that promised salvation through social up­ heaval. On the other hand, a number of servants and appren­ tices turned to reading to while away leisure time which industrial workers were deprived of. Since many horses could follow a familiar road with little or no guidance, servants who had to travel long distances on horseback could help pass the time by reading. The thousands of chairmen and miscel­ laneous drivers for hire in London, Bath and elsewhere had

27jan Watt, The Rise of the Novel (Los Angeles, 1957), p. 46.

^^Wellard, p. 94. 54

time on their hands before the Season began and at hours during the day when business was light. Household servants and apprentices found enough idle time to assemble for hours to listen to the harangue of a Methodist lay preacher. Ho­ garth’s drawings of "Industry and Idleness" illustrate what could be done by an industrious apprentice while his idle partners fiddled away their time in profligacy. Not only did house servants and apprentices have time to read, the homes of their masters usually provided books and light to read them by. Moreover, domestic help had access to a great deal of discarded printed matter, as for example, the old manu­ scripts that came wrapped around a "thread-paper" and other purchased articles. Finally, this favored group of workers received free board and lodging; therefore they could afford to invest part of their wages in reading matter if they desired to do so. There was a substantial glimmer of literacy, then, among the working classes during the second half of the eighteenth century. Dr. Johnson commented in 1758 that foreigners were quick to observe the superior knowledge of the English work­ ing people as compared to the learning of the vulgar elsewhere. Johnson attributed the superiority of the working classes in England to the information that constantly trickled down to OQ them. But one did not necessarily have to be able to read

^Idler, No. 7. 55 to partake of "intelligence" that arrived in such a manner.

Common sights in the streets of London whenever there was a noteworthy event were little bands of listeners huddled around the owner of a newspaper or journal who read the con- 30 tents aloud. In the barbershops and public houses, a man would frequently rise to his feet and laboriously plow through a paragraph of a newspaper. When he finished, another would continue in the same manner. "Seldom-readers are slow readers," said Lamb, "and, without this expedient, no one in the company would probably ever travel through the contents 31 of a whole paper." In a sense then, the lower-class audi­ ence consisted of those persons with the ability to read and all the non-readers who could place themselves within earshot of an oral reader. Nevertheless, the relatively high degree of literacy among the servant-apprentice class was not enough to appreciably raise the literacy rate for the working classes as a whole.

iii During the reign of George II, the aesthetic and intel­ lectual scope of popular literature was substantially widened. One significant factor behind this change was the development

30 A. E. Dobbs, Education and Social Movements, 1770-1850 (London, 1919), p. 102. 31 "On Books and Reading" (1822), The Works of Charles Lamb (Philadelphia, 1857), p. 433. 56 of the free-lance writer, bringing death to the patron system and introducing into popular writing the law of supply and demand. In its highest reaches, this evolution enabled Dr. Johnson to produce his Dictionary without the help of Lord Chesterfield, and David Home to become "not only independent 32 but opulent" from copy money he received from booksellers.

On the lowest intellectual plane, many writers turned their attention to the semi-literate market where they were required to express themselves in terms their audience could understand and appreciate. The development of Grub Street at the inter­ mediate level, however, was responsible for the periodical of manners, the periodical essay, and the popular miscellany, all of which raised the literary pitch of popular literature and augmented the amount of reading matter available to the lower classes. The eighteenth-century periodical of manners owed its inception to ambitious printers who seized upon the late seventeenth-century concern over the improvement of manners and incorporated it into a paper to disseminate rules for virtuous living in a manner both informative and entertaining. The Athenian Gazette was typical of the early publications of this nature. Founded by John Dunton in March, 1691, this half-sheet folio sold for a penny, and after the popularity of the first three weekly issues, appeared twice weekly until

32Charles Knight, The Old Printer and the Modern Press (London, 1854), p. 227. 57

1696. The Athenian Gazette was devoted almost exclusively to questions submitted by its readers and the sometimes serious, sometimes flippant answers of the editors. Its primary con­ cern was with morels, religion, and ethics. Typical questions were "When had angels their first existence?" "Where was the soul of Lazarus the four days he lay in the grave?" "Whether smoaking of tobacco ben't a vice as well as drinking, it being a cause of the latter and of vast experience?" and "Whether a 33 Wife having a Sot to a husband, may not (if able) beat him?" The Athenian Gazette, which pointed the way for the Tatlar and the Spectator, was written to appeal to several ranks of society and whetted the public appetite for periodicals that combined entertainment and instruction. To take further advantage of the demand for moral publi­ cations spiced with sensation, John Dunton began a publication in 1696 called The Night Walker: or Evening Rambles in search after lewd Women, with the various conferences held with them, dedicated to the whores and whoremasters of London and West­ minster. This journal, which ran for about eight months, was based on the adventures of Dunton and a friend who roamed the streets nightly in search of prostitutes. Whenever they en­ countered the object of their quest, the two men invited her to a bottle of wine over which they reprimanded her severely and attempted to frighten her with graphic sermons on the

The Athenian Gazette, Tuesday, March 17# 1691. 58

eternity of hell and the sorrow of banishment from the presence of God. The victim’s reactions formed the content of The Night Walker. It was a successful day indeed when Dunton was able to report that a woman had promised to mend her ways. Perhaps the most fitting comment on the success of this publication was made by Dunton himself: "I am well satis­ fied with the innocence of the design, but indeed the prudence 34 of it I know not how to justify." Between the Athenian Gazette and the appearance of the Tatler on April 12, 1709, there was a host of periodicals devoted to essays on the improvement of manners and public morals, but the familiar Tatler and the Spectator marked a high point in the development of the periodical essay. Addi­ son and Steele dedicated themselves to popularizing learning, morality, civility, and refined taste in a penny journal, and they did so with a literary flair that had seldom been seen in popular literature. The essays in the Tatler and the Spectator were written in a familiar, but not condescending style on topics of interest to both the "contemplative trades- 35 man" and "fellows of the Royal Society." Nor were women readers forgotten. "There are none," wrote Addison, "to whom this paper ^ the Spectator/ will be more useful than to the

Quoted in John Griffith Ames, The Literary Periodicals of Manners and Morals (Mt. Vernon, Ohio, 1904), p. 17. ^Spectator, No. 10. March 12, 1711. 59 female world." Three times a wsek in the Tatler and daily in the Spectator, the two men worked to bring "philosophy out of closets and libraries, schools and colleges, to dwell in clubs and assemblies, at tea-tables and in coffee-houses." The success of the periodical essay encouraged news­ papers and journals devoted to contemporary events to include general essays of a literary nature, thus giving birth to the miscellany. By 1731, around 200 halfsheets devoted partly or totally to essays were "thrown from the presses" of London every week, not including "divers written accounts" that were 37 still in fashion. In 1730, Edward Cave, a journeyman printer, realized the commercial value of publishing a monthly collection of the best of this material. Consequently, in January, 17 31, Cave began the Gentleman1s Magazine or Trader's Monthly Intelligencer, which immediately became popular partly because it provided "information with entertainment but with­ out frivolity," and partly because it was a library in minia­ ture. Not only did Cave reprint essays, poetry, news, and useful information; he also provided full reviews and notices of current books that many readers no doubt considered substi- tubes for the original works. 3 3 r With the Gentleman's Magazine,

35 Ibid. 37 Gentleman1s Magazine, I (March 1731), 93. 3f3Frank Beckwith, "The Eighteenth Century Proprietary Library in England," Journal of Do cumentat ion, III (1947), 32. 60 the miscellany became truly a significant educational device. In 1733, religion once again exerted a notable influence on the development of popular literature when John Wesley embarked on his Evangelical Revival and depended heavily on the printed word to reinforce his message to a middle and lower-class audience. Following the example that the tempo­ rarily dormant Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge had set earlier, Wesley wrote and published a number of dissua- sives frorn worldly activity which after 1740 were distributed from the Methodist Book Room in London. Contrary to his predecessors' policy of giving away religious literature, Wesley sold his pamphlets for a nominal fee because he believed that people were inclined to read what they had paid for no matter how small the price. Consequently, Methodist litera­ ture was peddled by itinerant preachers and placed on sale in 39 every Methodist chapel. In addition to the innovation of selling religious pam­ phlets, Wesley contributed to the development of the popular literature the practice of rewriting well-known classics in simple language for the semi-literate masses. In 1743, he published his version of Pilgrim's Progress and followed it in 1744 with a Collection of Moral and Sacred Poems. Later, he turned his attention to Paradise Lost and Young’s Wight Thoughts. In recognition of the doubtful reading ability of

39 Altick, pp. 63-64. 61 his audience, Wesley composed a Short English Grammar and a Complete English Dictionary, the latter being specifically intended "to assist persons of common sense and no learning 40 to understand the best English authors." Thus Wesley helped set the precedent of modifying literature to bring it down to the reading level of the masses. Around the time that Wesley was attempting to bring literary chef-d'oeuvres within the grasp of the common people, the circulating libraries came into existence end helped train the reading taste of the public in the direction of the popular novel, a form which many guardians of morality viewed with a jaundiced eye. The circulating library did not appear overnight. In Dryden1s day, coffeehouses customarily had pamphlets, periodicals, and books for sale, but toward the end of the century, come of the more enterprising landlords began to maintain libraries for their customers to use on the premises. The practice of lending books spread slowly, but once the idea caught on, the pace was stepped up considerably. A letter to the Champion on August 10, 1742 complained of the "scandalous and how Custom that has lately prevail'd amongst those who keep Coffee-Houses, of buying one of any New Book so soon as it is publish'd and lending it by Turns to such 41 Gentlemen to read as frequent their Coffee-house. ..."

40 Ibid., pp. 36,37 note ^George S. McCue, "Libraries in the London Coffee Houses," Library Quarterly, IV (1934), 624-625. 62

Around the time that coffeehouse libraries were becoming popular, the circulating libraries got underway. According to Benjamin Franklin, they were not in evidence when he searched London for one in 1725, but during that same year, Allan Ramsay, a poet and ex-wigmaker, began to rent books from his shop in Edinburgh. It was almost a quarter of a century, however, before the idea of a lending library out- 42 side the confines of a coffeehouse reached London. Circu­ lating libraries were chiefly concerned with novels although they carried all kinds of reading matter. To the respectable of the eighteenth century, however, novel reading in general was a waste of time, and the popular novel in particular was seldom less than immoral. Thus the libraries which placed the novel in the hands of the lower classes were frequently heaped with abuse. Mrs. Griffith, in the preface to Lady

Barton (1771), calls them "slop-shops in literature," and Fanny Burney in her Diary (November 6, 1778 entry) accused the libraries of being responsible for debauching the minds of schoolboys, plowboys, butchers, bakers, cobblers, tinkers, and servant women. By the end of the eighteenth century, many establishments that catered to the public kept books for the convenience of their customers. The records of the Bristol Library Society show that in 1793, the following restriction was placed on

42 Altick, pp. 63-64. 63 its borrowers: "No person keeping a lodging-house, inn, tavern, coffeehouse, or any place of public entertainment 43 shall be permitted to subscribe to this Society." Appar­ ently the wear and tear on books borrowed for use in such establishments placed too great a strain on the library's holding. These public-house libraries remained popular during the first part of the nineteenth century, and many of the working classes pored over the popular miscellanies and novels of the day while they took their liquid refreshments.

iv As the eighteenth century drew to a close, poor working conditions, low wages, and rising prices brought rumblings of unrest from the working classes. The 1780's had seen the birth of a long struggle for Parliamentary Reform. Middle- class dissenters of both Catholic and Protestant persuasions were convinced that sweeping reform was the only means of abolishing the Test and Corporation Acts which prevented them from holding public office. They had little difficulty in convincing the dissatisfied lower class that its salvation too rested with reform, but not before the latter had begun to take matters into its own hands. As early as 1764, there had been the "Great Cheese Riot" at Nottingham's Goose Fair

A. 1 Paul Kaufman, Borrowings from the Bristol Library (Charlottesville, 1960), p. 131. 64 when whole cheeses were rolled through the streets in protest against high prices- In 1766, laborers in Abdingdon, Newbury, and Maidstone, calling themselves "the Regulators, l! roamed the highways in large parties, entering shops and selling goods at what they called fair prices. Quite frequently, these riots were precipitated by radical handbills, which were at first written in longhand, but which in the 1790's appeared in printed form. Handbills expressing unorthodox opinions were not new, but for the first time, they were writ­ ten by working-class sympathizers and intended specifically for the working-class reader. In London, the two organizations most active in circu­ lating radical literature and spreading revolutionary thought were the Society for Constitutional Information and the London Corresponding Society. The former, organized by Major John Cartwright in 1730 and revived in the 9 0 's to assist in the agitation for reform, made its strongest pitch to the upper- middle class. Dr. John Jebb, the radical physician, Cart­ wright, and Capel Lofft were the chief writers for the group. The London Corresponding Society, organized in 179 2 by Thomas Hardy, was the larger of the two groups with an esti­ mated membership of 30,000 of the "aristocracy" of London’s 44 artisans and mechanics. Francis Place, who at the time was

44E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Jorking Class (New York, 1964), pp. 64-65. 65

a poor journeyman tailor, joined the Covent Garden division and in his later writings, celled the group, in his estima­ tion, an organization of ebovs-average young men. Each member subscribed to a different booh, which he read end circulated among the others. At frequent Sunday meetings, the chairman (the chair was filled by a different member each week) and all who had been able to read the booh beforehand stood up -and read aloud passages that each had found significant. A "discussion" followed each reading, but no member was allowed to speak twice until every other member had been offered an

opportunity to express himself. In the provinces, groups of butchers, cordwainers, and the like organized into groups on the order of the London societies. Manchester, Leeds, and other industrial centers became hotbeds of radical activity. In Norwich, a Revolution­ ary Society was organized to encourage the members to purchase books. A group of 2,000 workingmen "of the lower sort" organized in Sheffield to discuss government and circulate a 45 radical paper called the Patriot. In 1738, as the laboring-class giant that slumbered at the feet of English gentility began to yawn, John Wesley, s still believing in the efficacy of homiletic discussions of righteous living here below and the joys that awaited good Methodists in the other world, began publication of the

^~*Webb, p. 37. 66

Arminian Magazine. Each monthly issue, which was priced at a shilling a copy, contained both original and borrowed material, including the biography of e notable Christian, a large number of testimonial letters in which the writers told of their spiritual awakening, an engraving of an out­ standing Methodist, and a generous helping of poetry from the pens of Dryden, Pope, Watts, Goldsmith, John Newton, Mrs. Barbauld, and Matthew Prior. The Arminian Magazine carried "no news, no politics, no personal invective, nothing offen­ sive whether to religion, decency, good nature, or good manners. 46 The Arminian, like so many similar periodicals that followed it, was intended to lull the giant to sleep again, or at least, not to awaken him further. Wesley's earlier publishing activities indicate that he was aware of the educational limitations of his audience, but in the Arminian, he abandoned his "writing-down" technique and instead pitched its content above the heads of the semi­ literate reader, aiming at those with "tolerable capacity" instead. Theoretically, however, he did not lose sight of the less skillful reader. It was his intention to provide reading "for the sake of the learned as well as the unlearned. But as the latter are the greater in number, nine parts in ten of the work are generally suited to their capacity. What they do not understand, let them leave to others, and

46 The Arminian Magazine, I (1788), Preface. 67 endeavor to profit by what they do understand.

Wesley's advocacy of "talking up" to the common people was not widely accepted by those who wrote for the semi-liter­

ate, but his argument was sound, especially for publications that set out to appeal to gro'ups of different educational backgrounds. The Penny Magazine was to find itself confronted with a similar problem and to the consternation of many friends of popular education, chose to follow the practice that Wesley had established in the Arminian. While Wesley was all but ignoring the basic problems of economic deprivation and a general dissatisfaction with the existing social structure, Sarah Trimmer, who by now considered herself an expert on the problems of the poor, became spokes­ man for the segment of English society that was determined to turn back the clock to the days before the Industrial Revolu­ tion when the poor did not raad popular novels and therefore were contented and peaceful. Her implement was the Family Magazine, or Repository of religious instruction and rational amusement designed to counteract the pernicious tendency of immoral books which h ave circulated of late years among the poorer classes of people to the obstruction of their improve­ ment in religion and morals. This publication illustrates how much of a Frankenstein1s monster the charity and Sunday schools had become. Sarah Trimmer, after having worked so

^7Ibid., VII (1794), Preface. 63 hard to help create the monster, had no alternative but to help control it. Why she picked a shilling-a-month publica­ tion to carry out her ends is hard to say, but in both the sub-title of the Family Magazine and in the Preface to the first number, she makes it quite clear that she was primarily concerned with the lower-class reader. In the Preface she wrote: Many thousands of thoughtless young creatures of both sexes are betrayed into vice by putting them­ selves into the power of the enemy. At first they read these infamous publications under the notion of amusement, and by degrees lose all sense of vir­ tue until they can take pleasure in nothing but riot, intemperance, obscenity, and profaneness— which too frequently end in an ignominious death 1 And all this she laid at the feet of the popular novel 1 The Family Magazine was at once, then, an anti-novel, anti-radical publication, disguised as a book of instruction and amusement for cottagers and servants. Its secondary in­ tention was to "improve and lead the mind to religion and virtue." Each number contained a sermon from the works of an Anglican divine and a description of a foreign country "in which care was taken to make the lower orders to see the comforts end advantages belonging to this favoured land, and also to render them contented with its laws and government." 48 We shall see how this last idea was taken up by Charles Knight in The Plain Englishman and how, still later, he worked the

Trimmer, Some Account of the Life and Writings, I, 50. 69 theme into The Penny Magazine. But in the late eighteenth century, there was to he no contentment with existing government institutions. In Novem­ ber, 1789, the Reverend Richard Price, knwon only to modern readers through the mention of his name in the fulminations of Edmund Burke, preached a catalytic sermon to a small non­ conformist congregation in the Old Jewry. Price pleaded for liberty of conscience, the right of peoples to choose their own governors, and the right to resist power when it is abused. On November 1, 1790, Edmund Burke, enraged by Price's "democratica.l" ideas, published his Reflections on the Revo­ lution in France, in which he deplored what he thought would be the disaster of the triumph of democracy. Three months later, Thomas Paine, a member of the London Corresponding Society who had cut his radical teeth in the American Revolu­ tion, plunged into the argument by answering Burke with Pert I

°f The Rights of Man, wherein he eloquently defended the principles of the French Revolution and attempted to show that recently reformed French institutions were far superior to those of the British. The London Constitution Society and several other organi­ zations supervised the printing of cheap editions and abridge­ ments of the work for distribution among the poor. Edward Malone, the Shakespearean scholar, estimated in December, 1792 that "not less than four thousand per week of Paine's despicable and nonsensical pamphlet have been issued forth, 70

for almost nothing, and dispersed all over the kingdom. At Manchester and Sheffield the innovators bribe the poor by 49 drink to hear it read." Then in February, 1792, Paine released Part II of The Rights of Man, which not only called for reform, but made a pointed attack on monarchical rule and the aristocracy. This time, in addition to a three shilling edition, the pamphlet appeared in a sixpence version that helped make possible a wider circulation among the working classes than Part I had

received. The Tory government smugly winked at the first part of Paine's book in the belief that it would seldom fall in the hands of those who would be most affected by it. The dis­ tribution of Part II was so energetic, however, the govern­ ment was forced to take action. Archibald Macdonald, the attorney general, explained that punitive action was neces­ sary because "in all shapes, in all sizes, with industry in­ credible, it was either totally or partially thrust into the hands of all persons in this country, of subjects of every . ^ . 50 description. . . ." As a result of official excitement created by The Rights of Man, a Royal Proclamation of May 21, 1792 was issued against "divers wicked and seditious writing, 11 and the entire country

^Alfred O. Aldridge, Man of Reason: The Life of Thomas Paine (Lpndon, 1960), p. 161.

50Webb, p. 40. 71 was scoured in search of booksellers and printers who could 51 be prosecuted for selling seditious literature. Thomas Hardy's bookshop in Piccadilly was mobbed/ and his pregnant wife died from injuries she suffered while trying to escape.

William Blake, one of the intellectual hangers-on of the

Corresponding Society, was warned in a vision that Paine should flee and communicated his apprehension to Paine, who heeded Blake's urgings and fled to France. He was prosecuted in absentia, however, and his book was burned in public by 52 the hangman. So infiltrated was the country with Pitt's spies that a citizen who spoke too freely on political matters in a tavern or on a stagecoach ran the risk of arrest and trial. The Association for Preserving Liberty and Property against Re­ publicans and Levellers was formed in 1792 to oppose the principles set forth in The Rights of Man. Among the measiares this organization took was the circulation of counter-propagan­ da in the form of brief tracts, written in a colloquial style and cheaply printed. Few tricks of distribution were missed in placing this literature in the hands of the people. The members of the Association solicited ballads written on loyalist themes and had them set to familiar music. Itinerant ballad singers were then hired to hawk them about the streets.

5^Altick, p. 72. 52 Brailsford, pp. 35, 39, 41, 62, passim. 72 and promised police protection against hostile radical groups as long as they sang nothing but the prescribed ballads. So effective was this method that ballads sung on London streets for centuries almost completely disappeared for awhile, and a generation grew up that seldom heard anything but new versions 53 of the old songs. These were the tension-filled conditions of 1792 when

Hannah More threw her creative energy into closing the breach that threatened to destroy the traditional social structure of England. Surely she was qualified to do the job. She had been active with the Sunday School movement, gaining thereby some insight into the mentality of the lower classes. Her religious views hovered somewhere between orthodoxy and Evan­ gelicalism, but both groups accepted her, even though they 54 did so with a grain of suspicion. In 1788, her little volume, Thoughts on the Importance of Manners of the Great to General Society had gained her an enthusiastic upper-class following and set her up as an authority on manners and morals. Few people indeed sensed better the message that the Establish­ ment wanted conveyed to the poor. Therefore in 1792, Bishop Porteus of London asked her to write "some little thing" to open the eyes of the lower orders because she knew so much about their "habits and sentiments." At first she refused,

53Quinlan, pp. 71, 72, passim. 54 M. G. Jones, Hannah More (Cambridge, 1952), pp. 97-108. 73 but later, as she says, "In an evil hour, against my will and my judgment, on one sick day, I scribbled a little pamphlet called Village Politics by ‘Will Chip'." Hannah More addres- sed Village Politics to all "Mechanics, Journeymen, and La­ bourers in Great Britain. 11 In her letters, she characterized the work as being “vulgar as heart could wish; but it is only 55 designed for the most vulgar class of readers." Hannah More could not possibly have been more accurate in her evaluation °f Village Politics, which consisted of an unimaginative dia­ logue between Tom, a rustic who had been misguided by reading

The R ights of Man, and his neighbor, Jack, whose thinking was untainted because he read no further than The Whole Duty of Man. In the end, Jack places himself squarely among the friends of religion and government: My cottage is my castle; I sit down in it at night in peace and thankfulness and 'no man maketh me afraid'. Instead of indulging discontent because another is richer, than I in this world, (for envy is at the bottom of your equality works,") I read my bible, go to church, and look forward to a treasure in heaven.56 Although published anonymously, Village Politics was soon traced to Hannah More's doorstep, and her reputation as one who could deal effectively with the problems of the poor was firmly established.

The Letters of Hannah More, ed. R. Brimley Johnson (London, 1925), p. 129.

^Hannah More, Works (London, 1834), II, 231. 74

When Paine's Age of Reason appeared in 1794, denouncing as fiction the orthodox concept of a just and merciful God, the Bishop of London again appealed to Hannah More for an antidote. Although she believed her Sunday School work kept her sufficiently busy, she reluctantly consented to share in the writing of what became known as the Cheap Repository Tracts. In preparation for the undertaking, she made a study of anti-establishment tracts that radical groups had distri­ buted to the working classes, popular novels, songs of the "school of Paine," and all the chapbooks, lives, popular bal­ lads, and the like that were still being sold in the streets by itinerant pedlars for a penny or so a copy. Armed with this expert knowledge of the literature that was mott appeal­ ing to the lower-classes, she set about imitating it in the

Cheap Repository Tracts. The Evangelical Clapham Sect, under whose superintendence the Tracts appeared, believed, as had Wesley, that the poor valued literature they purchased more than that which they received free. At the same time, the sponsors realized that the price had to be kept within the purchasing range of the lower-class reader. Subscriptions were consequently invited to help finance the Tracts; the response was so enthusiastic that it was possible to place them on the market at ^d., Id., and l^d. per copy. Chapmen were given discount rates of about lOd. per twenty-five copies. Interested members of the 75 aristocracy also received a small discount on bulk 57 purchases. Of the 114 or so Cheap Repository Tracts that appeared between 1795 and 1798, Hannah More herself wrote fifty and possibly more. Her sister Sally contributed perhaps six, and 58 sister Patty one. Among the Clapham group that responded to the call for help in writing the tracts, appears the name of Zachary Macaulay, who, as we shall see later, was one of the founders of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge and doubtlessly carried with him many ideas that originated during his association with Hannah More and his friends at Clapham. The Cheap Repository Tracts were printed on coarse brown paper and occasionally illustrated with crude woodcuts. They were written in the clear, simple language that the semi­ literate reader was accustomed to seeing in popular litera­ ture. Although the Tracts appeared to be innocent moral stories, beneath the surface was a hard core of anti-Paine indoctrination. In The Sheperd of Salisbury Plain, for exam­ ple, the poor but pious goodman, with sixteen children and a wife crippled with rheumatism, is completely untainted by the radicalism that was sweeping England. His happy, Job-like attitude results from his faith in both God and the power of

^^Altick, p. 75. ^®Jones, p. 140. 76

revealed religion. His cottage is his castle, and he envies no man’s social position. Never once did Hannah More let her readers lose sight of the idea that the existing stratifica­ tion of society was God-ordained, and that it was therefore a sin to agitate for social equality. Without the aristocracy, she argued further, there would be no one to care for the poor. "When levelling comes about," Jack contends in Village Politics, "there will be no infirmaries, no hospitals, no charity schools, no Sunday schools. . . . Equality can't afford it. Whatever one's opinion of Hannah More's political lean­ ings, it cannot be said that she did not understand human nature. "Dry morality or religion will not answer the end," she once wrote, "for we must ever bear in mind that it is a 60 pleasant poison to which we must find an antidote." She was particularly sensitive to the frailties of the class with which she was dealing. She tried to show them, she once said, "that their distresses arise nearly as much from their own 61 bad management as from the hardships of the times." In this respect, she anticipated the wave of popular education that was to sweep the country during the first part of the nine­ teenth century. Unlike Wesley in his Arminian Magazine years,

59 Works, II, 231.

60Quoted in Jones, p. 139. 61 Jones, p. 46. 77

Hannah More reached down to the intellectual level of her

audience. Perhaps in this respect, she sometimes miscalcu­ lated the aesthetic and intellectual faculties of the poor, for she seldom gave her readers a taste of imaginative litera­ ture beyond the puerile efforts of the tract writers and sam­ plings of such works as Watts' Divine Songs for Children. In her view, the lower classes were ignorant and childish, and all the ideas they had concerning social equality and human rights resulted from the teachings of wicked demagogues interested in their own self-advancement. Although the Cheap Repository Tracts may have given the "great and gay" a feeling that they were at last taking posi­ tive action against anarchy and revolution, it cannot be said that the poor were greatly affected by Hannah More's efforts.

The phenomenal circulation of the Tracts resulted not from popular demand, but from energetic promotion and distribution by anti-Paine factions. The tracts were not only distributed through normal book-selling channels, they were delivered in bulk to many persons of quality who served as amateur chapmen to aid in their dispersion. The Bishop of London turned his home into a Cheap Repository Tract warehouse and gave them away to every hawker who passed. At the establishment of a respository in the library of a bookseller, Samuel Hazard, of Bath, pedlars were invited to the opening ceremony. Whey they arrived, dressed in their Sunday best, the blue ribbons that 78 identified their vocation flying in the breeze, they were presented with an assortment of tracts, paid for by a subscrip- 62 tion raised "by the ladies and gentlemen present." The Cheap Repository Tracts were leveled at the lower- class reader, but the radical reform movement, as we have seen, attracted many middle and upper-middle class sympathizers. It was to the latter group that the Clapham set turned its at­ tention in 1802 with the publication of The Christian Observer. The list of sponsors of the new publication included John Venn, the vicar and spiritual advisor of Clapham, William Wilberforce, the great humanitarian, and Henry Thornton, the financial backer of the Clapham group. In addition, there were Charles Grant, Hannah More, and Zachary Macaulay, the latter taking over the editorship of the Christian Observer after the first three months of its existence and remaining in that position 63 for the next sxxteen years. The Prospectus for the Christian Observer read in part: At a period like this, when Dramatick compositions, Novels, Tales, Newspapers, Magazines, and Reviews are disseminating doctrines subversive of all moral­ ity, and propagating tenets the most hostile to piety, order, and general happiness, some friends of civil government and revealed religion, have felt it incum­ bent on them openly to oppose the progress of lawless opinions, to strip scepticism and imposture of their artful disguise, and, by displaying the true features

62 Ibid., p. 41. 63 Mineka, p. 52. 79 of libertinism and impiety, to expose them to deserved contempt and abhorrence.®'* The Christian Observer added a strong Anglican bias to the kind of miscellany that Wesley had developed in the Arminian Magazine. The Clapham publication carried religious biogra­ phies, biblical criticism and interpretation, and essays showing the superiority of the Establishment. It also fea­ tured improving articles, poems and anecdotes. The Christian Observer praised the early numbers of the Edinburgh Review although it frowned on its mild religious position. One of the guiding spirits of the Edinburgh during these early years was Henry Brougham, who years later held a controlling hand in the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge and the Penny Magazine, both of which were criticized for being cool to religion. = Over the years, the Christian Observer, took a strong position against the theater and the novel, on the grounds that these literary forms overstimulated the imagination and were also not utilitarian in the sense of strengthening moral character or encouraging the performance of duty. Moreover, one writer argued that a number of “profligate novels" appeared in Prance prior to the Revolution and "behold the consequences in total corruption of the present." Scott, how­ ever, was treated with sympathy, but in the opinion of the

64 Quoted in Mineka, p. 52. 80

Christian Observer, he too was wasting his time. Crabbe,

Southey, and Scott were held to be safe poets, but as might 65 be expected, Byron was soundly castigated. Zachary Macaulay, who for so long was a leading power behind the Christian Observer, later became a prominent mem­ ber of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, and undoubtedly, he brought from the Clapham group many opinions about the content and function of a popular miscellany. But the publications of the Useful Knowledge Society were influ­ enced by a variety of factors prevalent in the early part of the nineteenth century. The most significant of these forces will provide the subject of the next chapter.

65 Mineka, pp. 65-68. Chapter III

i Religious reformers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries had found it necessary to turn their attention to the social and political conditions of the time, but their primary concern had been with the spiritual and moral side of man. Now, as the nineteenth century opened, individuals and groups inspired by secular motives injected a moral and to a lesser extent a spiritual element into their struggle to control the minds of the lower classes. Chief among the latter reformers was a group of middle-class philosophical radicals that gathered around Jeremy Bentham. The core of these Benthamite radicals was made up primarily of young ex­ patriate Scotsmen who had settled in London and joined hands with remnants of the Society for Constitutional Information and the London Corresponding Society, the organizations that had been active as we have seen, in the aborted reform move­ ment of the late 1800's. From the first decade of the nine­ teenth century to the end of their lives, the Benthamite group engaged in a variety of philanthropic, political, and educational enterprises. They were largely responsible for

81 82 the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge in the middle 1820's. Bentham, who was at heart one of the great humanitarians of his age, started his career as a devout opponent to demo­ cratic ideals, but coming at the height of class antagonism at the end of the eighteenth century, his philanthropic schemes were thwarted at every turn by a disinterested aris­ tocracy, and to find a sympathetic ear, he turned to the opposing side. Living as he did in Westminster, which was the center of democratic agitation in London, he made acquain­ tance with James Mill, Sir Francis Burdett, Francis Place and Major John Cartwright, all men with various degrees of radical leanings.'*' On the fringes of this early group, we get occa­ sional glimpses of Henry Brougham, whose "Hours of Idleness" in the Edinburgh Review was soon to evoke Byron's "English Bards end Scotch Reviewers" and who later translated a number of Bentham1s theories into practical educational and political schemes. To these radical reformers, Bentham brought his doctrine of utilitarianism, which gave the movement an intellectual stature and social prestige it had previously been unable to obtain. For the first time, the distinction was made between middle-class advocates of peaceful reform and revolutionists

Elie Halevy, The Growth of Philosophic Radicalism, trans. May Morris (New York, 195 ), pp. 263-264. who clamored for violent social upheaval and forceful return of the land to the community. With the coming of Bentham, the former group became the so-called philosophical radicals. The aspect of Bentham's doctrine which ultimately proved of most value to the Westminster Reformers grew out of his con­ cern for establishing morals as an exact science. Bentham argued that individual interests and motives did not always spontaneously harmonize to work for the general good of society. It then became the duty of government to force this harmony. This process Bentham (following the terminology of Adam Smith) called the artificial identification of interests In pursuance of this doctrine, Bentham advocated that legis­ latures attack the problem of morals by applying carefully controlled punishments to force the individual to identify his own interests with the common interests of the community. Although Bentham provided the germ of the idee, it was James Mill who carried on the work of James Mill who carried on the work of applying it to the radical cause. Mill argued that a representative government, duly elected by all the people, is necessary to ensure an artificial identification of interests, for unless government is controlled by the elec torate, it may be more concerned with its own interests than with the interest of the governed. At the same time, however Mill was fearful lest the common people, who were dominated

2 Ibid., pp. 14-16, 118. 84 by ignorance and passion, gain too much authority in the affairs of state. The solution was to educate the people to play a responsible political role. Thus, Mill was perhaps more responsible than anyone else for bringing about the marriage of the radical movement and the passion for the dif­ fusion of knowledge that swept the early nineteenth century. In an article on "Education," published in the 1818 Sup­ plement of the Encyclopedia Britannica, Mill argued that all human beings born without congenital mental deficiencies were equally capable of mental excellence, and that any discrepan­ cies in natural ability could be discovered and corrected. Education, according to Mill, was responsible for the develop­ ment of character. Mill, however, broke with many earlier advocates of educating the poor by suggesting that the best way to elevate the lower classes was first to educate the middle ranks of society, which he described as "both the most wise and the most virtuous part of the community." Mill be­ lieved that "the opinions of that class of people below mid­ dle ranks are formed, end their children directed, by that intelligent and virtuous rank who come the most immediately in contact with them" i.e., the middle rank. Lower class children looked up to the middle class "whose opinions thay 3 hear daily repeated and account it their honor to adopt."

