In 1838 he went north where he worked as an editor for first the Cheshire Reformer, then the Glasgow Argus. He returned to London in 1840, where for the next several years he contributed to a variety of periodicals, co-founded The Leader with George Henry Lewes, and wrote a novel, The Foster-Brother: A tale of the War of Chiozza (1845).

In 1855, he was asked by Joseph Moses Levy