Of these, in the first half of the century, John
Bull, which was also a political paper, became notorious, and was
often threatened with prosecutions for libel, so much so that its
chief conductors Theodore Hook, R.
Bull, which was also a political paper, became notorious, and was
often threatened with prosecutions for libel, so much so that its
chief conductors Theodore Hook, R.
Cambridge History of English Literature - 1908 - v14
192 (#222) ############################################
192
The Growth of Journalism [CH.
6
newspapers, it was able to boast that it possessed the largest cir-
culation in the world. ' The influence of the style of The Daily
Telegraph upon the newspaper press of this country has been
great; being, indeed, the basis of popular journalism. Not that
the latter repeats the styles of Sala, of Edwin Arnold, of Edward
Dicey, of Bennet Burleigh and of other men who long were
looked upon as representing The Daily Telegraph; for, with
features showing their influence has been combined a greater
directness of statement; but the picturesqueness at which they
aimed has had enduring effect. The loyalty of the staff
accounted for the success of the paper in obtaining early
information. Its enterprise has been shown in other directions.
In 1873, George Smith was commissioned by it to make and
describe archaeological exploration on the site of Nineveh, and
among his discoveries were a number of fragments of the cunei-
form narrative of the Deluge. Two years later, The Daily
Telegraph joined The New York Herald in sending Henry M.
Stanley into central Africa, where he surveyed lakes Victoria and
Tanganyika, and traced the source of the Congo; later, for the
same papers and The Scotsman, he was sent to rescue Emin pasha
from Equatoria ; but Emin refused to be rescued, and escaped
from the rescue party. In 1884–5, it was associated with
Sir Harry Johnston's exploration of Kilima-njaro, and, in 1899—
1900, with Lionel Decle's journey from the Cape to Cairo. Its
foreign staff have interviewed monarchs and statesmen; Bismarck,
some time before the Franco-German war, confided to Beattie-
Kingston that the military authorities had pressed him to quarrel
with France-a course to which he was then opposed.
Its musical and dramatic criticisms by E. L. Blanchard, Joseph
Bennett and Clement Scott were always read by the chief members
of the professions affected.
Another morning newspaper established successfully during
the century is The Daily Chronicle. Its founder, Edward Lloyd,
was already the prosperous owner of Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper.
In 1842, intending to compete with The Ilustrated London News,
he published Lloyd's Illustrated London Newspaper, unstamped.
The authorities intervened, and, in 1843, he rearranged his publi-
cation without illustrations, calling it Lloyd's Weekly London News-
paper. In this form, it competed with other Sunday publications,
such as The News of the World, Reynolds's Weekly Newspaper,
The Weekly Times, The Weekly Dispatch. Of these papers, The
Dispatch was long the most prominent. Its owner had been in
## p. 193 (#223) ############################################
>
IV] The Halfpenny Morning Press 193
the front of the fight against the stamp duty; but Lloyd's Weekly
soon became well established, especially under the short editorship
of Douglas Jerrold from 1852 to 1857, and, thereafter, under that
of his son Blanchard, who had among his coadjutors Hepworth
Dixon, better known as editor of The Athenaeum, from 1853 to
1868.
In 1877, Edward Lloyd purchased a daily paper which had
been started as The Clerkenwell News, but had expanded its
name to The London Daily Chronicle and Clerkenwell News.
He reduced the title to The Daily Chronicle, and adopted an
independent radical policy. The venture prospered, and has
latterly become one of the leading halfpenny morning papers.
The closing years of the century saw that advent of the half-
penny morning press to which reference has been made. There
had been such papers in the provinces for thirty years, The
Northern Echo being established in Darlington in 1869, The
North Star in the same town in 1880 and, about the same time,
The Newcastle Express, in the closing years of a long life, was
published at the same price. But, though The Northern Echo
achieved somewhat wide reputation in 1880, when it was edited
by W. T. Stead, the issue of a halfpenny morning paper in London
was a highly speculative undertaking. The Daily Mail, however,
was launched in 1896, and proved most popular. Much of its
earlier attractiveness was due to the writing of G. W. Steevens,
who, after a brilliant career at Oxford, plunged into daily
journalism, speedily became famous and died of fever in Lady-
smith, where he was one of the besieged in the Boer war. The
Daily Express made its appearance in 1900.
In the earlier part of the century, there were, in London,
seven evening papers; at the end, only six, and the general
development of evening journalism had not been commensurate
with that of morning papers, having, for the most part, been
limited to London and its suburbs, while morning journals were
carried to all parts of the country. The change was owing
chiefly to the growth of country evening papers, these being able
by telegraph and organisation to print later information, notably
concerning all forms of sport?
1 The supply of news to a morning paper is usually complete by 2 a. m. and, thus,
there is little actual need for late editions, but the news for an evening paper, the
incidents of the day, comes in a continuous stream, its end being fixed only by the
publication of the latest edition for which a sale can be had. The morning paper
prints the news of twenty-four hours; the evening paper, as a rule, that of only
eight.
E. L. XIV.
CH. IV.
13
## p. 194 (#224) ############################################
194
[CH.
The Growth of Journalism
6
Before The Courier was purchased by Daniel Stuart, it was
joined, in the last number of The Anti-Jacobin, with The Star as
forming a 'seditious evening post'; and, in 1792, at the instance
of Pitt, The Sun was started to advocate the ministerial home and
foreign policy. But it did not achieve a high position, and, in
1823, The Edinburgh Review said of it. The Sun appears daily
but never shines. The Globe, which, in the second half of the
century, became tory, was, in its origin, radical, competing with
The Star, the organ of the booksellers. Contemporary with The
Globe was The Traveller, intended to support the interests of
commercial travellers. A few years after its first publication,
The Traveller became the property of Robert Torrens, an eager
disciple of Jeremy Bentham, and a writer on political economy.
Torrens and his friends purchased The Globe in 1823, and during
many years the paper appeared with the double title. In all
respects well conducted, it was recognised as one of the chief
liberal organs, and the Melbourne administration of 1835 often
used it for the first publication of ministerial news. It preserved
its literary character, and, many years later, its sketchy serial and
historical articles were widely known as 'Globe turnovers,' their
length always slightly exceeding a column. Francis Mahony,
'Father Prout,' was one of its regular contributors. In 1869,
with new proprietors, it became moderately conservative, and,
with varying fortune, so continued until after the end of the
century. The Pall Mall Gazette obtained larger renown for its
philosophic statesmanship. It was founded in 1865 by Frederick
Greenwood, its proprietor being the wellknown publisher George
Smith. The name was taken from Thackeray's sketch of captain
Shandon in the Marshalsea, drawing up the prospectus of
The Pall Mall Gazette—written by gentlemen for gentlemen. '
Greenwood turned the satire into reality. Under Thackeray, he
had sub-edited The Cornhill Magazine, and his scheme contem-
plated the production of a paper which, with the publication of
news, should combine some of the characteristics of the already
flourishing Saturday Review and Spectator. Connected with the
paper were men of mark in literature, such as (to mention men of
very diverse qualifications) Anthony Trollope, Henry Maine, Fitz-
james Stephen and E. C. Grenville Murray. On several occasions,
Bismarck tried to form friendly relations with it. Greenwood,
undoubtedly, was one of the great editors of the century, revising
the work of his contributors, suggesting topics and their treat-
ment and, with a masterly hand, adding finishing touches. His
## p. 195 (#225) ############################################
IV]
W. T. Stead
195
sources of information gave him early news of the intention of the
French government, in 1875, to obtain control over the Suez canal,
by purchasing from the khedive of Egypt a large number of the
shares held by him in that undertaking; and the fact was brought
to the notice of Disraeli, the prime minister, who forestalled the
French. When, in 1881, the liberal party obtained a large majority
in the house of commons, Henry Yates Thompson, a son-in-law of
George Smith, had become proprietor of The Pall Mall Gazette,
and, as he was a supporter of Gladstone, Frederick Greenwood
and his colleagues were superseded by John (now viscount)
Morley, who was installed as editor, with W. T. Stead, of The
Northern Echo, as his chief of staff. Greenwood thereupon
started the St James's Gazette, but could not acquire for it
the vogue of his earlier paper. The career of W. T. Stead, who
in 1883 followed Morley as editor, was remarkable. Brought
up in a north country manse, and under the influence of
fervent religious emotions, he believed that every step in his
course was dictated directly from heaven. He assured the present
writer that the Almighty set up finger-posts for him, whose inten-
tion was unmistakable, and that, on several occasions, when he
had seen these directions, he had obeyed the command, apparently
risking everything that most men hold precious. His efforts
startling in their form, for the more stringent protection of girls,
and the pride with which he suffered the consequences of his
action, illustrate this attitude. He was, however, possessed of
,
much humour, and was a most graphic correspondent. At the end
of five years, another change of editor took place; and, later
still, in 1892, The Pall Mall Gazette passed into a new proprietor-
ship. At the same time, The Westminster Gazette was launched,
which was conducted on much the same lines as those of the
liberal Pall Mall Gazette had been, and, during several years, was
the only London penny paper supporting the liberal party. One
especial feature of The Westminster Gazette has been its brilliant
political caricatures. Stead was drowned in the disaster to the
• Titanic. '
For many years, London had one halfpenny evening paper,
The Echo (established 1868). Similar halfpenny papers were
already in being at Manchester and Bolton in Lancashire. Later,
The Evening News and The Star appeared.