3 James Mill, "Essay on Government," Bentham, ed. Philip Wheelwright (New York, 1935), pp. 205-209. 85

Almost certainly/ Mill still clung to this idea a decade later when he sat on the Committee of the Society for the Dif­ fusion of Useful Knowledge which was confronted with the prob­ lem of selecting an audience and chose to talk primarily to the middle class, convinced that as that segment of society advanced, "of the people beneath them, a vest majority would 4 be sure to be guided by their advice and example." Sometime around 1810, Mill met William Allen, who was a member of the Society of Friends, a sect that rivaled the Clapham group in philanthropic zeal. Although these two men differed widely in their religious opinions, the difference never seemed to interfere with their ability to work together or with their esteem for each other. Through Allen, Mill be­ came involved in the controversy between the Bell and the Lan- casterian system of education, an affair which drew Henry Brougham into the activities of the Benthamite radicals and shows the early religious attitudes of some of the men who formed the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge and ultimately were responsible for the religious policy of the Penny Magazine. Bell was an Anglican, and in his parochial charity school of St. Botolph1s Aldgate, the boys were taught according to strict Church principles. Lancaster, on the other hand, was a Quaker, and at his Borough Road School for poor boys, the

^Ibid., p. 207. 86 children were taught the Bible, but of course, no Anglican doctrine. Liberals and dissenters in search of ways to pro­ mote education among the poor were naturally drawn to Lan­ caster. The rival school under Bell drew its supporters pri­ marily from the Establishment, although the King and Queen 5 and Prince of Wales became patrons of Lancaster. The Lancas- terian System ran into financial difficulty primarily because of Lancaster's poor management. Lancaster went to prison for debt, and Joseph Fox took over the enterprise. Fox called in William Allen for help, and between them, they talked Lancas­ ter into turning the schools over to a committee of six that immediately appealed for public help. In a semi-public meet­ ing held at the Thatched House Tavern, December 14, 1810, Brougham presided, and those present agreed to serve as a committee. At a similar meeting on May 11, 1811, the Royal Lancasterian Institution was established, and in 1814, this 6 Institution became the British and Foreign School Society. In the fall of 1811, the conservative Quarterly Review sided with Bell, and the Edinburgh Review, in an article probably 7 written by Brougham, supported Lancaster.

Chester W. New, The Life of Henry Brougham to 1830 (Oxford, 1961), p. 204. 6Ibid. 7 Quarterly Review, (October 1811), 264-304 and Edinburgh Review, IX (November 1811), 41. 87 Although later we shall see much more of Brougham, it is worth noticing at this point that even though Brougham dis­ agreed with several aspects of the thinking of Bentham and Mill, he was in tune with the greater part of philosophical radicalism. One can almost be certain, however, that in spite of their occasional differences. Brougham and the Bentham radicals shared the same attitude toward religion. Francis Place, speaking of Mill, Edward Wakefield, and himself, wrote later that none of them were religious men and therefore had no sectarian notions to spread. They wished only to improve the people and knew that reading, writing, and arithmetic were important steps in the process. Thus, Place continues, "As our desire was to teach all we saw very clearly that the 8 way to teach all was to teach no religious doctrines." Con­ sequently all three men were anxious to extend Lancaster's system and to educate children of all denominations. In de­ fense of this policy on religion. Mill published a pamphlet in 1812 entitled Schools for All not Schools for Churchmen only. In the following year, Bentham published a series of papers entitled Chrestomathia, outlining a plan to educate pupils at a cost of six pounds each per year. An important aspect of this program was a curriculum arranged in the order of decreasing utility, so that a student who dropped

Alexander Bain, James Mill, A Biography (London, 1882), pp. 85-86./ 88 out of school would receive maximum benefit from the learn­ ing he had been exposed to. When Bentham turned his atten­ tion to the ordering of the sciences for this program, he had to depart from the familiar practice of arranging the various disciplines according to their logical relationship and 9 arrange them according to their degree of usefulness. The philosophy of Chrestomathia, no doubt, was partly responsible for the lack of organization that Thomas Arnold saw two 10 decades later in the Penny Magazine. While the "aristocracy" of the radicals concerned itself with education, the lower classes were swept up in the basic problems of existence. The second decade of the nineteenth century was one of violent working-class agitation. After the fall of Napoleon, England was gripped by widespread unem­ ployment because of a decrease in the demand for British goods at home and abroad and a glutted labor market resulting from the sudden release of thousands of soldiers and sailors. La­ borers, near starvation wages, began desultory rioting, par­ ticularly in the eastern counties, and machines were smashed in Nottinghamshire. The seme fear that gripped the country in the 1790's again prevailed. The government was convinced that the mob wanted revolution, end that the cry for reform

^Helevy, pp. 287-288. ■^See p. below. 89

was only a sham.^ To add to the woes of the Sidmouth administration,

William Cobbett— an anti-Jacobin writer who had switched to the cause of the radicals--dipped his pen in vituperation and became one of the most successful journalistic agitators of all time. In 1816, his paper, the Political Register, came vociferously to the aid of the working classes. Even though at its price of a shilling halfpenny it was too expensive for workers to buy individually, they clubbed together to purchase copies which were read aloud to crowds of eager listeners in the alehouses. Cobbett learned, however, that the government was planning to revoke the licences of public houses where his paper was permitted to be reed and that the Home Secretary was advocating the distribution of cheap, anti-radical propa­ ganda. On November 2, therefore, in addition to the regular, expensive number, the Political Register appeared in twopenny pamphlet form, with all news carefully eliminated to avoid the newspaper tax. The cheap edition was an immediate suc­ cess, reaching a weekly sale of somewhere between fifty and 12 seventy thousand copies within a few months. So annoying was Cobbett1s paper tc the Sidmouth govern­ ment that in 1817, official steps were taken to silence both

"^Llewellyn Woodward, The Age of Reform, 1815-1870, 2nd ed. {oxford, 1962), pp. 60-61. l2Altick, pp. 324-325 and Webb, pp. 49-50. 90

it and a host of imitators that mushroomed throughout the country. The Home Secretary distributed his Circular Letter to the Lords-lieutenant stating that in the opinion of the law, "Any justice of the peace might issue e warrant to take a person charged with libel and to demand bail for his re- 13 lease." The Habeas Corpus Act was suspended, and laws against sedition, enacted during the revolution scare of the mid-1790's, were dragged out of the closet. None of these measures were effective, including the Six Acts of 1819, one of which was the infamous 60 George III that would give the sponsors of the Penny Magazine several anxious moments a decade or so later. Consequently, Sidmouth concluded that "Cobbett must be written down," and in 1819 he subsidized a paper in Newcastle called the White Dwarf, edited by Gibbons Merle and aimed at answering Thomas Wooler1s Black Dwarf, a particularly obnoxious piece of propaganda of the Cobbett school. There also sprang up such publications as the Anti- Cobbett, the Political Death of Mr. William Cobbett, and Shadqett1s Weekly Review of Cobbett, Wooler, Sherwin and other Democretical and Infidel Writers.^ Cobbett's popularity was so strong that the opposition had little success. He made his way into every workshop and cottage not only by speaking the plainest English, but by

13 Webb, p. 52. ^ Ibid., pp. 52-54. 91 identifying himself with the everyday thoughts/ passions and 15 prejudices of those he addressed. Cobbett/ moreover/ was a rare master of prose style; and he possessed the ability to present his argument with amazing clarity and precision. Ac­ cording to Charles Knight, who was keenly interested in the style of popular prose, Cobbett and his school refrained from encumbering knowledge with pedantry, and above all, they made 16 their appeal to "the deepest passions of the human heart." Hazlitt expressed what many of those who set out to write him down must have concluded: "It is best to say little about him, and keep out of his way; for he crushes with his ponder- ous weight, whomever he falls upon. ..."17 While Sidmouth was futilely casting around for ways to combat anti-government propaganda, Charles Knight appeared on the scene as an obscure journalist who was destined to make a great contribution toward providing unobjectionable literature for the popular audience. Knight was born in 1791, the son of Windsor's bookseller-mayor. Raised in the shadows of Windsor Castle, he spent many boyhood hours watching the activities of the royal family, and his father was a personal friend of George III. One day in 1791, for

15 Knight, Passages, I, 245.

^^Ibid., p. 236. 17 Edinburgh Review, XXXVIII (May, 1823), 458. 92 instance, the elder Knight was terror-stricken to find that the King had slipped into the bookshop unawares and was en­ grossed in a copy of Paine's The Rights of Man, but nothing 18 came of the incident. At an early age, Knight was already interested in in­ structing the common people through cheap journalism. In 1812, his father and he began the Windsor and Eton Express, a venture that not only gave Knight valuable writing experi­ ence but helped convince him that the Stamp Act, the paper duty, and advertisement taxes were impediments to popular journalism. Instead of becoming discouraged over such ob­ stacles, he revealed in a letter to his future wife a desire to some day publish a "cheap work for the use of the indus­ trious part of the community who have neither money to buy 19 or leisure to read, bulky expensive books." On December 11, 1819, Knight wrote an essay for the Windsor Express entitled "Cheap Publications, 11 which revealed an author who on matters of popular education had an affinity for the thinking of the Bentham group, while at the same time possessing both the religious convictions of the Evan­ gelicals and the "liberal conservatism" of the Whigs. Knight observed that the most remarkable and to some extent the most

l®Knight, Passages, I, 38.

19Ibid., pp. 129, 153, 237, passim. 93 fearful sign of the times was the "excessive spread of cheap publications almost exclusively directed to the united object of inspiring hatred of Government and contempt of the Religious Institutions of the Country." What alarmed him most was that all these books were published in numbers that could be sold at a price within the reach of the working classes. Knight noted that efforts to educate the poor had produced a generation that was hungry for something to read. He was not quite sure at this time, however, whether such hunger was a blessing or a curse since "anarchists," as he called them, had cleverly seized upon the growing intelli­ gence of the lower classes and aimed a large number of pub­ lications in their direction. Knight recognized "a new power in society" that the "infidel" press had made alarming progress toward perverting; therefore something had to be done to take the initiative away from the forces of evil. His remedy was to couple the advance of learning "with re­ ligious knowledge and feelings. . . and sanctify the posses­ sion of the keys of learning to useful innocent ends." Then Knight made a statement that significantly reveals the com­ bination of influences that went into his thinking. "Knowl­ edge, " he wrote, "must have its worldly as well as its spiritual range. It looks toward Heaven, but it treads upon earth." He suggested a publication that would employ the direct, clear, intimate style of the radical cheap publica­ tions and at the seme time instill respect for national 94

traditions, inspire domestic happiness, and create a genuine

religious outlook. Within twenty-four hours after "Cheap Publications" appeared, Knight was visited by his neighbor, Edward H. Locker, an esteemed friend of Southey and Sir Walter Scott and fellow of the Royal Society. Locker, like Knight, was concerned with "the irreligion and disloyalty that were associated with the spread of education." Both men realized 20 that "'the Schoolmaster was abroad,1 and so was Cobbett." Locker was favorably impressed by Knight's idea of a cheap publication, and together they planned to bring it to frui­

tion. The result of their planning was The Plain Englishman Comprehending Original Compositions, Selections from the Best Writers, Under the Heads of The Christian Monitor; The British Patriot; The Fireside Companion, which appeared on February 1, 1820. In this publication, Knight end Locker presented an image of the ideal "plain Englishman" as the anti-radical forces saw him. He was the subject of a govern­ ment that "for many years ensured to its people more real freedom, more impartial laws and more universal security and happiness than any other system of human policy," but he had fallen from his original happy state when he ceased to look

20 Ibid., pp. 236-237. Knight, making this statement years after the event, could use the schoolmaster slogan although in 1820 it was not in current usage. 95 on "difference of ranks without envy" and could no longer understand that in spite of apparent differences, all English­ men were subject to the same laws, shared the same infirmi­ ties, were heirs to the same salvation; that in short, "the rich and poor of England were all equal." 21 Knight, whose early views on the political function of education were closer to Hannah More's than those of Bentham and Mill, was convinced that education would cure the plain Englishman's discontent with contemporary social conditions, and once his eyes were opened, he would "discover the ignorance, as well as the wick­ edness, of those who seek to turn them from the Faith and 22 Loyalty of their fathers." The Plain Englishman, as the complete title indicates, was divided into three parts. "The Christian Monitor" was directed toward curing social evils with such typical essays as "On the Progressive Nature of Evil Habits, " "Short Answer to Atheism," and "On Public Prayer." "The British Patriot" upheld established institutions and provided information about events in past British history with articles on "Popular Law," "History of the Crusades," and memoirs of noteworthy men, e.g., John Locke, Sir Isaac Newton, and Lord Burleigh. "The Fireside Companion" was a little compendium of useful knowledge with essays on "The Management

^"Introduction," The Plain Englishman, I (1821), iii, iv. 96 of Infants," the "Explanation of the Calendar," "Maxims Selected from various Authors," the "Monthly Retrospect of 23 Public Affairs," and the like. Of the three categories, Knight was least satisfied with "The Christian Monitor," for, as he later decided, the religious material would more likely have been read had it been mixed in with the other cate- 24 gories. In the Introduction to the second volume in 1821, Knight revealed his early views on what the intellectual level of a popular miscellany should be: "Some of our friends have ex­ pressed an opinion that our extracts, as well as the style of our own compositions, are above the comprehension of some of the humbler portion of our readers. But with every disposi­ tion to attend to this suggestion, we are inclined to think more favourably of the proficiency and powers of our British Brethren who, . . . are capable of digesting stronger meals 25 than have been usually set before them." This concept was little modified when he became editor of the Useful Knowledge

Society 1s publications. When Knight and Locker were casting around for a pub­ lisher for The Plain Englishman, Locker suggested the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, which had shaken off its

These titles are samplings from volume II, 1821. 24 Knight, Passages, I, 242. 25"Introduction," The Plain Englishman, II (1821), i. 97

lethargy and was once more attempting to improve the poor with moral and doctrinal literature. Although the Society's London bookseller agreed to take the job, the Church dis­ approved of the operation. In later years, Knight wrote, "It was well for us that we got out of the shackles of this Society, which was then wholly ignorant of the intellectual 26 wants and capabilities of the working population." If we can accept Knight's word, it had in its depository such anti­ quated volumes as Bishop Wilson's Instructions for the In­ dians, and many of its newer volumes talked to the working people "as if they were as innocent of all knowledge, both good and evil, as in the days when their painstaking mothers committed them to the edifying instruction of the village schoolmistress." The Society for Promoting Christian Knowl­ edge, according to Knight, eschewed such topics as history and science, and above all, did not meddle with works of the imagination. 27 When The Plain Englishman ceased publication in 1822,

Knight complained that the paper could not succeed in the face of popular works that exhibited "a palliation of vice, a laxity of expression, a jesting with sacred things, a wan­ ton exposure of private characters, and an avowed disrespect

2^Knight, Passages, I, 242.

27Ibid., pp. 241-242. 98 A for political restraints." 28 Knight voiced a similar com­ plaint a quarter of a century later when strong competition from popular novels and sensational penny sheets was partly responsible for forcing the Penny Magazine to close down. In reality# perhaps# Knight never actually had his finger closer to the pulse of the common reader than did the Society 29 for Promoting Christian Knowledge which he often disparaged. Years later, Knight rationalized that in 1822, the time was not yet ripe for the diffusion of knowledge because wood en­ graving had not been sufficiently developed to provide attrac­ tive pictures, which Knight considered essential to the success of a popular sheet. But Knight was mistaken when he surmised that the people were too much concerned with violent 30 politics to listen "to the small voice of popular knowledge.'^ The Mechanics' Institutes were already in operation in Scot­ land# and the following year marked the founding of the London Mechanics' Institute by the workingmen themselves. While Knight and Locker were still engaged with the Plain Englishman, they began publishing the Guardian# a Lon­ don miscellany that appeared on June 13, 1820 and followed the general plan of their other publication but with an

"Introduction," The Plain Englishman# III (1822), i.

29See below, p. 30 Knight# Passages# I# 246. 99

additional feature instituted in 1321 called "Magazine Day, 11 in which Knight reviewed current magazines. For the first of the series, he went into Ave Maria and Warwick Lanes to personally collect the publications on sale in the book­ stalls. The initial review made such a stir in the publish­ ing industry that Knight no longer had to collect magazines: 31 the next month many publishers were eager to send him copies. Certainly this systematic examination of what was going on in the periodical world added to Knoght's growing store of practical knowledge in the area of popular writing. In the same year that Knight and Locker began publica­ tion of the Guardian, Knight accepted an offer from Walter Blunt and Winthrop Mackworth Praed to publish the Etonian, a school magazine that had begun at Eton in 1819, first being circulated in manuscript form. Knight published the maga­ zine for ten months, after which he and the group that spon­ sored the Etonian enlarged the scope of their endeavor and drew up a prospectus for Knight1s Quarterly Magazine in which they characterized themselves as follows: Some of us have no occupation. Some of us have no money. Some of us are desperately in love. Some of us are desperately in debt. Many of us are very clever, and wish to convince the public of the fact. Several of us have never written a line.

31Knight, Passages, I, 264. 100 Several of us have written a great many, and wish to write more. For all these reasons, we intend to write a book. The prospectus then continued: We will not compile a lumbering quarto of Travels . . . nor a biting political Pamphlet to be praised by everybody on one side, and abused by everybody on the other, and read by nobody at all;--nor a Philosophical Essay, to be marvelled at by the many, and prosecuted by his Majesty’s Attorney-General. . . . We will go forth to the world once a quarter, in high spirits and handsome type, and a modest dress of drab, with verse and prose, criticism and witticism. . . while we will leave the Nation to the care of Parliament, and the Church to the Bishop of Peterborough.32

Among the group of twenty-five or so young men who attached their names to this rather eccentric proposal were Praed, whose Enigmas Knight reprinted in the final issues of the Penny Magazine? Matthew D. Hill, who was to be responsible for Knight's association with the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge; and Thomas Babington Macaulay, who was forced to resign temporarily from the group after the first number of Knight1s Quarterly (June, 1823) carried one of Macaulay's articles espousing neutrality on the issue of West Indian slavery. The tenor of the essay gave his father, Zachary Macaulay, "great uneasiness," and the young man de­ sisted from taking part in the Quarterly Magazine out of "gratitude, duty and prudence," although he did not share in the slightest degree the "rigidly religious sentiments," the

32I b id., pp. 296-297. 101

evangelical opinions, end the prejudices of the elder Macaulay. 33 Before Knight1s Quarterly ceased publication in November, 1824, however, young Macaulay had changed his mind and again joined his friends in contributing to the magazine. An incident occurred in connection with Knight1s Quar­ terly that inspired Knight to formulate views on the respon­ sibility of the art and literary critic which certainly he had not forgotten when he became editor of the Penny Magazine. In the fourth number of the publication, Knight wrote an essay entitled "The Boeotian Order of Architecture," satir­ izing the architecture of recently designed public structures. Three years later, Sir John Soane, Professor of Architecture ot the Royal Academy, brought suit against Knight for libel although Soane's name had not been mentioned in the article. The case was tried in the Court of King's Bench on June 12, 1327, with Brougham serving as one of the counsels for the defendant. Knight was acquitted, but as a result of the suit, he composed an called "The Defendant's Case" in which he defined the position of literary and art critic in a free press. "It cannot be denied," he argued, "that the liberty which is claimed by and permitted to public writers, of com­ menting without reserve upon writing of others, has had a most salutary influence upon the morals, the learning, the taste and the intellectual progress, of this and of every

~^Ibid., pp. 304-305. 102 other country." The only limit to this freedom, as Knight saw it, was an indulgence in personal slander. The critic's opinions "should be grounded solely upon the merits or de­ merits of the work he reviews, without any admixture of pri­ vate malignity." The critic should be free to use satire or even ridicule, as long as the ridicule is "limited to a man's 34 works, and does not apply to his moral character." Knight's views on this subject were certainly years in advance of the thinking or at least the practice of early nineteenth-century critics.

ii

While Knight was crystallizing his opinions and gaining the valuable experience that made him into the shrewd educa­ tor- journalist he later became, the audience he would soon address as chief editor of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge was taking shape. During the first quarter of the nineteenth century, the education of the lower classes, which had been primarily in the hands of various special- interest and philanthropic organizations, was given new direc­ tion. In the 1820's, the workingman himself began to realize that a certain amount of education was necessary to meet the demands of new technological developments. This desire for

34Ibid., pp. 322-326. 103 practical education was coupled with a general increase in the intellectual curiosity of the masses. "The common characteristic of the Operatives. . . /" wrote Bulwer, "is that of desires better than their condition. They all have 35 the wish for knowledge." But there were other perceptible changes. The working classes had acquired a certain amount of self-respect as a result, perhaps, of the general demo­ cratic spirit that was unleashed by the American Revolution and within the next quarter of a century swept across Europe. No longer did the lower class look to the aristocracy for beneficient guardianship. Gradually, they had begun to be­ lieve that they contained the power within themselves to ameliorate their own suffering. Moreover, the tendency that began early in the seventeenth century to judge individuals by their works rather than by their social rank had taken its effect on the age. (See p. 22 above) The French Revolution, wrote Place, "broke up many old absurd notions and tended to dissipate the pernicious reverence for men of title and es- 36 tate without regard to personal knowledge or worth." A combination of these factors played no small part in the founding of the mechanics' institutions.

Edward Lytton Bulwer, England and the English, 2nd ed. (London, 1833), I, 138, 36 Dorothy George, London Life in the Eighteenth Century (New York, 1930), p. 321. 104

The formation of the London Mechanics1 Institute in 1823 called national attention to a movement that had started in Scotland and had been spreading here and there throughout the kingdom since the beginning of the century. The usual account found in books on the adult education movement states 37 that the London institution was founded by George Birkbeck, who had been a contemporary of Mill# Brougham, and Peter Mark Roget at the University of Edinburgh, although there is no evidence that these men knew each other during their college og days. By 1323, Birkbeck had made a name for himself in the mechanics' institute movement in Scotland. Yet, tradition notwithstanding, Birkbeck was almost certainly not responsi­ ble for the London Mechanics' Institute. The idea, as Brougham clearly states in his pamphlet, Practical Observations on the Education of the People (1325), originated with Joseph C. Robertson, editor of the Mechanics' Magazine, which began publication on August 30, 1823. Robertson was assisted by Thomas Hodgskin, a. friend of Francis Place and a close associ- ate of the Bentham group. 39 The Mechanics 1 Magazine was pub­ lished to supply the operative with scientific principles of his work and information about new discoveries and inventions.

37Thomas Kelly, George Birkbeck (Liverpool, 1957), p. 76. 38 Ibid., p. 13.

~^Ibid., pp. 77-78. 105

On the title page appeared the motto, "Knowledge is Power." Soon after the first issue of the Mechanics1 Magazine, Robertson read an account of the Glasgow Mechanics' Institute, of which Birkbeck was a patron, and became interested in establishing a similar institution in London. With the help of Francis Place, Robertson and Hodgskin formalized plans to carry out the idea and set forth their thinking in a mani­ festo that began:" 'KNOWLEDGE,1 says one of the wisest men, Lord Bacon, 'IS POWER' and the first step, probably, towards the mechanics of the great empire obtaining the power to raise themselves to their proper station in society, is to 40 acquire knowledge." Copies of the manifesto were printed

in handbill form and at Place's suggestion, circulated among the wealthy. This latter move was carried out over the ob­ jection of Robertson and Hodgskin, who feared that once the wealthy members of the commjnity contributed substantially to the cost of the undertaking, they would gain a controlling

interest. A copy of the manifesto found its way into the hands of Birkbeck, who offered the London group the experience he had acquired in setting up similar institutions in Scotland. Birkbeck's services were accepted, and beginning in November, 1823, a series of meetings was held with Birkbeck presiding to work out the details of the plan. At the first meeting,

40 Quoted in Kelly, p. 79. 106 41 Brougham was present, probably at the invitation of Birkbeck. Final resolutions were drawn up at a public meeting held on November 11. Among these resolutions appeared the following key statements: That the establishment of institutions for the instruction of Mechanics, at a cheap rate, in the principles of the arts they practice, as well as in all other branches of useful knowl­ edge is a measure calculated to improve exten­ sively their habits end conditions, to advance the arts end sciences, and to add largely to the power, resources, and prosperity of the country. That such institutions are likely to be most stable end useful when entirely or chiefly sup­ ported and managed by mechanics themselves. . . . That among the objects which the London Mechanics' Institute shall have especially in view, shall be the establishment, for the bene­ fit of the members, of lectureships on the dif­ ferent arts end sciences, a library of reference and circulation, a reeding room, a museum of models, a school of design, end an experimental work-shop and laboratory, provided with all necessary instruments and apparatus. . . . That the friends of knowledge and improvement be invited to contribute towards the accomplish­ ment of all the aforesaid purposes by donations of money, books, specimens and apparatus.^2 As these resolutions show, the idea of self-support was at least partially abandoned. Birkbeck immediately contributed twenty pounds? Bentham and Hobhouse set their names down for ten pounds apiece? and Pice, Cobbett, and Mill pledged five pounds each. Before the meeting ended, Cobbett made a speech

41Kelly, pp. 81-82.

4^Ibid., p. 84. 107

in which he pointed out that although persons who were not mechanics could help finance the undertaking, the mechanics should guard against allowing anyone but themselves to take part in the management of the institution; otherwise, "men would soon be found who would put the mechanics on one side, 43 and make use of them as tools." Although Cobbett1s fears proved later to be well founded, the mechanics' institutes were at this early period threatened not so much by attempts to manipulate them as by enemies of popular education. Many clergymen in particular eyed the movement with suspicion. Those who had been strongly in favor of educating the poor boy in charity schools, infant schools, and Sunday schools, bitterly opposed the education of the poor man in mechanics' institutes. "They imagine," wrote Bulwer, "that knowledge, unless chained solely to religious 44 instruction, is hostile to religion." Birkbeck attempted to dispel the fears of those who envisioned the mechanics' institutes' becoming enemies of established religion and government by promising that the former would meddle with neither Church nor State unless it was to strengthen the 45 existing order. The feers of another group arose from an

43 Ibid., pp. 84-85. 44Lytton Bulwer, I, 280. 45Kelly, p. 92. entirely different direction. Some people were convinced that if the common people were given the advantages of educa­ tion/ they would improve so rapidly they would not only catch up with the privileged classes in refinement and learn­ ing, but surpass them. Henry Brougham, who was perhaps the most active and without a doubt the most loquacious champion of popular education, mentioned that such need not be the case at ell; the upper classes had more leisure to devote to 46 study and could always stay far ahead of the working people. Brougham, like Birkbeck, argued stoutly that popular educa­ tion was detrimental to none, but worked only for the good of

the people. Hobhouse relates the following conversation with Broughan "Brougham and I walked home together. He differed from me in thinking that the people would never have spirit or power to procure a fair Government, and thought that mechanics insti­ tutes and other establishments for instructing the lower classes would work out the cure for all political evil, and 47 make the people too strong for the Government." It was in support of the mechanics' institute movement that Brougham wrote his famous pamphlet, Practical Observa­ tions on the Education of the People, which was published in

^ Edinburgh Review, L (1829), 181-182. ^Geoffrey T. Garratt, Lord Brougham (London, 1935), p. 181. 109

January, 1825. This pamphlet, a painstaking elaboration of an article entitled "Scientific Education of the People11 that had appeared in the Edinburgh Review in October, 1824, con­ tained the germ of the idea for the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. Brougham wrote that the people them- sleves had to take the initiative in acquiring an education, but the move to educate them could not wait "ur -il the whole people with one accord take the determination to labour in 48 this good work." Their "more affluent neighbors" should aid them in removing obstacles as well as judiciously encouraging them so that their first timid steps toward self- education could "settle into a lasting and universal habit." The chief difficulties the people had to overcome were the lack of money and lack of time. The poor could afford neither books nor instructors, and even if they could, such books and instructors were not adapted to them. Consequently

Brougham suggested the encouragement of cheap publications to promote learning among the poor and pointed to the Mechanics1 Magazine, the Chemist, and the Mechanics1 Register as examples of effective literature to disseminate knowledge among the poor. Finally, he recognized the contribution of individuals to the advancement of popular education, but he believed

43 Henry Brougham, "Practical Observations on the Educa­ tion of the People," Speeches of Henry Lord Brougham (Edin­ burgh, 1838), III, 103. 110

"that a great deal more may be effected by the labours of a body." At this point, he revealed his plan for such an organization as the Society for the Diffusion of Useful

Knowledge: The subject has for some time past been under consideration, and I am not without hopes of seeing formed a Society for promoting the com­ position, publication, and distribution of cheap and useful works. To qualify persons for becoming efficient members of this associ­ ation, or co-operating with it all over the country, neither splendid talents, nor pro­ found learning, nor great wealth are required . . . . A well-informed man of good sense, filled with the resolution to obtain for the great body of his fellow-creatures, that high improvement which both their understandings and their morals are by nature fitted to re­ ceive, may labour in this good work. . . .

Brougham's Observations was circulated throughout every city in the kingdom, and in some places, "interested persons" purchased a number of copies and distributed them free. The pamphlet went through nineteen editions, and Brougham, who was never a wealthy man, contributed his share of the profits 50 to the London Mechanics' Institute. It is apparent then, that by 1825, the Benthamite radi­ cals and Knight, working independently, had formulated some­ what similar ideas about the education of the common people, and Brougham in addition not only synthesized the thinking of

49Ibid., pp. 117-118.

^New, pp. 336-337. Ill both sides, but suggested a practical way of reaching the largest possible audience with an abundance of cheap and use­ ful literature. The day of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge was rapidly dawning, for by the late 1820's, there was a significant number of working people able to read well enough to continue their education outside the schools, provided they could acquire the right kind of reading matter. The time was now ripe for the "small voice of popular knowl­ edge" to make itself heard throughout the land.

50 New, pp. 336-337. Chapter IV

The schoolmaster1s abroad you see And, when the people see him speak They all insist on being free And reading Homer in the Greek; And Bolton weavers seize the pen, The Sussex farmers scorn the plough; One must advance with other men; And so, I'm not a Tory now. From Preed's "Why and Wherefore"

In April, 1825, a few months after the publication of Practical Observations, Lord Brougham assembled a group of

"known friends to education and improvement of mankind" and apparently formed a "Society for Promoting the Diffusion of

Useful Knowledge," but the panic of November, 1825, forced 1 the group to disband before they got their program underway. Then on November 6, 1826, Brougham presided over another meeting of the same nature at No. 7 Furnival1s Inn, which marks the true beginning of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.^ Present were James Abercromby, M.P., who a year later was to become Canning's judge-advocate-general; Thomas Denman, M.P., common sergeant of the City of London

^Edinburgh Review, XLVI (June 1827), 235. 2 Thomas L. Jarman, "The History of the Society for Dif­ fusion of Useful Knowledge" (unpublished thesis, Oxford, 1933), p. 28, and New, pp. 347-348.

112 113

and the Queen's solicitor-general# who had energetically joined Brougham in defending Her Majesty against the charge

of adultery; William Tooke, president of the Society of Arts and Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature; William

Crawford, member of the Committee of the British and Foreign School Society and secretary of the London Prison Discipline Society; Matthew D. Hill, who had earned a reputation as a brilliant legal defender of radical agitators and who drew Charles Knight into Brougham's circle; James Millar, Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh and lecturer

on natural history; John Martin, M.P.; James Mill; and several men of lesser stature, including James Lock and

Robert Forster. After the Society was organized, membership was open to anyone who donated 10 to its funds or subscribed one pound annually. The average yearly income from subscriptions, how­ ever, never exceeded 300, of which approximately*^ 150 had to be subtracted for publications "distributed gratuitously" (each subscriber received a free copy of the treatises the Society published). The affairs of the organization were handled by a Committee initially elected by a poll of the entire membership; subsequent vacancies up until 1843 were 114 3 filled by a ballot of the Committee. After the first eighteen meetings, of which Brougham presided over thirteen, a ballot was cast to select a permanent chairman, and Brougham was unanimously selected and received the same honor at every succeeding election. Lord Russell served as vice- chairman until 1841, when Earl Spencer assumed the position. The secretary of the Society was Thomas Coates and the

treasurer William Tooke.

The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge was established "to give the people books which might convey knowledge to uneducated persons, or persons unperfectly educated, and to reduce the price of scientific and other 4 useful works to the community generally." In pursuance of this purpose, a Prospectus was circulated in November, 1826, announcing a plan to issue a series of elementary treatises

under the general title of "A Library of Useful Knowledge." Each volume, which was to appear in parts, would be designed "to unfold the principles of some branch of science--their proofs and illustrations--their application to practical

3 Address of the Committee, 1st June, 1843, p. 3, and Edinburgh Review, XLVII (January 1828), 129. In 1829, the Society had over 500 subscribers, but by 1843, the number had dwindled to less than forty. In a desperate attempt to revive flagging membership, the Committee voted to give all subscribers a voice in the election of its membership and an opportunity to periodically meet with the Committee to discuss the management of the Society's affairs.

^Address of the Committee, p. 3. 115 5 uses, the explnation of facts and appearances." In order to deal with each subject within the limits of an inexpensive treatise, "the greater divisions of science" were to be sub­ divided, and every treatise would carry references directing the reader to authoritative works in the field. Ihe price per part was not to exceed sixpence. The parts would con­ sist of thirty-two octavo pages, printed so as to contain as much material as was found in a hundred or so ordinary pages. Two treatises were to be issued monthly, in addition to "separate and extra numbers." Distributors such as mechanics' institutes, reading societies, and education committees would 6 be given special rates. When the Prospectus for the Library of Useful Knowledge appeared, Knight was impressed by the Society's intention to impart "useful information to all classes of the community, particularly to such as are unable to avail themselves of ex- 7 perienced teachers, or may prefer learning by themselves." For some time, Knight had been considering publication of a "National Library" and had issued a prospectus announcing his intentions. His plan called for a number of cheap edi­ tions so similar to the proposed Library of Useful Knowledge that he believed the Useful Knowledge Society might "nurture"

^New, p. 350. ^Edinburgh Review, XLV (December 1825), 198-199. 7 Knight, Passages, II, 45. 116 his scheme. Matthew Hill called Knight's "Library" to the attention of Brougham and the "committee for the encouragement of such a project/" and Knight was invited to London for a conference. According to Knight, Brougham manifested a "warm interest" in the "National Library," leaving the former with 8 the impression that he approved ot if. The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, however, did not undertake the publication of Knight's "Library," and instead, on December 24, 1826, John Murray published a prospectus for it. "It would be a fruitless and wearisome story of private affairs," wrote Knight, "were I to detail circumstances under which my unfortunate 'National Library,' having been at first taken up by the Society of which Mr. Brougham was President, and nego­ tiations having been opened with their publishers /Baldwin _ 9 and Cradock/, was finally adopted by Mr. Murray."

Some light is thrown on the matter in the Edinburgh Re­ view of June, 1827, when Brougham bitterly attacked Knight's

Prospectus on the grounds that it tried to outdo what the Useful Knowledge Society had proposed in the Library of Use­ ful Knowledge. Whereas the Society had confined its Prospec­ tus "to the safe grounds of natural and mathematical science, avoiding even matters connected with history," wrote Brougham,

Q Ibid., p. 47. ^Ibid. 117

the "National Library" proposed to embrace "all subjects, from arithmetic to party politics and religious controversy." But Brougham's greatest complaint was that Knight's treatises would clearly favor the High Church, a contention which was not unlikely, in view of Knight's earlier views as expressed in the Plain Englishman and elsewhere. "Thus," said Brougham, "the party were seen patronizing cheap publications on poli­ tics and religion for the common people— the same party which had always vehemently opposed any political or controversial

instruction to the lower orders." By so doing, the High Church-Tory faction, according to Brougham, "suddenly defied" the Useful Knowledge Society to include in its plan ethics, politics, history, and in short, "a full arrangement of all branches of human Knowledge. Knight was so zealous to become connected with the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge that he seems not to have taken offence at the incident, for on July 26, a month after the Edinburgh article, the Minutes of the Commit­ tee carry the following entry: General Meeting of the Committee for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.— 26th July, 1827.

