24 HENRY C OLE URN. cerned. As Mr. Bentley's establishment in New Bur- lington Street was only a further development of Colburn's old house, a few words may not be out of place concerning it. In 1837, Mr. Bentley proposed to start a periodical to rival the New Monthly, and at the preliminary meeting it was proposed to call it the Wits Miscellany, but James Smith objected to this as being too pretentious, upon which Mr. Bentley pro- posed the title of Bentley's Miscellany. " Don't you think/' interposed Smith, " that that would be going too far the other way ?" However, the name was adopted (Mr. Bentley denies the accuracy of this anecdote but se non e vero, e ben trovatd). One of the chief contributors to the new Miscellany was Barham, who had been a school chum of Mr. Bentley's at St. Paul's, and, until 1843, the " Ingoldsby Legends" delighted the public in the pages of the Miscellany. The last poem of the " Legends " was published in Colburn's New Monthly, but by Barham's express wish, the song he wrote on his death-bed, " As I Lay Athynkynge," appeared, as fitly closing his career, in Bentley. The first editor of Bentley s Miscellany, was no less a man than Charles Dickens, who had previously contributed the "Sketches by Boz" to the Morning Chronicle, and who soon, as the author of Pickwick, became the most popular writer of the day. Mr. Bentley was one of the first publishers to secure Dickens's services, and in his magazine " Oliver Twist" appeared. The editorship afterwards passed into the hands of Mr. Harrison Ainsworth and Mr. A. Smith. For the magazine, as for his ordinary business, Mr. Bentley secured the aid of most of the writers who had graduated first under Colburn ; and to enumerate them would, with the exception of " Father Prout," be
