To judge by my zeal and delight in my new pursuit, the bowl had at last found its natural bias[6]. Not content with taking articles, like candidates for holy orders--with rejecting articles like the Belgians--I dreamt articles, thought articles, wrote articles, which were all inserted by the editor, of course, with the concurrence of his deputy. The more irksome parts of authorship, such as the correction of the press, were to me labours of love. I received a revise from Mr. Baldwin’s Mr. Parker, as if it had been a proof of his regard; forgave him all his slips, and really thought that printers’ devils were not so black as they are painted. But my top-gallant glory was in “our Contributors!” How I used to look forward to Elia! and backward for Hazlitt, and all round for Edward Herbert, and how I used to _look up_ to Allan Cunningham! for at that time the London had a goodly list of writers--a rare company. It is now defunct, and perhaps no ex-periodical might so appropriately be apostrophized with the Irish funereal question--“Arrah, honey, why did you die?” Had you not an editor, and elegant prose writers, and beautiful poets, and broths of boys for criticism and classics, and wits and humorists.--Elia, Cary, Procter, Cunningham, Bowring, Barton, Hazlitt, Elton, Hartley Coleridge, Talfourd, Soane, Horace Smith, Reynolds, Poole, Clare, and Thomas Benyon, with a power besides. Hadn’t you Lions’ Heads with Traditional Tales? Hadn’t you an Opium Eater, and a Dwarf, and a Giant, and a Learned Lamb, and a Green Man? Had not you a regular Drama, and a Musical Report, and a Report of Agriculture, and an Obituary, and a Price Current, and a current price, of only half-a-crown? Arrah, why did you die? Why, somehow the contributors fell away--the concern went into other hands--worst of all, a new editor tried to put the Belles Lettres in Utilitarian envelopes; whereupon, the circulation of the Miscellany, like that of poor Le Fevre, got slower, slower, slower,--and slower still--and then stopped for ever! It was a sorry scattering of those old Londoners! Some went out of the country: one (Clare) went into it. Lamb retreated to Colebrooke. Mr. Cary presented himself to the British Museum. Reynolds and Barry took to engrossing when they should pen a stanza, and Thomas Benyon gave up literature.