James Mill, Esq., in the Chair. Mr. Mill having informed the Committee that Mr. Charles Knight was willing to undertake the

^ Edinburgh Review, XLVI (June 1827), 230-231. 118

superintendence of the Society1s Publications, it was Resolved, — That his services be accepted, and that it be referred to the Publications Committee to furnish him with the necessary instructions.H Knight was without doubt a fortunate addition to the Useful Knowledge Society, and much of the success it enjoyed result­ ed from his dedication to the cause of popular literature and his shrewdness in the financial aspect of publishing. It was he more than anyone else who gave literary direction to the good intentions of some sixty scholars, businessmen, clergymen, politicians and assorted philanthropists who made up the Committee. In spite of his enormous contribution, however, Knight remained in the shadows of the great figures

surrounding him. Of the handful of "working members" on the Committee, Henry Brougham was perhaps the most controversial. He, like Knight, was sometimes accused of jumping on various bandwag­ ons for his own personal advancement, and once having climbed aboard, of managing to somehow leave the impression that he had originated the idea in the first place. Robertson, for instance, the editor of the Mechanics1 Magazine, claimed

_ Knight, Passages, II, 47. The following characteriza­ tion by a writer who was acquainted with Knight helps to ex­ plain his zeal. "He was in truth, a very peculiar man. His mind was one that easily fell into step with 'whatever was going forward;' indeed, too easily, so that there was some­ thing secondhand about his opinions and his enthusiasms." Saint Paul1s Magazine, XII (May 1873), 547. 119 that the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge was actually conceived by Sir Richard Phillips, a dealer in cheap popular literature, who asked Brougham to become a member, but the latter, "liking the scheme but disliking the 12 originator, forthwith started it on his own." In spite of such criticism, this man who filled "so large a. space in the world's eye" 13 was not only the moving force behind the Society, but also the chief propagandist for nineteenth- century popular education in general. In 1827, Brougham, who strongly opposed a government in the hands of a military man, closed a speech expressing his opposition to Wellington's coalition government with these words: "There have been periods when the country heard with dismay that 'The soldier was abroad.' That is not the case now. Let the soldier be abroad; in the present age he can do nothing. There is another person abroad. . . whose labours have tended to pro­ duce this state of things. The schoolmaster is abroad1 And

I trust more to him, armed with his primer, than I do the soldier in full array, for upholding and extending the liber- 14 ties of his country." "The schoolmaster is abroad" became

12 Kelly, p. 162. 13 Knight, Passages, II, 47. 14 John Lord Campbell, Lives of Lyndhurst and Brougham, Lord Chancellors and Keepers of the Great Seal of England (London, 1869), p. 357. 120 both a slogan of the new popular movement in education and a term of ridicule used against it by those skeptical of its intent. The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge was certainly schoolmaster Brougham's organization, as so.many contemporary critics pointed out. Perhaps in a few instan­ ces other members helped decide the manner in which the pro­ gram should be conducted, but as Brougham's letters and articles of the period indicate, it was he in most cases who 15 made the final decision on the policies of the Society.

Brougham also reserved for himself the power to exert strong censorship over the content of the Society's publications. In a letter written in 1830, he stated: "Of course we avoid direct part in Church and State, but we openly profess to preach peace, liberty and absolute toleration, and I take cere, as the works pass through my hands, to keep out all that is against these principles, and to put in authorita- 16 tivelv what is wanting upon them. ..." A writer in the New Monthly Magazine (along with a number of other people)

See, for example, his 1828 letter to Matthew Hill, outlining the manner in which the Farmer's Series should be written. Rosamond and Florence Davenport-Hill, The Recorder of Birmingham. A Memoir of Matthew Davenport Hill; With Selections from His Correspondence (London, 1878), pp. 82-83, and the Edinburgh article on the Farmer's Series, L (October 1829). The Creevev Papers, ed. Herbert Maxwell (London, 1904), II, 346. 121 wanted to know how a man so active in public affairs could find time to take care of the minutiae of the Useful Knowl- 17 edge Society. Perhaps Charles Sumner, the American statesman and orator, who some years later observed

Brougham's "electric" rapidity as a judge provides the answer. Brougham looked into "the very middle of the case" while the attorneys were just beginning their argument. He would impatiently stop them short with the comment, "There is such a difficulty /_ mentioning it_7 to which you must ad­ dress yourself; if you can't get over that, I am against you." Seldom did he listen to the proceedings of the case. During a trial, he would write letters and busy himself with other matters. Sumner learned that Brougham had written an article for the Edinburgh Review as he sat at the table of the Privy Council I On one occasion, Sumner observed an usher bring him a bundle of twenty-five letters or so, which he opened and read, strewing the floor with envelopes. When the argument terminated, "Brougham pronounced the judgment in rapid, energetic, and perspicuous language,"— better than

Sumner had heard from any other judge on the bench. Such behavior, of course, did little to endear him with the

17XXXV (July 1832), 28-29. 18 advocates. It did, however, enable Brougham to keep his fingers soiled in several pies at the same time. Brougham was indeed the kind of man who was either greatly admired or passionately hated; there seems to have been no middle ground. Harriet Martineau, locking back on Brougham after the years had somewhat mellowed her first un­ favorable impression of him, left this revealing anecdote about his experience with a photographer: The artist explained the necessity of perfect immobility. He only asked that his Lordship and friends would keep perfectly still "for five seconds"; and his Lordship vehemently promised that he would not stir. He moved about too soon, however, and the consequence was— a blur where Lord Brougham should be; and so stands the daguerreotype view to this hour. There is something mournfully typical in this; In the picture of our century, as taken from the life by History, this very man should have been a central figure; but now, owing to his want of steadfastness, there will be for ever— a blur where Brougham should have been.19 Perhaps Brougham never swerved from his zeal to educate the people; nevertheless, his opponents often unfairly criticized his lack of steadfastness in just about everything except his

18Edward Pierce, Memoirs and Letters of Charles Sumner (Boston, 1877), I, 331. Letter from Sumner to Judge Story, July 12, 1838. This letter contradicts Mrs. C. S. Peel's statement: "In 1830 and for some twenty years after, letters were sealed or fastened by wafers, for envelopes were un­ known." Early Victorian England, ed. G. M. Young (London, 1934), II, 65-66. ^ Biographical Sketches (New York," 1869), p. 402. 123

propensity for plaid trousers resulting from the purchase of

such a large quantity of material in early life that it 20 lasted the rest of his days- The Westminster Review, for

instance, believed that the publications of the Society were

not really geared to the educational needs of the common

people because after his initial enthusiasm, Brougham, who

always courted political power, became disturbed over the

criticism the Society's efforts received from the clergy and

aristocracy. He therefore devised a scheme to instruct the

people on matters "wherein the self-interests of those who

raised the yell against instruction would be little if at 21 all concerned." However, Brougham's popular education

movement was not especially directed toward the "populace,"

consisting primarily of men whose nature was "grovelling and

base," but to the people, a term which included the middle 22 classes. Brougham's attitude toward educating the dis­

tressed working classes is clearly stated in one of his arti­

cles in the Edinburgh Review in which he wrote that "No

20 New, p. 164. These trousers and his nose were a boon to caricaturists. 21 "The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge," Westminster Review, XIV (April 1831), 378. 22 See Penny Magazine, I (April 27, 1832), 13 for the contemporary definition of the word populace. The Penny Magazine considered the word offensive. "By people," said Brougham, "I mean the middle classes, the wealth and intelli' gence of the country, the glory of the British name." Speeches, II, 617. Also see p. below. 124

association of individuals, however zealous in their benevo­ lent intentions, can pretend to relieve those prevailing distresses." But he did not believe the laboring classes should remain ignorant until a method was discovered to better house and clothe them, for ultimately, education and 23 economic improvement went hand in hand. How Brougham ex­ pected to rescue the poor through the printed word is not clear, and this vagueness, perhaps, is the most obvious flaw

in his program. Indeed, when Brougham envisioned the educational litera­ ture of the Useful Knowledge Society as written primarily for the middle class, or at least the "aristocracy" of the work­ ing class, he was close to the philosophy that Mill had ex­ pounded in his essay on "Education" wherein he argued that the habits and morals of the lower classes could best be im- 24 proved by educating the classes immediately above them.

23 Edinburgh Review, L (October 1829), 191. Compare this passage with a passage from Mill's essay on "Education": "Nature herself forbids, that you shall make a wise virtuous people out of a starving one. Men must be happy themselves before they can rejoice in the happiness of others; they must have certain vigour of mind, before they can, in the midst of habitual suffering, resist a presented pleasure; their own lives and means of well-being must be worth something, before they can value, so as to respect, the life or well-being of any other person." The Society's trea­ tise on Brewing is Brougham's example of literature designed to enable the poor to drink "wholesome liquor," which had be­ come a luxury item because of "ill-contrived laws, and heavy taxes and daily wars."

^4See above, p. 125

It is significant in this connection that the Committee took pains to indicate that the Society's publications were not primarily for the working-class reader. Even when the word

"labouring" was inadvertently used in the minutes of the first meeting to designate the audience to which the Useful Knowledge Society's publications would be directed, it was 25 carefully scratched out. Brougham's "good genius," James Mill, whom his son, John

Stuart Mill, characterized as an epicurean in morals, a cynic that saw little value in pleasure, and a man who considered life as "a poor thing at best" after the flush of youth had 26 passed, was usually near Brougham at meetings of the Commit tee, "listening to his opinions with marked attention." The minds of the two men were not "cast of the same mould," wrote Knight, but there were "deep sympathies between them, as is perhaps often the case when two men of apparently different paths to eminence, are brought into friendly contact for a 27 , . . common object." We have observed Mill's views on religi- 28 ous matters in connection with the Lencesterian Schools. When he left Scotland, he was a believer of sorts, but his

25 Jarman, p. 28. ^ J o h n Stuart Mill, Autobiography (New York, 1924), pp. 33-35. 27Knight, Passages, II, 124. 28 See above, p. 126

association with the Bentham group gradually led him to

scepticism. Bentham/ of course, never admitted his atheism, but Bain summed up his religious attitude in this way: "As a legislator, he had to allow a place for Religion; but he made use of the Deity, as Napoleon wished to make use of the Pope, for sanctioning whatever he himself chose, in the name 29 of Utility, to prescribe." This is the position on reli­ gion that was adopted by the philosophical radicals, and through Brougham, Mill and Peter Mark Roget, it became a guiding principle of the Useful Knowledge Society. Mill, the sceptic, had long been a friend and admirer of

William Allen, the devout Quaker chemist of Plough Court and 30 fellow of the Royal Society. In 1814, Allen had joined

Robert Owen and four others in purchasing the New Lanark Mills

from Owen's original partners and set up the New Lanark Ex­ periment. Allen, however, had his own opinions about educa­ tion, and after a decade of effort, persuaded the group to offer Bible study in the New Lanark schools instead of

James Mill, a Biography (London, 1882), pp. 88-89. According to the Minutes of the General Committee, 22 January 1827, it was agreed that "as numerous Societies already exist for the distribution of ‘religious instruction and as it is the object of this Society to aid in the progress of those branches of general knowledge which can be diffused among all classes of the community, no treatise to be published with the sanction of the Committee shall contain any matter of con­ troversial divinity, or interfering with the principles of Revealed Religion." Quoted in Jarman, p. 30. 30 See above, p. Allen did not join the group until 1827. Life of William Allen with Selections from His Corres­ pondence (Philadelphia, 1847), II, 181. 127 31 lessons in drawing and singing. Allen was still one of the managers of New Lanark during the first few years of the Useful Knowledge Society and strongly opposed the Bentham radical element that objected to religious instruction in 32 the publications of the Society. Zachary Macaulay, who as a member of the community at Clapham had assisted Hannah More with a few of the Cheap Re­ pository Tracts, was also a supporter of religious education; however, he probably was not opposed to the Society's publi­ cation of purely secular treatises as long as he could be convinced there was sufficient religious instruction available elsewhere. Macaulay had gained considerable insight into the lowest levels of humanity when as a young man he served es governor of the Sierra Leone Company, founded as a colony for liberated slaves in Africa by Wilberforce, Granville Sharp, and Henry Thornton. Both Macaulay and Allen almost certainly objected to the Society's policy of silence on the

j-lDNB31 32 The following entry appears in Allen's diary: "First Month 18th 1827— met the book committee /_ of the Useful Knowledge Society__7 at Furnival' s Inn. The rules were read, and the great point with some of us was, to guard against admitting any thing which might be opposed to revealed religion." Life, II, 181. 128 33 question of slavery. Moreover, when Knight wrote that some members of the Committee were as opposed to works of the imagination as if they had been "budge doctors of the Stoic 34 fur," he could well have had Zachary Macaulay in mind, who not only brought to the Useful Knowledge Society strong con­ victions about improving literature held over from his days as editor of the Christian Observer, but also a stiff oppo- 35 sition to imaginative writing. There was no unanimity, however, in the opposition of the Committee to imaginative literature; several members were writers of fiction or closely affiliated with literary groups. William Toohe, for example, was president of the Society of Arts and a member of the Royal Society of Literature. In 1804, he had anonymously published two volumes of poems. Lord Russell, an ardent supporter of Parliamentary Reform, was also a prolific writer on a number of subjects ranging

33 A proposal was made to Knight to occasionally publish in the Penny Magazine an article on the abolition of slavery. The secretary of the Society answered as follows: ^Although there is not I believe one of them the Committee_/ who is not favourable to the abolition of slavery, yet they will I am sure be very cautious in entering upon the discussion of a question concerning which so much excitement at present prevails." Letter from Coates to John Crisp, 26 July 1832. Quoted in Jarman, p. 80. 34Knight, Passages, II, 315. -^See Margaret J. Knutsford, Life and Letters of Zachary Macaulay (London, 1900). 129 from agriculture to politics. Among his numerous books were a novel called The Nuns of Arrounca (1822) and a translation of the Fifth Book of the Odyssey (1827) . Russell possessed a ready wit and an amazing ability to persuade intelligent listeners. During one of his trips to England, Charles Sum­ ner provided the following description of a parliamentary speech he heard Russell deliver: "In person diminuative and rickety, . . . He wriggled round, played with his hat, seemed unable to dispose of his hands or his feet; his voice was small and thin, but notwithstanding all this, a house of up­ wards of five hundred members were hushed to catch his slightest accents. You listened, and you felt that you heard 36 a man of mind, of thought, and of moral elevation." Doubt lessly, his words to the Committee of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge were received with the same respect and attention. Russell was an "enlightened" Church­ man who held among his friends many nonconformists. He stood for absolute religious and political freedom and was sympathetic to any plan to improve the well-being of the 37 common people. Henry Hallam was as strongly opposed Lo Parliamentary Reform as Lord Russell was in favor of it. Hallam, whom

36 Pierce, I, 316. 130

Byron refers to in "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers" as 38 "Classic Hallam, much renouned for Greek, 11 was one of the founders and the vice-president of the Society of Antiquar­ ies, and he no doubt pressed for the antiquarian treatises published by the Useful Knowledge Society, which in turn paved the way for the many articles on antiquarianism that appeared in the Penny Magazine. 'In his general manner rather cold and dry, he would occasionally deliver an ener­ getic opinion, pregnant with good taste and refined taste 39 . . . wrote Knight. Harriet Martineau characterized him as a "Working Man of Letters who was rather full of dis­ sent from what everybody said, innocently surprised when he found himself agreeing with anybody. He was a man full of rapid speech and action." Sidney Smith once attended a dinner with Hallam and aptly characterized him as being "full 40 of contradiction and cabbage." Peter Mark Roget was one of the original members of the Committee and the Society's most eminent scientist. In 1795, he toured the Highlands with his uncle, Sir Samuel Romilly, and Pierre Dumont, the Swiss disciple of Bentham and associ­ ate of Mirabeau. Roget later attributed his "enlightened" principles to the influence of Dumont. In 1800, Roget spent

33 Works, rev. ed. (London, 1888), I, 337. 39Knight, Passages, II, 123. 40 Martineau, p. 78. 131

six weeks with Jeremy Bentham discussing a scheme to put sewage from the city to some practical use. The young man was awed in the presence of the great utilitarian, and as a result of the initial preparation he had received from Du­ mont, was ready to accept the permanent stamp of Bentham's 41 philosophy. Then in October, 1808, Roget swelled the mi­ gration of intellectuals who left Edinburgh to settle in London and was gradually assimilated into the activities of the philosophical radicals. Unlike many of the important men who lent their names to the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, Roget, wrote Knight, was "a diligent attendant on its committees; a vigilant corrector of its proofs. Of most winning manners, 42 he was as beloved as he was respected." When the Society was founded, Roget was deeply concerned with Paley's Natural Theology, having in 1825 and 1826 delivered a series of lec­ tures based on Paley1s concept that "those proofs of infinite wisdom and benevolence which are displayed in every part of the universe, are nowhere so eminently conspicuous as in the 43 structure and economy of creation." It is most probable that Roget was influential in the Society's decision to

41 Proceedings of the Royal Society, XVIII (June 17, 1869- June 16, 1870), xxxvii-xi. 42 Knight, Passages, II, 123. 43 Proceedings of the Roval Society, op. cit., p. xxvii. 132

sanction a number of treatises that illustrated the princi- 44 pies set down by Paley. Moreover, it is almost certain

that Roget threw his weight on the side of the philosophical

radicals in the majority of controversial matters that con­

fronted the Committee.

In addition to the main core of philanthropists on the

Committee, there were several men of stature who undoubtedly

made a significant contribution to the operation of the

Society. Among the latter group was Dr. Edward Maltby, who

later became Bishop of Chichester and then of Durham. Maltby,

however, was not one of those divines who insisted "upon re­

ligious topics being thrust upon secular." Nor, says Knight, 45 did he "stickle for the due honour of the Established Church."

Had he done so, he would have been opposed not only by the

philosophical radicals, but also by Isaac Lyon Goldsmid, a

wealthy Jew who had for years actively supported the philan- 46 thropic projects of both religious and secular organizations.

44 Perhaps Brougham had to be convinced also. In 1827, he was so critical of Paxton's new edition of Paley1s book (See Edinburgh Review XLVI (October 1827), 524) that even Knight was astonished when later, Brougham asked him to an­ nounce Paley1s Natural Theology with Notes and Introductory Discourse by Henry Lord Brougham. Passages, II, 48. ^Knight, Passages, II, 124. 46 H. Hale Bellot, University College, London, 1826-1926 (London, 1929), pp. 17, 30. 133

This, then, was the caliber of men who either wrote or suggested writers for the Useful Knowledge Society's trea­ tises and passed judgment on the manuscripts submitted. In 1831, the Westminster Review characterized the Committee as a group of "All parties congregated under one name— the best friends of the people, their bitterest enemies— the staunch­ est advocates for a free press, the most virulent opponents to all political discussion: Radicals, Tories, Whigs, High Churchmen, Dissenters, are all banded together for the pro­ posed purpose of communicating knowledge. . . . What was to 47 be done with this ill assorted assembly?" In spxte of its ill-assorted appearance, the Committee was rather careful

John Kitto's account of passing his book through the Committee reveals the manner in which the group functioned: "I find that passing a book through the Committee, must be a great bore to poor authors. Six copies have been sent out to different members of the Committee. Two of them have come back with remarks, corrections, etc. I do not know whether I am to expect others; but it is understood that the person who does not send back his copy has no objections to the publication, and sees nothing to correct. In giving me the two copies to see if I could make any use of the remarks and suggestions which had been written on the margin, Mr. Knight told me I was not bound to adopt the suggestions or corrections they contained, end he hoped I would not be of­ fended at the manner in which some of them might be expressed. There was some need of this encouragement; for although both of the gentlemen like the book, and think it interesting, and calculated to be useful, one of them is very captious about details; and seeing things only in a "dry light," would scrape off much of the gilding and sugar by which I have, with no small pains, sought to make solid information attractive to children." Letter to Henry Woollcombe, esq. April 12, 1835. Jonathan E. Ryland, ed., Memoirs of John Kitto (New York, 1852), II, 184-185. 134

about who was elected into the inner circle. An outstanding case is that of Thomas Arnold, who in 1831 wanted more than anything else to become a member of the Committee, but his rather strenuous efforts to gain election were futile. Arnold went so far as to offer a larger sum than would "be thought sane to mention" if only the Committee would allow him to assist in writing Cottage Evenings in the Society's 48 The Working Man1s Companion series. But desperately as the Useful Knowledge Society needed financial support, Arnold's offer was rejected for an obvious reason. The head­ master of Rugby was avowedly intent on doing exactly what the Useful Knowledge Society went to greet pains to avoid; namely, to make the Society's publications Christian. A few years later, Arnold failed to have several of his articles accepted by the Penny Magazine although the Society published some of his essays in its Quarterly Journal of Education. At first, the Useful Knowledge Society concentrated on the kind of treatises Brougham had suggested in Practical Observations. Little thought was apparently given the matter of tailoring various works to meet the varied reading skills and intellectual levels of "the people." Although many of the treatises were written in a style comparable to that of

48 Arthur P. Stanley, The Life and Correspondence of Thomas Arnold, 5th ed. (London 1845), I, 303-308. 135 a modern high-school textbook, it was difficult always to present complex technical knowledge in language that semi­ literate readers could understand. For example, Dr. Lard- ner1s treatise on Mechanics began very simply: "Whatever communicates or tends to communicate motion to a body, is called force. The object of Mechanics in the most extended sense of the term, is the investigation of the effects of forces on bodies." Before long, however, the unsuspecting reader was hit with the following law: If two forces acting on the same point in the direc­ tions of the sides of a parallelogram be portional in their intensities to these sides, their united effects will be equivalent to that of a single force acting on the same point in the direction of the di­ agonal of that parallelogram,.^nd whose intensity is proportional to the diagonal. A passage in the treatise on Polarization of Light was even more abstruse: The increment of the square of the velocity of the extraordinary ray produced by the action of two axes of double refraction is equal to the diagonal of a parallelogram, whose sides are the increments of the square of the velocity produced by each axis separate ly, and calculated by the law Huyghens, and whose angle is double of the angle formed by the two planes passing through the ray and the respective axes.^O

49D. Lsrdner, Mechanics, Treatise I, The Library of Useful Knowledge (London, 1829), pp. 1-3. The author admits in a footnote that "This theorem admits of rigorous demon­ stration independently of the experimental proof which we have given." S^Sir D. Brewster, Polarisation of Light, Library of Useful Knowledge (London, 1829), p. 26. 136

It was only natural that before long complaints began to filter in to the Committee that the Library of Useful Knowl- 51 edge was too difficult for its readers. One disturbed mem­ ber of the Society estimated that nine-tenths of the laboring classes throughout the country could not read the treatises. Brougham, in a letter to Coates, wrote that his informants in Newcastle and elsewhere greatly strengthened his opinion that 52 "more easy treatises were absolutely necessary." At the same time, the public was growing critical of the content of the Society's publications. John Stuart Mill, for example, wrote in The Spirit of the Age: "The moral and social truths of greatest importance to mankind are few, brief, and easily

intelligible; and happy will be the day on which these shall begin to be circulated among the people, instead of second- rate treatises on the Polarisation of Light, and on the

51 There was also criticism that the treatises of the Useful Knowledge Society reflected the biases of the members of the Committee. Brougham answered this charge in the Edin­ burgh Review, XLVI (June 1827), 226: "But it is said that the opinions prevalent among the leading members of the Society will tinge the treatises published under their patron­ age . We trust that all the facts will be unfolded on each subject; that the various opinions will be fairly stated which divide reasoners upon disputed points; that the argu­ ments advanced in support of each will be fully explained; and that the reader will, in this way, be enabled to judge for himself, after being made acquainted with the merits of each controversy. . . . But there can be no harm in each author stating his opinion,--nor the Society announcing its preference of one side of any question discussed. ..." 52Letter from Coates to Brougham, September 28. Quoted in New, p. 356. 137 53 Rigidity of Cordage." As a result of such criticism, the Society's Prospectus for 1829 included a plan (formulated a year earlier) for the "gradation in the treatises upon sub­ jects of difficulty, so that most readers of every class in respect of previous requirements, may be suited. This concern over the difficulty of its treatises led

to the Society's decision to publish the Library of Entertain­ ing Knowledge, the first volume of which appeared in 1829.

In explaining the need for this Library, the Committee announced it had come to realize that many people could not

be coaxed into reading anything that would not amuse or enter­ tain. Fortunately, a great amount of information could be conveyed in a manner both amusing and entertaining. The Society, therefore, did not consider it necessary or even desirable to confine its publications to "dry exposition either of the practical rules, or scientific principles: whatever matter connected with the subject is interesting and amusing, should be intermingled with more solid parts of the 55 argument." The Library of Entertaining Knowledge was divided into

53 The Spirit of the Age, ed. Frederick A. Von Hayek (Chicago, 1942), p. 27. ^^Edinburgh Review, L (October 1829), 183. For a bibli­ ography of the Society's publications up to 1843, see appen­ dix. 55 Ibid., p. 188. 138

four classes. Class I, devoted to natural history, contained

the Menageries, the first volume dealing with the dog, the wolf, the hyena, the lion, the tiger, the camel, the llama, the giraffe, the antelope, and the deer. The entire second volume of Menageries was devoted to the elephant. Other natural history treatises bore such titles as Birds; Insects; and Vegetable Substances, the latter being divided into vol­ umes on "Timber Trees and Fruits," "Substances Used for the Food of Man," and "Substances Used in Manufactures." Class II of the Library of Entertaining Knowledge, embodying his­ tory and biography, contained treatises on Paris, and its Historical Scenes; The Pursuit of Knowledge Under Difficul­

ties; Criminal Trials; Historical Parallels; Secret Socie­ ties; and Distinguished Men of Modern Times. Class III con­ sisted of works on art and antiquities: Pompeii; British Mu-

seum-Egyptian Antiguities; British Museum— Elgin Marbles; British Museum— Townley Marbles, and History of British Cos­ tume s. Finally, Class IV, devoted to descriptive geography, treated the New Zealanders, The Hindoos, the Backwoods of Canada, The Modern Egyptians, and The Chinese. The entire Library of Entertaining Knowledge was one of the direct antecedents of the Penny Magazine, but the contri­ bution of George Craik's Pursuit of Knowledge Under Difficul­ ties is particularly significant. Craik expressed his views on self-help in a letter to Knight in 1829: 139

. . . We want a category which shall embrace, for example, the cases at once of Lady Mary Mortley Montague, or Franklin, of all, in short, who, whether in humble or high life, have pursued knowl­ edge with ardour, and distinctly evidenced, by the seductions they resisted or the difficulties they encountered and overcome for her sake, that she was the first object of their affections; and that the pursuit of her, even without reference to either the wealth, the power, or the distinction, which she might bring them, was, in their estimation, its own sufficient reward.56 Brougham agreed in principle with Creik, but thought that the Useful Knowledge Society should confine its treatises to "men who have greatly altered their situation by force of merit." In Brougham's opinion, the Society should concentrate on "self-exaltation" rather than self-education, although the two often coincided. Brougham and Craik resolved the matter by agreeing to change the title of the treatises from "The Love of Knowledge overcoming Difficulties" to the title under which it appeared. So well did this theme fit the philosophy of the Penny Magazine that it became the guiding principle for the selection of many of its biographies, and in 1841, Craik was asked to write a series of essays under that heading which the Penny Magezine published from time to time. Perhaps the use of the word "entertaining" in the title of this Library was unfortunate. The idea obviously originated with Brougham, who considered a treatise on insects as "amus­ ing as e novel." In his Discourse of the Objects, Advantages,

56 Knight, Passages, II, 133-134. 140 and Pleasures of Science,, Brougham expressed his belief that

There is something positively agreeable to all men, to all at least whose nature is not grov­ elling and base, in gaining knowledge for its own sake. . . . It is pleasing to examine the nature of a new instrument, or the habits of an unknown animal. . . . The mere gratification of curiosity; the knowing more today than we knew yesterday; the understanding what before seemed obscure and puzzling; the contemplation of general truths; and the comparing together of different things,— is an agreeable occupa­ tion of the mind. . . .^7 Many people, however, opposed the Library of Entertaining Knowledge merely because it was intended to amuse and enter­ tain. They considered it a capitulation to the "mania for frivolity and excitement" which had infiltrated many forms of popular literature. Samuel Smiles quotes Douglas Jerrold as once observing; "I am convinced the world will get tired (at least I hope so) of this eternal guffaw about things. After all, life has something serious in it. It can not be all a comic history of humanity. Some men would, I believe, write a Comic Sermon on the Mount. Think of a Comic History of England, the drollery of Alfred, the fun of Sir Thomas More. 58 . . ." A Committee member who objected to the Library of Entertaining Knowledge wrote Brougham that if the Society had to provide amusement for those who thought the original library too difficult, the chairman should form a "Society

57Library of Useful Knowledge (London 1829), p. 5. 58 Samuel Smiles, Self-Help (London, 1958), p. 317. First published in 1859. 141

for the Diffusion of Funny Knowledge. . . . and let those 59 gentlemen have their fun to themselves." In spite of such criticism, the Committee did not lose faith in the effective­ ness of sugar-coated knowledge, and it was this faith that was soon to make possible the Society's sponsorship of an "entertaining" publication such as the Penny Magazine. The Society's almanacs ranked second in importance to the Library of Entertaining Knowledge as an immediate fore­ runner of the Penny Magazine. In 1827, Knight called the Committee’s attention to the "nonsense and impertinence" con­ tained in the popular almanacs of the day, especially those published by the Stationer's Company, which held a legal monopoly on such works. The Useful Knowledge Society immedi­ ately became disturbed by the amount of "religious bigotry" mixed with the other objectionable matter in these publica­ tions. Brougham, writing in the Edinburgh, cautioned that "There is hardly a farm-house but harbours some portion of such trash; and it has been well observed, that the highly respectable and opulent company of Stationers would do well, as they are the owners of the whole works, to reform most in­ decorous parts, and gradually lead the taste of the 1,800,000 persons who purchase them, into a better channel, by providing

59 Quoted in New, p. 355. In 1837, A Parody upon the History of Greece, satirizing the Society's publication of the same name, appeared in London. The title page states that the treatise was published by "The Society for the Confusion of Useful Knowledge." 142 60 good new publications." A sub-committee was formed to advise on the nature and content of an almanac that could be published under the auspices of the Useful Knowledge Society. The resulting pro­ posals were "That the subjects selected shall be generally useful, either for present information or future reference," and "That the knowledge conveyed shall be given in the most condensed and explicit manner, so as to be valuable to every 51 class of reader." In January, 1823, the first issue of the British Almanac was published, priced et 2s. 3d. stitched. In spite of the high price resulting from an excessively heavy tax, the British Almanac sold 35,000 copies during its first year. The title page of the 1828 volume reveals the enormous range of this publication, accounting somewhat, per­ haps, for its popularity; The British Almanac, for the year MDCCCXXVTII, Being Bissextile, or Leap-Year; containing The Calendar of Remarkable Days and Terms; Anniver­ saries of Greet Events, and of the Births and Deaths of Eminent Men; Remarks of the Weather, Founded Upon Science and Experience; Tables of Astronomical Facts and Phenomena; A Table of Duration of Sunlight and Moonlight. . .; Useful Remarks of Practical Importance; Directions for the Management of a Farm, and a Garden and Or­ chard, and for the Preservation of Health; with a Miscellaneous Register of Information, Con­ nected with Government, Legislation, Commerce and Education.

60XLVII (January 1828), 131. f i 1 "Preliminary Observations," A Companion to the Almanac, I (1823), 1. 143

So successful was this venture that it was followed almost immediately by a Companion to the Almanac which sup­ plemented the regular publication "in order to afford room for conveying more full information" upon many subjects only 6 2 touched upon in the main volume. The Companion was divided into a number of departments: "The Days of the Calendar" provided the dates of important Church and secular observan­ ces such as Epiphany, Plough Monday, Terms, and Dog Days; a separate calendar listed Jewish feasts and observances. A department called "Natural Appearances of the Year" presented a romantic description of the changing seasons. For April, 1828, for example, the Companion to the Almanac observed that "There is nothing in the appearances of nature, which strikes even the most careless observer with such pleasure and sur­ prise as the suddenness with which, in this month, the trees put on their green and flowery garments. . . ," and for July of the seme year, the Companion pointed out that "The lover of nature has now abundant objects to excite pleasure and gratitude, in his morning or evening walks. The meadows, whose produce has been carried, are now usually crowded with cattle, who range at liberty over their luxuriant

"Preliminary Observations, 11 A Companion to the Almanac, I (1828), 1. 144 63 pasturage. ..." And finally, a section under the head­ ing of "Useful Directions and Remarks" furnished helpful hints for both the lower elements of society and all who attended the "physical and moral improvement of their hum­ bler neighbors." Here the poor were advised to "reflect often" on the nature of their being and the duties imposed by the laws of the Creator, "which cannot be neglected or evaded without future suffering." The indigent were remind­ ed that the masses must live by labor and that the wealth of the rich stemmed also from labor (the Companion omitted stating whose labor). In a lighter vein, the workingman was advised in such matters as sending his wife to market instead of going himself. "Women," thought the Companion, "are less subject to the temptation of drinking than men. They are better bargainers than men; they are quick in detecting de- 64 fects and small differences in goods." By 1830, however, the working classes had more on their minds than detecting small defects in the few articles they were able to purchase. The Paris Revolution had placed Louis Philippe, "the Citizen King," on the throne, and a feeling of hope ran through the working classes of England, who since the turn of the century and even before had

63 Ibid., pp. 33, 36.

64Ibid., pp. 107-108. 145

clamored for a voice in government. "No imported plague ever produced such rapid effects, or spread so widely," recalled 65 Lord Campbell. Samuel Smiles observed in his Autobiography: "The three days at Paris in July 1830 had wakened up Europs, and excited a general desire for change. In England and Scotland there was much distress. . . . There were rick-burn- ings in Kent and the southern counties, machine-breaking in the manufacturing districts, . . . and distress among the 66 working-classes generally." On March 1, 1831, Lord Russell introduced a measure of Parliamentary Reform which further aroused the working classes and brought a wave of reaction from the aristocracy. Petitions poured into Parliament from both sides; political unions sprang up like weeds. On Monday, November 7, the National Union of Working Classes met and ratified a Declara­ tion of Grievances of the Working Classes of London. This Declaration, drawn up by William Lovett and James Watson, read in part: That all hereditary distinctions of birth are unnatural, and opposed to the equal rights of man; and therefore ought to be abolished. That every man of the age of twenty-one years, of sound mind, and not tainted by crime, has a right . . . to a free voice in determining the nature

65 Lives of Lyndhurst and Brougham, p. 364.

66(New York, 1905), p. 37. 146

of the laws, the necessity for public contribu­ tions, the appropriation of them, their amount, mode of assessment, and duration. That in order to secure the unbiased choice of proper persons for representatives, the mode of voting should be by ballot, that intellectual fitness and moral worth, and not property, should be the qualification for representatives. . . .

