Every day found Mr. Knight more sick of his prospects than the last. The _Brazen Head_, a weekly satirical and humorous journal of his just started, lightened though it was by the rippling wit of Praed, fell upon the public like a leaden lump.
Mr. Knight’s brain had long been filled with a scheme of popular and cheap literature, and he now made up his mind to start afresh--to tempt the world and bless it with a real “National Library,” so good that all should desire, so cheap that all would buy. Lord Brougham, who was at that moment organizing the “Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge,” heard of this plan and obtained an introduction to the schemer. The idea of the National Library was at first taken up by the Society, but was finally adopted by John Murray. Differences of opinion as to the editorial responsibilities, and the arrangements as to the transfer of his stock to Albemarle Street, presented new difficulties, and thoroughly sick of the whole matter, Mr. Knight suddenly abandoned it. The germ of his idea, however, bore fruit in the “Treatises” published by the Society in March, and in the “Cabinet Encyclopædia,” issued a few years afterwards by Longman. “My boat,” writes Mr. Knight, “was stranded. Happily for me there were no wreckers at hand ready for the plunder of my damaged cargo.” Anyhow, for the time being, publishing was over. To a man of indomitable pluck, and blessed with the pen of a ready writer, journalism presents a tolerably open field, and to newspaper work Mr. Knight again addressed himself; but in a few weeks a document, which Mr. Knight values, he says, as a soldier values his first commission, reached him containing an offer of the superintendence of the Society’s publications, an offer that was forthwith accepted. As a first step, the “Library of Entertaining Knowledge” was commenced, and, in 1828, he started the _British Almanac_, and the _Companion to the Almanac_--a wonderful change for the better after the “Poor Robins” and “Old Moores” of the past.
In 1832, Mr. Knight was offered an official position at the Board of Trade, but fortunately for the education and interests of the people he had the courage to refuse it, having the pleasure, however, of being asked to recommend some one else to the post. In the March of this year appeared the first number of the _Penny Magazine_, subsequent by only a very few weeks to _Chambers’s Edinburgh Journal_.