Page:A history of booksellers, the old and the new.djvu/331

HENRY COLBURN. 291 artistic worker, as a true delineator of our subtler and deeper passions, Lord Lytton was far above any other of Colburn's writers above, indeed, any other writer of the day ; while his sophistry, immense as it undoubtedly is, only lends a more forcible and en- thralling interest to his plots. None of Colburn's novelists and their name was legion brought in more grist to the publishing mill than Lord Lytton ; and, when the meal had been baked several times, Messrs. Routledge paid the author ^"20,000 for all future use of these works as popular now perhaps in their cheap editions as they have ever been before. To return for a moment more immediately to Col- burn's life, we find him still speculating in periodical literature, and with the same success as ever. In 1828 he commenced the Court Journal, and in the following year started the United Service Magazine, while for many years he 'possessed a considerable in- terest in the Sunday Times newspaper ; and all these periodicals are still held in popular esteem. The printing expenses of his enormous business had been very considerable, and in 1830 he resolved to take his principal printer, Mr. Richard Bentley, into partnership ; but the alliance did not last long, and in August, 1832,, the connection was dissolved, and Colburn relinquished the business in New Bur- lington Street to Mr. Bentley, giving him a guarantee in bond that he would not recommence publishing again within twenty miles of London. However, his heart was so intuitively set upon the profitable risks of a publisher's career, that he could not quietly'retire in the prime of life, and, accordingly, he started a house at Windsor, so as to be within the letter of the law, but the garrison town was sadly