On the upper and on the lower reaches of the Thames the upper and the lower reaches of literature—if I may so describe them—were represented. Thus, at Kelmscott, by Lechlade, Rossetti and Morris were producing enduring work; while down at Isleworth Mr. Le Queux was reporting at County Courts and Boards of Guardians for the _Middlesex Chronicle_, innocent as yet of the many sensational crimes which, in six-shilling volumes, he has since committed; and at Richmond Mr. Bloundelle Burton was daily treading on historic ground without so much as contemplating the historic novel. At Teddington, Blackmore, having abandoned Devonshire and the novel of the West, was devoting himself to the pleasurable and profitable pursuit of market gardening. All sorts and conditions of the cultivators of literature sought the banks of the Thames; and if Edmund Yates, of the _World_, had a delightful place at Goring, Purkiss, of the _Police Gazelle_, had a still more luxurious home at Shepperton. In the eighties, too, the river began to have a literature of its own. Of these, _Lock to Lock_ lingers on to this day. The _Thames_ was a more serious and a more pretentious paper. It was under the editorship of one of the Mackays—William, I think—and to its powerful and continuous advocacy the public are indebted for the lock below Richmond, an improvement which can only be appreciated by those who can remember the exposed bed of the river between Isleworth and Teddington at the height of a hot summer. During one such year it was possible to walk across that part of the river which was supposed to run between Twickenham foreshore and Eel Pie Island. To one who comes early under the subtle influence of the Thames there is no other water which shall ever possess the same attraction. One falls in love with it, and thereafter can see only its perfections. No stream has been so celebrated in verse. From Spenser and Drayton to Cowley and Pope, from Cowley and Pope to Matthew Arnold and Theo Marzials, there stretches a long list of illustrious versifiers who found inspiration in the Thames. And if Pope might so exaggerate the objects of his poetic vision as to behold “. . . the Muses sport on Cooper’s Hill,” the more modern bard, Mr. Theo Marzials, may be forgiven for metamorphosing the Twickenham ferryman. The song presents that waterman as a dashing young Lothario. The unhappy fact is that, at the time when Marzials wrote the once popular song, the ferryman was a fat, oleaginous old man named Cooper, with no sentiment of any kind about him save a sentimental feeling for beer. Through all my memories of the journalistic life the Thames sings softly. When I look back, a thousand delightful recollections of its bosom and its banks inevitably obtrude, even while I try to concentrate on the busy haunts of men. “Sweete Temmes!” CHAPTER XIX THE PRESS IN TRANSITION “Old familiar declining and falling off.”—SILAS WEGG.