Somewhere about the year 1837 the world began to kick at the ‘Keepsakes,’ and they gradually got extinguished. Then the lords and the countesses put away their verses and dropped into prose, and, to the infinite loss of mankind, wrote no more until editors of great monthlies, anxious to show a list of illustrious names, began to ask them again. As for the general literature of the day, there must have been a steady demand for new works of all kinds, for it was estimated that in 1836 there were no fewer than four thousand persons living by literary work. Most of them, of course, must have been simple publishers’ hacks. But seven hundred of them in London were journalists. At the present day there are said to be in London alone fourteen thousand men and women who live by writing. And of this number I should think that thirteen thousand are in some way or other connected with journalism. Publishers’ hacks still exist--that is to say, the unhappy men who, without genius or natural aptitude, or the art of writing pleasantly, are eternally engaged in compiling, stealing, arranging, and putting together books which may be palmed off upon an uncritical public for prize books and presents. But they are far fewer in proportion than they were, and perhaps the next generation may live to see them extinct. [Illustration: LORD TENNYSON AS A YOUNG MAN (From the Picture by Sir T. Lawrence)] What did they write, this regiment of 3,300 _littérateurs_? Novelists, as we have learned, had fallen upon evil times; poetry was what it still continues to be, a drug in the market; but there was the whole range of the sciences, there were morals, theology, education, travels, biography, history, the literature of Art in all its branches, archæology, ancient and modern literature, criticism, and a hundred other things. Yet, making allowance for everything, I cannot but think that the 3,300 must have had on the whole an idle and unprofitable time. However, some books of the year may be recorded. First of all, in the ‘Annual Register’ for 1837 there appears a poem by Alfred Tennyson. I have copied a portion of it:-- Oh! that ’twere possible, After long grief and pain, To find the arms of my true love Round me once again! When I was wont to meet her In the silent woody places Of the land that gave me birth, We stood tranced in long embraces, Mixt with kisses sweeter, sweeter Than anything on earth. A shadow flits before me-- Not thee but like to thee. Ah God! that it were possible For one short hour to see The souls we loved that they might tell us What, and where they be. It leads me forth at evening, It lightly winds and steals, In a cold white robe before me, When all my spirit reels At the shouts, the leagues of lights, And the roaring of the wheels. * * * * *