Many as were the morning and evening papers published in
London during the century, they were far outnumbered by weekly
papers. Besides high-class and popular political weeklies, the
13--2
## p. 196 (#226) ############################################
196 The Growth of Journalism [CH.
pictorial papers, from The Illustrated London News, The Illustrated
Times (now extinct) and The Graphic, to those depending largely
on the portraits of brides and bridegrooms, sportsmen and sports-
women, actors, actresses and ladies of the ballet, the satirical
and humorous papers from Punch' and Fun (now extinct)
downwards, the century witnessed the establishment of scores of
weekly newspapers, dealing with almost every description of special-
ised interest—religious, atheistic, scientific, mechanical, financial,
military, naval, architectural, dramatic and artistic, a marvellous
record of the mental activity of the nation. All these make their
particular appeal, and even to indicate the character of each would
be impossible in these pages. Some of them, indeed, however
well their articles may be written, make no pretence of belonging
to the domain of literature.
Why one newspaper succeeds and another fails, even the
most experienced journalist will (as already hinted) hesitate to
decide. The Constitutional, issued in 1836, had for its editor
Laman Blanchard, with Thornton Hunt, afterwards editor of
The Daily Telegraph, as his assistant. Thackeray's Paris Sketch
Book is reminiscent of the fact that he was Paris correspondent
for the paper, in which his step-father and he had unfortunately
invested money; and among its constant contributors were
Bulwer Lytton, Douglas Jerrold and Sir William Molesworth.
It existed only seven months. Another was The Hour, issued in
1873 with captain Hamber as its editor. Hamber, who had been
at Oriel college when lord Robert Cecil, afterwards third marquis
of Salisbury, was also at Oxford, served in the Crimean war,
and then turned to journalism. During several years, he edited
The Standard with signal ability, but, eventually, quarrelled with
its proprietor, who desired less independence of official conser-
vative party control. Thereupon, The Hour was started as an
ultra-protestant conservative paper, independent of the re-
cognised party leaders. It never found a sufficient public, and,
in 1876, Disraeli 'heard with a pang that The Hour was no
more. '
A much more important publication was The Press, originated,
in 1853, as a weekly representative of progressive conservatism,
its first moving spirit being Disraeli, who, for some time, was a
frequent contributor? It editor was Samuel Lucas (not the
Samuel Lucas of The Morning Star) and the writers included
Bulwer Lytton, George Smythe, Shirley Brooks, Tom Taylor,
· See, post, chap. VI.
? Cf. , ante, vol. XIII, chap. XI.
## p. 197 (#227) ############################################
IV]
The Examiner
197
lord Stanley, Sir J. E. Tennant, H. L. Mansel (afterwards dean
of St Paul's) and Edward Vaughan Kenealy.
Among later
contributors were Richard Holt Hutton and Sir J. R. Seeley. It
never obtained a circulation of more than 3500, and though,
at its best period, it seems to have been financially stable, it ceased
to exist in 1866.
Journalism has always allowed equality of literary opportunity
to men and to women, to men who have made their mark at the
universities and to those whose chief or only schooling has been
such as they could pick up in the intervals of other occupations.
Swift's judgment of Mrs Manley was that her writing, at times, was
better than his own! Defoe had an audience greater than that of
Addison or Steele. In the early part of the nineteenth century, one
of the self-educated had popularity and influence equal to those
of any of his contemporaries. This was William Cobbett, born
in 1762, of whom, and of whose Political Register, something
has been said in a previous volume of this history.
In 1808 appeared the first of a distinctive school of weekly
periodicals, combining surveys of politics, literature, the drama
and the pictorial arts, in articles intended more nearly to resemble
a careful and a deliberate essay than the current comments of the
daily newspaper. This was The Examiner, launched by John
Hunt, and his more famous brother James Henry Leigh Hunt,
of whose influence on English criticism and poetry an estimate
will be found in an earlier volume of the present works. In
1805, John Hunt issued The News and Leigh, then in his twenty-
first year, was its theatrical critic. The Examiner followed. The
dramatic criticism of The News had been free and independent,
and attracted much attention. Writing of the kind was, according
to Leigh Hunt's Autobiography, a great novelty. Similar inde-
pendence in politics and literature marked The Examiner ; and,
not less for outspoken comments than for high quality of writing,
it soon attained eminence. Before it was one year old, it came
under prosecution for libel, but without result. In 1811, a scathing
article on the prince regent—'a violator of his word . . . the com-
panion of gamblers and demireps'—was followed by prosecution;
and, though Brougham, as on a previous occasion, defended the
brothers, they were fined £500 each with costs of about £1000,
and sentenced to imprisonment for two years. Their confinement
a
1 See letters to Esther Johnson and Rebecca Dingley. No. XXXII, 23 Oct. 1711.
3 See, ante, vol. XI, pp. 49–51.
3 Ante, vol. XII, pp. 220–4.
## p. 198 (#228) ############################################
198
[ch.
The Growth of Journalism
was not severe. Leigh Hunt had his wife and family with him,
and visitors came every day-Charles and Mary Lamb, Hazlitt,
Shelley, Barnes (later to edit The Times), Byron, Moore, Bentham
and others. The popularity of The Examiner was not main-
tained; but, with varying fortunes, it continued in the hands of
the Hunts until 1821, and, eventually, found a new and famous
editor in Albany Fonblanque, a radical of the Benthamite school.
Thus, during a quarter of a century, his paper was repre-
sentative of the advanced group of politicians. John Forster
followed him, and, later, Henry Morley, but the management and
scheme of the paper were not modified to suit new conditions
arising out of the competition of The Spectator and The Saturday
Review, and, in the course of a few years, The Escaminer's career
ended.
