voices I ever heard. He had no acquirements--perhaps
not even grammar; but his taste in putting forth a publication and getting
the best artists to adorn it was new in those times, and may be admired
in any. Unfortunately for Mr. Bell, the Prince of Wales, to whom he was
bookseller, once did him the honour to partake of an entertainment or
refreshment (I forget which--most probably the latter) at his house. He
afterwards became a bankrupt. After his bankruptcy he set up a newspaper,
which became profitable to everybody but himself."[2]

No. 93, Fleet Street (south side) is endeared to us by its connection
with Charles Lamb. At that number, in 1823, that great humorist, the
king of all London clerks that ever were or will be, published his
"Elia," a collection of essays immortal as the language, full of quaint
and tender thoughts and gleaming with cross-lights of humour as shot
silk does with interchanging colours. In 1821, when the first editor was
shot in a duel, the _London Magazine_ fell into the hands of Messrs.
Taylor & Hessey, of No. 93; but they published the excellent periodical
and gave their "magazine dinners" at their publishing house in Waterloo
Place.

Mr. John Scott, a man of great promise, the editor of the _London_ for
the first publishers--Messrs. Baldwin, Cradock, & Joy--met with a very
tragic death in 1821. The duel in which he fell arose from a quarrel
between the men on the _London_ and the clever but bitter and
unscrupulous writers in _Blackwood_, started in 1817. Lockhart, who had
cruelly maligned Leigh Hunt and his set (the "Cockney School," as the
Scotch Tories chose to call them), was sharply attacked in the _London_.
Fiery and vindictive Lockhart flew at once up to town, and angrily
demanded from Mr. Scott, the editor, an explanation, an apology, or a
meeting. Mr. Scott declined giving an apology unless Mr. Lockhart would
first deny that he was editor of _Blackwood_. Lockhart refused to give
this denial, and retorted by expressing a mean opinion of Mr. Scott's
courage. Lockhart and Scott both printed contradictory versions of the
quarrel, which worked up till at last Mr. Christie, a friend of
Lockhart's, challenged Scott; and they met at Chalk Farm by moonlight on
February 16th, at nine o'clock at night, attended by their seconds and
surgeons, in the old business-like, bloodthirsty way. The first time Mr.
Christie did not fire at Mr. Scott, a fact of which Mr. Patmore, the
author, Scott's sec