, Mrs. Hemans and others: with such an array of contributors he
was able to crush the several rival weeklies that soon entered the
field.

Toward the end of its prosperous first decade, however, the misfortunes
of the _Literary Gazette_ began. Colburn's publications had been roughly
handled in its pages and he accordingly aided James Silk Buckingham in
founding the _Athenaeum_. The first number appeared on January 2, 1828,
as an evident rival of the older weekly. For a time the new venture was
on the verge of failure and the proprietors actually offered to sell it
to Jerdan. Within half a year Buckingham was succeeded by John Sterling
as editor. Frederic Denison Maurice's friends purchased the _Literary
Chronicle and Weekly Review_ (begun 1819) and merged it with the
_Athenaeum_ in July, 1828. For a year Sterling and Maurice contributed
some of the most brilliant critical articles that have appeared in its
pages. The working editor at that time was Henry Stebbing who had been
associated with the _Athenaeum_ since its inception and who was the only
survivor[C] of the original staff when the semi-centennial number was
published on January 5, 1878.

Even the high standards set by Maurice and Sterling failed to win
public favor. The crisis came about the middle of 1830 when Charles
Wentworth Dilke became "supreme editor," enlisted Lamb, George Darley,
Barry Cornwall and others on his staff, and reduced the price of the
_Athenaeum_ from eightpence to fourpence. The apparent folly of reducing
the price and increasing the expenses did not lead to the generally
prophesied collapse; this first experiment in modern methods resulted in
the rapid growth of the _Athenaeum's_ circulation, to the serious
detriment of the _Literary Gazette_. Jerdan tried to stem the tide by
publishing lampoons on the dullness of Dilke's paper; but when the
_Athenaeum_ was enlarged in 1835 from sixteen to twenty-four pages
Dilke's triumph was evident. The _Literary Gazette_ was compelled to
reduce its price to fourpence in its effort to regain the lost
subscriptions. Dilke labored earnestly to improve his paper and when, in
1846, he felt that it was established on a firm basis, he made Thomas
Kibble Hervey editor and devoted his own time to furthering his
journalistic enterprises. However, he continued to contribute to the
weekly; his valuable articles on Junius and Pope together with several
others were afterwards reprinted as _Papers of a Critic_.