In 1828, Joseph Hume and others raised money to enable Robert
Stephen Rintoul to start The Spectator as an organ of educated
radicalism. It was, indeed, to perform for radicalism a service like
that which Disraeli intended The Press to render to toryism, but, in
the forefront, whether of educated radicalism, or of a liberalism
not easily to be distinguished from independent conservatism,
The Spectator has consistently held up the banner designed
for it by its founder. Under Rintoul, it disputed the supremacy
of Fonblanque's Escaminer and led the advocacy of lord John
Russell's franchise measure of 1831 by demanding the Bill, the
whole Bill and nothing but the Bill'a demand which The
Examiner was obliged to echo, thus, in effect, acknowledging
leadership.
In 1855, The Saturday Review made its appearance without
the compendium of news which had formed a large portion of The
Spectator and The Examiner, and the former of these, after
the death of Rintoul in 1858, was remodelled in the hands of
Meredith Townsend and Richard Holt Hutton. Until Gladstone
adopted the Home Rule policy in 1885, The Spectator was his
constant supporter; but its attitude towards the liberal party
hereupon changed as to this and as to some other subjects.
According to their initial declaration, the Peelite projectors
of The Saturday Review, as has been seen, wished to free thirty
million people who were ruled despotically by The Times. Among
early writers in The Review were Sir H. S. Maine, Sir James Fitz-
james Stephen, W. Vernon Harcourt, E. A. Freeman, J. R. Green,
Abraham Hayward, William Scott (an eminent Puseyite), Mrs
Lynn Linton and lord Robert Cecil. The paper was noted
## p. 199 (#229) ############################################
IV]
Weekly Papers
199
especially for the pungency of its satire, the brilliance of its
style and the nicety of its scholarship. The political events
of 1885 lost the liberal party not a few of its supporters in
journalism, and, therefore, The Speaker was launched under the
editorship of Sir T. Wemyss Reid, who had previously edited
The Leeds Mercury. It was conducted with ability and existed
a number of years without making headway in competition with
The Spectator or The Saturday Review. Upon its discontinuance,
The Nation appeared as an advocate of advanced liberalism.
Other qualified successes in this form of journalism were Charles
Mackay's London Review, in which Lawrence Oliphant, Charles
Isaac Elton and William Black, the novelist, participated in
,
1860, and The Leader, started, in 1849, with George Henry Lewes
as principal writer and a staff including Herbert Spencer, Marian
Evans, Alexander William Kinglake and Edward Michael Whitty
-the last a peculiarly gifted writer of sketches of parliamentary
celebrities.
Mention should be made of William Ernest Henley's effort to
establish, in 1889, The Scots Observer as a literary review and an
organ of imperialism, to be issued in Edinburgh, so that the Scottish
capital might rival London in the possession of a weekly review, as
it had done in quarterly reviewing and in daily journalism. Henley
summoned to his colours the most famous Scottish writers of the
day, but, in a couple of years, it was found necessary to tranfer
the paper to London, and to alter its title to The National
Observer. Even so, unfortunately, it did not find room for per-
manent growth.
A position of its own was achieved by The Economist, which for
seventeen years was under the editorship of Walter Bagehot, of whose
great critical powers, primarily, but not exclusively, devoted to
the elucidation of economical and political questions, something
has been said elsewhere.
Although The Guardian, primarily, was a religious weekly, being
founded, in 1846, by a number of churchmen, including Gladstone,
it gave much attention to political, social, and literary subjects, and
among its constant contributors were men of high rank in their
respective departments of knowledge. Until 1885, it was generally
a supporter of the liberal party, but, thereafter, its political inde-
pendence became more and more pronounced. It is impossible
here to survey the wide field of religious periodicals, valuable
though such a review would be as illustrating a gradual change
1 See, ante, chapters i and mi.
## p. 200 (#230) ############################################
200
[CH.
The Growth of Journalism
in the attitude towards religious journalism not only of the general
public, but, also, of trained theologians of various schools. A
mere catalogue of professedly religious papers might be misleading.
In specialised journalism, literature has always had a prominent
place. In the first half of the eighteenth century, a weekly
literary paper was founded entitled The Grub Street Journal,
Alexander Pope being an early contributor. Its most notable
successor, in the early part of the nineteenth century, was The
Literary Gazette, established by William Jerdan, in 1817. George
Crabbe, Mary Russell Mitford and Barry Cornwall wrote for it,
and its career extended into the fifties. In 1828, it met an
antagonist destined to win the first place—The Athenaeum. A full
history of this long-lived literary paper has been written by the son
of John Francis, who, at an early age, became associated with
its business management. The Athenaeum, in 1830, was only
struggling for existence when Charles Wentworth Dilke was placed
in authority. The help given him by John Francis was of great
value, but Dilke, in addition to being an enterprising proprietor,
was, also, a man of letters, and, by his own writing, did much
towards making secure the position of the paper. It would be
impossible here to enumerate the nineteenth-century English
writers who had more or less close connection with The Athe-
naeum and though, at various times, endeavours—such as those of
The Reader and The Academy-have been made to depose it,
these have not been attended with success.
Of journalism dealing with socicty in its many phases, much
has been seen, not only in daily newspapers but, also, in specialised
weekly publications.
Of these, in the first half of the century, John
Bull, which was also a political paper, became notorious, and was
often threatened with prosecutions for libel, so much so that its
chief conductors Theodore Hook, R. H. Barham, T. Haynes Bayley
and James Smith (of Rejected Addresses) sheltered themselves
in an anonymity which prosecutors were not able to penetrate.
In more recent years, The World, founded by Edmund Yates
and Henry Labouchere, and Truth, launched by the latter after
some disagreement with Yates, became celebrated by their daring
criticisms.
A brief notice must be added of the illustrated press, which is
one of the distinctive growths of the century. Rough woodcuts,
illustrating old chapbooks and thus appealing to the masses,
attracted by representations of crimes, and other incidents
narrated to them in literary form, were followed by work much
## p. 201 (#231) ############################################
IV]
Illustrated Papers
201
more artistic, but making appeal by means essentially the same.
The adaptation of the art was possible, first, by improved mechanical
production, and, later, by the application of photography, which,
because of its ability to image an actual scene, has taken the
place of the craftsman who, working from rapid notes, assisted by
his power of imagination, contrived to represent not merely the
facts, but, also, something of their meaning. The illustration
of news pamphlets was common in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries. In 1740, The Daily Post contained a narrative
of admiral Vernon's attack on the Spaniards at Porto Bello
illustrated with a view of the fleet, the fortifications, the
harbour, the position of the Spanish fleet and the town; and
Owen's Weekly Chronicle, in 1758, portrayed the British attack
on Rochefort. These are said to be the earliest attempts in a
newspaper to illustrate a news article 1
The Observer, a Sunday paper still in existence, was the first
to adopt wood engraving after Bewick's development of the art;
but, in 1806, The Times had an illustration, slightly influenced by
Bewick's method, of Nelson's funeral car. The Observer's illus-
trations of the Cato street conspiracy in 1820, of the trial of queen
Caroline in the same year and the coronation of George IV, of his
visit to Ireland in the following year and of the famous murder of
Weare by Thurtell, Probert and Hunt in 1823, were striking
instances of ability to cater for a public on the look-out for
sensational effect. The Observer, indeed, was a worthy fore-
runner of the cheap illustrated newspapers numerous at the end
of the century.
The Illustrated London News was, however, a great leap forward.
Among the thirty-two woodcuts of the first number was a view of
the burning of Hamburg, apparently drawn from the inner Alster.
Some of the character-sketches are as good as any published
since, and far more distinctive than any photographic illustrations.
Kenny Meadows, Birkett Foster, John Leech, Sir John Gilbert,
Alfred Crowquill and their colleagues, employed by Herbert
Ingram, were associated with writers already known, and the
paper soon attained a large circulation. It was followed by The
Pictorial Times and this, again, by many others; but, chief
among its surviving competitors are The Graphic, The Queen,
The Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News, The Field, The
Sphere. The Graphic made a step in advance when it was sup-
plemented by The Daily Graphic.