We declare these principles to be essential to our protection as working men— and the only sure guar­ antee for the securing to us the proceeds of our labor. . . .67 The unstamped press again came to the forefront as it had in past times of political unrest. Several violently anti-government papers appeared, among which were the Radi­ cal, the Republican, and perhaps the most disturbing of all to the government, Hetherington's Poor Man1s Guardian, a weekly with the avowed purpose of trying the power of might against right. By the end of 1831, no fewer than thirty-two unstamped journals were published in London. But there were middle-class voices raised also in support of the radi­ cal cause. Even while his father sat on the Committee for the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, wrestling

67 William Lovett, Life and Struggles of William Lovett in His Pursuit of Bread, Knowledge and Freedom (London, 19 20), pp. 74-75. Originally published in 1876. 6 ft Elie Halevy, A History of the English People, trans. E. I. Watkins(London, 1949-1952), III, 18-19. 147 69 with means to calm the masses, John Stuart Mill was arguing in the Spirit of the Age that "power and fitness for power have altogether ceased to correspond," and therefore the aristocracy was no longer fit to rule. As Mill saw it, this condition could only be resolved by granting power to the classes "which new circumstances had best qualified to 70 govern." So blatant were radical journals in denouncing both the government and establishment that in 1831 the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge belatedly noticed what it called "insults upon the faith by publications of the most pernicious kind, full of blasphemy and ribaldry." To combat this irreligious tendency, a Committee of General Literature was formed and entrusted with publishing in the name of the Church "all kinds of useful and interesting works, which would

gg James Mill wrote to Brougham in a letter dated Sept. 3, 1832: "Nothing can be conceived more mischievous than the doctrines which have been preached to the common people, at Birmingham and elsewhere. At a late meeting of the Union At­ wood held forth for hours, giving an exaggerated description of the misery of the people, from low wages; then telling them that the only cause of low wag^ is the government, and whenever government does its duty, wages will be high. . . . The newspapers should suppress all knowledge of these ras­ cally meetings, by abstaining from the mention of them. . . . The nonsense to which your Lordship alludes about the rights of the labourer to the whole produce of the country, is the mad nonsense of our friend Hodgskin." Bain, pp. 363- 364. For Hodgskin1s connection with Mill and Brougham, see p. above. 70 pp. XXX, XXXI. 148

,serve to counteract the mischievous papers in c i r c u l a t i o n .71 x

Among the men on this Committee were William Otter, a friend of Coleridge and the first principal of King's College, London; George Chandler, Dean of Chichester, the chairman of

the group; and John William Parker, who became the publisher

of the Saturday Magazine. The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, com­ posed of the “conservative" middle-class wing of the radical movememt, believed that the tide of extreme radicalism could be stemmed by diverting the minds of the working classes away from revolutionary politics and by presenting them with a

clearer picture of the conservative view than they had thus

far received. The Committee agreed with Knight that if the government could hold firm for awhile, and the good sense of

the upper and middle classes, who after all had property at

stake, could preserve tranquility, “the ignorant dissemina­ tors of sedition and discontent will be beaten from the field by opponents of better principles who will direct the 72 secret of popular writing to a useful and righteous purpose." But certainly if such a philosophy had any substance, the time had come to put it to test. Imbued with Messianic zeal,

^Allen and McClure, pp. 154, 190. 7 2Knight, Passages, I, 261. Knight expressed this opinion in 1821. 149 the Useful Knowledge Society hastened to publish "The Work­ ing Man's Companion" series (1831)/ which included Charles Knight's The Results of Machinery and The Rights of Industry Addressed tc the Working Men of the United Kingdom; Dr. John Conolly's Cottage Evenings, which caught the attention of 73 Dr. Arnold, and The Physician, the first treatise of which dealt with "The Cholera." During this period, William Chambers, a young bookseller in Edinburgh, noted the growth of cheap publications "mostly worthless and ephemeral, but being popular among the 'masses' — a word which had come into vogue." Chambers had long waited for a "favourable gale" to assist him in taking advan­ tage of the growing taste for popular literature so that he could lead it in the direction of elevation and instruction rather than that of "mere passing amusement." 74 In his shop, Chambers came into contact with a large variety of popular reading matter and observed that most of it frequently did not reach the stalls on schedule. This experience taught him early that "any irregularity in the appearance of periodicals

^Dr. Arnold wrote William Tooke of June 18, 1831: "This very work, the 'Cottage Evenings,1 might be made every thing that I wish if it were but decidedly Christian. I delight in its plain and sensible tone, and it might be made the channel of all sorts of information, useful and entertaining. ..." Stanley, p. 307. 74William Chambers, Story of a Long and Busy Life (Edin­ burgh, 1882), pp. 30-31. 150 is generally fatal." Moreover, Tne noticed that existing pop­ ular journals were made up primarily of plagiarized and dis­ jointed extracts, clippings from "floating literature," old stories, and stale jokes. Chambers saw in these publications a "perversion of what, if rightly conducted, might become a 75 powerful engine of social improvement." William took the idea to his brother Robert, who refused to have anything officially to do with the project although he consented to occasionally contribute papers to his brother's undertaking. In January, 1832, William issued a prospectus for Chambers1s Edinburgh Journal, and the first number was published on Saturday, February 4, at l^d. per copy. 76 The editor's opening "Address to the Reader" stated that the new publication was designed to take advantage of the "universal appetite for instruction" which then existed. Every Saturday night, the new journal would make it possible for the poorest laborer in the country to purchase with his humble wages "a meal of healthful, useful and agreeable men­ tal instruction." In a candid evaluation of existing groups for the diffusion of knowledge, Chambers expressed his con­ viction that the people had never been offered knowledge

75 William Chambers, Memoirs of Robert Chambers with Autobiographic Reminiscences of William Chambers (Edinburgh, 1872), p. 225. 7^Chambers, Story of a Long and Busy Life, p. 31. 151

"under its most cheering and captivating aspect." Although "associations established under the advantages og enormous capital ^ and_7 the influence of baronial title" had been beneficial# they had fallen short of the goal, mainly because they attached "the interests of political or ecclesiastical corporations to the course of instruction or reading." By carefully avoiding the pitfalls of organizations that pre­ ceded him. Chambers hoped to provide the kind of reading that was essential and above all acceptable to all political and 78 religious persuasions. Chambers1s Journal was an immediate success. Sales in Scotland rose to 30,000 copies within "a few days." With the third number, copies were consigned to a London agent, and weekly circulation climbed to 50,000, remaining there for some time without the benefit of widespread advertisement. Chambers attributed the success of his Journal to the fact that newspapers sold at 7d. and his paper, containing an equal amount of reading matter, was priced at three half­ pence and therefore was considered "a great bargain in read­ ing." But of greater importance, "It found its way to nooks and corners of the country to which no such papers had ever

In 1830, Brougham received the title of Baron, be­ coming Henry Lord Brougham. 78 Chambers1s Edinburgh Journal, I (February 4, 1832), 1. 152 penetrated, the instructive and entertaining nature of the 79 articles making it a special favourite with young people." Meanwhile, the public was steadily losing interest in the treatises of the Useful Knowledge Society. The demand for the Library of Entertaining Knowledge, on which a few years earlier the Society had staked so much hope, had been disappointing: whereas the first treatises in this series had sold around 23,000 copies, sales of the eighteenth trea- 80 tise had barely reached 6,400. Matthew Hill, like so many others, had watched carefully the development of radical publications and was prepared to exhibit a number of penny and twopenny pbulications he had gathered that contained matter either "Political, Religious, 81 or Critical and sometimes objectionable." Hill suggested that the Useful Knowledge Society begin its own penny weekly which would exclude politics and religion. To give the matter further consideration, a Penny Publications Committee was formed, consisting of Hill, Thomas Falconer, David Jar- dine, Henry B. Ker, George Long, John Wrottesley, B. H. Mal­ kin, W. H. Ord, and John Ward, the nephew of Thomas Arnold.

79 Chambers, Story of a Long and Busy Life, pp. 32-33 80l ^T Jarman, p. 60. 81 ‘ibid., p. 64. 153 After carefully examining a number of cheap publications, the sub-committee concluded that even the best of them were filled with useless matter although they enjoyed a circula- 82 tion of almost 30,000 copies weekly. It was therefore recommended to the general body that the Useful Knowledge Society enter the periodical field to ''direct the taste for

reading into proper channels." 83 Apparently, the exact nature of the publication was not immediately decided upon.

There is little doubt that Matthew Hill was chiefly responsible for the sub-committee1s recommendation being

Q 2 A. C. Cherry, "A Life of Charles Knight" (unpublished thesis, University of London, 1943), p. 20, and Jarman, p. 64. A circulation of 30,000 was another one of the Society^s stock estimates. For example, in 1834 Hill stated: "Those ,/publica- tions7 tainted with obscene or irreligious matter, or had nothing but frivolity to recommend them, scarcely reached a combined sale of 30,000." By this time, however, he claimed that the combined circulation of the Penny Magazine, the Sat­ urday Magazine, the Mirror, and other magazines and tracts of the same class sold 500,000 copies a week. Handsard, XXIII (May 22, 1834), col. 1217. 83Ibid. In a speech delivered in October, 1833 (excerpts printed in Chambers1s Journal, III (February 1, 1834), pp. 1-2) Knight said that from time to time he had collected all the penny and twopenny sheets published in London in a single day. He was by no means convinced that all of them were unsatisfac­ tory in the eyes of those "who ardently desire that the general ability to read should be directed into proper channels." Knight found that a large number of these works were instruc­ tive as well as amusing. Some indeed "were devoted_to frivo­ lous and injuriously exciting subjects; and a few /were^ posi­ tively dangerous— scoffing at sacred things— and reviling those institutions for the security of property. . . . These circumstances furnish evidence. . . that the tree of knowledge may bear fatal as well as precious fruit." 154 carried out in the form of the Penny Magazine. Shortly after­ wards. Hill and Knight were walking to London together from their respective homes on Hampstead Heath. Their conversa­ tion turned to the dangerous principles and coarse language of the cheap radical publications that enjoyed such enthusi­ astic reception among the working classes. "Let us," exclaimed Hill, "see what something cheap and good can accom- 84 plishl Let us have a Penny Magazine 1" Although the initial idea was Hill's, Charles Knight supplied the impetus necessary to get the project underway. In an 1858 letter to the Durham

Chronicle, Hill wrote: . . . I suggested the Penny Magazine, and fur­ nished its title; but that suggestion would have fallen to the ground had it not been made to Charles Knight, who combined all the endow­ ments essential to the successful issue of such an experiment— he taking upon himself all the financial responsibilities, and yet giving up a considerable sum out of the profits to the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowl­ edge, in whose name and under whose general superintendence the publication went forth.®5 Some members of the Society thought a penny publication beneath the dignity of the organization. One gentleman of the old Whig school muttered over and over again as the matter was under discussion, "It's very awkward," but Brougham, "who

84 Passages, II, 180. 85 Davenport-Hill, p. 81, note. 155 was not accustomed to let awkward things stand in his way," heartily approved of the "experiment," and the project was 86 carried forward with enthusiasm. Charles Knight was ap­ pointed editor and publisher, but the general superintendence of the Penny Magazine was entrusted to the Penny Publications Committee, augmented by William Allen, Captain F. Beaufort, William Coulson, R. H. Malkin, J. Whitshaw, and G. B. Green- ough. At least three members of this sub-committee were responsible for the examination and approval of each number 87 of the publication before it went to press. The first number of the Penny Magazine appeared on the bookstalls on March 31, 1832. Published every Saturday, it consisted of eight folio pages of approximately 7 1/8 by 11 V8 inches. Chambers 1s Journal, in comparison, measured approximately 9 by 12 inches. The economy-minded reader did, perhaps, get more for his money in Chambers 1s than he did in the Penny 88 Magazine. Chambers 1s Journal carried no illustrations, but the Society's paper, like the Saturday Magazine, was

86 Knight, Passages, II, 181. 87 Cherry, p. 290. 8 8 Measuring the worth of a publication by its bulk appears to have been a practice of the period. For example, a correspondent, arguing in 1834 for the superiority of the Athenaeum, claimed that in the monthly part, "We give 959 lines for one penny, while the Diffusion Society in their penny prodigy, give but 7101" Athenaeum, February 15, 1834, p. 131. 156 copiously illustrated. For the first few months, woodcuts

for the Penny Magazine were borrowed from the Library of En­

tertaining Knowledge. The Useful Knowledge Society engaged illustrators exclusively for the magazine only after it be­ came apparent that its miscellany could stand on its own 89 financial feet. In 1841, both Chambers1s and the Penny Magazine began a new series printed on smaller sheets, with the Chambers brothers reducing the size of their Journal to the approximate

size of the new Penny Magazine. Although the purchaser of Chambers1s Journal may have

received a few more words for his money, the reader of the Useful Knowledge Society's paper came closer to getting a 7d.

newspaper at the bargain price of a penny. The Penny Maga­

zine contained material so close to "the ill-defined line that separated the essayist from the newspaper writer" that Knight could not breathe easily until the Solicitor of Stamps had examined the first two numbers and declared that the pub­ lication contained nothing to make it liable to the stamp 90 duty. Since the Penny Magazine was technically a newspaper

89 Passages, II, 90 Passages, II, 18. The duty on paper at this time cost the Penny Magazine 7,000 annually. (The newspaper tax would have added to the price per copy of the Penny Magazine, thereby ruining the concept of a penny paper. 157

under 60 George III/ rumors spread that it was exempted from the newspaper tax because of a "judicious hint" from Brougham,

who in 1830 had become Lord Chancellor. But since other cheap publications on the order of the Penny Magazine (Cham­ bers 1s Journal, the Saturday Magazine, and Robert Owen's paper, the Crisis) were not taxed, it is unlikely that special

intercession was necessary for the Penny Magazine, a paper whose stated purpose was to divert attention from the kind of news the government considered dangerous. Furthermore, the Solicitor of Stamps had the authority to declare any publica­ tion untaxable that he so desired. Section 14 of the Act merely required the officer of stamps who declared a paper "as not coming under the true intent and meaning of the act to give, if demanded, a certificate that the offer had been

made. If sixty per cent or more of the Committee had not been

in Parliament, the exemption of the Penny Magazine from the newspaper tax would have gone unnoticed, but circumstances

being as they were, a tempest of protest broke over the heads of the Society. The New Monthly Magazine thought that the delicate relation of the Penny Magazine to the law was

91 Collet Dobson Collet, History of the Taxes on Knowledge (London, 1889), I, 27-30. Under 60 George III, a newspaper was defined as any paper of two sheets or less, priced under 6d. and published more frquently than once every twenty-six days. See Hansard, Series I, XXLI (1819), cols. 1678-1690. 158 ludicrous and pointed out that although the editors seemed "so mighty anxious to avoid Politics," they could not avoid printing news, and news was as much against the law as poli­ tics. The law, the New Monthly pointed out, said that "in­ telligence" must not be sold under sevenpence. "But our lawgivers themselves sell intelligence for a penny, and turn the law upon others. The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge have his Majesty's Ministers for Members— they send out their own Penny Paper to-day, and prosecute another man's Penny Paper to-morrow." 92 Bulwer, in an 1834 Parliamentary speech opposing the newspaper stamp duty, attacked the Society and the Penny Magazine on the same grounds: . . . But how much worse was it, . . .if they who attacked cheap knowledge were themselves members of a society for the diffusion of cheap knowledge1 If it was with a penny magazine in one hand that they attempted to strike down the penny newspapers with the other, it was carry­ ing into the State the jealousies of trade? it was saying, "We will give you information; but whoever else gives it to you, him we will pun­ ish and destroy; we will tell you about animaLs and insects, and give you pictures of ruins and churches, with all such infantine trumpery— the hobbyhorse and rattle of education; but whoever unfolds to you the secret of your laws, the machinery of your State, the mighty events that inspire the age and animate the world, him

9 2 New Monthly Magazine. XXXIX (December 1832), 427. 159

we have the Stamp Commissioners to prose­ cute. . . .^3 But anxiety over the tax law was not the only headache for Knight and the Penny Publications Committee during the infancy of the Penny Magazine. Many booksellers were afraid to handle the Society's publication because it violated a law requiring the printer's name on the first and last pages of all such publications. Soon after this oversight was called to Knight’s attention, the statute was modified, but not before he had recalled the entire stock of the Penny Magazine that was in violation of the law.94 Moreover, after a few numbers of the Penny Magazine had been published, the Committee realized the difficulty of meeting weekly delivery schedules in outlying districts. Because the Penny Magazine was an unstamped publication, it could not be delivered by regular post as the newspapers were. For the convenience of readers in the provinces, therefore, the Useful Knowledge Society authorized sewing the weekly numbers together to be sold as monthly parts. But since some months contained four

9^Hansard, XXIII (May 22, 1834), col. 1198. Matthew Hill came to the defence of the Penny Magazine against the charge of trumpery. He apologized if the Penny Magazine were such, for the publication was his own project. Hill thought, how­ ever, that the Society should be given credit for what it had done. "The Society taking the law as it was, had availed itself of all the advantages it could command, to as great extent as possible." Ibid., cols. 1216-1217.

^Knight, Passages, II, 185. 160

Saturdays and others five, the price of the monthly parts would fluctuate if the price were based on the individual numbers each contained. To correct this discrepancy, a Mon­ thly Supplement was begun which appeared with the regular number on the last Saturday of the month. No matter how many penny numbers each monthly part contained, the price was set at sixpence. Customers, nevertheless, were required to pay 8d. annually for the wrappers in which the Supplements were delivered. Bound volumes of twelve Monthly Supplements sold at six shillings. Initial public acceptance of the Penny Magazine was en­ couraging. Even before the first copy appeared in the book­ stalls, Francis Place, whom Knight characterized as having more influence with the working classes than anyone in London, requested copies of the Prospectus and had them distributed in places where workingmen congregated. 95 In July, 1832, a member of the Committee traveling on business for the Society reported that the Penny Magazine had excited extraordinary interest wherever he went, and he was pleased to learn from booksellers that as the sale of the Society's publication in­ creased, there was a corresponding decrease in the sale of 96 "pernicious" publications. Before the year ended, the

95 Ibid., p. 181. 96Letter from Thomas Cahussac to Coates. Cherry, p. 306. 161

Society announced that circulation of monthly parts and weekly numbers of the Penny Magazine had climbed to 200,000 97 copies, and early in 1833, Brougham boasted in the Edin­ burgh Review that "hundreds of thousands crowd round the sources whence the streams of pure and useful knowledge flow; and the numbers who thirst for it, and can thus slake that

OQ thirst, may be reckoned by the million." The penny magazine idea spread half way round the world, with similar publications springing up in France, Hungary, Germany and Portugal. These were not under the superinten­ dence of the Useful Knowledge Society; however, the Society's Penny Magazine was published in the United States, where at first it could not be sold for two cents {the equivalent of a British penny) because of a thirty-three per cent tariff on all foreign books. This tariff was circumvented by

97 The Society threw these figures around rather freely, but they mist be interpreted in light of the language in which they were generally couched. The only way to arrive at the total circulation of weekly numbers plus monthly parts was to figure on the combined total sales of both categories for the entire month. The Minutes of the Penny Publications Committee for 2 May 1832 state that 92,000 copies of the Penny Magazine were sold the first month and the same body reported that the figure had dropped to 89,000 copies by June. In 1855, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alexander Duff Gordon, wrote to Knight requesting the peak circulation of the Penny Magazine. In reply, Knight said that during the third and fourth year, circulation did reach 200,000 copies. During the first year, it only went as high as 100,000 and in 1833, 160,000. Alice Cowes, Charles Knight, a Sketch (London, 1829), pp. 225-226. 98 LVII (April 1833), 241. 162 shipping the stereotype plates of the pages to this country where they were distributed to publishers in New York, Bos- 99 ton, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington, D. C. At the end of 1832, the Society announced that the circulation of the Penny Magazine1s monthly parts alone had reached 80,000 copies and that profits were at a point where the 8d. charge for the wrappers could be dropped. As an added bonus, in months containing only four Saturdays double supplements would be instituted to standardize each monthly part at six numbers. This arrangement for 1833, for example, worked out so that double supplements appeared in January, February, April, May, July, September, October, and December. Each of the remaining four months required only a single sup­ plement. The circulation of a penny journal in sufficiently large quantities to justify its publication financially could not have been hoped for before the invention of the steam press. Two men working at a hand press could produce in the vicinity of 1000 perfect (printed on both sides) sheets a day; with the steam press, they could produce 16,000 or more impressions

" penny Magazine, II (November 30, 1833), 471, and Address of the Committee, 1843, p. 7. I have in my possession a copy of the Penny Magazine with the names and addresses of these publishers on the title page along with Knight's. 163 100 during a similar period. An entirely new vista of print­ ing was opened when the steam press and stereotyping were combined. The latter was a process in which the pages of the text were set up with woodcuts locked in place and cover­ ed with a liquid stucco to about a half inch thickness so that a level surface was formed over the entire sheet. Ammost im­ mediately/ the stucco hardened into a cake which was then separated from the type, leaving a mold-like representation of the page. The cake was baked and placed in an iron pan with holes at each corner. The pan was then covered and im­ mersed in a vat of molten lead, which flowed in at the open­ ings and filled the impressions in the cake, forming a repli- 101 ca of the original type. This process had several advantages over the old system of printing directly from movable type. The type could be distributed immediately for re-use; moreover, several stereo­ type plates could be produced of each page, making it economi­ cally feasible to use a number of presses simultaneously. The plates could be saved for future use, a fact which en­ couraged the re-publication of papers such as the Penny Maga­ zine and the Saturday Magazine in monthly parts and annual

100 Charles Knight, The Old Printer and the Modern Press (London, 1854), pp. 255-256. ^Chambers 1 s Journal, I (September 9, 1832) , 278. 164 volumes- Never before had it been possible to broadcast the words of so few writers to so wide an audience at so little cost. The cheapness enlarged the demand, and the demand led rapidly to a multiplication of the product. After the publi­ cation of Chambers1s Journal and the Penny Magazine, the floodgates opened to penny periodicals. Before the end of 1832, there had appeared the Half-penny Magazine, the Chris­ tian Penny Magazine, the Ladies1 Penny Gazette, the London Penny Journal, the Girls1 and Boys1 Penny Magazine, the True Half-penny Magazine, Dibdin * s Penny Trumpet, the Penny Comic Magazine, the Saturday Magazine, and a host of other inexpen­ sive publications. "I think, sir," wrote Bulwer, "when our ingenious countryman, Joshua Barnes, gave us so notable an account of the Pigmies, he must, in spirit of prophecy, have intended to allegorize the empire of the Penny Periodicals. . . . These little strangers seem . . .of marvellous ferocity and valour; they make great head against their foes— they spread themselves incontinently— they possess the land— they 102 live but a short time, yet are plenteously prolific. . . .,r

102 England and the English, 2nd ed. (London, 1833), II, 114-115. By 1834, Knight estimated that the combined sales of good cheap journals or "those no father would hesitate to put in the hands of children" (The Saturday Magazine, the Christian Tract Society Publications, Chambers1s Journal, Pinnock* s Guide to Knowledge, the Mirror, and the Penny Maga­ zine) outsold the penny sheets of impiety and ribaldry twen­ ty to one or nearly a half million copies weekly to 30,000. Chambers1s Journal, III (Feb. 1, 1834), 2. 165

The most important of these "pigmies" that followed im­

mediately in the wake of the Penny Magazine was the Saturday Magazine/ published under the supervision of the Church-con­

trolled Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. Early in 1832, the General Literature Committee of that organization, which (as we have already noted) was formed during the previ­

ous year to arrive at a means of combatting undesirable read­ ing material, decided upon the publication of the Saturday Magazine. The first number appeared on July 7, 1832, with John W. Parker as publisher. A great share of the Saturday Magazine1s success stemmed from energetic promotion by interested philanthropists. Cor­ respondents were solicited from every large town in the king­ dom, and as many as eighty district committees sent donations 103 to help finance the publication. By 1834, the Christian

Knowledge Society was able to announce that it had wholesale agents in Berlin, Hamburg, Leipsic, Paris Rotterdam, and 104 St. Petersburg.

103 William K. Lowther Clarke, The History of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (London, 1959), p. 182. ^ ^Brougham said in 1858: "The Saturday Magazine . . . reduced our circulation about 40,000, at which we greatly re­ joiced, because this excellent publication found access to quarters which ours could not reach." "On the Diffusion of Knowledge," Transactions of the National Association for the Diffusion of Social Science, 1858, p. 26. 166

The ostensible purpose of the Saturday Magazine was set forth in the introduction to the first number: "Our little Magazine will go forth every Saturday morning, like a skill­ ful gardener, to plant in every corner of the land, within sight of every man's door, and within reach of every man's arm, a tree of knowledge, which growing out of the fear of God, will, under God's blessing. . . bring forth in due sea­ son, the fruits of honour and of power to the nation. ..." This publication joined Chambers's Journal, and as we shall see later, the Penny Magazine, in offering its readers a combination of "innocent amusement" and "sound instruction."

The editors promised no ghost stories; nor would they present readers with "Newgate legends of murder and robbery," unless, of course, such tales were used in moral examples. Above all, knowledge would be made "directly or indirectly subser­ vient to the end of virtue." Under no other circumstances, according to this introduction, would the Saturday Magazine 105 consider knowledge of any value. The tone of the Saturday Magazine was decidedly Chris­ tian and the style direct and familiar, the latter demon­ strating that the Christian Knowledge Society was interested primarily in capturing and holding the attention of semi­ literate readers. The eighth installment of a series bearing

105 i (July 7, 1832), 1-2. 167 the unpretentious title/ "Familiar Illustrations of Natural

Phenomena," may be considered representative of the publica­ tion' s style. The essay begins: There are several causes, which tend constantly to produce changes in the atmosphere. We have already noticed, that the air we breathe is com­ posed of several dry gases, that it also con­ tains a great quantity of the vapour of water in an invisible state, besides the vapour which ex­ ists in the visible form of clouds, and mists; and that currents of wind are always moving some parts of the air over the ocean, and others over large tracts of land, by which they become heated or cooled, and raise greater or less quantities of water by evaporation.106 Knight was wont to call the language of the Christian Knowledge Society's publications "prattle," and perhaps most sophisticated readers of the period who had grown accustomed to the ornate style of some nineteenth-century writers agreed with him. But to the readers for whom the Saturday Magazine was intended (and to modern readers also), its language and style were more than adequate. But because Knight worked under the conviction that the understanding of the common people was capable of a stronger literary diet than was cus- 107 tomarily set before them, the style and content of the Penny Magazine took on a sterner aspect, as we shall see presently.

106IV (January 11, 1834), 11. lO^See above, p. 96. Chapter V

Knight's "Address to the Reader" which appeared in the first number of the Penny Magazine informed the public that the Useful Knowledge Society hoped its miscellany would be­ come "an universal convenience and enjoyment" just as the stagecoach had become, although when it first appeared in the seventeenth century that vehicle had had to overcome strong opposition from the middle class. Knight called at­ tention to the fact that other publications of the Society were intended for persons interested in systematic learning, whereas the Penny Magazine was published for the occasional reader. Its purpose was "to fix the mind upon calmer, and, it may be, purer subjects of thought than the violence of party discussion, or the stimulating details of crime and suffering." The editor was careful to point out that the Society's miscellany was not meant to divert attention from the newspapers; indeed, the Committee considered it the duty of every citizen to acquaint himself with political news. Nevertheless, everyone was not qualified to understand such information. Only the diffusion of sound knowledge could prevent the formation of false judgments in matters of public

168 169 concern. thus, the scope of the Penny Magazine would be broad, consisting of "whatever tends to enlarge the range of observation, to add to the store of facts, to awaken the rea­ son, and lead the imagination into agreeable and innocent trains of thought." The general hope was that such reading would establish a sincere desire for more "elaborate and pre- 1 cise knowledge." Behind these statements were deeper and more subtle objectives. First, the Penny Magazine was intended to incul- culcate the principles of the philosophical radicals in all who might have been in sympathy with violent social and poli­ tical revolution. When the immediate aim was not inculcative, the function of the Penny Magazine, as the stated purpose im­ plied, was to divert the public from literature the Society considered inimical to morality. In these two aspects, the paper spoke not only to the working classes, but to the

1{March 21, 1832), 1. 170 2 community at large. The manner in which these aims were implemented reveals a great deal about the kind of middle- class thinking that motivated the Useful Knowledge Society and ultimately found its way into the Penny Magazine. The men responsible for the Penny Magazine were strongly imbued with the spirit of progress, having been convinced that nature made man so responsive to experience that it was 3 next to impossible to impede his forward progress. The

2 Brougham had the following opinion about the readers of immoral literature: "I think that the appetite for such vile and often indecent trash belongs to the higher classes of the community, extending down to the middling classes. There are some people among the latter who like to read the gossiping stories put in the newspapers. They say, 'Let us see what Lady so and so is doing with Lord so and so.' Also men milli­ ners, ladies' maids, and upper servants are, I believe, great patrons of these sort of publications; and I have been told by many gentlemen and ladies that they have found them in their servants' halls and upper servants' rooms very much. But no doubt it is the drawing-room that furnishes the effec­ tive demand for such writing; and the upper classes are very unjust in blaming the press and its licentiousness, as they are so prone to do on all occasions, seeing that they them­ selves afford the market for the worst sort of scurrility." Taxes on Knowledge (London, 1834), p. 9. 3 I (August 4, 1832), 184. The Westminster Review was foremost in popularizing the cult of progress (See George L. Nesbitt, Benthamite Reviewing (New York, 1934), p. 68), but oddly enough, Carlyle's "Characteristics," from which the following passage was taken, appeared in the Westminster, "What . . . is all this that we hear, for the last generation or two, about the Improvement of the Age, the Spirit of the Age, Destruction of Prejudice, Progress of the Species, and the March of Intellect, but an unhealthy state of self-sentience. . . . That Intellect do march, if possible at double-quick time, is very desirable; nevertheless, why should she turn round at every stride and cry: See you what a stride I have taken." Carlyle's Miscellaneous Writings (New York, 1870), p. 301. 171 history of great truths which had promoted the happiness and welfare of society fell into two periods: the period of dis­ covery and the period of application. The Useful Knowledge Society was willing to concede that the nineteenth century was deficient in the former; however, there was no question that it excelled in the latter, as was evident in the extraordinary energy displayed in carrying out "truths and principles which . . . are for the first time made familiar to the minds of men by their powerful influence on the business and enjoyment of 4 life." The application of steam to the press, nagivation and the railroad, for example, exercised a vast influence on the general destiny of mankind. Indeed, no subject was more gratifying for the Penny Magazine to speculate upon than the triumphs of civilization resulting from a "confederation of the highest elements of social progress— knowledge, commerce, and the facilities of intercourse— over all the kingdoms of the earth." Each new railroad pushed back the barrier that separated ignorance from truth, thereby making possible a 5 "higher moral and physical condition of the community." The Society claimed to see progress even in the areas of aesthetics and spirituality. The patronage system having be­ come outmoded, literature and the arts were free to flourish

4X (January 16, 1841), 22. ^IX (August 8, 1840), 305. 172

in proportion to the leisure and wealth of the masses. More­ over, as the material wealth which God had spread abroad upon the earth became accessible to the poor, religion would gain importance in the affairs of man. "Peace and good-will among men must daily become nearly universal as the bond of society 6 ensures more and more the comfort and happiness of all. . . ." For those who were skeptical of their blessings, the Penny Magazine conveyed this message: "You are not what you were a century or two ago, because you are better informed and more civilized than then; and a century hence your condi­ tion will be so much the better, as you will be more civilized 7 than now." In short, the tenor of the Society's optimism was this: the nineteenth century provided an abundance of physical comforts which were rapidly filtering down to the poorest of mankind, and the march of mind was making visible inroads in­ to the ignorance of the masses. The whole history of the modern world, and especially England, was a narrative of moral, intellectual and economic progress. By implication, the Penny Magazine considered such evidence as the harbinger of a distant millennium. Although the Penny Magazine devoted a good part of its time spreading the doctrine of nineteenth-century optimism,

g XIII (March 30, 1839), 115. 7 I (July 31, 1832), 170. 173 the Useful Knowledge Society was aware that the social picture was not as hopeful in reality as it was in theory. A walk through the manufacturing district of a British city was enough to convince the most bigoted optimist that in spite of advances in science and technology, the condition of the Eng­ lish workingman was far from ideal. The blame, however, was frequently laid at the feet of two temporary impediments: in­ adequate schooling for the lower classes and the often indif­ ferent early education of the middle and upper classes, who p set the standards of taste and manners for those beneath them. According to the Penny Magazine, an ideal education was one which taught the individual . . . his duty to God and his neighbor, which trains him to good principles and good temper; to think of others and not only of himself. It is that education which teaches him . . . his duties as a citizen— to obey the laws always, but to try to get them made as perfect as possi­ ble; to understand that a good and just govern­ ment cannot consult the interests of one particu­ lar class of calling, in preference to another, but must see what is for the good of the whole . . . .And because a great part of all that goes wrong in public or private life arises from ig­ norance and bad reasoning, all that teaches us . . . to reason justly and puts us on our guard against the common tricks of unfair writers and talkers, or the confusions of such as are puzzle-

8 In 1839, Lord Russell concluded that “all the inquiries which have been made show a deficiency in the general educa­ tion of the people which is not in accordance with the charac ter of a civilized and Christian nation." Quoted in R. J. Evans, The Victorian Age: 1815-1914 (London, 1950), p. 196. 174

headed, is a most valuable part of a man's education. . . . And, finally, all that makes a man's mind more active, and the ideas which enter it nobler and more beautiful, is a great addition to his happiness whenever he is alone, and to the pleasure which others de­ rive from his company when he is in society. . . . This is an education which will make a man and a people good, wise and happy.9 The majority of schools, however, did little to impart this or any other kind of knowledge. Schools for the poor were much too scarce. In 1837, the magazine carried a por­ tion of Brougham's speech in the House of Lords attacking the British educational system. Brougham estimated that in Eng-

* land and Wales 40,000 day schools were in operation, with a total capacity of around 1,400,000 pupils, an inadequate por­ tion of the poor children produced by a population of 14 mil­ lion people. The education provided by these schools was so "lamentably defective" that those who attended learned only the simple arts of reading, writing, and account keeping, and those skills were so poorly taught that once the child was out 10 of the schoolroom, his meager learning was soon forgotten. In 1840, the Penny Magazine expressed concern over the fact that in many parts of England less than half the inhabi­ tants could write their names, and according to the latest Report of the Registrar-General, only forty-one out of every

9 I (January 16, 1832), 110.

10VI (August 19, 1837), 315-316. Also Speeches, III, 222. 175

one hundred persons who married could sign their names on the register. The Penny Magazine believed that "when an adult is unable to write, it may be safely assumed the time he has spent at a school has been very brief; and . . . it is safe to conclude that he is incapable of reading with pleasure and advantage to himself." Moreover, little attempt was made in the village schools to call the children's attention to the utility, the beauty or the grandeur of "external objects," and only a slightly better job was done in expanding their ideas

and elevating their taste. "Need we wonder," one writer mused, "if in after life the parish becomes their little world, and that they are incapable of carrying their ideas beyond its limits."^ Of the limited educational facilities available to the lower classes, however, the Penny Magazine considered the old foundation-type charity schools least effective. (Sunday schools were viewed as time filling activity for the young to keep them out of trouble on the Lord's day.) About all these nineteenth-century anomalies did, the paper maintained, was to imbue the poor with a feeling of humility and a sense of obligation to the ladies and gentlemen who provided for

^ I X (October 31, 1840), 417-418. On the other hand, the paper spoke favorably of schools operated by the British and Foreign School Society and the National Society. II (De­ cember 31, 1833), 506. 176 charitable education. 12 The children in such schools were taught songs and recitations about the virtue of being hum­

ble. They were subjected to the indignity of being required to attend public dinners where, dressed in their familiar blue or green uniforms, they were paraded around the room and "indulged with a glass of wine" to drink the health of their benefactors. To make matters worse, the magazine ob­ served, hordes of well-intentioned philanthropists bustled through working-class districts to discover why the children were not in school. When told that the young lacked proper clothing, interested persons raised subscriptions, and each child whose parents guaranteed his attendance at school for a certain number of days was decently outfitted. Thus the poor generally ignored many of the better charity schools in favor 13 of those that had more clothing to distribute. Nor were the men responsible for the Penny Magazine less severe in their criticism of middle-class education. Speaking of education for boys, Knight wrote in his autobiography:

— - Dickens's Uriah Heap, who was a charity-school product, says: Father and me was both brought up at a foundation school for boys; and mother, she was likewise brought up at a public, sort of charitable, establishment. They taught us all a deal of umbleness— not much else I know of, from morning to night. We was to be umble to this person, and umble to that; and to pull off our caps here, and to make bows there? and al­ ways to know our place, and abase ourselves before betters. David Copperfield. Modern Library College Edition, p. 604.

