CUMP. VI,] PEOKHAM SCHOOL AND GRUB STKEET.
Periodicals were the fashion of the day. They were the
means of those rapid returns, of that perpetual interchange •**•29<
of bargain and sale, so fondly cared for by the present
arbiters of literature; and were now, universally, the
favourite channel of literary speculation. Scarcely a week
passed in which a new magazine or paper did not start into
life, to perish or survive as might be. Even Fielding had
turned from his Jonathan Wild the Great, to his Jacobite's
Journal and True Patriot; and, from his Tom Jones and
Amelia, sought refuge in his Covent Garden Journal. "We
have the names of fifty-five papers of the date of a few years
before this, regularly published every week.* A more im-
portant literary venture, in the nature of a review, and with
a title expressive of the fate of letters, the Grub Street
Journal., had been brought to a close in 1737. Six years
earlier than that, for a longer life, Cave issued the first
number of the Gentleman's Magazine. Griffiths, aided by
IMph, Kippis, Langhorne, Grainger, and others, followed
with the earliest regular R&VIGW which can be said to have
succeeded, and in 1749 began, on whig principles, that
publication of the Monthly which lasted till our own day.
Seven years later, the tories opposed it with the Critical,
which, with slight alteration of title, existed to a very recent
date, more strongly tainted with high-church advocacy and
quasi-popish principles than when the first number, sent
forth under the editorship of Smollett in March 1756, was
on those very grounds assailed. In the May of that year of
Goldsmith's life to which I have now arrived, another Review,
the Universal, began a short existence of three years, its
principal contributor being Samuel Johnson, at this time
wholly devoted to it.
* See the curious and complete list in Nichols's Litercwy Anecdotes, iv. 88—97.