Excerpt from The Gentleman's Magazine, Vol. 7: June-December, 1871Jones and Pamela to Guy Mannering and Kenilworth; from the first fruits of Scott to the first fruits of Dicken's and Thackeray. It was the earliest of the magazines to recognise the genius of Byron, perhaps of many of Byron's contemporaries; and yet outliving, as it has, generation after gene ration of novelists, of poets, of critics, I do not think the shade of Cave need blush to-day to present this latest volume of T Ire Gentleman's Magazine to his original subscribers in Elysium. This is not egotism. It is history. And if the circulation of He Gentleman's [magazine is not equal to that of its most powerful rivals - as I hope it is - the fault is not the fault of T Ice Gentlwzan's. It lies with the public; and all I can say is that every Englishman with the slightest apprecia tion of its antiquities of literature. With the slightest pretence to what Mr.
Disraeli calls an historic con science, and to all the tastes that an historic conscience implies, ought not only to make it a point of personal pride to have T fie Gentleman's Magazine on his own table, but - shall I add - to use all his inuence to keep it in its natural position at the head of English periodical literature. This is the true, the rightful position of my Gmlmmn's Magazine and in its new series the volume which I now present to my readers is, I hope, a sufh cient guarantee that in that position it will form no unworthy representative of the qualities which pre eminently distinguish English periodical literature. This in itself probably most of my critics will at once set down as an outburst of the old egotistic spirit of Cave and Johnson, of the spirit which, as I said at the outset, is apt every now and then to reappear, like gout or a Roman nose in a family, in the prefaces of T kc Gentleman's. But it would be a transparent piece of mock modesty to affect not to feel proud of this grand.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work.
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