(September 9, 1837), 350. 177

They have been taught to write and read; they have been fagged at arithmetic for seven years, under the wretched old boarding system, without having attained the remotest conception of its philosophy; they are worse than ignorant of History and Geography; of science they never heard; .... their literature is confined to a few corrupting novels, the bequest of the Miner­ va press to the circulating library of the last age. Shall we say that the children of the sich and noble. . . have nothing to learn?14 Boarding schools for women were even worse. Here the girls were superficially taught composition, a smattering of French and a little music. Middle-class mothers placed such value on a fine shape and a genteel carriage, however, that pupils were forced to spend a great deal of their school day in de­ veloping the posture recommended by the dancing master: the waist tucked in, the shoulders thrown back and the head erect. So ardent was the desire for these so-called "accomplishments" that girls whose bodies defied such molding by natural means were stuffed into braces and stays, often to the detriment of their health. The Penny Magazine was convinced, then, that many schools were incapable of providing the kind of instruction the Use­ ful Knowledge Society deemed essential in shaping the charac­ ter, the intellect, and the social attitudes of the public.

14Passages, II, 67-68. A similar view was expressed by The Westminster Review, IX {April 1828), 328 ff.

■*"^11 (February 28, 1833), 77-78. 178 particularly the working classes. If the education available in the schools was not augmented by outside sources/ many young Englishmen stood the chance not only of remaining igno­ rant/ but also of failing to acquire a cheerful disposition/ a good temper, contentedness, virtue and morality (character­ istics the Useful Knowledge Society considered most desirable in the lower orders). The paper's efforts to augment traditional channels of learning fell into several distinct categories. The first dealt with preparing the individual to cope with the practi­ calities of a trade or profession. A popular miscellany could do little in this area, but the Penny Magazine attempted to augment fundamental skills by providing information about a variety of manufacturing processes. In 1841 and 1842 a number of supplements were devoted to a day with various British manufacturers. The text was illustrated by beautifully exe­ cuted woodcuts of happy-faced workers going about their tasks of producing glass, sugar, steel, and a host of other familiar products under pleasant working conditions, surrounded by the latest labor-saving machines. Indeed, the paper never ceased to preach the blessings of industrialization. The Penny Magazine, for example, called it "satisfying" to learn that the cottage lace makers had finally been convinced of the impossibility of competing with 179 steam power and had gradually given up their "writched occu­ pation" to obtain higher wages in the factories.

The truth is, that employments which are least aided by mechanical power, which only call forth the rudest elements of labour. . . . are not paid so well, are subject to great fluctua­ tions, and are less valuable to society in an economic point of view, than when they are assisted by machinery. . . . The workman then becomes a more intelligent agent amidst the processes which are going on around him, and he exchanges incessant exertion for the less la­ borious and more intellectual operation of directing and superintending an inanimate power which seems almost obedient to his will. . . .16

Moral and political education, embracing the various duties connected with good citizenship, were more within the range of a popular miscellany. The working classes were ad­ vised that the government should not be considered ineffective when an occasional crop failure or some other "accidental 17 occurrence" caused temporary economic discomfort. As a corollary to this argument, a number of articles compared the superior conditions of British workers with the deplorable 18 life of workers elsewhere. Nor did the Penny Magazine cease to pound away at the idea that "great and longstanding moral evils cannot be removed by sudden exertion of physical force:

16 VI (March 11, 1837), 95. 17 II (July 31, 1833), 170 and (June 6, 1833), 260. 18 This recurring theme parrots the words of the younger Macaulay in his review of Southey’s Colloquies in the Edin­ burgh (1830). 180 that those have been mightiest and most lasting reformations which have been effected by moral power. Close in importance to moral education came religion, which fitted the individual "for his higher relations, as God's creature, designed for immortality." 20 And finally, convinced of the effectiveness of the printed word in ameli­ orating the boorishness of the masses and eventually bringing them into the general culture of the nation, the paper offered a wide range of cultural essays intended primarily to civilize its readers. As a result of a strong undercurrent of utilitarianism in the Useful Knowledge Society, the miscellany argued that the amount of pleasure derived from each of the foregoing categories of information determined their degree of useful­ ness. By assuming this position, the publication placed it­ self in direct opposition to those who believed that educa­ tion was only useful in proportion to the amount of money it brought the learner. Adherents to the latter theory were prone to consider apprenticeship in a trade or profession of more use than education of an ethical, moral, political, or religious nature. The Penny Magazine took the position, however, that one could quite possibly excel in a trade 11 and

19VII (April 27, 1838), 132. 20 I (January 16, 1832), 109. 181

still be very ignorant, very miserable and very wicked." And although such persons might do "pretty well" at their place of

employment, they could not remain at work forever. They must of necessity come into contact with their family and other members of the community. But above all, they must sometimes be alone. If they could not cope with these extra-occupation- al situations, they were "worthless and contemptible." 21 Of the various kinds of education the Penny Magazine attempted, that dealing with religion required the most deli­ cate handling. Certainly Christianity was ideal for bending the collective personality of the lower classes in the direc­ tion the magazine would have it grow. When the Society was formed, however, the Committee agreed that "as numersous Socie­ ties already exist for the distribution of religious instruc­ tion, no treatise to be published with the sanction of the Committee shall contain any matter of controversial divinity or interfering with the principles of Revealed Religion." This determination stemmed partly from the religious agnosti­ cism of some of the members, partly from the varied religious persuasions of others, but primarily from the group's intention "to address itself to the whole people without distinction of 22 sect." This position on religion did not imply that the

22 Address to the Committee, 1843, p. 4. 182

Society* s publications should eschew all religious matters, but rather, that the Society should not deal in denominational propaganda and polemics, two quantities that many people of the nineteenth century considered essential in any religious discussion. The absence of such matter led critics of the Penny Magazine to immediately label it un-Christian. The Saturday Magazine, for example, went so far as to insinuate that the Society*s miscellany was "unfavourable, if not posi- 23 tively hostile to religion." Thomas Arnold, still rankling, perhaps, from the Useful

Knowledge Society*s rejection of his offer to Christianize the Library of Entertaining Knowledge, joined the Saturday Magazine in finding very little of the Christian element in the Penny Magazine and submitted to the secretary of the Soci­ ety, William Tooke, several articles written according to his concept of Christian standards. In a letter to the Reverend J. E. Tyler, who apparently had approached him about writing for the Saturday Magazine, Arnold wrote: Your letter interested me exceedingly. I have had some correspondence with the Useful Knowl­ edge people about their Penny Magazine, and have sent them some things which I am writing to see whether they will publish. I want to give their Magazine a decidedly Christian character, and then I think it would suit my notions better than any other; but of course

^ Edinburgh Review, LVII (April 1833), 239. 183

what I have been doing, or may do for them, does not hinder me from doing what I can for you. I only suspect X should wish to liber­ alize your Magazine, as I wish to Christianize theirs; and probably your Committee would re­ calcitrate against any such operation, as theirs do. 24 Arnold's articles did not reach the pages of the Penny Maga­ zine. Knight, it seems, never saw them; nor was he even apprised of the fact that the headmaster of Rugby had offered his services. "For myself," Knight wrote in his autobiography,

"I can distinctly state that no expression of such a desire ever reached me; nor do I Know that any communication to such an effect was ever formally put before the sub-committee for the 'Penny Magazine.'" 2S It appears that Arnold* s offer to Christianize the maga­ zine was simply ignored, because an overt rejection of his proposal would have been unwise. At a time when hostility to Christianity was synonymous with opposition to King, Establish­ ment, and everything respectable, an outright no could have proved fatal to a commercial publication depending upon the good will of the community to ensure its wide circulation. So careful were the Penny Magazine* s competitors on matters of religion that they took great pains to demonstrate their

24 Letter to the Rev. J. E. Tyler, 10 June 1832, Stanley, II, 324-325. 25 Passages, II, 190. 184 piety. In the introduction of the first number, the Saturday

Magazine promised that the paper would come at the end of the week "when most men have a pause from labour." The only day the workingman completely paused in his labour, however, was Sunday, and some Sabbatraians believed the Saturday Magazine was obviously intended for Sunday reading. The editor denied the charge and pointed out that Saturday and not Sunday marked the end of the week. No attempt was made to atone for the

fact that few workingmen had time to read on Saturday. The Chambers brothers mustered enough courage to admit that their Journal might in some cases provide Sunday reading, but only for "poor old men and women . . . among the hills who cannot sometimes come to church." 26 It was not unusual, then, for Brougham to deny the charge that the Penny Magazine was hos­ tile to religion and to add that the paper was "throughout most 27 friendly to its interests."

26 Chambers1s Journal, I (February 1832), 1. ^ Edinburgh Review, LVII (April 1833), 239. Even the editor of the Athenaeum, Charles W. Dilke, who was perhaps as hostile to religion as was Mill and Brougham, showed some dis­ cretion in his non-religious policy. Elizabeth Barrett re­ lates, "Mr. Dilke begged me once, while I was writing for him, to write the name of God and Jesus Christ as little as I could, because these names did not accord with the secular character of the Journal1" Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, ed. Frederic G. Kenyon (London, 1897), I, 97. 185 And by modern standards, the paper was indeed not hostile to religion. Any such hostility would have been remote as

long as Charles Knight was at the editorial helm. From his juvenilia in the Eton and Windsor Express to his mature works, there runs a strong Christian undercurrent. But Knight also was a practical man, who realized that many of the Useful Knowledge Society1s aims were embodied in the principles of Christianity; consequently, he did not hesitate to exploit the

fact in the Penny Magazine. He sums up the religious aspect of his role as editor of the Society's miscellany with the following comment; "I think that I may confidently say that without attempting to impart a distinctly religious character,

I did not interpret in a too literal signification the origi- 28 nal rule of the Society with reference to religion." The Useful Knowledge Society's task was incomplete, how­ ever, until it could create a general desire for the various aspects of learning the Penny Magazine provided. The Committee was so conscious of this need that it attempted to make a cult of the pursuit of knowledge by maintaining that the greater the difficulty an individual encountered in reaching the springs of learning, the greater the value of his ultimate success. This concept was first embodied in the self-help

28 Passages, II, 192. motif which Knight credits George L. Craik with formulating in his book. The Pursuit of Knowledge Under Difficulties, the theme of which received constant attention in the Penny Maga­ zine. Craik saw a kind of moral therapy in both knowledge and the pursuit of it. "If knowledge were not in itself one of the supports of morality," he wrote, "it would not be worthy of the commendations which have been universally bestowed upon it; nor would its diffusion deserve the warm encouragement it 2S has uniformly received from an enlightened philanthropy."

Nor was the process of seeking after knowledge without certain benefits of its own. The more one studied, the more he became aware of people who were superior to him in both natural and acquired ability. In the face of superior learn­ ing, he gained humility; in an effort to advance his own standing, he developed diligence. Finally, his self-respect rose in proportion to his rate of ascent on the ladder of understanding.39 The Penny Magazine did not guarantee that a knowledge of science, literature, or the arts would always improve an individual's morals, but a combination of moral, religious, and practical education could be counted upon to provide a buffer against poverty, misfortune, and disgrace, for "when

29Craik, I, 418.

30VII (January 3, 1838), 16. 187 poverty comes (as it sometimes will) upon the prudent, the industrious, and the well-informed, a judicious education is all-powerful in enabling them to endure the evils it cannot always prevent. A mind full of piety and knowledge is always rich . . . it yields a perpetual dividend of happiness." 31 Suffering along the road that led to knowledge sharpened the mental faculties, the Penny Magazine maintained. When, for example, the invention of a new machine threw a man out of a job, he was forced to use his wits to survive. All his mental and physical energies were awakened "by the spur of necessity." Only in such a state could man triumph over great difficulties. Under no other circumstances would he work hard enough to really improve his condition.32 John Henry Newman was the first to point out that the virtues the Useful Knowledge Society attached to the pursuit of knowledge 33 had once been the prerogatives of religion. Certainly the

31I (April 28, 1832), 32. 32 I (June 23, 1832), 114-115. 33 "The Tamworth Reading Room," Essays and Sketches (New York, 1948), II, 199-200. Speaking of Craik's thesis in Pur­ suit of Knowledge Under Difficulties, Newman pointed out: "He enumerates in various places the virtues which adorn the chil dren of knowledge— ardour united to humility, childlike alac­ rity, teachableness, truthfulness, patience, concentration of attention, husbandry of time, self-denial, self-command and heroism." Newman erroneously attacks Brougham as the author of Pursuit of Knowledge. 188 readers of the paper were reminded often enough that the road to learning was strewn with thorns, and that only by trial and tribulation could the aspiring scholar reach the Promised

Land. Perhaps because it realized that popular education was a hard pill to swallow, especially for the workingman who had to devote fourteen hours a day to earning a living, the Use­ ful Knowledge Society sought to temper the pursuit of instruc- 35 tion with amusement. The Penny Magazine held that a natural connection existed between the process of learning and enter­ tainment, for "the man who would amuse others for an hour . . . must tell his hearers something they do not know, or suggest to them some new reflexion upon the knowledge acquired."

34Tennyson's lines in "Despair" aptly criticized the sub­ stitution of knowledge for faith: . . .For these are the new dark ages, you see, of the popular press, When the bat comes out of his cave, and the owls are whooping at noon, And Doubt is the lord of this dunghill and crows to the sun and the moon. Till the sun and the moon of our science are both of them turn'd into blood, And Hope will have broken her heart, running after a shadow of good; For their knowing and know-nothing books are scatter'd from hand to hand— We have knelt in your know-all chapel too, looking over the sand. 3~*See above, p.

36I (March 31, 1832), 8. 189

On several occasions, writers compared the paper to the Tatler

and the Spectator on the grounds that the Society's publica­ tion, like its eighteenth-century predecessors, was intended primarily to "inexpensively instruct and amuse unlearned read­ ers by short papers appearing at stated intervals." The Penny Magazine hoped to perform the same function in the cottage of the tradesman and mechanic that the Tatler and the Spectator had performed in the clubs and coffeehouses of the previous century and promised not to rest until it had reached the goal of Addison and Steele to make knowledge "amiable and lovely to 37 all mankind." As Hannah More had discovered a half century earlier, this sugar-coated approach was necessary for the suc­ cess of a publication intended for widespread circulation among the masses. As Brougham and Knight admitted in their more candid moments, the number of people who seriously read out of a mere love of learning or even for self-improvement was relatively small. 38 It was essential, then, to offer other inducements

37 I (April 21, 1832), 31. 38 There is no reason to believe the situation in the 1830's had changed appreciably from that of 1829 when Broughem wrote that "many persons . . . would read neither for love of knowledge nor the desire of entertainment." Edinburgh Review, L (October 1829), 183. Knight says in The Old Printer that the public was always more ready to buy Waverley novels than informative books, no matter how agreeably the latter were presented. p. 246. 190 to attract a large audience, especially among the classes for which the Society's miscellany was primarily intended. Fur­ thermore, by offering instruction that was both entertaining and useful, the Penny Macrazine accomplished several important functions at once. By making the useful amusing, it reached out for that segment of the audience which was apathetic to the idea of self-improvement; by making amusement useful, it not only lured readers who were hostile to anything that smacked of serious study, but also paralyzed a great many eye­ brows that were prone to be raised at the idea of a publica­ tion which made accessible to the working classes more “fri­ volity" than was already available to them. Certainly from the scraps of evidence trickling in from persons who in sime way had benefited from the Penny Magazine, the Useful Knowledge Society was encouraged in the belief that its miscellany was a successful educational tool. One reader found the Society's miscellany of so much use that to secure money for the monthly parts he deprived his family of 'ag sugar for their tea. Brougham recalled in 1858 that Cap­ tain Thomas Drummond, inventor of the calcium light that bears his name, had discovered two small boys in the Manches­ ter slums who divided the cost of the Penny Magazine between

39The Old Printer, pp. 220-221. 191 them so that one, who was interested in art, could copy the woodcuts. After coloring his reproductions, he sold them for twelve shillings each. Later, the young artist was hired as an apprentice to a cotton manufacturer and placed in the drawing room of the industrialist's factory. In addition, Brougham maintained that one of the most promising sculptors of the day (Brougham does not name him) declared that he first was attracted to the fine arts by the woodcuts in the 40 Penny Magazine. In spite of encourageingevidence of the Penny Magazine1s effectiveness, its critics were loud and numerous. There were some who thought that the Useful Knowledge Society and other exponents of popular education promised far more than they could deliver. Nor had they reaped sufficient results to warrant the optimism they exuded about the Penny Magazine's efficacy. But what was more alarming, they overstressed the role of education in bettering the condition of the working classes. John Stuart Mill, in advocating reasonable claims for popular education, observed that "a large portion of talking and writing common in the present day, respecting the instruction of the people, and the diffusion of knowledge,

lTransactions of the National Association for the Pro­ motion of Social Science, 1857, p. 33. 192

appears to me to conceal, under loose and vague generalities, notions at bottom altogether fallacious and visionary."A "*

Other critics held that the Penny Magazine1s desire to diffuse knowledge in all departments of learning resulted in little more than dilettantism, for "as the stream of knowledge is 42 diffused . . . it loses depth." Many people considered the fare too diversified and lacking in continuity. Among this group were parents who objected to the Penny Magazine on the

grounds that it filled their children with too many unrelated

ideas, the majority of which could not be brought to bear on any one subject. But the most authoritative voice, perhaps, was that of Thomas Arnold, who called the content of the Soci- 43 ety*s publication "ramble-scramble." Although Knight took

offence at this term, Arnold was not picking a bone merely with the Useful Knowledge Society's miscellany, but with magar-

zines in general, as the following passage from his letter to the Reverend J. E. Tyler indicates: The objection to a magazine is its desultori­ ness and vagueness— it is all scraps; whereas a newspaper has a regular subject, and follows it continuously. I would try to do this as much as I could in a magazine. I would have in every number one portion of the paper for mis­ cellanies, but I think that in another portion

^ Spirit of the Age, p. 23,

42VII (June 13, 1838), 15. 43 Passages, II, 182. 193

there should be some subjects followed up regu­ larly; e.g. the history of agriculture, includ­ ing that of enclosures; the statistics of dif­ ferent countries, &c., &c. Arnold then proceeds with his evaluation of systematic

learning: I suppose the object is to instruct those who have few books and little education; but all instruction must be systematic, and it is this which the people want. . . . not a parcel of detached stories about natural history, of this place, or that man*— all entertaining enough, but not instructive to minds wholly destitute of any thing like a frame, in which to arrange miscellaneous information. And I believe, if done spiritedly, that systematic information would be even more attractive than the present hodge-podge of odds and e n d s . 44

In the first place, Arnold misconstrued the purpose of the Penny Magazine. It was not intended to systematically instruct the masses. As we have observed, its purpose was to arouse enough curiosity in the reader to inspire study of a serious nature. On the other hand, Bentham in his Chresto- mathia had paved the way for the Penny Magazine1s patchwork content when he argued that various subjects should be taught in the order of their utilitarian relationship rather than according to some logical grouping. By the 1830's, of course, the question was no longer one of whether or not the people should be educated, but of how much and what kind of education they should receive.

44 Stanley, II, 325. 154

Many friends of popular education, for instance, believed the Penny Magazine should constantly preach proper conduct in po­ litical matters and quarrelled with the idea that the masses could be helped by leading their minds into thoughts about music, art, and literature. Bulwer reported in the House of Commons that he received the following letter from a knowl­ edgeable workingman in answer to the question of the Penny Magazine1s effectiveness: You ask me if the Penny Magazine will not counteract the effect of what you call the more violent papers? Yes, in some degree; but not so much as is supposed, because poor men, anxious to better their condition, are always inclined to politics, and the Penny Magazine does not touch upon them; to correct bad politics you must give us not only literature, but good politics.^ The Athenaeum, which was particularly sensitive to com­ petition from the Penny Magazine, took offence at the Society's implication that all cheap literature except its paper was trash: The Papers state that it is intended by this soporific "to allay the irritability of the public mind occasioned by the poisonous trash of cheap literature"— now this wholesale con­ demnation of the cheap literature is exceed­ ingly unjust. That there are publications of­ fensive to good feeling and good morals, we readily admit, and the sober dulness of the ^ Penny Magazine is not to put an end to them.

^ Hansard, XXIII (May 22, 1834) , col. 1198. ^ Athenaeum, April 28, 1832, p. 274. IS 5 Many joined Thomas Arnold in criticizing the Penny Maga­ zine* s so-called atheism. A writer in Saint Paul1s many years later recalled that when he was a boy, the parents of most of his friends objected to the Society's miscellany be­ cause it had "no savour of the things of God." Most adults, according to this writer, thought that Thomson's The Seasons, which the Penny Magazine extolled as a great poem, was a "de­ cidedly dangerous" work. During the days of the Penny Maga­ zine, che writer observed, "mere morality was a very bad thing indeed. So was a general argument of the goodness of 47 God." Religion, if it were to be at all meaningful, had to have a denominational cast. Nor did the Penny Magazine escape the charge of plagiar­ ism. In April of 1832, a reader complained that six or seven articles in the Penny Magazine had appeared first in another publication devoted to popular instruction. Knight hastened to explain that the manuscript for his paper was sent to press ten days before publication and that "some person" con­ nected with The New Entertaining Press had by accident ob­ tained the material for the number in question and "fraudu- 48 lently appropriated a portion of the contents." In another

47 "The Penny Magazine," Saint Paul1s Magazine, XII {May 1873), 548.

48I (April 30, 1832), 48. 196 instance, an article extracted from a work entitled History and Description of Modern Wines evoked a strong reaction from the New Monthly Macazine: "We know no difference between the

'Penny Magazine' and the 'Thief.' The motto, 'Ex rapto vivens, 1 (living by plunder,) is equally applicable to all the publications of the Diffusion Society, who have not, during the nine /Tslc_7 years of their existence, produced a single original volume." 49 Many who had no particular quarrel with the content of the Penny Magazine believed it was seeking a monopoly because of the government connections of so many important members of the Useful Knowledge Society. The Athenaeum was convinced thaL the primary aim of the Penny Magazine was to eliminate hundreds of its competitors and pointed out that the enormous circulation of the Society's miscellany represented a corres- 50 ponding loss to its competitors. Others believed that Knight was using the name of the Useful Knowledge Society to

49 XXXIX (December 1833), 427. The Penny Magazine article was attributed to Craik, but it was actually written by John Kitto, as the following portion of a letter to George Harvey, dated June 24, 1834, reveals: "The article on 'The New Vin­ tage, 1 which moves so much the indignation of the New Monthly, was mine, though attributed to the digestive pen of Mr. Craik." Jonathan E. Ryland, ed., Memoirs of John Kitto (New York, 1852) I, 179.

50July 14, 1832, p. 455 and April 28, 1832, p. 274. 197 promote bis own interests. The New Monthly Magazine wrote: What glorious humbug this said magazine is upon the reading portion of the operativesi They think# poor devils# that the matter doled out to them weekly# through the medium of the 'Penny Magazine, 1 has been really got up under the superintendence of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. . . . Does anybody in his senses believe that the Lord Chancellor, or Lord John Russell, or Sir Henry Percell, had time to correct the proofs of a penny journal? The heart of the argument formed an interesting surmise: . . . Mr. Hill, member from Hull . . . is a particular friend of Charles Knight. Knight bethought himself of a penny magazine on the plan of 'Chambers's Edinburgh Journal.' Says Knight to Hill, 'This would be a capital speculation if you could get me the name of the Society.' Says Matthew Hill, 'I will.' And he succeeds and the magazine is published under the Society. . . . This weekly sheet , . . brings in Knight some thousands per annum, al­ though, if it had been publicly known to be what it truly is,— nothing more than a book­ seller' s speculation— it would have been at ^ the bottom of the Lethean lake by this time. In 1834, John Kitto, of whom we shall hear more presently, explained the furor to his friend, George Harvey: "You see there is at present a war making upon the Penny Magazine, by those who find their craft in danger, from the quantity of cheap literature in the market." 52

51 XXXIX (December 1833), 427.

5 2 Memoirs, II, 179. 198

Even the Penny Magazine * s use of woodcuts came in for a share of the criticism. The Morning Chronicle of December 31, 1836, proclaimed, "As there is no royal road to mathematics, so we say, once for all, there is no Penny Magazine road to the Fine Arts." The Chronicle believed that the proper study of art was an expensive undertaking, and until that fact was altered, "the cultivation of the Fine Arts must be carried on by a comparatively small gifted few, under the patronage of wealth and leisure." A great deal of the "reasonable and just" criticism directed toward the Penny Magazine found fertile ground. After the first few years of experimentation, more and more groups of essays were based on single subjects, e.g., indus­ try, minerals, artists and their works, and the like. Further­ more, to offset the charge of sciolism and of engendering false hope.among the lower classes, the Penny Magazine adopted the paradoxical position of on the one hand encouraging the artisan to better his economic and social position by the ac­ quisition of learning, and on the other, damping his expecta­ tions of high regard for securing an education. The mere fact that a shepherd boy taught himself mechanics, for exam­ ple, was no guarantee of future eminence. Similarly, the young man who learned to read by the light from a shop window would not necessarily become a renowned scholar although he 199 53 were admitted to the best libraries in the world. The semi-literate reader was on more than one occasion reminded that amusing and attractive knowledge was intended merely to excite the curiosity. Hoping to become educated by reading the Penny Magazine was like seeking knowledge in the picture alphabet and refusing to learn to read the material that made use of the various letters. The most effective dis­ couragement of all, perhaps, was the Penny Magazine’s argument that the world had room for only a few intellectual giants. It was therefore more within the general scheme of things for the working classes to remain humble, while at the same time cheerfully and efficiently pursuing their various occupations. Even though the Penny Magazine may have wavered in such matters as the amount of hope to engender in the semi-literate classes or the proper variety of subjects to best satisfy the needs of its readers, it never swerved from its course of stuffing them with an enormous supply of knowledge. Approxi­ mately three-fourths of this material was written specifically for the Penny Magazine. The remaining essays, especially the fillers on the last page of each number, were gleaned from a wide variety of sources, including other publications of the Useful Knowledge Society. The original essays were as a rule

53 , I (JUne 16, 1832), 111. 200 unsigned, except for the occasional initials of Allan Cunning­ ham, Charles MacFarlane, Charles Knight and John Kitto. From time to time, articles were contributed by specialists on the Committee, and frequently papers were accepted from "corres­ pondents," who were paid for their manuscripts. For several years immediately following 1833, however, a significant share of writing and selecting material for the Penny Magazine fell on the shoulders of John Kitto, who is best remembered for his later work as a biblical scholar. Kitto was indeed a living example of a poor man who pursued knowledge under extreme difficulties and reached the pinnacle of success. The son of a Plymouth stonemason, he had fallen at the age of thirteen from the height of thirty-two feet, suffering an injury that left him almost completely deaf. Since he was consequently unfit for his father* s trade, he devoted his time to reading and painting shop signs and pic­ tures for children. To purchase supplies, he collected and sold scrap material. In 1819, however, he was sent to the workhouse, where he learned shoemaking. Kitto was intermit­ tently in and out of the workhouse until 1823, when he case was called to the attention of a group of philanthropists who arranged for his support and gained permission for him to read in the public library. In 1825, Kitto entered the Missionary College at Isling­ ton to train for employment as a printer for the Church 201

In 1825, Kitto entered the Missionary College at Isling­ ton to train for employment as a printer for the Church Mis­ sionary Society. His first assignment was with one of the organization1s presses in Malta. After returning to England, he joined a private missionary party to Persia, where he opened an Armenian school. In 1833, he again found himself in England, and it was at this time that friends introduced 54 him to Charles Knight. Knight left the following account of their first meeting: On the 18th of July, 1833, a short stout man, of about thirty years of age, presented him­ self to me at my place of business in Ludgate Street. . . . He tendered me a note from Mr. Coates, at the same time uttering some strange sounds, which could scarcely be called articu­ late. The few lines of introduction said that the bearer, Mr. Kitto, laboured under the mis­ fortune of nearly absolute deafness, and that I must therefore communicate with him in writing.^5 The note that Kitto presented from Coates contained a letter dated July 10th from Henry Woollcombe, chairman of the Use­ ful Knowledge Society's committee at Plymouth: He is a native of this town, and became known to us by his misfortunes, as a lad of extraordinary capacity, though reduced by the vices of his father to the condition of an inhabitant of our workhouse. . . . He has subsequently been em­ ployed as a printer at Malta, by a religious

54 DNB. 55 Passages, II, 186, 202

society. But he is now just returned from a residence of some years at Bagdad; having embarked from England for Petersburg, and de- cended from thence through Russia to Moscow and other towns, entering Persia by the Desert; of that country he has acquired con­ siderable information, which he is ready to communicate through your publications. . . . His appearance is not prepossessing; his deafness is somewhat embarrassing; his talents are considerable, memory retentive, observation quick, and undivided as other men's are. . . .^6 So important was Kitto's contribution to the success of the Penny Magazine that it is best to let his account of cir­ cumstances pertaining to his relationship with Knight and the nature of his employment speak for itself. August 12, 1833 . . . I was sinking down into much despondency, when a kind and influential friend was the means of introducing me to some gentlemen con­ nected with the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. By them I have been engaged to write in one of their cheap periodical pub­ lications, 'The Penny Magazine,' on the very liberal terms of £l 1 1 . per page. . . The Chancellor is the President of the Society with which I am becoming connected, and some affect to regard him as editor of the Magazine. Yesterday I saw him represented in a caricature, as engaged, with great energy, in ramming the Penny Magazine, with the handle of his broom, down the throat of a poor wight on his knees. August 18, 1833

I have obtained an engagement to write in the Penny Magazine, on very liberal terms, only

56Ibid., pp. 186-187. 57Memoirs, I, 168. Letter to Lady M*Neill in Teheran. 203 that I am limited in the space I occupy to two or three columns weekly. Two papers of mine appeared in the Number for the 10th of August, namely, Arabic proverbs, and the first of a series of papers I am to write about my travels. Besides this. . . Mr. Knight, who has behaved to me with great kindness, made me a proposal with regard to permanent employment. . . . 58

September 28, 1833 I spoke /with Knight/ on the subject of my independent contributions to the Penny Magazine, as the Deaf Traveller, etc. You have perceived that my papers have been few and far between? and as I thought this might be from the fear of tiring the readers, by the frequent recurrence of the same subject, I expressed the satisfaction I should feel in being permitted to fill up with other subjects the intervals between the various papers of the Deaf Traveller. Mr. Knight said he should be glad if I do so; but the reason the Deaf Traveller had not come more frequently, was in the fear that I had not exactly hit his meaning in preparing the papers. I had better take some one subject, and bring my collected information to bear upon it, rather than carry readers on from stage to stage, as in a book of travels. 'I do not say, don't write a book,' Mr. Knight remarked, 1 for that is a different matter, but don't write a book for the Penny Magazine. 159 By January of 1834, Knight had virtually turned most of the Penny Magazine over to John Kitto. His duties consisted of writing a three-column article weekly in addition to pre­ paring two or three molumns from the letters of correspondents

58 Ibid., pp. 169-170. Letter to George Harvey, esq.

59Ibid., pp. 171-172. Letter to Henry Woollcombe, esq. 204 and condensations from various printed sources. It was his task to suggest changes and additions in submitted manuscripts and to read the first proofs of the entire publication. It was he also who answered letters from readers when their correspondence contained a real name and address. And finally, he brought all contributions to the Penny Magazine "into fit­ ting shape" and returned those that were useless.^® Kitto was not exaggerating when in 1834 he wrote that over half of the Penny Magazine was of his writing, and that he also se- 61 lected all the extracts from other sources. When Kitto's association with Knight terminated, his duties were probably taken over by John Clarke Platt, a close friend of Thomas

Arnold, and John Saunders. Brougham on several occasions stressed the cooperative nature of the writing that went into the Penny Magazine. Knight, on the other hand, admitted that though there was some "united action" in preparing the Society's periodical works, he thought that Brougham overstated the case. "Regular meetings there were," wrote Knight, "sub-committees occasion­ ally; proof-sheets read; corrections even of style submitted." But in the final analysis, the Society exhibited united action

60 Ibid., p. 178. Letter to George Harvey, esq. January 24, 1834. 1Ibid., p. 179. Letter to Henry Woollcombe, esq. March 4, 1834. 205 62 only in the case of a small number of scholarly treatises. The Penny Magazine sought and received help from the general 63 Committee only when "doubtful questions" arose. Brougham called attention also to the manner in wbich the man who sub­ mitted material to the Penny Magazine and other of the Socie­ ty' s publications confided in the editors, and he intimated that if such confidence had not existed, the periodical works of the Useful Knowledge Society could not have survived for a 64 single month. Brougham probably had in mind the confidence that writers seemed to exhibit in the editors' ability to re­ write and correct manuscripts. Knight and his assistants corrected not only for factual errors, style, and mechanics, but also for offences against taste. Even if this practice went against the grain of some writers, it eliminated a great deal of delay and irritation involved in sending manuscripts 65 back to the writers for revision.

63 Ibid., p. 14.

6 4 Ibid. 65 If there was any dissatisfaction with the system, it was well concealed from the public. G. W. Hastings observed in 1857: "It . . . is worthy to be noted that no dispute or disagreement arose with any of the numerous literary men who were employed in preparing the works published by the Society, but freely revised and freely altered before publication." Transactions of the National Association for Promotion of Social Science, 1857, p. 28. 206

This surveillance of manuscripts, however, was not in­ tended to weed out empty and high-sounding verbosity, for sim­ plicity of style was not one of the aims of the Useful Knowl­ edge Society. The reason lay partly with the stylistic taste of the day and partly in Knight's opposition to writing down to anyone except children. The public, as Knight envisioned it, was divided into three classes: professional and non-pro­ fessional readers, and the illiterate masses. The profession­ al group consisted of people who had had the advantage of for­ mal training in mathematics, science, and the classics. The non-professional category included people who were fairly skilled in reading and perhaps could write, but whose school­ ing had been cut short for one reason or another, leaving them deficient in certain aspects of learning. No doubt the Penny Magazine welcomed professional readers (and there seem to have been many), but it §poke primarily to the non-professional reader regardless of whether he was an artisan, a shopkeeper, a gentleman, or a student. Since Knight was addressing a fairly literate audience, the only concession he made in style was to avoid scholarly jargon and as far as possible to trans­ late difficult terminology and foreign phrases into the ver- ft ft nacular. a publication such as the Penny Magazine could not expect to reach the ignorant masses by way of the printed word, and the Society, following Mill's philosophy, could only

Knight1s Penny Magazine, I (1846), 6. 207 hope that as improvement was absorbed by the social classes that could read, some enlightenment would filter downwards to the classes beneath them. But for the professional and non-professional reader, the Penny Magazine provided several categories of utilitarian literature. At its lowest level, i.e., the level that called for few rhetorical, aesthetic, or stylistic considerations, it provided a plethora of practical information, running the gamut from the proper way to construct a lightning rod to the latest method of treating the diseases of sheep. A second class of essays was intended to broaden the understanding. Some of these essays enabled the reader to comprehend a pro­ cess or a concept so that he could apply the principle to a variety of cases. Also in this category were articles, direc­ ted primarily to the working classes. These were "plain and correct descriptions of the most ordinary occurrence, of the arts and manufactures of their country, geographical and topo­ graphical descriptions, with little dramatic pieces and tales that inculcate the value of industry, the love of truth, and an honourable desire of improving their condition." The latter group often made extensive use of literary allusions and was sprinkled with passages of poetry that sometimes ex­ pressed an idea more aptly than did the author's prose.