1 The Pictorial Press (1885), by Mason Jackson.
## p. 202 (#232) ############################################
202
The Growth of Journalism [ch.
We have noted several praiseworthy, but unsuccessful, attempts
to found journals, and, although this narrative deals mainly with
the nineteenth century, we may add references to two which fall
in the twentieth. One was the issue of The Pilot, partly in com-
,
petition with The Guardian. The literary quality and variety of
interest in the articles of The Pilot deserved a success which was
not attained The difficulties in the way of fighting a well-
established periodical are very great, a newcomer having to incur
expenses practically equalling those of the periodical with which
it competes, while its advertising revenue is, necessarily, very small
in comparison; and it often happens that the strain involved in
such conditions is greater than the projectors are able or willing
to bear. A similar comment may be made upon the fate of
The Tribune, intended, by its projector, to take a position at the
head of liberal journalism. The intention was admirable ; and,
from a purely literary point of view, many were the regrets
when it was learnt that the paper was a financial failure.
If the history of the newspaper press of the provinces' could
be traced in detail, it would be found, in the main, the vehicle
of opinion entirely independent of that expressed in London,
admitting the leadership of the London press as little as other
members in parliament would allow it to those sitting for London
constituencies. The provincial press has, indeed, been much
more free than the London press from the influence of political
organisers. It has been read by weavers and shoemakers no
less than by employers of labour and professional men? No
doubt, newspapers printed in London have always had a wider
circulation in the provinces than country newspapers have had
in London. One of the prosecutions which Cobbett and the
Hunts underwent was for reprinting an article written for and
published in The Stamford News; and, though London has
exercised an attraction for newspaper writers because of the
greater variety of opportunities which it offers them, many news-
papers published out of London have been as well written and
edited, as careful and, within limits, as enterprising in the
collection of news, and as skilled in the arrangement of material,
as any London journal. Several of the country newspapers
existing at the end of the nineteenth century could boast a career
longer than that of any London paper, though many bave dis-
appeared, and some, in the course of a long life, have lost
the importance which, as compared with rivals, they once possessed.
1 See Bamford's Passages in the Life of a Radical (1840—4).
## p. 203 (#233) ############################################
>
IV]
The · Provincial' Press
'
203
There were country papers in the early part of the eighteenth
century; and, though they copied from their London contem-
poraries much of their general and foreign news, they printed
information peculiar to the districts in which they circulated.
The ‘provincial' press has attracted men of ability. The Sheffield
Iris had, as editor, James Montgomery the poet; Hugh Miller,
the geologist, edited The Edinburgh Witness ; James Hannay,
The Edinburgh Courant ; William Henry Ireland was editor of
The York Herald when, in 1823, Sydney Smith sent to it for
publication the manuscript of his earliest political speech, that at
the Three Tuns in Thirsk. That Sydney Smith and his friends should
want their speeches to be published in this way, indicates the
importance of the country press at the time! John Mackay Wilson,
author of Tales of the Borders, edited The Berwick Advertiser;
William Etty, the painter, was a compositor on The Hull Packet;
De Quincey, during a part of his residence in the lake district,
walked once a week into Kendal to edit The Westmorland Gazette
and see his leading article printed; Alexander Russel, of The
Scotsman, was as influential and as independent as any writer in
the United Kingdom. These men flourished in days when, accord-
ing to some writers, the provincial press was a weak reflex of
opinions published in London-a statement which would be
entirely ridiculous if applied to the latter half of the nineteenth
century, when the extended use of the telegraph had made it
possible for the provincial newspapers to receive simultaneously
with the London press reports of important occurrences and
speeches, and to comment upon them the same night. Indeed,
there have been occasions when complaints were made in behalf
of an eminent statesman that, though he spoke in London, the
provincial newspapers could print his speech and leading articles
upon it, while his supporters in the London press could not do
more than print his speech—commenting on it the following day.
As in London, so in the country, the removal of taxes upon
paper, newspapers and advertisements gave a great impetus to
journalism, many papers being started, and not a few of the
weeklies being converted into dailies. Space will not permit a
sketch of these, valuable though it would be, if not, indeed,
essential, in any complete narrative of the industrial, social and
educational development of the country. Mention, however, must
be made of The Manchester Guardian, because, at the end of the
century, through a variety of causes, it became the chief morning
1 See G. W. E. Russell's Sydney Smith, p. 109.
## p. 204 (#234) ############################################
204
[CH. IV
The Growth of Journalism
exponent of liberal policy in the United Kingdom, and because,
during many years, there were associated with it writers of the
highest rank in special subjects. It is remarkable that these
qualities did not, in any way, lessen its experience of the keen
competition set up by less expensive journalism. Manchester had
been the scene of the first endeavour to issue a daily paper in
the provinces. This was in 1811! Another journal issued outside
London should, also, be mentioned because of its metropolitan
character. The Scotsman was founded in Edinburgh in 1817, to
promote reasoned liberal opinions. It developed into a daily paper,
and, in the hands of Alexander Russel, achieved a wide and sound
reputation. Its support was wholly given to the liberal party until
1885.
The halfpenny evening papers of the biggest centres in the
provinces and Scotland are better arranged than those of London.
Like the chief morning papers, they are connected with London
by private telegraph wires, and it would be impossible for any
London evening newspaper to obtain, within their areas, a circula-
tion of more than a few dozen copies, bought for some especial
feature.
The tendency of journalism towards the end of the century
was not of the kind anticipated by writers and thinkers of the
middle period. It depended more and more upon advertise-
ments; in many cases, the cost of procuring news and articles,
and printing and publishing them, are materially greater than
the prices charged for the newspapers; and those with very
large circulations are not always noted for careful ascertainment
of facts or for deliberation in their political judgments.
The journalist has no title to usurp the functions of prophet,
and, therefore, no attempt is made here to look into the future.
The great dependence of newspaper properties upon advertise-
ments may or may not subject them to a rude shock, or, as a
result of a reorganisation of industrial conditions, to a gradual
loss of revenue. In either case, no doubt, the contraction of their
activities in the matter of the very expensive collection of news
would be probable, since a growth in circulation cannot com-
pensate for the shrinkage of advertisements. Our task has been
to record the past of English journalism, and this, as we have
endeavoured to show, has been at least in harmony with the
general development in arts and science, and in the industrial,
social and political conditions of the country.
1 Andrews's History of British Journalism, vol. II, p. 124.
## p. 205 (#235) ############################################
CHAPTER V
UNIVERSITY JOURNALISM
The man in the train has settled habits and views, definite
experience of life, its problems and difficulties. The under-
graduate changes yearly, and is in the tentative period of
youth, though the influence of his school and his restricted
atmosphere (in England, at any rate) keep him fairly constant
in type. He has much of the freedom of manhood without
its responsibilities. For him, life is a comedy, or, at most,
a tragi-comedy; he has not begun to understand. He writes, if
he writes at all, at leisure, and the product of idle hours beneath
the shade, as Horace hints, is not often destined to be remembered
beyond the year. Horace, who owed his success largely to a good
schoolmaster and the university of Athens, is, in tone and form,
the ideal poet of university life. He is half-serious, half-sportive,
with an exquisite sense of form and metre, and he has more
university imitators than a dozen good prose writers can boast.
These imitators have a zeal for form due to their reading. The
study of the ancient classics gives a sense of conciseness, and
a detestation for the mere verbiage which is frequent in ordinary
journalism. University journalism thus follows a great tradition,
but it does not start a new one.
