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Further Additions to the Nichols File
of the Gentleman's Magazine
by
Arthur Sherbo
In 1982 Professor James M. Kuist was able to list and identify the authors of some 13,000 anonymous and pseudonymous pieces in the Gentleman's Magazine (hereafter GM).[1] Two years later in what I described as a "desultory" study I was able, from various sources, including the GM, to add a not inconsiderable number of identifications of such pieces, some by authors not in the Nichols file. That study appeared in Studies in Bibliography under the title "Additions to the Nichols File of the Gentleman's Magazine" (35 [1982], 228-233). Recently, as the byproduct of research towards a biography of Richard Farmer, author of An Essay on the Learning of Shakespeare (1767), I have gleaned a few more identifications from a number of sources, including John Nichols's Literary Anecdotes, a work which continues to reward the researcher.
George Dyer, friend of Charles Lamb and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, wrote or compiled, among other works, The Privileges of the University of Cambridge (a shortened title), 2 volumes, 1824. He appended an unpaged Postscript to volume 2 in which he included a "List of Publications and Writings. By G. Dyer." Among his writings were a number of reviews. Both the old and new Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature list the Analytical Review, the Critical Review, the Reflector, and the Monthly Magazine, all of which are in Dyer's own list, but neither bibliography lists the others for which Dyer wrote reviews or other pieces and which he also names, i.e. Athenaeum, Asiatic Register, Classical Journal, Genteman's Magazine, and the Ladies' Magazine and Ladies' Museum (O3v-O4r). My concern is with the reviews in the GM, which Dyer lists as follows:
I have been unable to find any mention of the first work Dyer reviewed, that edited by Sir Richard Phillips, publisher of the Monthly Magazine or British Register, a periodical to which Dyer contributed from its very inception.[2]
Of major interest and what seems to have gone unnoted is that Dyer reviewed the 1818 edition of the Works of his friend, Charles Lamb. The review was the longest Dyer wrote in the GM, appearing in the July (pp. 48-51) and August (pp. 138-140) numbers of the 1819 volume, part 2, and covering over eight closely printed columns. As the GM is not a rare periodical, I shall quote only the concluding sentence of this two-part review: "We shall therefore only add, that, as we have read Mr. Lamb's Works with considerable pleasure ourselves, so we think them calculated, considered either morally or critically, to give pleasure and instruction to other readers." The eccentric George Dyer's reviews in the GM deserve identification. One other review, possibly by Dyer although not published in the GM, should be mentioned. Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Poems on Various Subjects (1796) was reviewed, among other places, in the Critical Review, 2nd Series, XVII, 209-212. The review was anonymous, the contents described as "Poems have great beauty, but deficient in polish and metre."[3] Lamb wrote to Coleridge on July 5-7, 1796 about the review in the Critical Review and said, "I suspect Master Dyer to have been the writer of that article, as the Substance of it was the very remarks & language he used to me one day."[4] Dyer did not name this review in his list of writings in the Critical Review, although it might be one of the "various Theological and Critical Tracts" which he did not otherwise identify.
Students of nineteenth-century English literature will have encountered the name of George Dyer. Few indeed would recognize the name of Thomas Harwood. But he, too, contributed, albeit pseudonymously, to the GM, to an extent I have not thought fit to explore, as his contributions could be scattered over some thirty-five volumes of the periodical, from about 1790 to 1807. He is credited with one piece in the GM in 1820 (Kuist, p. 76) under his initials. In the 1812 edition of the Biographia Dramatica, published five years after Isaac Reed's death in 1807 but which he had been revising for many years, Reed included a brief biographical sketch of Harwood because Harwood had written two tragedies. What is of immediate interest are these two sentences: "He was author of several letters in the Gentleman's Magazine, with the signature of Clio. He also penned Observations on the Writings of Dr. Johnson; but we know not whether these were ever published" (I. 313). Future researchers in the GM may profit from the knowledge that Harwood was "Clio." And, as a by-product, Johnsonians will know the author of the Observations should they ever surface. Harwood, incidentally, was the author