An aspect of the Penny Magazine with which this study is

67 I (July 21, 1832), 155. 208

especially concerned encompasses the various types of reading matter which tradition recommended as an effective tool for improving public manners and morals. What had been tried and tested by time meant much to the men responsible for the con­ tent of the Penny Magazine: . . . We look with much respect upon the wisdom of our ancestors, rightfully so called. We re­ spect that which had stood the test of time, and been sanctioned by the approval of many past generations. We do this . . . on the rational principle that, in matters disputable or doubt­ ful, experience is entitled to go for something, and therefore that which has been long estab­ lished and found to answer its purpose has in so far an advantage over that which is altogether new and untried. The wisodm of our ancestors in this sense is merely another name for the certainty of experience as opposed to theoretical or conjec­ tural expectation.6 8

Biography stood high among the literary forms which for centuries had remained popular with all classes of readers. From the standpoint of the Useful Knowledge Society, the most interesting biographies were those of men whose intelligence

lifted them out of the 11 incongenial condition" into which

they were born. The universal desire to improve one's condi­ tion formed a bond between the reader and the person whose life was being revealed. And even though no similarity could be found between their circumstances, the reader felt an al­ most personal concern for the hero's struggles and derived an 69 almost personal satisfaction when the latter emerged victorious.

68 V (April 2, 1836), 130.

X (January 20, 1841), 70. 209

British history was filled with men whose lives had been

picturesque, proper, and elevating. Sometimes their biogra­

phy was a means of providing hope to the lowly by illustrating

11 instances in which persons of humble grade have greatly pro­ moted the general good." Thus, the Penny Magazine kept before

its readers the fact that men such as James Watt, inventor of

the steam engine, was a watchmaker; Thomas Newcomen, who built

one of the first successful steam engines, began his career

as a plumber; Richard Arkwright and Samuel Crompton, who con­

tributed much to the cloth manufacturing industry, were origi­

nally barbers; and a "rude and inconsiderable manufacture was 70 changed into an elegant . . . by Wedgewood, the potter.

Biography, of course, was often a vehicle for moral,

religious, and social propaganda. It could promote the brotherhood of man by keeping before the reader the fact that

others had had experiences similar to his own, and that "the 71 human family forms a circle from which none are excluded."

The closing lines of Knight's review of Dumont's Recollec­

tions of Mirabeau demonstrate how the Penny Magazine could at times skillfully use the biographical sketch to expound the

Society's moral and religious views:

Mirabeau swayed the destinies of millions,— but he was never happy;— Mirabeau had almost

7 0 ‘ II (June 15, 1833), 227.

^ I (August 4, 1832), 184. 210

reached the pinnacle of human power, and yet fell a victim to the same evil passions which degrade and ruin the lowest manking. He could never be really great, because he was never freed from the bondage of his own evil desires. The man who steadily pursues a consistent course of duty, which has for its object to do good to himself and to all around him, will be followed to the grave by a few humble and sin­ cere mourners and no record will remain except in the hearts of those who loved him, to tell of his earthly career. But that man may gladly leave to such as Mirabeau the music, the torches, and the cannon, by which a nation proclaimed its loss, for assuredly he has felt that inward con­ solation, and that sustaining hope throughout his life, which only the good can feel; he has fully enjoyed, in all its purity, the holy in­ fluence of "the peace of God, which passeth all understanding."^ There were times when the Penny Magazine used biography to illustrate the habits and character of a whole nation or of a certain historical epoch. And since apparently there was little utilitarian distinction between authentic and fictional biography, it was possible for the Penny Magazine to use the life of Sir Roger DeCoverley as a means of deploring the dis­ appearance of the "cordial intercourse" which existed between the great and the humble of the eighteenth century. Sir Roger was considered thoroughly English, typifying "a beauti­ ful specimen of the old-fashioned gentleman, with a high soul of honour, real benevolence, acute sense, mixed with the ec- centricities which belong to a nation of humourists." 73 Even

7 2 I (May 12, 1832), 63-64. 73 XII (January 7, 1843), 2. 211 the life of Robin Hood received the following encomium: "Were a sculptor to create a statue embodying the Old English charac­ ter, he would make Robin Hood, who was a true Englishman in look, in word, and in deed. He was a generous foe, a faith­ ful friend: all who loved oppression, he regarded as his ene­ mies; and all who had hearts warm and true, he desired to make

friends. ..." 74 The character, a kind of imaginary sketch that had served English didactic writers for centuries, was particularly use­ ful to the Penny Magazine for graphically portraying qualities the Useful Knowledge Society considered desirable in various segments of society. The following is the character of an

ideal citizen: An honest and contented burgess is one of those men whom no good fortune can pamper and corrupt, no adversity sour, and no fashion change. He is right English. He is the main prop and stay of our social institutions. He is respected by his su­ periors, without compromising his indepen­ dence, and looked up to by those beneath him, without concealing their faults. . . . The mainspring of the honest burgess1s benevolence is true religion. He does not ask whether such duties are expected from his situation: but he looks into that Vol­ ume which prescribes their performance, and then applies himself to their execution, to the full extent of his humble means.

74 VII (August 4, 1838), 301. 212

His religion is not with him a holiday suit. It is not put on once a-week for decency. It lives^in his heart, and is seen in his house­ hold. 7 5 The wise farmer is depicted as follows: The ordinary farmer is no speculator; he does not enter into wild and ambitious schemes which we may daily see in trade and commerce; hence he never lays head upon pillow under the painful apprehension that some change in state affairs, or some untoward freak of fortune, may render all his schemes abortive, and reduce him to a state of beggary before the sun goes down on the morrow. His chief aim and ambition is to live dependent of the world; to be able to defray, with fruits of his own industry, all just demands that may be brought against him; and possessing the means of accomplishing this, he would not exchange conditions with the rulers of the land. 76 Biography and history were so closely related that at times they served almost identical purposes. The main func­ tion of history, according to the Penny Magazine, was not to dwell upon political upheavals and bloodshed, but to stress the lives of men whose inventions had improved the common good, and whose purity had set them apart as paragons of vir­ tue. History, like biography, then, was important because it could be made subservient to "the gratification and improve­ ment of the human mind." By providing object lessons from the past, history would correct and elevate what is and what

75 I (April 28, 1832), 34-35. 76 VIII, Supplement (December 31, 1839), 33. 213 shall be. Within tts province ample space is found for the pleasing and the useful." 77 The autobiographical sketch, especially those written by men from the working classes, provided the Penny Magazine with. another pleasing and powerful tool. The majority of these sketches were in the form of confessions of individuals who "without the advantage of formal education had managed to collect a good share of floating knowledge; and . . . had had their minds opened to receive a larger portion of the pleasant and useful things which knowledge offers. . . . 78 Because this knowledge sometimes led to a kind of humble wisdom, the Penny Magazine afforded these "correspondents" opportunity to reveal the manner in which they had overcome difficulties and warn others of the pitfalls that lay along the way. One such autobiography was sent in by an intelligent young man who had pulled himself up after wallowing in the Slough of Despond during the seven years of his apprenticeship because, as he says, he had had no more control over his movements than a horse "which is taken out of its stable in the morning to drag a cart and in the evening brought back again." During his most disconsolate days, the young apprentice had a sagacious

77VIII (March 16, 1839), 99. 78IV (May 2, 1835), 170-171. 214 friend whose apprenticeship was drawing to a close. The latter had no allusions about his future life: I am sure it will be more comfortable in many respects; especially as one feels directly and fully paid for what he earns. But, otherwise, I expect no such mighty things from the change, as you do. Go where I please, and do what I please, indeed1 What does that mean, but that I may, if I please, become a vagabond and fool; which, while I am an apprentice, my master will not allow? But if I please to be a respectable man, honestly discharging my duties to those around me, and to those who may depend upon me, where I must please to go is my workshop, and what I must please to do is my work. This, it is true, is a life of toil which I see before me; but it is honourable toil. . . .79

As a result of his friend* s homily, the writer accepted his fate, finished his term, and went on to become a successful artisan. He forwarded his experience to the Penny Magazine in hope that it would be of use to others. But the Penny Magazine could not depend too heavily on biography and related genres to effect its purposes. The precept method of instruction offered far greater possibili­ ties, especially in an age that relied heavily on homiletic teaching. As a consequence, few areas of misconduct were too insignificant or too private for the Penny Magazine's little sermons. Sometimes the folly of human vanity was ridiculed by smile-provoking anecdotes such as this one, borrowed from

79III (May 31, 1834), 216-217. 215 the Library of Entertaining Knowledges

A gentleman who had long lived in retirement sallied out into the next town one day, and saw asparagus at table for the first time in his life. Not knowing how to manage it, he ate the tough stalk, and left the tender shoot. This rather surprised his fellow diners, but the gentleman, not liking to avow his ignorance, asserted that this was the part he preferred, and thus condemned himself for ever to eat asparagus at the wrong end.8 0 As a rule, however, the Useful Knowledge Society con­ cerned itself with more serious matters, as, for instance, rules of conduct designed to advance the moral and economic well-being of the working classes. In this respect, the Penny Magazine placed itself squarely in the mainstream of nineteenth-century thought, for many people of the age con­ sidered this life a preparation for the life to come. Conse­ quently, proper conduct was an essential part of living, and a significant part of the evangelical zeal that characterized the period was devoted to imparting the ideals of virtuous living to the inferior ranks of society. This practice, of 81 course, was not unique with the nineteenth century. Follow­ ing the tradition established by the early conduct books, the Penny Magazine presented advice on deportment for the servant classes, interspersed with a hint or two for their employers.

80 VI (April 22, 1837), 149. 81 See above, pp. 216

A young girl entering service was advised not to be concerned with rising above her social station; nor should she move

from employer to employer because of impatience with "present

inconvenience." Rather, she should diligently apply herself

to her allotted tasks instead of seeking pleasures "adverse to

their fulfilment." The Penny Magazine suggested that she

follow orders quickly, but not servilely. She should cheer­

fully submit to minor annoyances and bear with the caprices 82 and even the bad temper of her employer.

Male servants were advised that the most desirable of

their kind were good-tempered, cheerful, obedient, and content­

ed. Somehow, there seems to be a symbolic connection between

these qualities and the Penny Magazine1s description of the

camel, which it called a most well-behaved beast of burden:

"Patient under his duties, he kneels down at the command of

his driver, and rises cheerfully with his load; he requires

no whip or spur during his monotonous march; but . . . feels

an evident pleasure in musical sounds; and therefore when

fatigue comes upon him, the driver sings some cheering snatch

of his Arabian melodies, and the delighted creature toils

Q O forward with a brisker step."

82II {August 24, 1833), 326. 8 3 II (March 30, 1833), 116. Turning its attention to employers, the Penny Magazine warned that servants could fare better without the help of their masters than vice versa; therefore, the master was ad­ vised to go out of his way to secure the happiness and well­ being of those who served him. Such ministration should in­ clude a careful watch over the servant's conduct, the master first making sure, of course, not to require of those in his service any task "inimical to the strictest rules of morality. Nor should employers be overly critical of the faults they observe in their servants except in cases of moral conduct. In short, allowances should be made for those deficiencies which might be far more pronounced if the social structure werp ever reversed.^ 8 4 Suggestions for the judicious handling of money were well within the scope of the Penny Magazine1s guide to proper

conduct. George Long, editor of the Penny Encyclopaedia,

concluded an essay entitled "The Value of a Penny" with the following observation: We wish it were in our power to impress strongly on the working people of this Kingdom, how much happiness they may have at their command by small savings. They are far the most numerous part of the community? and it is by their condition that the real prosperity of the community should be estimated. . . . Hard as the condition of the working classes often is, are they not aware that

(August 24, 1833), 326. 218

by industry/ frugality, and a judicious combina­ tion of their small resources, they can do more to make themselves happy, than anybody else can do for them?85

From time to time, the Penny Magazine presented essays to warn against questionable economic practices involving the poor. An attack, for example, was aimed at the custom of pay-

i ing factory workers on Saturday night at a public house in the vicinity of their place of employment. Workingman "of most abstemious habits," it seems, often felt obliged to take re­ freshments in the house where they received their pay, a custom which, more often than not, made an appreciable dent in the family budget. Workers of "less temperate character" frequent­ ly did not leave the establishment until they had spent the greater part of their wages. The Penny Magazine recommended that the pay table be located in a place less fraught with 86 temptations. Workingmen not well established in a trade were advised to refrain from taking on family responsibility as long as their financial prospects were "not overclear.1,87 The pawnshop vied with the public house as a financial snare for the working classes. This establishment frequently provided the poor with temporary but dubious relief from their economic woes. The Penny Magazine presented the testimony of

85 I (May 12, 1832), 62. 86 I (October 27, 1832), 294. 88VII (April 7, 1838), 131. 219 a well-informed witness before the Poor Law Commission in 1833 as stark evidence of the exorbitant interest demanded by pawnbrokers. According to the witness# the following rates were typical: Size of loan Interest if article Weekly redeemed same day interest

3d. 5200% 8 6 6 % 4d. 3900% 650% 6 d. 2600% 433% 9d. 1733% 288% Is. 1300% 216% The witness pointed out that the average loan ranged between

3d. and Is. 6 d. on handkerchiefs, flannel petticoats, shifts, and such household articles as tea kettles and flat irons. These articles were usually redeemed in a few days and fre- 88 quently on the same day. The Penny Magazine was ready with suggestions ad infiniturn on such diverse matters as arithmetic, diet, dress, home furnishings# child rearing, reading and recreation. A samp­ ling will indicate the zeal with which the paper went about this aspect of public education. Many people were embarrassed by not being able to pro­ nounce certain words "according to what is esteemed the correct way" and were consequently ridiculed by persons who may have been more ignorant than they. While acknowledging the useful­ ness of fixed pronunciations, the Penny Magazine endeavored

88 II (July 13, 1833), 271. 220 to show that very few people could completely avoid errors. Although it considered such slips of little consequence, it devoted some space to rules designed, as far as possible, to make pronunciation more uniform for those who might be appre- 89 hensive about the matter. The nineteenth century, quick to castigate excess in any form, considered drunkenness a major facet of the "condition of England" question. Most Englishmen grasped at anything that might counter drunkenness in expanding urban areas. So great was the quest for temperance that in 1841 when Father Theobald Mathew (a cleric who had organized enormous temper­ ance demonstrations throughout Scotland and Ireland) visited England, a crowd of 20,000 Londoners gave him a rousing wel­ come. ^ In keeping with the general tenor of the age, the Penny Magazine frequently scrutinized the nation's drinking habits and laid down guidelines for propriety in the use of alcoholic beverages. For example, beer, which had been the traditional refreshment for centuries, was highly recommended over gin consumed in such great quantities by the urban poor. But the magazine reserved its greatest enthusiasm for wine. It could find no more harm in a jug of wine than in a hearty meal of roast beef. The danger in both instances lay in the

OQ II (February 2, 1833), 45. 90 John W. Dodds, The Age of Paradox (London, 1952), p. 12. 221

lack of moderation. Moreover, respectable people drank wine;

only the vulgar classes imbibed in gin and brandy. On more

than one occasion, readers were told that drunkenness had

grown rare in the highest ranks of society, and the change was "unquestionably due in great measure, to the adoption by 51 them of pure unbrandied wines." Nor did the paper weary of

trying to convince the workingman that the alehouse yielded

far less pleasure than could be derived from a walk in the

country or a holiday visit to some interesting object that

afforded both instruction and delight.

When a mechanic was able to move from an undesirable

cottage to one more decently appointed, the Society observed

an improvement in his conduct; the reverse was true when he

was forced from a comfortable environment into the "hopeless 92 degradation of a miserable cellar-dwelling." Therefore the

Penny Magazine was convinced that a connection existed between

the workingman1s dwelling and his morals and consequently pro­

vided a number of essays on the selection, improvement and

furnishing of houses for the poor. These were suggestions of

a purely practical nature, to be sure, but because the paper

was committed to the social efficacy of beauty and taste, as

we shall see later, many articles were directed toward

91 IV (January 20, 1835), 235. 92 X (march 6, 1841), 92. 222

improving the appearance of the poor man's surroundings. An attack was launched against the belief that the cottage was doomed to ugliness because the poor had no control over the appearance and quality of their possessions/ and with their meager income, they had to take what they could get. Such thinking, said the Penny Magazine, was a most serious obstacle to "all exertion and all improvement." 93 After all, the duty on stamped paper had been abolished in 1836, and homes of the poor could be beautified with the simple addition of pleasing wallpaper. The argument was no longer valid that ugly walls were cheaper than sightlier ones. The Penny Magazine, however, urged the working classes to create a demand for beautiful surroundings in order for the supply to materialize. More­ over, "demand producing competition" for tasteful articles would ensure their cheapness. 94 In an essay entitled "Intel­ lectual Paper Hangings," the magazine went so far as to sur- gest that wallpaper be used for more than aesthetic purposes: We have long remarked the unseeming designs which cover the walls of most apartments in­ habited by the humbler, nay, even by the wealthier classes of this country; and it has occurred to us that it would be an easy task, not only to render the patterns of paper- hangings more elegant and ornamental, but to introduce a new feature in their construction,

^3V (December 10, 1836), 484. 223

which, while it shoukd not detract from the elegance of their appearance, should invest them with a degree of utility calculated to enhance their value in the estimate of all right-thinking persons. . . . We cannot think that an elegant design on the walls of an apartment can lose any­ thing of its beauty by conveying to the spectator some enobling thought or virtuous admonition, couched in the language of Shake­ speare or Milton; nor can we conceive in what way the wisdom of the learned or even the pre­ cepts of religion would be depreciated either in value or effect by such a method of commu­ nication. . . . An idle humour of the unprin­ cipled thoughts of a vacant hour might be checked by such a handwriting on the wall; while the advice of a Franklin or the satire of a Pope might serve to fix some wavering 9 5 resolution or turn aside some vicious pursuit. Fortunately, perhaps, most of the Penny Magazine1s sug­ gestions for improving the working man's living quarters were less elaborate. In a feature called "The Library," which was discontinued after 1833, there were detailed guidelines for stocking a poor man's library. The paper looked forward to the day when the poorest cottage would be considered incom­ plete without a few shelves stocked with "provisions of the mind." This development would surely come about when the working classes were generally educated, and books were deemed as indispensable "as anything else whatever, after food, shel- ter, and clothing." 96 The Penny Magazine believed that a cottage library could be furnished for as little as a pound

IX (February 8, 1840), 52-53.

96I (April 14, 1832), 22. 224 a year. With this modest outlay, the workingman could in tine acquire such works as The Wealth of Nations, The Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Beniamin Franklin, and Select Works of the British Poets. Although the general practice of the paper was to recom­ mend books containing “wholesome amusement and useful instruc- tion,“ it did not hesitate to use its offices to caution against books of “an injurious tendency.1' Among the best known books that the Penny Magazine castigated was Frances Trollope's Domestic Manners of the Americans. Mrs. Trollope, according to the Penny Magazine, left England "dissatisfied with the political and social systems of the Old World"; con­ sequently, her expectations of the New World were exaggerated. When she found neither America nor the Americans quite as good as she had imagined, it was no more than natural that she describe them as much worse than they were. Therefore the magazine considered her opinions misleading and advised against 97 reading her book. In another instance the paper disapproved of a book entitled The Village Poor-House, by a Country Curate (1832) because the writer showed only the misery, the suffer­ ing, and the poverty of the poor. According to the Penny

97I (May 31, 1832), 83. Many Englishmen of the period were critical of the United States. The Penny Magazine and the Athenaeum, however, were notably sympathetic. See, for example, the latter*s condemnation of Mrs. Trollope's Book, March 24, 1832, p. 187. 225

Magazine, the curate should have pointed out that peasants of other countries were much worse off than the British. Such books were accused of inciting insane jealousy and hatred 98 against the wealthier classes. Although the Useful Knowledge Society said publicly that it approved of the dissemination of news, it considered some information harmful, especially to the partially educated reader. As a rule, news was improper when it dealt with mat­ ters that might possibly stir up trouble wmong the working classes. Thus, a report of a speech by the reform agitator Thomas Attwood or the labor leader Thomas Hodgskin was the kind of news to be eschewed; a speech on education by Brougham or the testimony by Francis Place before the Select Committee for the Inquiry into Drunkenness was welcomed as information for the people. But harmless news was at best dull compared to the violent discussions of Church and State which the Use­ ful Knowledge Society had pledged to avoid. In an attempt to substitute a harmless kind of exitement for something that might prove inflammatory, the Penny Magazine resorted to sup­ plying its readers with a kind of pseudo-news. This type in­ cluded the occurrence of strange and unusual events at home and abroad, along with reports of exotic aspects of nature in lands unfamiliar to the untraveled Englishman, In 1833 and

98 I (July 31, 1832), 110. 226

1834, for example, considerable attention was given to a story concerning Peter the Wild Boy, who was found sucking a cow in 99 Hanover. The following year, several articles were devoted 100 to Casper Hauser, a feral man discovered in Bavaria. The Penny Magazine was dedicated to combat superstition and the belief in supernatural interference in natural events; however, a good many readers were as interested in such mys­ terious happenings as their ancestors had been for centuries. Without compromising its principles, the magazine allowed its readers to enjoy the supernatural under the guise of examples of ignorant superstitions of generations past. Such was the pretext for the following old account of the bird of paradise: Now and then some traveller brought to Europe the skin of a beautiful race of birds, of whose habits he knew nothing, except what he learnt from the natives who collected them. Their plumage was the most brilliant lustre; some were covered over the breast and back with tippets of richest hues; others had long delicate lines of feathers,prolonged from be­ neath their wings or branching from the head; and most of these trappings appeared too fra­ gile for any use, and incapable of bearing up

99 III (January 4, 1834), 8. Queen Caroline reportedly be­ came interested in the boy and hired tutors to instruct him in speech. Quite frequently in the news ballads of the seventeenth century, royalty succored such people. Cf. Of a maide nowe dwelling at a towne of meurs in dutchland, that hath not taken any foode this 16 years, and is not yet hungry nor thirsty; the which maide hath lately been presented to the lady elisa- beth, the King1s daughter of england, 1611.

100III (February 1, 1834), 46. 227

against the rude winds which visit the earth. The specimens also which came to Europe were deprived of feet. Fancy had thus ample material to work upon. These birds. . . were described as inhabitants of some region where all was beauty and purity; where no storms ever ruffled their plumage; where they floated about on never-tiring wings in a bright and balmy atmosphere incapable of resting from their happy flight, and nourished only by dews and perfumes of a cloudless sky. They were called Birds of Paradise: and the few specimens that Europeans saw were supposed to have accidentally visited some sunny spot of our world, rich with flowers and spices, but not their true abiding- place.101 To help prevent the rise and spread of similar scientific errors, the Penny Magazine frequently printed what it called reliable eyewitness accounts of unfamiliar natural phenomena.

It made a special effort to avoid 11 silly stories of idle and credulous travellers, and the prejudiced remarks of such as hurried through a country as fast as post-hourse could carry 102 them." In this effort the paper enjoyed a varying degree of success. Several amazing reports slipped by the watchful eye of the Penny Publications Sub-committee. A classic in­ stance involved the account of a British ship that put out a rowboat in the Sunderbunds to travel up a small river in search of fresh fruit. The party went ashore, leaving to guard the boat a lone sailor, who promptly fell asleep. When his comrades returned, they found the boat in the coils of a

101II (March 2, 1833), 82.

102I (April 30, 1832), 45. 228 103 sixty-two feet long boa constrictor. In one instance, at least, the Penny Magazine stirred up a small furor in the Useful Knowledge Society with an account of the operation of a sugar plantation, written by Knight, who probably had never seen a plantation in his life. Neverthe­ less, he wrote that at one time, sugar plants had been culti­ vated by hand, but of late, where the ground would permit, the hoe had been replaced by the plow "to the mutual advantage of the planter and his labourers." William Allen, who was a member of the Penny Publications Committee, thought that the timing of the article was poor in light of the current slavery dispute and that Knight had romanticized the facts. Allen pointed out that raising sugar was hard work and denied the claim that the task was made easier with the introduction of the plow. He was most upset over the reference to slaves as laborers and added sarcastically that he expected "in the next place to see in some number of the Penny Magazine. . .some de­ scription of the blessings of the Factories and the happiness of little Labourers, employed from 12 to 16 hours out of 24— swelling the tide of Commerce and promoting the prosperity. . . of a few Individuals who may hereafter employ the power thus

103 III (October 11, 1834), 384. Perhaps the story is not exaggerated as much as the artist's concept of the incident that accompanies it.

104I (April 21, 1832), p. 39. 229 obtained in adding Field to Field till there shall be no place 105 left for the Poor." It was not long before Place's expectation materialized, for the Society found itself caught between a genuine synpathy for the plight of the lower classes and the Whig middle-class economics of the philosophical radicals. For example, as a humanitarian publication, the Penny Magazine was opposed to the employment of chimney sweeps and expressed pleasure when legislation was passed prohibiting the practice: "The period seems to be not very far distant when the poor little chimney­ sweeper, with his sooty face, his weak eyes, his bare feet, and his burden of collected soot, will be spoken of as a creature of other days— a memorial of a most clumsy and un­ scientific (not to say inhuman) practice." Yet as an up­ holder of prevailing economic practices, the paper saw nothing wrong with employing children in factories. It admitted that

1 05 The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge Letter Book. William Allen to T. Coates, April 24, 1832. Quoted in Cherry, pp. 298-299. Knight was nettled by Allen's letter and fired back: "The answer to Mr. Allen is not dif­ ficult. The cultivation of Sugar-cane affords the supply of an article of necessity to the British population. . . . be­ sides paying four millions to the state. I suppose those who eat sugar may be told how it grows, without involving the dis­ cussion of a complicated question, with two sides, whatever certain people may think. It is not improbable that the advaiv- tage of adding 'field to field till there shall be no place for the poor* may be stated in some future number of the Penny Magazine." Ibid., Knight to Coates, April, 1832.

106 XI (November 16, 1833), 322. 230 in a few instances there were hardships, but held that in the majority of establishments, the children suffered no undue abuses. Furthermore, youthful sweat not only made a contribu­ tion to the national wealth, it also gave the children useful employment and trained them in habits of "morality and good feeling which are most likely to ensure their own lasting 107 happiness and to make them valuable members of society." Although the Penny Magazine was conservative in many re­ spects, it was always on the side of reform in matters of crime, illiteracy, and public education. Table after table of dreary statistics attempted to link illiteracy and poverty with immorality, crime, and drunkenness. Reports on the deplorable condition of the schools, compiled by such

107 II (November 16, 1833), 445. The Penny Magazine de­ scribed as follows a model factory run by Mr. John Wood, a stuff manufacturer at Bradford, Yorkshire: "In the manufactory of Mr. Wood about six hundred persons, principally girls, are employed. When we arrived it was the hour allotted to dinner and recreation; and the young people were joyously sporting in the open yard of the factory, like children out of school. After witnessing for some time this scene of unrestrained freedom from toil, the period for renewed industry arrived, and we were ushered into the mill. This we found as clean, as light, and as comfortable as a drawing room. . . .The children in resuming their work, had not lost their cheerful look, but set about their tasks in a manner which proved that these were any thing but irksome to them. Seats are provided for the accommodation of the young folks when they are not actually employed, which state of leisure, from the nature of their occupation, very frequently occurs. The little work-people seemed quite delighted to see their employer; their faces brightened up, and their eyes sparkled as he came near and spoke to them. ..." Ibid. 231 organizations as the Manchester Statistical Society, received special attention. One such report dealt with a Liverpool school conducted in a garret that could only be reached by negotiating three flights of broken stairs. A class of forty children shared a 9 by 12 feet area with a cock, two hens, and three black terriers. The screeches of the children, coupled with the barking and the cackling, made the noise un­ bearable. The area was lighted by one small window in which the master placed his desk, blocking out three-fourths of the feeble light. Other schools in the vicinity were reported in a similar state of squalor and chaos. 108 The Penny Magazine reported that in Manchester, investi­ gators discovered that the majority of dame schools were located in dirty and unhealthy rooms, unventilated cellars, or dilapidated attics. In one school, eleven children were found in a classroom where one child belonging to the mistress lay in bed with the measles. Another had died of the disease a week before. Moral education, according to the magazine, was totally neglected. When asked if he taught morals, one master replied, "Morals! how am I to teach morals to the like 109 of these?"

108 VI (February 4, 1837), 43.

Ibid., p. 42. 232

The paper provided a number of perceptive views of nine­ teenth-century life and contemporary affairs which are of interest even today. An outstanding example is the detailed account of public life in London and its environs. In word and picture, the reader was carried to such places as Bow Street, Palace Yard, the Old Bailey, and Newgate— places where the wheels of British justice slowly grind. The Penny Maga- zine paused in Old Bailey Street so that the reader could view young prisoners between the ages of nine and fifteen crowding into the dock “like sheep in a pen."1^ Moving on to the boys' ward in Newgate, the reader sees young offenders who have served their apprenticeshop in crime on the streets, and now in prison, they are furthering, their education in “the dexterity and meanness of theft," under the tutorship of har­ dened criminals. In other instances, the paper explained the function and tradition of various London courts. The names are familiar to readers of nineteenth-century novels: Doctors' Commons, Marshalsea, King's Bench. At another time, the Penny Magazine led the reader to the strangers' gallery of the House of Com­ mons, where he was familiarized with the workings of Parlia­ ment and later given a guided tour through Whitehall and

VI (February 11, 1837), 50-51.

111 Ibid., p. 50. 233

Downing Street, the site of many important government offices. From there the Penny Magazine moved to Somerset House, The

Excise Office, the Mint and the Post Office, with detailed descriptions of the official duties performed at each step. On other occasions, the reader was shown the vast commu­ nication network that fanned out from London. He was asked to pause a while in Fleet Street to watch the arrival of stage-coaches from thirty-seven points in the country connect­ ed to London by direct route. The Penny Magazine then urged him on to Bishopsgate to observe the short stages, the hackney coaches and the sedan chairs. From there, he was led to the manufacturing districts of Smithfield and Spitalfields, to the market areas in Ludgate and Regent Street, to Bethlehem Hospital, to Vauxhall, the Zoological Gardens, and a host of 112 other fascinating places in and around London. With its zealous dissemination of knowledge, the Penny

Magazine sometimes trod close to the line that separated a newspaper from a miscellany of useful and interesting informa­ tion. But in 1834, Brougham was involved in an argument with the Times that for a brief period placed the Penny Magazine in danger of crossing the line and becoming a full-fledged newspaper. The circumstances of the dispute are not clear.

_ See the 1837 series called "The Looking-Glass of London." 234

Thomas Barnes, editor of the Times and long-time friend of Brougham, apparently became offended when Brougham, after becoming Lord Chancellor, considered it impolitic to remain on personal terms with any member of the press and cooled his relationship with Barnes. The Times of December 26, 1834, accused Brougham of stating in the Edinburgh Review, in the Companion to the Newspaper, "and wherever his hand could be traced" that the press had lost its power, and the day of the leading article was over. Actually, the Times had miscon­ strued Brougham’s comments. The Companion to the Newspaper for 1834 carried excerpts from testimony Brougham had given on the relation of libel laws to the newspaper tax. In this passage, delivered before the Select Committee of the House of Commons, Brougham had saidi I am of opinion that a sound system of govern­ ment requires the people to read and inform themselves upon political subjects, else they are the prey of every quack, every impostor, and every agitator, who may practice his trade in the country. If they do not read. . . i f they do not digest, by discussion and reflec­ tion, what they have read and learned— if they do not thus qualify themselves to form opinions for themselves, other men will form opinions for them, not according to truth and to the interests of the people, but according to their own individual and selfish interests, which may. 235

and probably will, be contrary to that of the people at large. H3 The article in the Penny Magazine that most likely offended the Times was not written by Brougham. In a discussion of Hogarth's "The Politician," the paper commented: In the days of Hogarth, newspapers dealt only in news, and most delighted in 'wars and rumours of wars.' They had no idea of the step made in our times, when a single editor boasts that he directs the opinion of three-fourths of his countrymen, (poor countrymen!) and thinks it a merit to raise up an idol one day to throw it down in the dirt (if he can) the next. In Hogarth's print, an old near-sighted gentleman holds a candle so close to his paper that the flame sets his hat a- fire. The Penny Magazine comments: Thanks to the introduction of narrow-brimmed hats, there is now no danger of our Quidnuncs setting fire to their beavers. Their heads, indeed, are sometimes affected and heated by flaming leading articles and paragraphs, but the heat is all inwards. There are political

1 1 O pp. 207-208. Brougham, however, made another com­ ment that shows that at this particular time he held no malice against the Times. He said that he did not think removing the newspaper tax would hurt the revenue of established news­ papers by permitting too many newspapers to spring up in competition. Furthermore: "An old established newspaper has a great advantage over the new comer; the Morning Chronicle or the Times, the Morning Herald or the Morning Post, coming down to three­ pence, would have infinite advantages over any other; they have possession of the field; the proprietors are men of credit, and I am sure they are activated by a feeling too liberal to wish to put forward their hands to any thing like monopoly." 236

occasions on which the people have to think and to act, . . . but the only way to think and act rightly is to be cool, and not set their hats on their heads on fire.1!4 But whether these articles were actually sources of the rancor or not, the Times, which had so far confined its attack to political matters, opened a blistering personal attack on Brougham, who became angered to the point of attempting to ruin his attacker by first aiding radical agitators in their fight to repeal the stamp duty and then converting the Penny Magazine into the first penny newspaper. If Brougham was serious, his position represented a complete about face from his statements earlier in the year. Yet, as we have pointed out, such switches were well within the capacity of the Lord Chancellor's ephemeral moods. Perhaps transforming the Penny Magazine into a newspaper could actually have hurt the circu­ lation of the Times, which could not have been profitably sold for less than threepence per copy even if the tax were removed. On the other hand, the Penny Magazine claimed a circulation three times that of the Times, a factor which would have enabled the Useful Knowledge Society to sell it for a penny and still reap a profit, assuming, of course, that as a regular newspaper, the Penny Magazine would not have

III (December 13, 1834), 482. 237

dropped in popularity. The argument waned, however, and 115 Brougham abandoned the scheme. Just as the newspaper tax restricted the Penny Magazine’s handling of the news, the almanac tax seriously prevented it from inserting many popular features of the almanac into its format. The Society had long been aware of the power of the almanac to diffuse popular knowledge. The British Almanac, however, which the Committee established in 1828, had not been effective in diminishing the popularity of almanacs based on superstition and quackery. Picking up the Society's argu­ ment against the almanacs that were commonly distributed among the people, the Penny Magazine argued that "a reliance . . . on the unprincipled quackeries of the more popular almar- nacs which still disgrace our country, as well as every other prostration of the understanding before the shrine of ignor­ ance, is the most deceptive of all states of the human mind, and the most likely to engender a train of other delusions which shut up the sources of real knowledge, and degrade the whole moral as well as intellectual character." In spite of its abhorrence of such almanacs, the Penny Magazine was powerless to use its facilities to produce something better

Arthur Aspinall, Politics and the Press, c. 1780- 1850 (London, 1949) , pp. 260-261.

116 I (January 30, 1832), 123. 238 until after the repeal of the tax on almanacs in 1834. Even then, the Committee was wary of incorporating an almanac into a publication appearing more frequently than once a year be­ cause traditionally, almanacs had been designed to serve throughout the twelve months of the zodiac. Published at shorter intervals, such works were considered financially un­ sound. By 1839, nevertheless, the Society decided that a monthly almanac as part of the Penny Magazine might help revive sales. The prefatory remarks to the first series stated that: An Almanac, rightly considered, is a text for the most amusing and instructive com­ ment. An Almanac directs us to the obser­ vance of periods connected with our social duties;— an Almanac has relation to all the wonderful phenomena of the heavenly bodies; an Almanac leads us to the consid­ eration of the changes of the Seasons and to the Natural History of the Year; an Al­ manac has reference to the customs of our ancestors, which shed so rich a light over the whole history of their social arrange­ ments. . . . An Almanac, then, supplies a boundless field of interesting subjects for our Miscellany— subjects which have a natur­ al connexion, but are yet individually in­ structive. Without duplicating what was to be found in other almanacs published by the Society, the Penny Magazine hoped to give readers of all classes a great deal of useful and agreeable information that in a variety of ways could be connected with

117 IX (January 5, 1839), 1. 239 the calendar. Coming at the end of the First Series, the Penny Magazine* s almanac was an indication that the paper was changing from a publication devoted largely to illus­ trated essays to one that placed its major emphasis on reading and which gave greater prominence to longer works of imaginative literature. Chapter VI

During the first series of the Penny Magazine, or up to 1841, a large proportion of articles were illustrated.

