CONDER, Josiah, an English littérateur, was born in Falcon Street, Aldersgate, London, on l7th September 1789, and belonged to an old nonconformist family, proud of its hereditary piety and nonconformity. Leaving school at the age of thirteen, he began to assist his father in his business as a bookseller at Bucklersbury; and in this situation he found abundant pabulum for the literary tastes which he had already begun to develop. The first time he appeared in print was in the poet’s corner of the Athenaeum, No. 11; and in 1810 he joined the well-known Taylor family in the little volume called the Associate Minstrels. From 1811, when his father retired, till 1819, he carried on the business on his own account; but in the latter year he determined to adopt literature as a profession, and thenceforward till his death his pen was never idle. As editor of the Eclectic Review, which had been published under his name since 1814, he was regarded as the literary representative of evangelical nonconformity; andin 1832 he became still more publicly and completely associated with the interests of the party as the editor of the newly established organ called the Patriot. Besides contributing voluminously to both these periodicals, he published work after work on religious, political, and miscellaneous subjects; but in too many cases these owed their origin merely to the necessity of producing something that had a market value. That he frequently put forth mere paste and scissors work he makes no shame to confess,—conscious that if his labour was somewhat ignoble it was at least performed with scrupulous honesty. His whole literary activity was influenced by his religious convictions, and it was not only as editor of the Eclectic that he endeavoured to “reconcile those long ...