An anarchic age like the present is inclined to underrate the
sense of tradition, which does not, perhaps, foster the most seminal
minds; but modern masters of prose and verse have mostly
been trained in it, and the maxim, 'the form, the form alone is
eloquent,' is worth remembering. In particular, the sense of
comedy which comes from playing at life has found expression
in classical parody and light verse. Here, Cambridge can show
a long line of masters whom she has trained, from Prior and
Praed to Thackeray, Calverley and J. K. Stephen. Oxford, more
in touch with the world, has been more serious and more prolific
## p. 206 (#236) ############################################
206 University Journalism [CH.
in prophets, but can claim a first-rate professor of the sportive
mood in Andrew Lang. Calverley, however, is the leading master
and his inimitable short line has had many disciples :
The wit of smooth delicious Matthew Prior,
The rhythmic grace which Hookham Frere displayed,
The summer lightning wreathing Byron's lyre,
The neat inevitable turns of Praed,
Rhymes to which Hudibras could scarce aspire,
Such metrio pranks as Gilbert oft has played,
All these good gifts and others far sublimer
Are found in thee, beloved Cambridge rhymer1
Among many excellent composers of parody in verse, A. C.
Hilton is pre-eminent. The two numbers of The Light Green,
which are mainly his work, were produced just before and after
he took his degree at Cambridge (1872), and are still sold in
reprints. They represent a solitary flowering of wit and crafts-
manship, for he died young. The Light Green ridiculed The
Dark Blue, a magazine now forgotten, which was published in
London, but was understood to represent the life and thought of
young Oxford? Hilton's supreme achievement is a parody of
Bret Harte's Heathen Chinee. The Heathen Pass-ee secretes
about his person tips for examination purposes instead of the
cards of his prototype:
On the cuff of his shirt
He had managed to get
What we hoped had been dirt,
But which proved, I regret,
To be notes on the rise of the Drama,
A question invariably set.
In the crown of his cap
Were the Furies and Fates,
And a delicate map
of the Dorian States,
And we found in his palms which were hollow,
What are frequent in palms,-that is dates.
The last two lines are perfect in point, expression and likeness
to the original. Almost equally famous are The Vulture and
the Husbandman, after Lewis Carroll, and The Octopus, after
Swinburne.
Special brilliance is certainly needed to make university
6
1 J. K. S. , Lapsus Calami, •To C. S. C. ' See, ante, vol. XIII, chap. vi.
? Russell, G. W. E. , Collections and Recollections, chap. XXVIII.
## p. 207 (#237) ############################################
y] The Cambridge Review
207
magazines live; their humour is limited in scope, and refers to
persons who do not survive in the public memory; jests pass with
many repetitions from Oxford to Cambridge and back again, and
even to America, where an old story of Whewell is now current
concerning a new professor of encyclopaedic range. Hence, a
great number of university magazines are forgotten, and a study
of them at large does not suggest that they deserved to be more
than ephemeral. The Shotover Papers, or Echoes of Oxford
(1874—5) may serve as a typical example of parodies and com-
ments which, praised in their day, have now lost their savour. In
such magazines, the social history and atmosphere of the univer-
sity are fairly recorded for the future historian; but the Promethean
touch which lifts the local to the permanent is wanting. Great
men, however, will always attract great attention even by their
immature efforts. Thus, The Snob and The Gownsman are still
remembered because they contained the work of Thackeray; but
they were not brilliant periodicals; and comic treatments, by com-
paratively unknown persons, of subjects set for prize poems are
quite as good as Thackeray's Timbuctoo.
The credit of having been the first lasting university organ be-
longs to The Cambridge Review, which was started in 1879, and has
been published weekly in term time ever since. The first number
expresses the idea that university men are too busy to have much
time for journalism; but the purpose of the Review-to give a
representation of the life and thought of the university-has been
well maintained. It has a semi-official claim, too, on serious
readers, in publishing weekly the university sermon. Perpetual
discussions of university topics which, to the outsider, seem of
small moment is characteristic of all universities; learned and
sedentary persons are prone to controversy; and, perhaps, for this
reason, the Review has not paid so much attention to belles lettres
as some of its light-hearted predecessors. It has, however, had
its humours, as the selections in The Book of the Cambridge
Review (1898) show, and, for many years, it has excelled every
February in valentines, ingenious quotations and perversions
of quotations, addressed to men of note both in and outside
Cambridge.
In the nineties, The Granta started as a light and bright com-
mentator on Cambridge affairs, and absorbed some of the humour
which would otherwise have found a place in the Review. The
wayward genius of J. K. Stephen, already an accomplished rimer
in his Eton days, shone in both periodicals. His verse is the more
## p. 208 (#238) ############################################
208 University Journalism [CH.
astonishing inasmuch as it was casually and rapidly produced.
His best known lines (The Cambridge Review, 1891),
When the Rudyards cease from kipling
And the Haggards Ride no more! ,
have become so familiar that their author is often forgotten.
Of other Cambridge periodicals, the best are The Cambridge
University Magazine, which came out under the title The
Symposium in 1840, and contained some good work by George
Brimley, and The Tatler in Cambridge (1871—2) which was
illumined by the wit of A. W. Verrall. The Cambridge Observer
was started in 1892 by a small group including G. W. Steevens,
an Oxford man then in Cambridge, S. V. Makower and others.
Largely ignoring the ancient classics, it set out épater le bourgeois,
and was defiantly propagandist concerning foreign authors. It
contested the claim of contemporary critics, and discovered
the best of all art in the New English Art club. Such a paper
could not last, but did something, in spite of its extravagancies, to
enlarge the average mind of the university.
The Oxford Magazine, which was started in 1883, has lasted
till today, and secured a recognised position as a commentator on
university affairs. Resembling The Cambridge Review in general,
it differs in being the organ of the don. The talent for writing
English is more widely valued at Oxford than at Cambridge;
essays figure largely in examinations; and the Oxford paper is
more elaborately written than its contemporary. It is, in fact, ,
almost too well written, and loses, sometimes, in irony and para-
phrase what it would have gained by naturalness. It has that
excessive use of negative forms of expression which is character-
istic of Jane Austen and it has maintained an excellent standard
of serious verse. The pieces in Echoes from the Oxford Magazine:
being reprints of Seven Years (1890) form a collection unrivalled
for brilliancy. R. W. Raper is supreme in his parody of Whitman.
The volume is also strong in that humour which comes from
imitating in English the style and manner of an ancient author.
* L'Envoy,' concerning the purpose of The Magazine, is a good
specimen of Oxford prose.
As The Cambridge Review was supplemented by The Granta,
The Isis was started in 1892 as a light-hearted and flippant variant
on the sobriety of The Oxford Mayazine. A prominent feature
in the paper is the series of 'Isis Idols' with illustrations.
Of other Oxford magazines of the nineteenth century, The
1 J. K. S. , Lapsus Calami, • To R. K. ' See, ante, vol. XIII, chap. vi.
## p. 209 (#239) ############################################
v] Scots University Periodicals 209
Oxford Critic and University Magazine (1857), conducted chiefly by
undergraduates, was the first to shake off the lumbering verbosity
which came from Johnson and survived longer in the universities
than elsewhere. Its criticism was occasionally smart, but its verse
lacked distinction. The Oxford Spectator of Copleston and Nolan
(1868), in shape and size like Addison's famous periodical, is still
remembered as a deserved success. It was humorous on esoteric
subjects like Oxford philosophy, but, also, was capable of seizing
the charm of Oxford in such a passage as this :
When I look back to my own experience, I find one scene, of all Oxford,
most deeply engraved upon the mindful tablets of my soul. ' And yet not
a scene, but a fairy compound of smell and sound, and sight and thought.
The wonderful scent of the meadow air just above Ifley, on a hot May
evening, and the gay colours of twenty boats along the shore, the poles all
stretched out from the bank to set the boats clear, and the sonorous cries of
'ten seconds more,' all down from the green barge to the lasher. And yet
that unrivalled moment is only typical of all the term; the various elements
of beauty and pleasur
sure are concentrated there.