Woodcuts became less frequent, however, with the beginning of the second series. Knight gave the following explana­ tion: I may truly say that the object of the change was to present to a public which had been ad­ vancing in education, a Miscellany of a high­ er character than the first series. The en­ gravings were superior; the writing was less "ramble-scramble" .... The superintendence of the Society had merged in my individual responsibility as editor when I announced a new "Penny Magazine." It was henceforth to be chiefly a magazine of reading; woodcuts no longer continuing to be the prominent feature in the work.1 Although the emphasis of the new series was shifted, the il o lustrated article was by no means abandoned. Indeed the

1 Passages, II, 322. o The advertisement for the New Series states: "The paper upon which the 'Penny Magazine1 is now printed will be slightly reduced in size; but in thickness and fineness of quality a larger expense will be incurred by the Pub­ lishers. With this advantage the quality of the printing will be greatly advanced. . . . It will aspire to a beauty of illustration which has never been combined with extra­ ordinary cheapness." Advertisement, Jan. 2, 1841.

240 241

1830's and 40's saw the zenith of the woodcut in conjunction

with the popular miscellany. In the first decades of the nineteenth century, wood en­ graving, which had flourished during the Renaissance, had fallen into such disuse that it was almost impossible to find an engraver in London who possessed the shill and the tools 3 to do a first-rate job. Even if engravers had been plenti­ ful, a system of printing woodcuts in conjunction with the rotary press had not been developed when the Useful Knowledge

Society decided to illustrate the Library of Entertaining Knowledge. In the early days of printing, the operator of

the press was responsible for making gradations in lightness

and darkness in a print by varying the pressure on the block with padding placed between a blanket and the paper. The thicker the padding, the darker the shadows. With the intro­ duction of stereotyping and the steam press, the engraved block was locked in the frame along with the other type, and the entire impression was put on a plate for use in the ro­ tary press. The printer was no longer able to modify what

3The process of steel engraving in some respects is exactly opposite to that of wood engraving. In a metal en­ graving, the lines that appear on the finished print are etched into a metal plate, the surface of which is then inked. It is then wiped clean, and the print is made from the ink remaining in the depressions. In a wood engraving, the lines to be printed are left standing, and the background is cut away. 242

the engraver had produced. It therefore became necessary to develop wood-engraving techniques that gave the required blackness to the shadows and left the necessary cleanness in

the highlights. Under the supervision of the Useful Knowledge Society, a process was developed that met the demands of the machine 4 age. A drawing was first made on high quality boxwood im­ ported from the Ukraine. {Boxwood trees grown in England did not reach sufficient size.) The wood was sawed across the grain, a process requiring the largest and most expen­ sive logs to make illustrations the size of those often re- 5 quired by the Penny Magazine. The block on which the draw­

ing had been made was turned over to an engraver, who

scooped out the necessary depressions with a few simple tools. In the technique developed for use with stereotyping, the surface of the wood that was to reproduce white in the print was cut deeper than previously had been required. Shading was varied by the angle at which the shadow-producing surfaces of the carved wood touched the paper and by hatch­ ings. The process required time and patience, and the men

4 Passages, II, 115-116. 5A system was developed a few years later permitting the use of four blocks bolted together when large illustrations were required. Sometimes a different engraver worked on each section. 243 who mastered the skill demanded extremely high pay. The Useful Knowledge Society was fortunate in securing some of the best artists in the business, including John Jackson, an outstanding draftsman and engraver. Pew of these artists would have been at the disposal of the Penny Magazine, the Society explained, had not the 200,000 purchasers been will- ing to cooperate to obtain an excellent specimen of art.

Art for the masses was an innovation, but since the

Renaissance, private collectors had had imported into England many objets d 1 art, which for the most part were displayed in private residences where the public seldom had access. Thus before the 1830's, art in England (as it was in most places) was reserved primarily for the wealthy. In 1833, however, a growing interest in art led to a grant of £50,000 from Parlia­ ment to establish a National Gallery of Painting. Motivated in part by this general concern for the fine arts and in part by its ability to produce inexpensive reproductions and dis­ perse them in large numbers, the Useful Knowledge Society decided to use the Penny Magazine to place masterpieces of painting and sculpture within arm’s reach of the common man. For the first time in history, the majority of viewers were

^11 (October 26, 1833), 421. A full-page woodcut cost the Penny Magazine sixty guineas. Transactions of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science, 1858, p. 26. 244 not required to travel to the work of art. Rather, the product of the artist's skill was taken in generous quanti­ ties to the viewer. Thus the Society harnessed an untapped source of innocent diversion and at the same time took ad­ vantage of new technology to provide instruction for the masses in a manner both pleasing and informative. A major function of art in the Penny Magazine was to cultivate the taste of the masses. The Society held that people could be educated in taste as readily as they could be taught to read. Thus, after the masses had learned to provide for their bodily needs, it was necessary to elevate their minds by enlarging the sphere of their aesthetic ac­ tivity. And even though the working classes must continue in their daily routine, they should be encouraged "to par­ ticipate in those gratifications of an intellectual order, the enjoyment of which . . . renders the path of duty more 7 cheerful and pleasant." When the workingman reached the point where he could gain happiness from things that were beautiful, noble, and elevated, he had acquired taste. To reinforce this connection between happiness and taste, the Penny Magazine was ready with several cogent, utilitarian arguments. Whatever tended to make the ideas which entered the mind nobler and more beautiful was without

7 V (December 3, 1836), 479. 245 question a great addition to the individuals general happi­ ness. It was therefore exceedingly useful for a man to learn to understand and appreciate the beautiful, "whether in the works of God, or in those of man; whether in the flowers and fields, and rocks and woods, and rivers, and sea and sky; or in fine buildings, or fine pictures, or fine music and the Q noble thoughts and glorious images of poetry." Natural beauty and moral beauty, moreover, were so closely allied that the Penny Magazine considered them "different gradations of the scale of excellence; and the knowledge and relish of the former should be deemed only a step to the nobler and more 9 permanent enjoyments of the latter." And finally, anything whatsoever with the power to improve the manners of the peo­ ple was of extreme utility in promoting a "high advance in civilization."^ Taste, or the ability to discriminate between the beautiful and the ugly, had a variety of uses. For one thing, it was of extreme importance in industry. The Penny Magazine argued, for example, that French and Belgium silk workers

g I (January 14, 1832), 109-110. The Penny Magazine adopted the romantic concept of nature1s intuitive teaching; both by natural objects and the essence of these objects cap­ tured in art and literature. Carlyle, for example, called literature "an apocalypse of nature." ("The Hero as Man of Letters"). ^ Ibid., p. 150. 10 V (October 8, 1836), 396. 246 turned out a product superior to that of the British because these foreign artisans had been taught to "unite elegance and usefulness." The French worker's taste, for instance, was perfected by several years of instruction in anatomical and botanical drawing, architectural forms and landscape. British silk workers, on the other hand, had no such opportu- 1 : nity and consequently turned out aesthetically inferior silk. The Penny Magazine1s interest in concrete applications of taste led to its war against unsightly noneteenth-century architecture. 12 The Useful Knowledge Society had no quarrel with the majority of public edifices erected throughout Eng­ land; these were usually designed to meet acceptable stan­ dards of taste. On the other hand, the cottage of the arti­ san and the peasant was generally hideous. As a result of this diversity, the middle class^ anxious to demonstrate the social distance between it and the lower class, but unwilling to devote time and energy to acquiring a true appreciation of the beautiful, associated taste in architecture with the amount of money spent in the construction of the building.

__ II (February 28, 1833), 75. In 1839, the Penny Maga­ zine was able to announce that the government had established a School of Design to educate artisans and mechanics in the fine arts as they applied to manufacturing. VIII (September 14, 1839), 357. 12 On this point, Knight's influence can be clearly seen. See above, p. 247

This practice of making elegance expensively conspicuous led to the ornate, cluttered style of architecture so characteris­ tic of the nineteenth century. A more serious violation of taste came about when the less wealthy began to imitate the class immediately above them by tacking on a cheap coating of pseudo-finery, or gingerbread. The Penny Magazine held in contempt the rich citizen1s house "with its monstrous incon­ veniences and fantastic decorations." Nor could it condone "the vulgar assemblage of a great many rude articles and a few fine ones" that passed for proper furnishings in the 13 tradesman's parlor or the merchant's drawing room. Much of the Useful Knowledge Society's artistic theory stemmed from the Neoclassical movement in art as reflected in Sir Joshua Reynold's Discourses on Art. There were overtones also of the Romantic artistic writings of William Blake. Ac­ cording to the Penny Magazine, nature was the cheapest and surest model for beautiful man-made things. In nature one could see symmetry, grace, and elegance displayed to their 14 best advantage. Nothing in nature was tawdry or ugly. De­ signs copied from nature, for instance, would greatly improve the appearance of English wall coverings. Paper makers fre­ quently exhibited a complete ignorance of plant anatomy, with

■*■^11 (August 31, 1833), 339. 14 V (December 10, 1836), 485. 248 the result that one species of flower was often displayed with the leaves that belonged to another. This inaccuracy/ thought the Penny Magazine/ was never met with in French 15 wallpapers. Although the paper turned to nature as the ultimate cri­ terion of taste, it by no means considered art a slavish imi­ tation of natural forms, as the following passage so aptly illustrates: It is a common mistake to look upon painting as a mere art of imitation; but an acquain­ tance with good works will show that it has a higher aim. Its object is indeed to coun­ terfeit nature, but her effects must be translated, as it were, into a new language; her most beautiful or impressive forms must be selected with care; and in every work, of whatever class, a prevailing sentiment must be preserved, which is the source of what is termed feeling in the art, and affords one of its greatest charms.16 In preserving this prevailing sentiment, there was no room in art for allegory because of its tendency to let the imagina­ tion take precedence over the reflective faculties. Moreover, the Useful Knowledge Society considered allegory no longer compatible with British taste. Symbolism was more acceptable,

O O

IV (December 26, 1835), 500. As Mr. Thomas Gradgrind explains in Dickens' Hard Times: "Why, then, you are not to see anywhere, what you don't see in fact; you are not to have anywhere, what you don't have in fact. What is called Taste, is only another name for Fact."

16I (May 19, 1832), 67. 249 but it too was thought to be little more than ornamentation. The Penny Magazine explained its stand on metaphoric art in terms of progress. When the nation was in its infancy, the common mind was too simple to understand such abstract terms as government, liberty, law, justice, religion, faith, hope, charity, and the like. Thus, the artist resorted to allegory to convey meaning whenever he wished to touch upon such matters. England, in the Penny Magazine's opinion, had so advanced that the original purpose of symbolic representa- k tion had vanished. To artists who disagreed with this stand

(and there were many), the Society had one simple answer: "We 17 have advanced." As the argument against allegory implies, the Penny Maga­ zine believed that one function of the artist was to keep the imaginative faculties in check, or at least to do nothing that would encourage them to run rampant. In this respect, art took on certain functions of the daguerreotype, as is apparent in the belief expressed by the Penny Magazine that the trans­ parent atmosphere and bold lighting of Italy presented an excellent "volume" for the artist to study. In Italy, there could be found "no obscurity, no faintness, no mist, no hazi­ ness, no mingling, no confounding, or blending together of

17VII (August 11, 1838), 305-306. 250 objects; everything stands out decidedly and boldly, and in its own individual character, distinct in outline, in form, X8 colour, and position." In short, there was nothing in the Italian atmosphere to distort the artist's vision and encour­ age his unrealistic or romantic rendition of the landscape. Yet the Penny Magazine, paradoxically, was not arguing for realism in art. Its rather confused position, further complicated by the Society's ideas about the relationship of poetry to art, warrants the lengthy quotation that follows; Poetry is the essence of each of the fine arts, and when there is not poetry there is not true art. A genuine landscape is a poetic represen­ tation of a scene, not a mere servile copy of it— that is the work of a daguerreotype, not an artist. But this poetic version is no less true than the other; there are not all the de­ tails, but there are all the leading and neces­ sary features; there is substantial truth, if there be not literal. For poetry deals with reality; she embellishes, she idealizes it, but she does not distort or conceal it. Truth and beauty are poetry, and must not be separated. The true poetry of art is seen in the transfu­ sion of the mind of the artist into his imita­ tion of nature. And it must never be forgotten that a picture is to be regarded as a work of art, and art is something very different from nature...... The painter seeks by careful selec­ tion and adjustment of the parts to produce a whole that shall most strongly convey to the spectator's mind the sentiment or character pro­ per to the scene he has to portray; and this sentiment or character will depend very much for its development upon the mind of the artist. . . . For a picture to exhibit this poetic spirit, it is not necessary that the subject of it should

18VIII (March 23, 1839), 112. 251

be a poetic one? it may be found in every picture that has a definite purpose and ef­ fects it. The imagination and inventive powers are often very little exercised upon such works as merely impart form and colour to what has been already described by the poet; while others which illustrate no pas­ sage of poetry/ and tell no tale, yet fix the attention, and excite emotions of pleasure far beyond those of a more ambiti­ ous character. Nor is it necessary that it should be a representation of the stern sublimities of nature. A simple pastoral may be as much a true work of art as a most splendid epic. . . 19 The problem of whether art should imitate reality or modify it cropped again in a discussion of the artistic repre­ sentation of historical events. The Penny Magazine argued that any verbal account of history was shadowy and indistinct at best because the image conveyed by the printed word was at the mercy of the reader's experience, age, mental condition, prejudices, and the like, not to mention inaccuracies in the writer's language. It was within the power of a good artist to neutralize these variables by his graphic representation

19 "Landscape Painting" XIV (November 8, 1845), 439-440. The mention of daguerreotype in the Penny Magazine1s art criticism is not accidental. In January, 1839, Daguerre pub­ lished his discovery, and on June 10, Henry Fox Talbot read a paper before the Royal Society describing a similar process called Calotype. There are indications that Knight's friend, Sir John Herschel, invented the term photography; it is cer­ tain that he introduced the words negative and positive and suggested hyposulfite as a fixer. John W. Dodds, The Age of Paradox (London, 1952), p. 36, note. For Sir Joshua Reynold' s discussion of the relation between poetry and art see "Dis­ courses" 7 and 11. 252 of the facts. Indeed, such clarification was the prime func­ tion of artistic genius, which acted through a process of making truth, in the form it is perceived by the artist, a part of the minds of others. The Penny Magazine ascribed still another function to pictures of a historical event. The emotions aroused when one looks at the locality where a great event took place are quite unusual: Who . . . has ever stood upon a spot rendered sacred to a great memory without finding that the event itself, with all its consequences, became there clearer to his apprehension than before; without feeling his love and venera­ tion for all that was great and good— or his contempt and abhorence for all that was sordid and bad in that event, there confirmed and deepened. . . . The printing-press and the graver make such scenes, in a certain sense, accessible to all. We propose to employ these instruments in bringing such scenes and associa­ tions home to the understanding and hearts of readers.20 Thus, by reproducing such events by word and picture, the paper hoped to convey not only the facts of the events, but to recreate the mental attitudes of the participants and to provide a moral cleansing for the reader as well. Art, as William Blake had observed in 1810, was more than "facsimile representations of merely mortal and perishing substances." It had its own "sphere of invention and visionary conception."

20 X (January 21, 1841), 21The Poetry and Prose of William Blake, ed. Geoffrey Keynes (London, 1939), p. 626. 253

Over the years, the Penny Magazine reproduced hundreds of masterpieces of painting, sculpture, and engraving by numerous artists, including the works of Michelangelo, Rubens, Spagnoletto, Guido Reni, Teniers, Murillo, Quinten Matsys, 22 Hogarth, Raphael, and a number of others. But the paint­ ings of Hogarth and Raphael dominated this gallery of artis­ tic offerings. On 1832-33, the Society was fortunate in acquiring the use of seven woodcuts engraved from a group of Raphael's cartoons. The engraving was begun in 1800 by Thomas Holloway, who died in 1827, but the work was finished by R. Slann, Joseph Thomson, and T. S. Webb. The publication of these woodcuts marked an aesthetic high point for the Penny Magazine. The bold style of Raphael;s work lent itself admirably to the art of wood engraving, and the quality of the reproductions was excellent. The Useful Knowledge Society considered the group of cartoons "a compendium of the early history of the promulgation of the Christian faith," and as such, used them as a point of departure for lessions in Chris­ tianity and New Testament history. For example, the text explaining the significance of the woodcut entitled “Christ's

22 To demonstrate the progress in printing techniques, Edward Cowper presented to the House of Commons 150 repro­ ductions of paintings and sculpture clipped from the pages of the Penny Magazine. Cowper testified that these woodcuts gave mechanics and peasants in the remotest parts of England their first opportunity to glimpse great works of art. V (December 31, 1836), 515. 254

Charge to Peter" reads: "The Redeemer stands alone# distin­ guished by a majestic simplicity of action. With one hand he points to a flock of sheep, symbolically introduced in illustration of the text, 'Feed my sheep;1 with the other he consigns the keys to St. Peter, who kneels with devout rever- 23 ence to receive them. ..." In 1834, the Penny Magazine turned its attention to the work of Hogarth and printed twenty-four woodcuts executed by John Jackson from the originals. Certain of Hogarth's works had to be omitted because of the nature of their subject matter. The explanation of these omissions reveals the dif­ ference in eighteenth-and nineteenth-century sensibilities:

For obvious reasons, the selection we shall make from the works of Hogarth will be some­ what more limited than if these subjects were published in a separate form. Although the moral tendency of Hogarth's works is un­ exceptionable, — although he laboured all his life to illustrate the axiom, that 'Vice is a monster of such frightful mien As, to be hated, needs but to be seen.' the change in our taste since Hogarth drew (and, in many respects, the change is an im­ provement) prevents the republication of many of his most capital performances in a work of such general circulation as the 'Penny Magazine,' . . . Those who are acquainted with the works of Hogarth will be aware that in this selection we have not introduced a single print that can offend the most fastidious taste. In many of

^ 1 (December 1, 1832), 350. 255

them there will be found representations of human nature in its degradations of vice and imprudence? but such representations are re­ deemed from the possibility of exciting dis­ gust by the exquisite skill of the artist.24

The Penny Magazine admitted that Hogarth's works lost some of their "force and fervency" in woodcut reproductions, but maintained that the defects of the mechanical process did not detract from the originality and truth of the artist's work. Hogarth's paintings that appeared in the Penny Magazine offered ample opportunity to preach against a variety of social and moral evils. Many of these preachments repeated what the Penny Magazine had said on other occasions. Several of Hogarth's works, however, led into fresh fields of criti­ cism. In discussing the "Marriage a la mode" series, for example, the Penny Magazine pointed to the wretchedness ex­ perienced by a husband and wife who have nothing in common. Although this situation was to be pitied in all walks of life, it was particularly tragic when the unfortunate alliance re­ sulted from the union of family title on one side and wealth on the other: The personages of this tragical drama are taken from the upper walks of society. The son of a nobleman seeks an alliance with the daughter of a wealthy London citizen. On the one side there is a pedigree from William the Conqueror, but an estate embarrassed by improvident expenditure? on the other there is humble birth, but great

24 III (March 31, 1834), 122. 256

riches. The parents settle this ill-assorted marriage;— those who are to be made happy or wretched, virtuous or vicious, for the rest of their lives, care little about the matter.

In another of Hogarth's satires, "The Cockpit," the artist depicts a peer, a pickpocket, a French marquis, a chimney-sweep, a doctor, and a jockey all busily engaged in the "sordid pleasure" of a cockmatch. The Penny Magazine philosophically reflected that "crime is the leveller of all distinctions," the only difference being that the rich man is able to invest more money in his evil pleasures than can his poor counterpart. 26 "The Feast," from Hogarth's Election En­ tertainment Series presents the artist's view of corrupt poli­ tics. The Penny Magazine raised the question: "Does the pic­ ture before us altogether represent a past state of society? We fear not. . . . Are there not many still among us who look upon the solemn trust of an election lightly and selfishly?

As long as this social ifnorance exists, Hogarth's prints of 'The Election' will have more than historical truth. They will be bitter satires, in which every venal elector may feel a record of his own crimes and follies." 27 And finally, Hogarth's print, "The Distrest Poet," served the Penny Magazine as a springboard for criticism of

25 Ibid. 26 Ibid., p. 126.

^7IV (January 10, 1835), 12. 257

contemporary literary journals and the writing profession in

general. The painting shows an aspiring young poet in his room where he suffers from abject poverty. He is about to abandon hope of gaining fame as a respectable poet, and his thoughts turn to writing for the Grub Street Journal, a copy of which lies open on the floor beside him. "This is the last degradation," says the Penny Magazine, "equivalent to writing, at the present day, dishonest reviews,— attacking individual character,— or garbling and misrepresenting pri­

vate documents, because they are private. From such sins

even literary Journals of our time are not exempt. 1,28 Although the Penny Magazine was particularly suited to

the diffusion of art, it also showed considerable interest in the masses' taste for music, one of the performing arts for which the printed page was preeminently unsuited.

Just as the masses had been deprived of art, so had they suffered deprivation in good music. The Penny Magazine be­ lieved that music would provide the entire community with much needed relaxation from the serioud discussion with which it seemed continually occupied and which transformed each citizen into a mental gladiator, interested only in the attack and defense of his opinions. "We are for march of mind," the Penny Magazine obsrved, "but we think it would march better

28III (August 30, 1834), 330. 258 to music."29 Knight observed that during the first part of the nine­ teenth century, "Musical performances for the multitude there were none; for the popular taste for any higher music than a jig had not yet developed. . . . The choruses in the streets of jolly good fellows made night hideous; and when the din was overpast, the waits, horribly out of harmony, were almost as bitter enemies of sleep as the rattle of the watchman and the screech of the virago that he was dragging to durance vile. " 3 *3 In fact, it was often said in jest that an English­ man never sang outside of church unless he was drunk.- This lack of music appreciation was a serious matter to the Useful Knowledge Society. The Penny Magazine looked upon music as the handiwork of the Creator and irrefutable evidence of an intelligent power behind the universe. God gave music the power to express every emotion of the human heart? then He provided the ear with the ability to convey these emotions to the mind. To complete His work, the Almighty created the means of producing sound and harmony. Certainly enjoyment was the ultimate purpose of these divine gifts, and cultiva­ ting them rendered to the Creator "the acceptable tribute of

29 III (May 17, 1834), 190. 30 Passages, II, 27. 259 obedience."31 In spite of the virtues inherent in music, there was no feasible method of recording and reproducing actual sound, and it was useless to provide printed scores for the masses, who could not read music, and even if they could, were too poor to buy instruments. No instrument than in existence was cheap enough and simple enough for the widespread diffusion of musical knowledge. In searching for a solution to this problem, the Penny Magazine appealed to the ingenuity of the

British artisan: Here then is a fair field for all mechanics who have been, or are, employed in the construction of musical instruments, to exert their ingenuity. And we promise any one who can succeed in produc­ ing a satisfactory result, under the following conditions, to make his name and invention known from one end of the country to another, without any expense to him, so soon as we shall be satis­ fied, that the conditions are fulfilled, or even that most of the difficulties are overcome.32 The conditions of this unusual offer were rather demand­ ing. The instrument had to be priced under five shillings and rugged enough not to require frequent repair. It could not call for special skill on the part of the player to pro­ duce true musical intervals, as is the case with the violin and the flute. It had to have a range of at least two

31 VIII (February 9, 1839), 56.

32III (May 17, 1834), 189. 260

octaves, with provisions for playing the chromatic scale; yet it should be uncomplicated enough for a novice to play simple airs without long hours of practice. The volume had to be so adjustable that at its softest, the tone would be no louder than a tuning fork. And finally, it should be plucked or played with a bow so the player could sing to his own accom­ paniment. Although the Penny Magazine failed to explain ex­ actly how, it believed that with such a device, good music could be placed in the hands of the people. But since the desired instrument was not immediately forthcoming, the Penny Magazine contented itself with an attack on poor taste in music and by presenting a number of essays on the history of music in England. First, the Society set out to prove that the English were not inherently unmusical. According to the Penny Maga­ zine: Much has been said about the inherent bad taste of English people. It has been assumed that nothing but the common-place and the vulgar, in music, had any charms for them; and hence the theatres, and other places of amusement, have given them the vulgar and the commonplace to re­ pletion. It has hitherto been the fate of the great body of people to have their intellects and tastes unfairly and disparagingly judged of, and to have the really good in music, and the rest of the fine arts, kept out of their sight and reach. Many writers upon taste, who pretend­ ed to metaphysics and all the loftier branches of philosophy, have asserted that the refined strains of music please the uncultivated ear much less than the dissonant hubbub to which it has been 261 accustomed,-— and that, in short, the ruder the music, the more it delights the b a r b a r i a n . 33

The Penny Magazine was categorically opposed to any such con­ tention. Good music could be appreciated by anyone. A Turk­ ish sultan was even said to have taught his semi-barbaric people to love Italian music. In the opinion of the Penny Magazine, the humblest mechanic in England was "a more re- 34 fined and intelligent being than the highest Turk." There­ fore, there was no reason to suppose the English common peo­ ple could not develop a taste for good music. At any rate, Englishmen should listen to the best music in order to demon­ strate to the rest of Europe that the English were as refined as their neighbors. Even though the Penny Magazine defended the Englishman's ability to appreciate good music, it was critical of his re­ luctance to do so. The Society was annoyed, for example, by the low quality of street music, which the masses seemingly relished. Nothing sounded worse to the sensitive ear of the Penny Magazine than an out-of-tune hurdy-gurdy, except, per- 35 haps, the noise of the bagpipes. Such sounds were all the more deplorable because English street music had once been

33 III (March 23, 1834), 111. 34x, . , Ibid.

35III (May 3, 1834), 121-122. 262 the pride of the nation. In Elizabethan England/ many "in­ genious and exhilarating compositions" were printed and hawked about in the streets, the seller, of course, singing his wares as advertisement. Many of these songs were written for part singing, "three men's songs," as they were called, and required a certain amount of musical sophistication on the part of the singer. The pedlar with his music was by no means an anachronism in the first part of the nineteenth century, but the Penny Magazine bemoaned the degeneration of his wares. Music played in the churches was almost as distasteful to the Penny Magazine as that of the street. Composers of church music were no longer content to model their composi­ tions on "The Old Hundred" and "Evening Hymn." The new har­ mony was that of the opera and not of the church. Even the playing and singing of sacred music were in a state of degen­ eration. Local musicians, who sometimes supplied the music in lieu of an organ in smaller churches, were consistently out of harmony and out of unison. Their playing offered an excel­ lent excuse for the poor singing of the congregation, which seldom missed an opportunity to fully avail themselves of the orchestra's example. The clergy, suggested the Penny Magazine, should undertake an immediate reformation in church music

36 III (March 1, 1834), 83. 263 because "one well-directed attempt to promote innocent amuse— 37 ment would be worth two sermons against pernicious ones." The Penny Magazine favored the music of Handel {perhaps because of his long residence in England) and Bach, but the conservatism of the Society prevented its endorsement of such

innovators as Beethoven and Rossini. Beethoven's fault lay in his moodiness, which induced him to fill his music with "crude innovations out of a morbid opposition to existing

opinion." He not only broke with tradition; he spoke con­ temptuously of time-honored practices. Rossini, following in Beethoven's footsteps, wrote next to each of his innovations, "per saddisfazzione de* pedanti" (for the edification of pedants). The Penny Magazine could not believe the reputation of men who so flagrantly broke with received opinion would be lasting.t ^ ■ 3 8 On the positive side, the Penny Magazine stressed singing as an excellent diversion and recommended that it be taught 39 in schools for the poor. The Society believed, however, that "vocal music ought to imitate the natural language of the human feelings and passions rather than the warbling of canary

37 III (April 26, 1834), 156. 38 IX (January 11, 1840), 15.

39 III (March 22, 1834), 122. William Allen, it will be recalled, once objected to this practice. See above, p. 127. birds which our singers now—a—days affect so vastly to mimic 40 with the quaverings and boasted cadences." A song that met the approval of the Penny Magazine had to deal with simple subjects, but the content "should not pander to vulgarity or bad taste," the latter two qualities being defined as "gross­ ness of idea or act likely to be produced by an imperfect edu- cation acted upon by strong if not violent passions."’41 The Penny Magazine singled out the sea ditties of Charles Dibdin as good examples of the kind of popular songs that met its approval although Dibdin*s lyrics were frequently sung to Irish rather than English tunes. Dibdin made no attempt to conceal the imperfections of the lower classes to whom his songs were addressed. Rather, he aimed at strengthening "in the homeliest and least obtrusive manner" the virtues of their station, namely, their honor, valor, mercy, friendship, and virtuous love. Although his apparent purpose was not to teach, his songs often stressed the unpleasant consequences of conduct opposite the virtuous life he emphasized. Dibdin* s "Tom Tackle" provided the Penny Magazine with an excellent example of this quality. The first stanza of the ditty reads: Tom Tackle was noble, was true to his word; If merit bought titles, Tom might be my lord.

Ibid., p. 112. The Penny Magazine attributed these words to L'Abate Gravina.

^ X (September 25, 1841), 372. 265

How gaily his bark through life's ocean would sail; Truth finished the rigging, and Honour the gale. Yet Tom had a failing, if ever man had, That, good as he was, made him all that was bad; He was paltry and pitiful, scurvy and mean, And the sniv'lingest scoundrel that ever was seen: For so said the girls and the landlords 'long shore. Would you know what his fault was?— Tom Tackle was p o o r . 42

The Penny Magazine, as we have observed, accused the theater of fostering the vulgar and the commonplace in music. This aversion to theatrical music in all probability was part of the Society's general hostility to the stage. With the ex­

ception of Shakespeare, the Penny Magazine could find no Eng­ lish playwright who measured up to the stature of Moliere. Especially was it critical of Restoration drama. The Society was willing to admit that seventeenth-century English drama­ tists possessed humor, wit, and a sense of satire, but these qualities were of no avail because the writers lacked "a just and piercing insight into all varieties of human character," and the wittiest of their plays were the "most licentious and least imbued with any high moral purpose." The plays of Moliere, on the other hand, were highly commendable because they contained nothing to offend "the ear of modesty," nor did the works of the French writer ridicule virtue and hold sobri- 43 ety in contempt.

42 Ibid., p. 372.

^ X {August 7, 1841), 305. 266

Contrary to what might be expected, the Penny Magazine

exhibited no general hostility to the novel; instead, it considered the genre one of the "most powerful engines of civilization" ever devised. The novels of Scott, Richardson,

Edgeworth, and Goldsmith were praised not only because they were highly moral, but because they were fraught with ad­

mirable lessons in proper conduct. in contrast, the popular novels of the kind that kept the circulating libraries thriv­ ing were anathematized under the general heading of popular romances, and as such, were looked upon as the most pernicious

form of imaginative writing known to man, serving no other 1 44 purpose than to frighten "our maiden aunts." The paper, perhaps, sensed disaster in this form of competitive reading, for it was the so-called romance that in the long run appealed more to the semi-literate masses than did the intellectual 45 entertainment provided by the Useful Knowledge Society.

