Page:The Library, volume 5, series 3.djvu/219

HENRY CROSS-GROVE, JACOBITE. 207 , and if the intermitting feaver should happen to return, the cortex is ready, alias a whip or rope : and in a few days will be published, c Memoirs of the Infamous life and Inglorious actions of Mr. Scandal, alias Crossroge, with his flight from Redcross Alley, near Cripplegate, London, very diverting and entertaining, printed on a neat elzevir letter in a pocket volume, by a gentleman lately come from London. What incident in Cross-Grove's life this referred to is uncertain, nor do the threatened Memoirs ever seem to have been published, but the passage is quite in the style of the amenities exchanged between Pott and Slurk, and the study of a nearly complete file of Cross-Grove's 'Norwich Gazette' has brought the convi<5tion that Dickens must, at some time or other, have seen this Jacobite journal. Cross-Grove was a man of decided eccentricity in character one who would at once have cap- tured Dickens's interest. Apart from this there are two reasons why his biography should be written, the first and not the least important being the fadt that of all the early provincial printer-editors he is the only one whose career can be told in detail ; and the second being that amongst country editors he alone displayed an interest in contemporary literature. His ambition was to write a magazine. He never quite realised it, but the attempt to do so lifted his paper out of the ordinary ruck. At the time when Cross-Grove's career com- menced, Harley was a Member of Parliament for King's Lynn, and Norfolk was one of the great