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OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [BOOK m.
1759. the dull blind offspring had meanwhile eaten and drank,
2Et.3i. and the owners or masters profited. Of magazines alone, weekly and monthly, I will enumerate the specimens which a very few weeks, between the close of 1759 and the beginning of 1760, added to a multitude akeady wearing out their brief existence. They were : the Royal Magazine, or Gentleman's Monthly Companion; the Impartial Review, or Literary Journal; the Weekly Magazine, or Gentlemen and Ladies' Polite Companion; the Ladies Magazine; the Public Magazine; the Imperial Magazine; the Royal Female Magazine; the Universal Review; the Lady's Museum; the Musical Magazine; and the British Magazine, or Monthly Repository for Gentlemen and Ladies.
See all her progeny, illustrious sight!
Behold, and count them, as they rise to light.
As Berecynthia, while her offspring vie
In homage to the Mother of the sky,
Surveys around her, in the blest abode,
A hundred sons, and ev'ry son a God :
Not less with glory mighty Dullness crown'd,
Shall take thro' Grub-street her triumphant round ;
And her Parnassus glancing o'er at once,
Behold a hundred sons, and each a Dunce.
Whether with equal triumph she beheld the new recruit
advance to take his place, may admit of question. But her favourite Purdons, Hills, Willingtons, Kenricks, Shiels, Bakers, Gruthries, Wotys, Eyders, Collyers, Joneses, Pilk- ingtons, Huddlestone Wynnes, and Hiffernans, were always at hand to comfort her: and there was an ill-fashioned, out-of-the-way corner, in even her domain, for temporary reception of the Smolletts and the Johnsons; men who owed her no allegiance, but had not yet deserted Grub-street altogether. "It is a street in London," was Johnson's |
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