44 II (September 28, 1833), 305. 45 For the titles of some of these romances, see below, p. A distinction such as the Penny Magazine made be­ tween the novel and the romance was by no means universally accepted. For instance, William Cobbett several years earli­ er had written in his paper, "Advice to Young Men": "I depre­ cate romances of every description. It is impossible that they can do any good, and they may do a great deal of harm. They excite passions that ought to lie dormant; they give the mind a taste of highly seasoned matter; they make matters of real life insipid; every girl, addicted to them, sighs to be a Sophia Western, and every boy a Tom Jones." Life, I, 8. 267

A second group of novels to which the Penny Magazine ob­ jected, albeit far less strenuously, consisted of works that made "desperate attempts" to novelize history in the manner 46 of Scott. The Penny Magazine was vague about the novels it considered guilty of this offence, but in light of Bulwer*s strong criticism of the Society1s miscellany in Parliament, it is easy to assume that his historical novels were partly 47 responsible for the Penny Magazine's displeasure. The Penny Magazine, significantly, never attempted to serialize a novel and never offered its readers a short story. It did, however, make limited use of the short moral tale, and to a lesser extent, the fable. In 1835, for example, it presented an illustrated series dealing with Aesop's Fables. These stories provided ideal subjects for the art of engrav­ ing, and in presenting them, the Penny Magazine called atten­ tion to the fact that it was reviving an ancient practice of combining the fable and the woodcut. The Society was favora­ bly disposed toward fables because

The good opinion of fables which we contact during our childhood, and the recollection of the enjoyment they afforded, very gener­ ally dispose us to regard them with compla­ cency in after-life. Nor is this feeling misplaced. There is no possible reason why, when our minds and tastes have acquired

46 II (September 28, 1833), 375. 47 See above, p. 164. maturity, we should look back with unkindness or scorn upon that which was a fitting ailment when they were young and immature. These com­ positions are, in fact, admirably calculated to make impressions on uncultivated or unin­ formed minds, and to convey, in the most agree­ able form, moral instruction to them.4® A reader protested, claiming that fables were only fit for the intelligence of three-or four-year-old children. On one of the rare occasions that the Penny Magazine answered a reader's criticism, it suggested that if the disgruntled individual could not overcome his distaste for these delightful little stories, he should leave them to his children and concern him­ self with the general information concerning fables which the , , 49 Penny Magazine presented. During its first few years, when the Penny Magazine was obviously searching for effective modes of communication, it resorted occasionally to extended moral tales. Among these were several stories of happy peasant life on the order of 50 Hannah More's Cheap Repository Tracts. In one, the author and a party of friends wander into a tranquil village where "everything spoke of content and innocence." Their attention is drawn to a little cottage whose cleaniness and comfort al­ most approaches taste. Inside, a fisherman's wife rocks a

48 IV (July 4, 1835), 262. 49 IV (July 25, 1835), 286, 50 „ See above, pp. 269

baby and softly sings a ballad, while several children play at her feet. A few years later, the author visits the village a second time. The fisherman, who held so much love for "domestic occupations," has drowned at sea, and his wife and her orphaned children are living with her husband* s kindly old father, whom the Penny Magazine eulogizes with the following words: Excellent old man! the blessing of heaven shall be thy exceeding great reward; and when thou art taken from thy abode of labour and love,to have thy virtue made perfect, thou shalt feel, at the moment of parting, a deep and holy assur­ ance that the same Providence which gave thee the will and ability to protect the infancy of these orphans, shall cherish and uphold them through the rough ways of the world^when thou shalt be no longer their protector. After 1833, these tales grew more and more infrequent. From beginning to end, however, the paper found poetry a highly utilitarian form of imaginative writing and was always ready to reinforce expository essays with poetic excerpts, a practice that logically enabled the Penny Magazine to follow the contemporary trend of presenting only those portions of a work an editor or a compiler considered desirable. The Useful Knowledge Society* s miscellany used passages from Byron* s ••Sonnet on Chillon" and "The Prisoner of Chillon," for in­ stance, to substantiate an article on the castle of Chillon,

51 II (February 23, 1833), 67. 270 even though it warned the reader that the poet, with "pardon­ able licence," had introduced into his account “points which 52 do not precisely correspond with the actual edifice.1' An essay warning of the evils of smoking quoted an emblem by Francis Quarles which condemns the world for being a slave to

CO smoke. Passages from Pope's Moral Epistles and Southey's “Thalaba" provided an effective commentary on the works of 54 Hogarth. Agricultural essays seemed particularly suited to include poetry and presented frequent opportunity for the Penny Magazine to print excerpts from Herrick, Shelley, Scott, Tusser, Thomson, Campbell, Crabbe, Milton, Spenser and Shake­ speare. During the years, that the Penny Magazine was providing its readers with snatches from the great poets, the English critical world was divided into two major camps: the neo-roman­ tics and the utilitarians. The ranks of those who supported the romantic approach to poetry were rapidly dwindling, but the stalwarts who remained took their cue either from Words­ worth and Coleridge and the poetry of reflection or from Shelley and Keats and poetry of the senses. Henry Hallam spelled out this split in romantic criticism in his 1831

52 IV (February 13, 1835), 62. 53 IV (September 5, 1835), 475. 54 IV (September 30, 1834), 27. 271

review of Tennyson1s Poems, chiefly Lyrical. The utilitarian spirit of the early nineteenth century was largely responsible for a romantic revolt, the nature of which was succinctly expressed in Sir Henry Taylor* s Preface to Philip Van Artevelde (1834). The utilitarians were not categorically opposed to poetry that stemmed from the imagi­ nation, but they demanded that the poet "raise his reason to 55 be its equipoise." According to the utilitarian critics, poetry that expressed "the realities of nature, and the truths which they suggest" was superior to that which dealt primarily 56 with "impassioned sentiment and glowing imagery." On the occasions that the Penny Magazine found it ad­ visable to comment on poetry and the nature of poetic crea­ tion, it quite frequently drew its critical comment from both schools of criticism. In one of its many prescriptions for self-education, there appears the following caution: Read poetry; for as imagination is the common property of man, belonging equally to all ranks, no valid reason can be given why its pleasures should be denied to any. . . . This delightful art should . . . however, be used for no purposes but to instruct, to elevate, and to smoothe the soul of man. It has been lamentably perverted for other purposes, to abuse the mind with false and dangerous sentiments, to debase and to in­ flame. Read poetry, therefore, with reserve

55 Sir Henry Taylor, "Preface," Philip Van Artevelde, Walter E. Houghton and G. Robert Stange, eds., Victorian Prose and Poetics (Boston, 1959), p. 816. 56 Ibid., p. 813. 272

and caution. Implicit in this advice are the basic elements of the Penny Magazine's theory of poetry. First, there is the suggestion of a utilitarian bond that connects poetry and the imagination. Following the thought of eighteenth-century "imitationists," the Society saw nature as the raw material of poetic imagina- 58 tion. This belief becomes apparent in the proposal for a series of essays on the nature poets: We propose to walk forth, in all seasons with these interpreters of Nature. They, for the most part, look upon this fair earth with a healthy spirit of gladness. If sometimes they have mournful notes, they are still such as Nature mingles with her happiest moods, and therefore wre they not painful. We will look, too, with these companions, upon man in his holy hours— "few and far between,"— but still not to be wholly counted amongst the glad things that are past. One of the poets of gladness, happy Robert Herrick, says— I sing of brooks, of blossoms, birds and bowers, Of April, May, of June, and July flowers; I sing of may-poles, hock-carts, wassails, wakes. This is, in the spirit of poetry, which is that of love, to unite the merry heart of man with thg all- gushing gladness of birds and flowers. . . . In his capacity as instructor, the poet was a naturalist who instead of dealing with nomenclature and classification

^ V (August 27, 1836), 335. 58 See M. H. Abrams, The Mirror and the Lamp (New York, 1958), pp. 8-14. 59 XIV (January 18, 1845), 18. 273

of natural objects/ concerned himself wit the higher calling of relating the material with the spiritual world. This poet­ ic function demanded the same close observation of nature that

the natural sciences required; otherwise, false images would betray their creators as "half poets who dwelt not in fields and solitary places, but attempt to describe through the aid 60 of what has been described by others— book images." In nature's lonely places, perhaps, the Useful Knowledge Society hoped that there was an anodyne for the gloom and mental de­ pression brought about by the smoke and increasing hideousness of an industrial age to which the Society was so strongly com­ mitted. Regions still unspoiled by human contrivance mani­ fested the "permanence, grandeur and joy" of things which were 61 rapidly disappearing in other parts of England. Throughout this glorification of the unbeaten paths of nature, the Penny Magazine avoided poetry in which there was

60 Ibid. This position on poetry is similar to that taken by Peacock in his parody of Wordsworth in "Four Ages of Poetry": "Poetical impressions can be received only among natural scenes. For all that is artificial is anto-poetical." Works of Thomas Love Peacock, ed. H. F. B. Brett-Smith and C. E. Jones (London, 1934), VIII, 13. 61 Basil Willey, Nineteenth Century Studies (London, 1949), pp. 69-70. Some people, of course, may have wanted to get away from the noise of the Useful Knowledge Society. The hero of Tennyson's "Locksley Hall" longs for a lonely island because "There methinks would be enjoyment more than in this march of mind,/ In the steamship, in the railway, in the thoughts that shake mankind." 274 any hint of "a Byron# in melodious tones, 'cursing his day,1" or "a Shelley filling the earth with inarticulate wail," as Carlyle described the spasmodic qualities of early nineteenth- 62 century poetry. In fact, the bulk of the magazine1s lyric offerings consisted of descriptive passages in which the poet captured the inspirational moods of nature. The early poetry of Wordsworth was a favorite with the Penny Magazine. In 1843, a series was devoted to an illustrated trip down the Duddon, with the text taken from Wordsworth. On the other hand, Tennyson's poetry was for the most part ignored because, perhaps, his attention was devoted primarily to nature in minuscule and not to the broad expanses that carried the kind of message the paper wanted to convey. Even in 1842 when Tennyson began to exhibit concern for utilitarian matters, his verse seldom met the needs of the Penny Magazine. The paper, as we have seen, believed the poet should re­ ceive his natural impressions first-hand, but it did not de­ mand that his song consist of images transcribed with photo­ graphic accuracy. Rather, it was necessary for his original impressions to be heightened. The poet accomplished this feat not be transcribing nature as it exists, but as it ap- 63 pears through a colored medium. This intensifying factor

62 "Characteristics," p. 306. 63 Jeremy Bentham, Rationale of Reward (London, 1825), pp. 205-206. 275 through which natural objects must pass into the poet's mind is the imagination. The paper conceived of the poet's imagi­ nation as being less restricted than that of the artist, who could only depict nature from one single point of view at a time. The poet's imagination, however, could transcend time and space and draw a succession of images to strengthen a con- 64 trolling idea. The poet, then, dealt with reality, but in an embellished and idealized form. Even though the imagina­ tion falsified the truth, this kind of deceit resulted in mischief only when it was used to weaken morals or divert the mind from good. The Penny Magazine believed, however, that really great poets never employed the imagination for ignoble 65 ends. The reader had to develop taste, nevertheless, to determine what was noble and what was not. He was advised to begin with the poems of James Thomson who reflected "the image of that Nature their author so warmly loved; of Cowper, who heard every where 'the loud hosanna sent from God's works,' of Milton, who . . . soared beyond the bounds of time and space, 66 with the express design of 'justifying the ways of God to Man.'"

64 X (March 20, 1841), 109. 65 VII (October 6 , 1838), 309. ^ V (April 27, 1836), 336. From Bullar's Hints and Cautions in the Pursuit of Knowledge. The Penny Magazine thought this book was "sensible." 276

Because of the innate goodness of natural objects which the poet employs, the Penny Magazine (inspired, no doubt, by Wordsworth1s Preface to Lyrical Ballads, and certainly antici­ pating Emerson's essay on "Nature") considered it possible for poetry to reach a state of excellence even when it was couched in unrefined or crude language. Poetry expressed in such a manner had its advantages, for when the machinery of expres­ sion is simple, the poet can take greater care in developing other aspects of his poetic genius, such as, for example, the function of transferring the natural morality of nature into language. The Penny Magazine did not rule out refined imagery and elegant language in poetry; these elements became necessary when the province of poetry widened and grew in com­ plexity. Some men, for instance, possessed feelings which could not be dealt with in simple language. Then too, feelings varied from time to time within the same individual and from social class to social class. "A very rude people will be most delighted by poetry which tells the warlike actions of their fathers: a religious people will be most fond of devo­ tional poetry: a people in a very high state of refinement will enjoy poetry which goes deeply into the workings of our minds and affections and awakens feelings absolutely unintel- 67 libible to men in a less advanced condition."

I (November 17, 1832), 326. From the preface of a volume entitled Poetry for Common People. 277

The idea that there was an ideal poetry for each social class influenced the choice of poetry in the Penny Magazine.

In its appeal to the commonalty, the Society selected poets who dealt primarily with the vagaries of low life. George Crabbe, for example, was a favorite in this respect because he was known as "the poet of poverty and wretchedness,— the stern explorer and describer of the deepest and darkest re­ cesses of human suffering and crime. . . . If he delineated with an unsparing pencil both the miseries and vices of the 6 8 poor, he could also sympathise with their enjoyments." Thomas Tusser's Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry was often quoted in the Penny Magazine because the Society thought there was "scarecely a practical treatise extant equal to the work in question, or a book upon general agriculture so preg­ nant with sound common sense," although admittedly, scientific experimentation and experience had occasionally found Tusser's poetry m error. 69 When the Penny Magazine turned to poetry that demanded a certain amount of intellectual background on the part of the reader or that contained passages inimical to the Useful Knowledge Society's purposes, it attempted to make the work understandable and to give it the proper ideological cast by

68 I (March 31, 1832), 6. 69 IX (June 31, 1840), 81. 278 omitting what was objectionable and by making prose summaries of difficult and controversial passages. Instead of being told, for example, that the bucke which "verteth" in the Medieval "Cuckoo Song" did what any normal buck would do after eating too much vegetation when "springeth the weed new," readers of the Penny Magazine were told that "verteth" meant 70 the animal frequented green places. The Penny Magazine*s modus operandi in making prose sum­ maries appeared in the following statement: "Our aim will be, whilst transcribing many passages which may convey to an ordi- nanary reader the worthiest ideas of their author, to preserve at the same time most strictly the continuous interest of the story, by making our own connecting prose, as far as possible, a pure reflex, in feeling, thought, and words, of the poetry 71 we omit." The Canterbury Tales, which the Penny Magazine singles out as having extraordinary merit and peculiar fitness for popular appreciation and enjoyment, shows how the Society's objective was carried out. The language difficulty was held so slight it could be easily eliminated by a glossary and the use of modern spelling (a practice that had been followed in Cowden Clarke's Riches of Chaucer), thereby enabling any reader of ordinary intelligence "to enjoy that fine old poet

70 III (March 6 , 1834), 83. The Penny Magazine used as its authority Burney's General History of Music. 4 vols. 71 X (February 15, 1845), 65. 279 72 in his own admirable dress." The Penny Magazine1s versions of Chaucer's masterpieces, however sometimes contained more connecting prose than original poetry. In a portrait of Chaucer's cook, adopted from the Prologue of The Canterbury Tales, there were approximately thirty-five lines of Chaucer's poetry and 138 lines of connecting prose. So much interpola­ tion was necessary, said the Penny Magazine, because "It is but too true, the Cook is a drunk." Therefore, the Society felt morally compelled to append a more respectable image of a cook from the pen of Ben Jonson:

A master cook! why, he is the man of men. For a professor; he designs, he draws, He paints, he carves, he builds, he fortifies, Makes citadels of curious foul and fish. Some he dry-ditches, some motes round with broths. Mounts marrow-bones, cuts fifty-angled custards, Rears bulwark pies; and for his outer works, He raiseth ramparts of immortal crusts, And teacheth all the tactics at one dinner— What ranks, what files, to put his dishes in. The whole art military! Then he knows The influence of the stars upon his meats, And all their seasons, tempers, qualities; And so to fit his relishes and sauces. He has nature in a pot 1bove all the chemists Or bare-breech's brethren of the rosy cross He is an architect, an engineer, A soldier, a physician, a philosopher, A general mathematician.73

Interlinear comments, then, were a means of presenting both useful information and moral propaganda. "The variety

7^ XIV (February 15, 1845), 65.

73 X (February 27, 1841), 80. This is a rather free ren­ dition of Lickfinger's Eulogy of The Culinary Artist in Act IV, Sc. I of The Staple of News. 280 of allusions to and descriptions of the manners, tastes, cus­ toms, and doctrines of the day," the Penny Magazine explained, "afford opportunity of mutually elucidating passages of the 74 poem and history of the times." Thus, in the Prologue of The Canterbury Tales, when the host makes the following pronouncement" Lordings, quod he, now hearkeneth for the best, But take it not, I pray you, in distain: This is the point, to speak it plat and plain, That each of you, to shorten with, your way In this viage shall tellen tales tway; To Canterbury ward, I mean it so, And homeward he shall tellen other two, Of aventures that whilon have befall And which of you that beareth him best of all That is to say, that telleth in this case Tales of best sentence and most solace, Shall have a supper at your aller cost Here in this place, setting by this post, When you come again from Canterbury. The Penny Magazine interrupts with a comment on the architec­ ture and manners of Chaucer1s day: We cannot but here observe, by the way, how this last line but one carries the eye and the thought back to the domestic architecture of the middle ages, when the large rooms or halls of inns, and of gentlemen's mansions of secon­ dary and inferior class, were supported some­ times by a pillar or "post" in the centre, some­ times by one near each end of the room. The post appears to have been the head of the table, the place of honour, for the Host says the vic­ tor in the proposed intellectual games shall sit

74 XIV (January 13, 1844), 10,

7 5 Ibid. 281

•here in this place, sitting by the post; 1 and it is a characteristic evidence of the dignity and social rank of 'hosts' in those days to find Henry Bailly, our host, even in the presence of a knight, of distinguished reputation, who forms one of the party, taking that seat as a matter of course. The proposal is now told, but the host naturally wishes himself to enjoy the mirth it provides, and therefore adds— Several lines from Chaucer follow: . . . . for to maken you the more merry, I will myselven gladly with you ride Right at mine owen cost, and be your guide; And who that will by judgement withsay Shall pay for all we spenden by the way. And the Penny Magazine hastens over a dozen or so lines of text with a summary which indicates that the paper was interested chiefly in passages with a utilitarian prospect: In the morning the pilgrims ride forth, and the host, reminding them of.their engagement, at ^ once assumes the duties of his situation. . . . The mere mention of the knight afforded the Penny Magazine an opportunity to launch a tirade against the institution of knighthood, with its immorality and bloodthirstiness. To the Society, knighthood represented "a strange incarnation of the most opposite qualities of our nature." A knight's gentleness in peace was remarkably in opposition to his ferocity in war, and although he appeared sufficiently pious, he was uncommonly fond of slaughter. The knight's most disturbing contradic­ tion, according to the magazine, was the fact that he held

76 IX (February 20, 1841) , 66. 282

"such pure and lofty notions of women in the abstract, they were to him women no longer, but species of earthly goddesses . . . yet he at the same time but too often exhibited in his life the grossest sensuality, the most utter disregard of 77 their true welfare and dignity." Chaucer served the Penny Magazine so well that on one hand, it used the "Merchant's Tale" to illustrate just how far the common people in England had risen since the Middle Ages and on the other hand, the presence of the sergeant-at- law in the group of Canterbury Pilgrims demonstrated the su­ periority of relationship between rich and poor in Chaucer's day. At that time, a heterogeneous society could be brought together by a common object, "the rich and the proud undeter­ red by any of that feverish desire to stand aloof from their fellow-men." Nor were the poor and humble hampered by "any of that chilling sense of dependence" which the Penny Magazine deplored in its own day. 7 8 The Penny Magazine used the same system of indoctrination in connection with other long poetic works, but it found the Old English ballads one of its most fertile sources of pure moralizing and of presenting the Society's social and politi­ cal views. The Useful Knowledge Society had great respect for

77 X (March 6, 1841), 66. 78 X (May 8, 1841), 185. 283

for the power of the ballad to spread ideas and to ultimately influence the actions of the masses. After commenting that ballads had played a part in almost every English political upheaval, the Penny Magazine concluded: "He who said 'Let me make the Ballads and you make the Laws' was a man deep in the 79 secret of ballad-making." English ballad writers, neverthe­ less, had not always used the popular ballad to its best ad­ vantage; rather, they dwelt far too frequently upon "atroci­

ous murders, inhumane cruelties, daring outrages upon person and property, in short every species of vice and crime which 80 belongs to a rude state of society." The objection was di­ rected not so much to the nature of the subject matter as to the fact that early English ballad writers failed to register disgust or opprobrium toward immorality and instead registered apparent delight in relating the reprehensible actions of thei r characters. The ballads that originated in Spain, on the other hand, came closer to the Penny Magazine1s requirements for a popu­ lar ballad. In the Spanish ballad: To the enthusiastic admiration of valour is united a humane and kindly generosity toward the weak and vanquished, and a pervading gen­ tleness and courtesy; an indomitable pride

79 VII (May 5, 1838), 169. 80 X (January 2, 1841), 6. 284 and self-respect is blended with a noble scorn of whatever is fraudulent, base, and dishonour­ able, an ardent love of truth, a fervour of loyalty to the sovereign and a devotion to the fair sex equalled only by the depth of religious feeling. To substantiate the superiority of the Spanish ballad over the English, the Penny Magazine argued that even the English ver­

sion of "The Spanish Lady" was inferior to the traditional English ballad, "The Nut-brown Maid." Although both dealt with similar themes: The Spanish dame is chivalrous and high-souled; the English maid, gentle, tender, and submissive; the former maintains, with much grace and dignity, the modesty and pride of the female character; the latter seeks her lover's heart by a humility allied to meanness, and a deference which implies defici­ ency of spirit. When told, at last, that the man she loves is the husband of another, the Spanish lady ceases to press her suit, but retires from the scene with a dignity at once becoming and decorous: not so the English maid; when told that her lover admires other ladies, and that, at the most, she can but hope for the share of a heart ever oncon- stant and changeful, she becomes more earnest, more humble, and more impassioned; resolves to follow him wheresoever he goes; nay, says she is willing to act as a menial to any lady he loves. There is a visible want of decorum in the conduct of the Nut-brown Maid: our heart is more with the Spanish Lady: the poet who wrote the former seems slightly acquainted with the delicacy of woman's nature; the humblest virgin in the land would have disdained to lower herself like this high-born p e r s o n . 82 Whether the Penny Magazine was commenting on the English or the Spanish ballad the primary criterion of excellency

81 Ibid.

82 Ibid. 285 was the degree of morality, political conservatism, and model conduct each work exemplified. In other words, the magazine's yardstick was the amount of preaching that the poem permitted it to engage in. Then after this utilitarian requirement was met, the poetry was judged by its power to delight the reader and to direct his mind away from harmful ideas and violent passions.

A publication whose content ranged from a discussion of the diseases of sheep to a philosophical treatment of the re­ lationship of poetry to art was without doubt intended to ap­ peal to a diversified audience. Inevitably, then, the ques­ tion arises of the Society1s success in accomplishing its goal. Judging by circulation figures, it would seem that the readers of the Penny Magazine were legion. There is no evi­ dence to indicate this popularity was forced upon the public by charitable individuals or organizations that bought up huge lots of the Society's miscellany for distribution among the poor. And although the Committee energetically promoted sales by making personal visits to booksellers and by offer­ ing dealers' discounts for bulk purchases, it cannot be said that the Useful Knowledge Society forced the Penny Magazine down the throats of the poor with a broomstick, the method a 286 83 cartoonist claimed that Brougham used to disseminate it. Thus we must accept Knight's statement that the Penny Magazine existed on a commercial basis alone, and that if its huge cir­ culation had not paid the major part of its expenses "with a profit to all concerned," the Penny Magazine could not have 84 existed at all. During 1834 and 1835, the Penny Magazine enjoyed its best years, with circulation, as we have seen, soaring to slightly above 200,000 copies per number. But then a series of events set in that led ultimately to its failure. In 1836, Parlia­ ment reduced the tax on paper from 3d. to llgd. per pound and the stamp duty on newspapers from 4d. to a penny. 8 5 Not only could existing newspapers be sold at a price to compete with cheap magazines, but a number of local papers sprang up de­ voted almost entirely to parish politics, local squabbles,

83 See above, p. 202, 84 Preface, I (1832), iv. 85 When the Penny Magazine began in 1832, the following tax table was in effect: I. A duty of 3d. per pound on paper or about a farthing a sheet for the average-size paper. II. A duty, nominally of 4d., but daily papers were subject to a discount of 2 0% (weeklies paid the full tax). III. A tax of 3s 6 d. on every advertisement. IV. Total duty, S^d. for every sevenpenny copy of a London newspaper. 287

criminal trials, and sensational police cases. Knight, who in 1834 had advocated the total repeal of the stamp duty, now grew apprehensive that the "garbage" which had been kept un­ der control by the Tax Act might after its repeal interfere with the march of mind, and his fears were soon to materialize. To add to the Society's difficulties, in 1836, Baldwin and Craddock, who published many of the Society's treatises, 8 6 went bankrupt, owing the organization a balance of £2 ,0 0 0 . The Committee was forced to borrow money from its members to continue operation. Brougham, in a fit of generosity that belied his own shaky financial condition, lent the Society 87 £2,000 at 5% interest. At the death of Lord Russell in 1841, Lord Spencer be­ came vice-chairman of the Society and suggested a work that in its final form became the ill-fated Biographical Dictionary, the first four volumes of which appeared between 1842 and 1844 at 10/- per volume. The sale of the publication, however, was disappointing, and the expense of the undertaking placed such a heavy drain on the already depleted treasury of the Society that the project had to be abandoned. In the Address of the

86 All trade arrangements for the Library of Useful Knowledge, the Farmer's Series and the Maps of the Society were left to Baldwin and Craddock, who paid the Society "rent" on the number of copies sold. 87 Jarman, p. 75. 288

Committee of March 11, 1846, the failure of the Dictionary was explained as follows: Though the Committee always counted upon a loss, or at the best upon a deficiency which could not be made good until long after the completion of the work, neither they, nor others more conversant with the chances of the bookselling-trade, were at all prepared to expect so large a deficiency as appeared by the time letter A was completed. On these seven half-volumes the excess of expenditure above receipts amounts to nearly £5000. Of this loss, more than half, it appears, has been sustained by the Society, and the remain­ der of the subscriptions and donations which have been announced from time to time. . . . And careful estimates showed that, under exist­ ing circumstances, an additional sum of at least £15,000 must be sunk. A work commenced in parts ought to be continued to the full ex­ tent which the capital of the undertaker will allow. The Society had obeyed this reasonable rule, and has exhausted its r e s o u r c e s . 8 8

As a further blow to the financial condition of the Society, the circulation of the Penny Magazine was steadily dropping off. Undoubtedly, the New Series, beginning in 1841, was a vain attempt to bolster flagging sales, but in spite of Knight's zealous efforts to bring the Society's publication in line with changing public taste, the results were less than encouraging, for although the monthly parts sold fairly well, the demand for the weekly numbers dropped significantly. "If the sale of it /the Penny Maqazine7 has diminished," the Society explained in 1843, it is because other publications

83 Passages, II, 327. 289

of the same hind afford to purchasers an opportunity of selec- 0 9 tion." By 1845, the total circulation of weekly numbers and monthly parts had fallen to a mere 40,000 copies and was 90 barely remunerative. The small emolument that accrued to the Society from an­

nual subscriptions fell off to almost nothing. Whereas in 1829 the total number of subscribers amounted to over 500 persons, by the early 1840*s they had dwindled to fewer than forty. In an effort to revive flagging interest in its oper­

ations, the Society announced: "Henceforward Members of the Society will be their subscriptions, not only acquire a right to certain of its publications, but also will have a voice in

the election of the Committee (to which body Members of the Society also are eligible), and they will have opportunities periodically at evening meetings of discussing the management 91 of the Society's affairs." Moreover, at four meetings a year, all members of the Society would be given opportunity to read papers touching upon matters of education. In 1845, however, Spencer died. In the face of its other reverses, his death chilled the enthusiasm of the Committee.

89 Address to the Committee, 1846.

9 0 Jarman, T p. -7C75.

^ Address, 1843. 290

The members, among whom many new faces had appeared over two decades, realized that perhaps the work of the Useful Knowl­ edge Society was for all practical purposes over. Yet in its requiem, they still found room for rejoicing: ''The Society's work is done, for its greatest object is achieved— fully, fairly, and permanently. The public is supplied with cheap and good literature to an extent which the most sanguine friend of human improvement could not in 1826 have hoped to 92 have witnessed in twenty years." On December 7, 1845, three months after the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge had decided to disband, the last number appeared of the Penny Magazine of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. Knight, who bought the Society's stocks and copyrights for £6,500 continued the pub­ lication under the title of Knight1s Penny Magazine. The changes made in the publication under Knight's ownership re­ veal his mature thinking about the proper form of a popular miscellany and may be interpreted as his concept of a remedy for the ailing Penny Magazine. Because an illustrated jour­ nal was no longer a novelty with special reader appeal,

Knight1s Penny Magazine employed woodcuts for decorative pur­ poses only. The articles were considerably longer, and al­ though they were still unsigned, Knight solicited the services

92 Passages, II, 327. 291 of more "authors of eminence" than had written for the Useful Knowledge Society's miscellany. Furthermore, he was aware that the old Penny Magazine had grown rather dull, for in the advertisement for the new undertaking he promised: "To the one great object of diffusing useful knowledge will be added the constant desire to make that knowledge interesting." Fur­ thermore, the new Penny Magazine would not eschew modern writers. Instead, it would both praise and blame "the novel­ ties of literature, foreign as well as English." And finally, Knight promised to avoid "as carefully as ever, all party or polemical discussion, at the same time not shrinking from the examination of opinions which he ^the editor7 thinks delusive 93 and mischievous." Although the reception of the Penny Magazine under

Knight's ownership was encouraging, it was not financially successful enough for him to continue it after six months. Thus he left the field to be cultivated "by those whose new energy may be worth more than his old experience." It was Knight's wish that the paper begin and end with him. "It 94 shall not pass into other hands," he wrote. Knight attributed the failure of the Penny Magazine to a number of interlocking causes, the first being the increase

1845 Advertisement for Knight1s Penny Magazine. 94 Passages, II, 325-326. 292 in the number of newspapers, with their "greater passing attractions" and their development of a more respectable char­ acter than they possessed in 1832 when the Useful Knowledge Society decided upon a weekly miscellany for the diffusion of sound information. But if Knight had a few good words for newspapers of higher character, he had nothing but vitupera­ tion for a large number of weeklies that in his opinion dis­ graced the journalistic profession but nevertheless had gotten a firm grip on the young members of the working classes. He was particularly bitter towards Edward Lloyd and what has been called his "Salisbury Square" school of fiction. In 1841 Lloyd had founded the People* s Police Gazette, a penny weekly of sensational crime stories. The Police Gazette was followed in 1842 by three other publications, Lloyd* s Penny Weekly Mis­ cellany, the Penny Atlas, and the Weekly Register of Novel 95 Entertainment. Knight denounced these works after scornfully labeling the establishments that turned them out as "manufactories" whence hundreds of reams of vile paper and printing issue weekly; where large bodies of children are employed to arrange types, at wages of shirt-makers from copy furnished by the most ignorant, and the wages of scaven­ gers. All the garbage that belongs to the history of crime and misery is raked together,

95 E. E. Kellett, "The Press," Early Victorian England, 1830-1865 (London, 1934), II, 65-66. 293

to diffuse a moral miasma through the land, in the shape of the most vulgar and brutal fiction. 'Penny Magazines,' and 'Edinburgh Journals,' and 'Weekly Instructors, 1 and •People's Journals,' have little chance of circulation amongst the least informed class, who most require sound knowledge, while the cheap booksellers' shops are filled with such things as 'Newgate, a Romance,' 'The Black Mantle or Murder at the Old Jewry,' 'The Spectre of the Hall,' 'The Love-Child, 1 'The Feast of Blood,' 'The Convict,' and twenty others, all of the same exciting character to the young and ignorant. ®

No doubt the competition from sordid novels and sensa­ tional newspapers played a role in the failure of the Penny Magazine, but it was the multiplication of a variety of inex­ pensive illustrated miscellanies of a wholesome sort that helped more than any other factor in ringing its death knell. The new brand of magazine 'better satisfied the needs of the reading public. The Penny Magazine1s gingerly handling of fiction, for example, caused it to sell poorly in face of com­ petition that not only featured excellent woodcuts and useful information, but also provided tales and stories appealing to the reader1s imagination. The Useful Knowledge Society had been wrong in believing that history and biography could meet the needs of the public (especially that of the imperfectly

96 Ibid., p. 329. In the Preface to the Weekly Penny Miscellany for 1846, Lloyd insisted that Knight's complaints were groundless and that the material in his miscellanies was elevating. Kellett, p. 6 6 . 294 educated working classes) for imaginative literature. As Brougham, looking at the situation in retrospect, pointed out: . . . It became also apparent that imaginary adventures, scenes rarely or never exhibited in real life, lively descriptions of both persons and things removed from common obser­ vation— in a word, stories, whether of a ro­ mantic or of a mere ordinary character, would fix the attention which the most interesting realities had failed to arrest, and that thousands would read tales whom nothing else could tempt to take up a book.97

When the Penny Magazine failed to do so, others stepped in with cheap publications for that portion of the audience bent upon reading for entertainment without any direct concern for

QQ useful knowledge. With the last issue of the Penny Magazine, the official work of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge was over. In 1848, a meeting was held in the Piazza Coffee House,

Covent Garden to announce the successful untangling of the Society's financial affairs. A second meeting at which Brougham presided followed close on the heels of the first. A committee was appointed to manage the Society's remaining property and

97 Transactions, 1858, p. 27. 98 Ibid., p. 36. A decade after the Penny Magazine ceased, there were nine penny papers with a combined weekly circula­ tion of 1,200,000. Seventeen religious weeklies added another 100.000 copies, and the Temperance Society accounted for 300.000 more. Furthermore, there was a huge circulation of historical and scientific works, such as Cassell's Illustrated History of England, that were published in penny numbers. 295 to preserve its legal existence. Although the committee was given power to add new members/ none were ever added. The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge had come to an 99 end. Neither the Society nor the Penny Magazine lacked its share of contemporary evaluation. In 1854, Knight made the following appraisal of the Society's accomplishments: In seventeen years, the Society accomplished its main objects. . . . It supplied the new demand for knowledge in a way that had never before been contemplated; it supplied it at the cheapest rate then possible; it broke down the distinctions between knowledge for the few and knowledge for the many; it cre­ ated a popular taste for art; it sent its light into the strongholds of ignorance and superstition, by superceding for a time, a large amount of weekly trash, and destroying, for ever, the astrological and indecent alma­ nacs. But beyond its own productions, it raised the standard of all popular literature. It ceased its work when others in the field, honestly and successfully carried forward what it had begun.1 0 0 Yet the prevailing feeling among those who assessed the Useful Knowledge Society seems to have been that it failed to reach the people for whom it was intended. Thus, instead of diffusing knowledge among mechanics, weavers, and laborers, the Society, for the most part, merely supplied interesting but desultory reading for the educated classes. These critics

99 Jarman, p. 75. 100 The Old Printer, p. 242. 296 maintained it was beyond the power of the Society to instruct the working classes, who were constantly attended by painful anxiety about their next meal and faced only with the pros­ pect of constant labor. No power in the world could interest

such people in the minute description of a wasp1s nest anc

the economy of a fly. Robert Chambers believed the publications of the Useful Knowledge Society failed in their mission because they were too technical and abstruse for the mass of operatives, and he corroborated the impression that the Society's treatises were not read by the working classes but by "persons consid­ erably removed from the obligation of toiling with their hands 101 for their daily bread." Thomas Carlyle, who spoke of Brougham as "an eternal grinder of commonplace and pretenti­ ous noise, like a man playing a hurdy-gurdy," inveighed against the "pretentious Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge which . . . treated literature as if it were a tabula rasa whereas good books already existed in abundance, but needed to 102 be brought within the reach of readers of moderate means."

_ William Bhambers, Memoir of Robert Chambers (New York, 1872), p. 213.

A. Wilson, Carlyle at His Zenith, 1848-53 (London, 1927) pp. 14, 17 and Carlyle To Three-score and Ten (London, 1929) p. 476. 297

Blackwood1s Magazine considered the Useful Knowledge Society the result of an error in judgment on the part of a group of well-meaning philanthropists who assumed that the tastes and interests of the working classes were different from those of people in the upper walks of life: These unfortunate masses! When first the schoolmaster began to be abroad, how ten­ derly we took care of the improvement of their minds, and how zealously exerted our­ selves to make literature a universal domi­ nie, graciously enlightening the neophyte on every subject under heaven! Does anybody remember now the Societies for the Diffusion of Knowledge— the Penny Magazines and Cyclo­ paedias through which the streams of useful information fell benignly upon the lower or­ ders?— how we laboured to bring ourselves down to the capacity of that unknown intelli­ gence, the working man! how we benevolently volunteered to amuse him in a profitable and edifying way, by histories and descriptions of the ingenious crafts, and nice accounts of how they make pins, and laces, and china, or how a steam engine is put together! What a delightful ideal dwelt then in our inexperi­ enced thoughts. . . .103 Thus the Society gave the poor man Bacon and the Novum Orqanum when his reading taste could have been better satisfied with Byron and Guy Mannerinq. The Useful Knowledge Society, thought Blackwood1s, erected a wooden image to represent popu­ lar literature, but the multitude avenged itself by mounting the kind of literature it craved on the pedestal where useful

103 "Reading for the Million," Blackwood1s Edinburgh Magazine, LXXXIX (August 1858), 203. 298 information once stood. For a fair overall estimation of the work of the Useful Knowledge Society, however, we must rely finally on the judg­ ment of Harriet Martineau in one of her unprejudiced moods: The institution of this Society was an important feature of its times, and one of the honours belonging to the reign of George IV. It did not succeed in all of its professed objects: it did not give to the operative classes of Great Britain a library of the elements of all sciences,— it omitted some of the most important of the sciences, and, with regard to some others, presented anything rather than the elements. It did not fully penetrate the masses that most needed aid. But it established the prin­ ciple and precedent of cheap publication (cheapness including goodness), stimulated the demand for sound information, and the power and inclination to supply that demand; and marked a great era in the history of popular enlightenment. ^4

The Useful Knowledge Society was slow to fade from the minds of the nineteenth century. As late as 1872, Samuel Butler satirized it in Erewhon with a Professor of Worldly Wisdom who is the president of the Society for the Suppres­ sion of Useless Knowledge and who has done more than any living man to prevent students from thinking for themselves. "Our duty, says the professor, "is to ensure that they shall think as we do."^ 5 There were those also who did not forget the

104 History of the Peace (London, 1849), I, 250, 105 Erewhon 299

Penny Magazine. In 1864, the Eclectic Review observed that while many old periodicals were being discarded, the Society's miscellany, "full of worthy old reading and original informa- 106 tion," still retained its place on the bookshelf. A decade later, a writer in Saint Paul1s Magazine fondly recalled that thirty years earlier, many an "ill provided student" found the Penny Magazine of great value because it was such a varied miscellany. The articles were all well written, he recalled, "some of them betraying the hand of a master; and all of them in correct taste and high tone." 107 The Penny Magazine of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge had indeed written a share of early Victorian literary history and left its mark on the century.

106 CXIX (February, 1864), 57.

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