The conditions of academic life in Scotland differ considerably
from those prevailing in Oxford and Cambridge, and the resultant
journalism does not make so general an appeal as the best of the
English writing of the sort. The Scots tongue, in spite of its
unqualified successes with most English readers, is not known or
liked by all, and the same may be said of Scots humour, which is
apt to be grim, and of Scots metaphysics. Apart from these
differences of language, the Scots student has not the full advan-
tage of the corporate life from which it is difficult for the Oxford
or Cambridge undergraduate to differentiate himself. The first
magazine proper of Aberdeen, The King's College Miscellany
(1846), printed mathematical and physical problems with solutions,
and translations from Greek and Latin authors. Alma Mater,
also of Aberdeen, is the oldest of the existing Scots university
periodicals, starting in 1883. It is thus six years senior to The
St Andrews College Echoes, and The Glasgow University Magazine
of 1889, and four to the Edinburgh Student. During the first
half of the century, Aberdeen was a desert so far as literature is
concerned, and it was the vivid interest of Minto that suggested
to his students the idea of Alma Mater. It has done much to
bring together the diverse elements of the university, and, from
time to time, has had excellent plates. It has also done much in
the way of academic history and reminiscence, which, previously,
had been less cultivated here than in England. St Andrews claims
a light poet and parodist of distinction in A. W. Murray, the
14
E. L. XIV.
CH, V.
## p. 210 (#240) ############################################
210
[CH.
University Journalism
author of The Scarlet Gown (1891). Andrew Lang, indeed, might
have been one of the glories of St Andrews journalism; but the
n
weekly magazine which he helped to found never reached the
dignity of print.
The University Maga is the happiest of early efforts in
Edinburgh academic journalism. It ran for twenty-four weekly
numbers in 1835 and 1837—8. Edward Forbes was mainly respon-
sible for it, and contributed some good verses and a number of
excellent caricatures and sketches. It was altogether a lively
production, and reflects the spirit of the times better than its
fellows. It was not until 1887 that it was possible to establish
a university journal with a reasonable chance of permanence, and
this can be easily understood in an intensely independent and
individualistic society with no common meeting-place and prac-
tically no sport.
192
The Growth of Journalism [CH.
6
newspapers, it was able to boast that it possessed the largest cir-
culation in the world. ' The influence of the style of The Daily
Telegraph upon the newspaper press of this country has been
great; being, indeed, the basis of popular journalism. Not that
the latter repeats the styles of Sala, of Edwin Arnold, of Edward
Dicey, of Bennet Burleigh and of other men who long were
looked upon as representing The Daily Telegraph; for, with
features showing their influence has been combined a greater
directness of statement; but the picturesqueness at which they
aimed has had enduring effect. The loyalty of the staff
accounted for the success of the paper in obtaining early
information. Its enterprise has been shown in other directions.
In 1873, George Smith was commissioned by it to make and
describe archaeological exploration on the site of Nineveh, and
among his discoveries were a number of fragments of the cunei-
form narrative of the Deluge. Two years later, The Daily
Telegraph joined The New York Herald in sending Henry M.
Stanley into central Africa, where he surveyed lakes Victoria and
Tanganyika, and traced the source of the Congo; later, for the
same papers and The Scotsman, he was sent to rescue Emin pasha
from Equatoria ; but Emin refused to be rescued, and escaped
from the rescue party. In 1884–5, it was associated with
Sir Harry Johnston's exploration of Kilima-njaro, and, in 1899—
1900, with Lionel Decle's journey from the Cape to Cairo. Its
foreign staff have interviewed monarchs and statesmen; Bismarck,
some time before the Franco-German war, confided to Beattie-
Kingston that the military authorities had pressed him to quarrel
with France-a course to which he was then opposed.
Its musical and dramatic criticisms by E. L. Blanchard, Joseph
Bennett and Clement Scott were always read by the chief members
of the professions affected.
Another morning newspaper established successfully during
the century is The Daily Chronicle. Its founder, Edward Lloyd,
was already the prosperous owner of Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper.
In 1842, intending to compete with The Ilustrated London News,
he published Lloyd's Illustrated London Newspaper, unstamped.
The authorities intervened, and, in 1843, he rearranged his publi-
cation without illustrations, calling it Lloyd's Weekly London News-
paper. In this form, it competed with other Sunday publications,
such as The News of the World, Reynolds's Weekly Newspaper,
The Weekly Times, The Weekly Dispatch. Of these papers, The
Dispatch was long the most prominent. Its owner had been in
## p. 193 (#223) ############################################
>
IV] The Halfpenny Morning Press 193
the front of the fight against the stamp duty; but Lloyd's Weekly
soon became well established, especially under the short editorship
of Douglas Jerrold from 1852 to 1857, and, thereafter, under that
of his son Blanchard, who had among his coadjutors Hepworth
Dixon, better known as editor of The Athenaeum, from 1853 to
1868.
In 1877, Edward Lloyd purchased a daily paper which had
been started as The Clerkenwell News, but had expanded its
name to The London Daily Chronicle and Clerkenwell News.
He reduced the title to The Daily Chronicle, and adopted an
independent radical policy. The venture prospered, and has
latterly become one of the leading halfpenny morning papers.
The closing years of the century saw that advent of the half-
penny morning press to which reference has been made. There
had been such papers in the provinces for thirty years, The
Northern Echo being established in Darlington in 1869, The
North Star in the same town in 1880 and, about the same time,
The Newcastle Express, in the closing years of a long life, was
published at the same price. But, though The Northern Echo
achieved somewhat wide reputation in 1880, when it was edited
by W. T. Stead, the issue of a halfpenny morning paper in London
was a highly speculative undertaking. The Daily Mail, however,
was launched in 1896, and proved most popular. Much of its
earlier attractiveness was due to the writing of G. W. Steevens,
who, after a brilliant career at Oxford, plunged into daily
journalism, speedily became famous and died of fever in Lady-
smith, where he was one of the besieged in the Boer war. The
Daily Express made its appearance in 1900.
In the earlier part of the century, there were, in London,
seven evening papers; at the end, only six, and the general
development of evening journalism had not been commensurate
with that of morning papers, having, for the most part, been
limited to London and its suburbs, while morning journals were
carried to all parts of the country. The change was owing
chiefly to the growth of country evening papers, these being able
by telegraph and organisation to print later information, notably
concerning all forms of sport?
1 The supply of news to a morning paper is usually complete by 2 a. m. and, thus,
there is little actual need for late editions, but the news for an evening paper, the
incidents of the day, comes in a continuous stream, its end being fixed only by the
publication of the latest edition for which a sale can be had. The morning paper
prints the news of twenty-four hours; the evening paper, as a rule, that of only
eight.
E. L. XIV.
CH. IV.
13
## p. 194 (#224) ############################################
194
[CH.
The Growth of Journalism
6
Before The Courier was purchased by Daniel Stuart, it was
joined, in the last number of The Anti-Jacobin, with The Star as
forming a 'seditious evening post'; and, in 1792, at the instance
of Pitt, The Sun was started to advocate the ministerial home and
foreign policy. But it did not achieve a high position, and, in
1823, The Edinburgh Review said of it. The Sun appears daily
but never shines. The Globe, which, in the second half of the
century, became tory, was, in its origin, radical, competing with
The Star, the organ of the booksellers. Contemporary with The
Globe was The Traveller, intended to support the interests of
commercial travellers. A few years after its first publication,
The Traveller became the property of Robert Torrens, an eager
disciple of Jeremy Bentham, and a writer on political economy.
