1. With this number was introduced the change of printing on the
wrapper the names of most of the contributors: not of all, for some
still preferred to remain unnamed, or to figure under a fancy
designation. Had we been left to our own resources, we must now have
dropped the magazine. But the printing-firm--or Mr. George I.F.
Tupper as representing it--came forward, and undertook to try the
chance of two numbers more. The title was altered (at Mr. Alexander
Tupper's suggestion) to "Art and Poetry, being Thoughts towards
Nature, conducted principally by Artists"; and Messrs. Dickinson and
Co., of New Bond Street, the printsellers, consented to join their
name as publishers to that of Messrs. Aylott and Jones. Mr. Robert
Dickinson, the head of this firm, and more especially his brother,
the able portrait-painter Mr. Lowes Dickinson, were well known to
Madox Brown, and through him to members of the P.R.B. I continued to
be editor; but, as the money stake of myself and my colleagues in the
publication had now ceased, I naturally accommodated myself more than
before to any wish evinced by the Tupper family. No. 3, which ought
to have appeared March 1, was delayed by these uncertainties and
changes till March 31. No. 4 came out on April 30. Some small amount
of advertising was done, more particularly by posters carried about
in front of the Royal Academy (then in Trafalgar Square), which
opened at the beginning of May. All efforts proved useless. People
would not buy "The Germ," and would scarcely consent to know of its
existence. So the magazine breathed its last, and its obsequies were
conducted in the strictest privacy. Its debts exceeded its assets,
and a sum of £33 odd, due on Nos. 1 and 2, had to be cleared off by
the seven (or eight) proprietors, conscientious against the grain.
What may have been the loss of Messrs. Tupper on Nos. 3 and 4 I am
unable to say. It is hardly worth specifying that neither the editor,
nor any of the contributors whether literary or artistic, received