Robert Wylie King, author of The Translator of Dante; The Life, Work and Friendships of Henry Francis Cary (1772-1844), published in London in 1925, suggests in a footnote that "we may also assume that verses signed T.L. or T.L.---d (Lycid) are [Thomas] Lister's and that those signed T.T.R. or T.T.S. (Tityrus) are [John] Humberston's" (p. 29n.). Lister and Humberston were at Sutton Coldfield Grammar School with Cary, the trio adopting the names given above, with Cary as Marcellus (p. 19). King may have erred in his note on page 29 in thinking it probable that Cary used the initials M.C.S. for Marcellus as well as M---s for pieces in the GM. M.C.S. were the initials used by the Reverend W. Bagshaw Stevens (Kuist, p. 146). A problem arises, however, in that there are five sonnets in the 1790 GM, all with the information that they were written in 1788 and bearing the initials M.C.S. Three are at i. 452 and two at ii. 748, with one sonnet, that To a Lady at a Concert, appearing in both places. They are all in the stilted style of much amatory verse. If they are Bagshaw Stevens's, two of whose contributions to the GM were sonnets, then Nichols failed to mark them as his. If King is correct about the contributions of Lister and Humberston, and there is indication that he is from the subjects of those contributions, we may add to Lister's two identified pieces (Kuist, p. 86) and enlist Humberston as a hitherto unidentified contributor. I have gone through the GM for the years 1788 through 1793 and can list the following, all previously unnoted: 1788. i. 61-62, Horace Ode XXVI, Lib. i. (T.L. of Lichfield); 159, On Solitude (T.T.R., with first line, "While Cary strikes the glowing lyre"); 252, The Fourth Idyllium of Bion (T.L.); 446, Stanzas to an Infant (T.L---D.), Sonnet to Miss Seward (T.L.), Elegiac Sonnet (T.L---D.), Address to the Owl (T.T.S.). 1788. ii. 1105, A Pastoral Song (T.L.---D.). 1789. i. 161-162, Elegiac Sonnet (T.L---D.); 554, Sonnet to Fancy (T.T.S.). 1789. ii. 650, Sonnet to Time (T.T.S.); 841, Sonnet to H.F. Cary, By T. Lister, Feb. 1788 (unsigned, of course). 1791. ii. 1044, Sonnet to a Lady Written in an Alcove in Kensington Gardens (T.T.S.). 1793. i. 261, Sent to a Lady, Inclosing the Ring for her Marriage (T.L.). There were no pieces by Lister or Humberston in the 1794 GM.
King states that "Early in 1791 [Cary] contributed to the Gentleman's Magazine two short translations from the letters of Bernardo Tasso," identified in a footnote, "Gent. Mag., 1791, Feb. p. 125; April, p. 309. The second is unsigned, but there can be no doubt of its ascription to Cary" (p. 55 and n.). The first is noted in Kuist; the second is not. King cites Cary's "Memoir, i, p. 316" as evidence that Cary reviewed his own work, i.e. three of his sermons that had appeared in Edward Pye Waters's Sermons on Various Occasions, in the GM for Sept. 1800, pp. 867-869. In the Memoir Cary, writing to the Reverend Thomas Price on Nov. 11, 1814, asked that Price be prompt in acquainting him "with the publication of your sermons. I do not recollect to have offered my services to the 'Gentleman's Magazine,' since the appearance of Waters's volume. But I shall be happy to assist at your debut as an author" (i. 316). Accordingly, Cary reviewed Price's sermons in the GM (1815. ii. 147-148).
John Nichols, basing himself on manuscripts of William Cole, wrote in his account of the Reverend Mr. Michael Tyson that "In the Gent. Mag. for 1777 [p. 416] he has a Letter relating to a Sculpture found in the Parish Church of Fakenham in Suffolk, signed T.M. the reversed Initials of his names: and I think he afterwards gave a draught of it, with some further explanation" (Literary Anecdotes, VIII. 206). The draught is actually en face and there is no further explanation. Add Tyson's one contribution to the File. In another work, his Bibliotheca Topographica Britannica, Nichols stated that a piece in the 1772 GM (p. 42) signed W.L. of Leicester was by William Ludlam, a name not in Kuist. Ludlam helped Nichols in the latter's History of Leicestershire. Ludlam contributed at least one piece to the GM over his name (vol. 35, pp. 412-413). Back to the Literary Anecdotes, where Michael Tyson, writing to Richard Gough, asks "What say you to Rowley now? Who is the Author of the last squib in the Gent. Mag.?" (VIII. 627), a question which Nichols answers in a footnote, "Answer: The Rev. John Duncombe; see vol. XLVII., p. 317." Duncombe wrote much in the GM (Kuist, p. 57), but the squib on Rowley is not listed in the Nichols File, although it bears his pseudonym, Crito, used for the first time it would seem. Tyson to Gough again, in another letter: "Did you receive my memorandums on Coffee, and are they worthy the acceptance of Mr. Urban?" Nichols again supplies an answer: "See Gent. Mag. 1779, vol. XLIX, p. 237," the piece in question being signed "T.L." One more, then, for Tyson.