Torrens and his friends purchased The Globe in 1823, and during
many years the paper appeared with the double title. In all
respects well conducted, it was recognised as one of the chief
liberal organs, and the Melbourne administration of 1835 often
used it for the first publication of ministerial news. It preserved
its literary character, and, many years later, its sketchy serial and
historical articles were widely known as 'Globe turnovers,' their
length always slightly exceeding a column. Francis Mahony,
'Father Prout,' was one of its regular contributors. In 1869,
with new proprietors, it became moderately conservative, and,
with varying fortune, so continued until after the end of the
century. The Pall Mall Gazette obtained larger renown for its
philosophic statesmanship. It was founded in 1865 by Frederick
Greenwood, its proprietor being the wellknown publisher George
Smith. The name was taken from Thackeray's sketch of captain
Shandon in the Marshalsea, drawing up the prospectus of
The Pall Mall Gazette—written by gentlemen for gentlemen. '
Greenwood turned the satire into reality. Under Thackeray, he
had sub-edited The Cornhill Magazine, and his scheme contem-
plated the production of a paper which, with the publication of
news, should combine some of the characteristics of the already
flourishing Saturday Review and Spectator. Connected with the
paper were men of mark in literature, such as (to mention men of
very diverse qualifications) Anthony Trollope, Henry Maine, Fitz-
james Stephen and E. C. Grenville Murray. On several occasions,
Bismarck tried to form friendly relations with it. Greenwood,
undoubtedly, was one of the great editors of the century, revising
the work of his contributors, suggesting topics and their treat-
ment and, with a masterly hand, adding finishing touches. His
## p. 195 (#225) ############################################
IV]
W. T. Stead
195
sources of information gave him early news of the intention of the
French government, in 1875, to obtain control over the Suez canal,
by purchasing from the khedive of Egypt a large number of the
shares held by him in that undertaking; and the fact was brought
to the notice of Disraeli, the prime minister, who forestalled the
French. When, in 1881, the liberal party obtained a large majority
in the house of commons, Henry Yates Thompson, a son-in-law of
George Smith, had become proprietor of The Pall Mall Gazette,
and, as he was a supporter of Gladstone, Frederick Greenwood
and his colleagues were superseded by John (now viscount)
Morley, who was installed as editor, with W. T. Stead, of The
Northern Echo, as his chief of staff. Greenwood thereupon
started the St James's Gazette, but could not acquire for it
the vogue of his earlier paper. The career of W. T. Stead, who
in 1883 followed Morley as editor, was remarkable. Brought
up in a north country manse, and under the influence of
fervent religious emotions, he believed that every step in his
course was dictated directly from heaven. He assured the present
writer that the Almighty set up finger-posts for him, whose inten-
tion was unmistakable, and that, on several occasions, when he
had seen these directions, he had obeyed the command, apparently
risking everything that most men hold precious. His efforts
startling in their form, for the more stringent protection of girls,
and the pride with which he suffered the consequences of his
action, illustrate this attitude. He was, however, possessed of
,
much humour, and was a most graphic correspondent. At the end
of five years, another change of editor took place; and, later
still, in 1892, The Pall Mall Gazette passed into a new proprietor-
ship. At the same time, The Westminster Gazette was launched,
which was conducted on much the same lines as those of the
liberal Pall Mall Gazette had been, and, during several years, was
the only London penny paper supporting the liberal party. One
especial feature of The Westminster Gazette has been its brilliant
political caricatures. Stead was drowned in the disaster to the
• Titanic. '
For many years, London had one halfpenny evening paper,
The Echo (established 1868). Similar halfpenny papers were
already in being at Manchester and Bolton in Lancashire. Later,
The Evening News and The Star appeared.
Many as were the morning and evening papers published in
London during the century, they were far outnumbered by weekly
papers. Besides high-class and popular political weeklies, the
13--2
## p. 196 (#226) ############################################
196 The Growth of Journalism [CH.
pictorial papers, from The Illustrated London News, The Illustrated
Times (now extinct) and The Graphic, to those depending largely
on the portraits of brides and bridegrooms, sportsmen and sports-
women, actors, actresses and ladies of the ballet, the satirical
and humorous papers from Punch' and Fun (now extinct)
downwards, the century witnessed the establishment of scores of
weekly newspapers, dealing with almost every description of special-
ised interest—religious, atheistic, scientific, mechanical, financial,
military, naval, architectural, dramatic and artistic, a marvellous
record of the mental activity of the nation. All these make their
particular appeal, and even to indicate the character of each would
be impossible in these pages. Some of them, indeed, however
well their articles may be written, make no pretence of belonging
to the domain of literature.
Why one newspaper succeeds and another fails, even the
most experienced journalist will (as already hinted) hesitate to
decide. The Constitutional, issued in 1836, had for its editor
Laman Blanchard, with Thornton Hunt, afterwards editor of
The Daily Telegraph, as his assistant. Thackeray's Paris Sketch
Book is reminiscent of the fact that he was Paris correspondent
for the paper, in which his step-father and he had unfortunately
invested money; and among its constant contributors were
Bulwer Lytton, Douglas Jerrold and Sir William Molesworth.
It existed only seven months. Another was The Hour, issued in
1873 with captain Hamber as its editor. Hamber, who had been
at Oriel college when lord Robert Cecil, afterwards third marquis
of Salisbury, was also at Oxford, served in the Crimean war,
and then turned to journalism. During several years, he edited
The Standard with signal ability, but, eventually, quarrelled with
its proprietor, who desired less independence of official conser-
vative party control. Thereupon, The Hour was started as an
ultra-protestant conservative paper, independent of the re-
cognised party leaders. It never found a sufficient public, and,
in 1876, Disraeli 'heard with a pang that The Hour was no
more. '
A much more important publication was The Press, originated,
in 1853, as a weekly representative of progressive conservatism,
its first moving spirit being Disraeli, who, for some time, was a
frequent contributor? It editor was Samuel Lucas (not the
Samuel Lucas of The Morning Star) and the writers included
Bulwer Lytton, George Smythe, Shirley Brooks, Tom Taylor,
· See, post, chap. VI.
? Cf. , ante, vol. XIII, chap. XI.
## p. 197 (#227) ############################################
IV]
The Examiner
197
lord Stanley, Sir J. E. Tennant, H. L. Mansel (afterwards dean
of St Paul's) and Edward Vaughan Kenealy.
Among later
contributors were Richard Holt Hutton and Sir J. R. Seeley. It
never obtained a circulation of more than 3500, and though,
at its best period, it seems to have been financially stable, it ceased
to exist in 1866.
Journalism has always allowed equality of literary opportunity
to men and to women, to men who have made their mark at the
universities and to those whose chief or only schooling has been
such as they could pick up in the intervals of other occupations.
Swift's judgment of Mrs Manley was that her writing, at times, was
better than his own! Defoe had an audience greater than that of
Addison or Steele. In the early part of the nineteenth century, one
of the self-educated had popularity and influence equal to those
of any of his contemporaries. This was William Cobbett, born
in 1762, of whom, and of whose Political Register, something
has been said in a previous volume of this history.
