The printing expenses of his enormous business had been very considerable, and in 1830 he resolved to take his principal printer, Mr. Richard Bentley, into partnership; but the alliance did not last long, and in August, 1832, the connection was dissolved, and Colburn relinquished the business in New Burlington Street to Mr. Bentley, giving him a guarantee in bond that he would not recommence publishing again within twenty miles of London. However, his heart was so intuitively set upon the profitable risks of a publisher’s career, that he could not quietly retire in the prime of life, and, accordingly, he started a house at Windsor, so as to be within the letter of the law, but the garrison town was sadly quiet after the literary circles of London, and to London he again returned, paying the forfeiture in full. This time he opened a house in Great Marlborough Street, as his old establishment in New Burlington Street was, of course, in possession of Mr. Bentley, whose business had already assumed formidable proportions. At Great Marlborough Street, Colburn succeeded in rallying round him all his old authors, and, perhaps, the greatest triumphs that date from thence, are Miss Strickland’s “Lives of the Kings and Queens of England and Scotland,” for the copyright of the first of which he paid £2000. Burke’s “Peerage,” “Baronetage,” and “Landed Gentry” were also among his most profitable possessions. Throughout the whole of his business life, Colburn had a very keen perception as to what the public required, and of the market value of the productions offered him; and yet he was almost uniformly liberal in his dealings. His judgment of copyrights was occasionally assisted by Mr. Forbes and Mr. Charles Ollier. Of course, among the multitude of books he produced, many were utterly worthless, beyond affording a passing recreation to the library subscribers, and many even were pecuniary failures. The most ludicrous of these failures was a scheme originated by John Galt, a constant contributor to the _New Monthly_. This was a periodical, which, under the title of the _New British Theatre_, published the best of those dramatic productions, which the managers of the great playhouses had previously rejected. The audacity of the scheme carried it through for a short time, but soon the unfortunate editor was smothered amid such a heap of dramatic rubbish, coming at every fresh post, to the table of the benevolent encourager of youthful aspirations, that he was fain to acknowledge the justice of the managers’ previous decisions.