On February 2, 1780 Tyson wrote to Gough discoursing of many things, among others some biographical conjectures about Matthew Prior. "How George [Ashby] does sputter about Mat Prior," Tyson wrote; "I have some where heard that his Chloe was a Butcher's wife of Cambridge; and that Prior left her some houses he had purchased, either in Jesus or Emanuel lane. If you give a hint to [John] Nichols of this, perhaps George would fish it out." Footnotes identify George Ashby and refer to the GM, volume 50, pp. 28 and 126 (Literary Anecdotes, VIII. 661). On page 28 of the 1780 GM "D.C." animadverts on Prior's Solomon and takes occasion to call attention to Prior's will in which he makes "Mr. Adrian Drift, and Mrs. Elizabeth Cox [i.e. Chloe], his residuary legatees." On page 126 "M. Green," one of John Nichols's pseudonyms, sends "two letters, of Bishop Atterbury and Mr. Prior." D.C. is, then, George Ashby.
William Cole is represented in Kuist with but one entry, signed "W.C.," in the 1781 GM. John Nichols, however, wrote of him that "In compliance with a public request, he communicated to Mr. Urban an account of St. Nicholas; and gave, in the same volume of the Gentleman's Magazine, some Remarks on Sir John Hawkin's 'History of Music'" (Literary Anecdotes, I. 661). A footnote refers one to the GM for XLIX, pp. 119, 131, 157, 208, and 219, the volume number being in error, as it should be volume XLVII (1777). Nichols's account is also garbled. Palaeophilus gave a learned account of the probable origin of the name Saint Nicholas (p. 119-120). On page 131, part
A letter signed J. Carr in John Coakley Lettsom's Hints Designed to Promote Beneficence, Temper and Medical Science, 3 vols. (1801), II. 175 had appeared in the 1786 GM (ii. 725-726) signed simply "J.C." Carr does not appear in Kuist. This may be John Carr (1723-1807), architect, known as Carr of York, as he built the courthouse, castle, and gaol at York, the last of which buildings forms a possible link with the prison reformer John Howard, the subject of Carr's letter. The same authority (p. 179) names the Reverend Weedon Butler as the "Spontaneous" who, with other members of the Society for the Relief and Discharge of Persons imprisoned for Small Debts, contributed towards a statue for Howard (GM, 1786. ii. 723). Butler contributed pieces to the GM (Kuist, pp. 40-41), but not, evidently, as "Spontaneous." William Walker, in his Life of the Reverend George Gleig, Edinburgh, 1878, p. 192, states that the letter signed "An Episcopal Clergyman of the Scotch Church" in the June 1785 GM (i. 437-440) is by Gleig. Gleig is represented by one contribution to the GM in Kuist (p. 64).
Sir John Cullum's History and Antiquities of Hamstead and Hardwick in the County of Suffolk, first published in 1784, was edited again in 1813 by his brother Sir Thomas-Gery Cullum. Sir Thomas attributed a piece on cedar trees in the GM for March 1779 (p. 138) to his brother and queried whether he had also written the piece on yew trees in the same periodical (p. 578) in the same year. He also gave the GM for Dec. 1792 (pp. 995-997) as a locus for his brother's familiar epistolary style. The piece on the cedar trees is signed with Sir John's name: that on the yew trees (accepted as Sir John's in the DNB account of him) is signed "A.B."; the two letters in the 1792 GM are signed "J.C."
John Nichols corroborates the authorship of the two letters in his Literary Anecdotes, VIII. 676 and n. The piece on the yew trees is almost surely not by Sir John, but one can now add two pieces signed J.C. to the Nichols File.
Cambridge University Library Adv. c. 89.11 is, as the manuscript title-page has it, a "Memoir of Wm Capon, Esqr By Mr Samuel Tymms. With a List of various Drawings by Mr Capon in the possession of JB Nichols." The
Notes
John Evans, The Importance of Educating the Poor . . . To which is added, the Letter of Sir R. Phillips on the present state of the Prisons of the Metropolis, 2nd ed. (1808) is described as an octavo in the BM Catalogue of Printed Books. And the title is, of course, different.
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