In 1808 appeared the first of a distinctive school of weekly
periodicals, combining surveys of politics, literature, the drama
and the pictorial arts, in articles intended more nearly to resemble
a careful and a deliberate essay than the current comments of the
daily newspaper. This was The Examiner, launched by John
Hunt, and his more famous brother James Henry Leigh Hunt,
of whose influence on English criticism and poetry an estimate
will be found in an earlier volume of the present works. In
1805, John Hunt issued The News and Leigh, then in his twenty-
first year, was its theatrical critic. The Examiner followed. The
dramatic criticism of The News had been free and independent,
and attracted much attention. Writing of the kind was, according
to Leigh Hunt's Autobiography, a great novelty. Similar inde-
pendence in politics and literature marked The Examiner ; and,
not less for outspoken comments than for high quality of writing,
it soon attained eminence. Before it was one year old, it came
under prosecution for libel, but without result. In 1811, a scathing
article on the prince regent—'a violator of his word . . . the com-
panion of gamblers and demireps'—was followed by prosecution;
and, though Brougham, as on a previous occasion, defended the
brothers, they were fined £500 each with costs of about £1000,
and sentenced to imprisonment for two years. Their confinement
a
1 See letters to Esther Johnson and Rebecca Dingley. No. XXXII, 23 Oct. 1711.
3 See, ante, vol. XI, pp. 49–51.
3 Ante, vol. XII, pp. 220–4.
## p. 198 (#228) ############################################
198
[ch.
The Growth of Journalism
was not severe. Leigh Hunt had his wife and family with him,
and visitors came every day-Charles and Mary Lamb, Hazlitt,
Shelley, Barnes (later to edit The Times), Byron, Moore, Bentham
and others. The popularity of The Examiner was not main-
tained; but, with varying fortunes, it continued in the hands of
the Hunts until 1821, and, eventually, found a new and famous
editor in Albany Fonblanque, a radical of the Benthamite school.
Thus, during a quarter of a century, his paper was repre-
sentative of the advanced group of politicians. John Forster
followed him, and, later, Henry Morley, but the management and
scheme of the paper were not modified to suit new conditions
arising out of the competition of The Spectator and The Saturday
Review, and, in the course of a few years, The Escaminer's career
ended.
In 1828, Joseph Hume and others raised money to enable Robert
Stephen Rintoul to start The Spectator as an organ of educated
radicalism. It was, indeed, to perform for radicalism a service like
that which Disraeli intended The Press to render to toryism, but, in
the forefront, whether of educated radicalism, or of a liberalism
not easily to be distinguished from independent conservatism,
The Spectator has consistently held up the banner designed
for it by its founder. Under Rintoul, it disputed the supremacy
of Fonblanque's Escaminer and led the advocacy of lord John
Russell's franchise measure of 1831 by demanding the Bill, the
whole Bill and nothing but the Bill'a demand which The
Examiner was obliged to echo, thus, in effect, acknowledging
leadership.
In 1855, The Saturday Review made its appearance without
the compendium of news which had formed a large portion of The
Spectator and The Examiner, and the former of these, after
the death of Rintoul in 1858, was remodelled in the hands of
Meredith Townsend and Richard Holt Hutton. Until Gladstone
adopted the Home Rule policy in 1885, The Spectator was his
constant supporter; but its attitude towards the liberal party
hereupon changed as to this and as to some other subjects.
According to their initial declaration, the Peelite projectors
of The Saturday Review, as has been seen, wished to free thirty
million people who were ruled despotically by The Times. Among
early writers in The Review were Sir H. S. Maine, Sir James Fitz-
james Stephen, W. Vernon Harcourt, E. A. Freeman, J. R. Green,
Abraham Hayward, William Scott (an eminent Puseyite), Mrs
Lynn Linton and lord Robert Cecil. The paper was noted
## p. 199 (#229) ############################################
IV]
Weekly Papers
199
especially for the pungency of its satire, the brilliance of its
style and the nicety of its scholarship. The political events
of 1885 lost the liberal party not a few of its supporters in
journalism, and, therefore, The Speaker was launched under the
editorship of Sir T. Wemyss Reid, who had previously edited
The Leeds Mercury. It was conducted with ability and existed
a number of years without making headway in competition with
The Spectator or The Saturday Review. Upon its discontinuance,
The Nation appeared as an advocate of advanced liberalism.
Other qualified successes in this form of journalism were Charles
Mackay's London Review, in which Lawrence Oliphant, Charles
Isaac Elton and William Black, the novelist, participated in
,
1860, and The Leader, started, in 1849, with George Henry Lewes
as principal writer and a staff including Herbert Spencer, Marian
Evans, Alexander William Kinglake and Edward Michael Whitty
-the last a peculiarly gifted writer of sketches of parliamentary
celebrities.
Mention should be made of William Ernest Henley's effort to
establish, in 1889, The Scots Observer as a literary review and an
organ of imperialism, to be issued in Edinburgh, so that the Scottish
capital might rival London in the possession of a weekly review, as
it had done in quarterly reviewing and in daily journalism. Henley
summoned to his colours the most famous Scottish writers of the
day, but, in a couple of years, it was found necessary to tranfer
the paper to London, and to alter its title to The National
Observer. Even so, unfortunately, it did not find room for per-
manent growth.
A position of its own was achieved by The Economist, which for
seventeen years was under the editorship of Walter Bagehot, of whose
great critical powers, primarily, but not exclusively, devoted to
the elucidation of economical and political questions, something
has been said elsewhere.
Although The Guardian, primarily, was a religious weekly, being
founded, in 1846, by a number of churchmen, including Gladstone,
it gave much attention to political, social, and literary subjects, and
among its constant contributors were men of high rank in their
respective departments of knowledge. Until 1885, it was generally
a supporter of the liberal party, but, thereafter, its political inde-
pendence became more and more pronounced. It is impossible
here to survey the wide field of religious periodicals, valuable
though such a review would be as illustrating a gradual change
1 See, ante, chapters i and mi.
## p. 200 (#230) ############################################
200
[CH.
The Growth of Journalism
in the attitude towards religious journalism not only of the general
public, but, also, of trained theologians of various schools. A
mere catalogue of professedly religious papers might be misleading.
In specialised journalism, literature has always had a prominent
place. In the first half of the eighteenth century, a weekly
literary paper was founded entitled The Grub Street Journal,
Alexander Pope being an early contributor. Its most notable
successor, in the early part of the nineteenth century, was The
Literary Gazette, established by William Jerdan, in 1817. George
Crabbe, Mary Russell Mitford and Barry Cornwall wrote for it,
and its career extended into the fifties. In 1828, it met an
antagonist destined to win the first place—The Athenaeum. A full
history of this long-lived literary paper has been written by the son
of John Francis, who, at an early age, became associated with
its business management. The Athenaeum, in 1830, was only
struggling for existence when Charles Wentworth Dilke was placed
in authority. The help given him by John Francis was of great
value, but Dilke, in addition to being an enterprising proprietor,
was, also, a man of letters, and, by his own writing, did much
towards making secure the position of the paper. It would be
impossible here to enumerate the nineteenth-century English
writers who had more or less close connection with The Athe-
naeum and though, at various times, endeavours—such as those of
The Reader and The Academy-have been made to depose it,
these have not been attended with success.
Of journalism dealing with socicty in its many phases, much
has been seen, not only in daily newspapers but, also, in specialised
weekly publications.
Of these, in the first half of the century, John
Bull, which was also a political paper, became notorious, and was
often threatened with prosecutions for libel, so much so that its
chief conductors Theodore Hook, R. H. Barham, T. Haynes Bayley
and James Smith (of Rejected Addresses) sheltered themselves
in an anonymity which prosecutors were not able to penetrate.
In more recent years, The World, founded by Edmund Yates
and Henry Labouchere, and Truth, launched by the latter after
some disagreement with Yates, became celebrated by their daring
criticisms.
A brief notice must be added of the illustrated press, which is
one of the distinctive growths of the century. Rough woodcuts,
illustrating old chapbooks and thus appealing to the masses,
attracted by representations of crimes, and other incidents
narrated to them in literary form, were followed by work much
## p. 201 (#231) ############################################
IV]
Illustrated Papers
201
more artistic, but making appeal by means essentially the same.
The adaptation of the art was possible, first, by improved mechanical
production, and, later, by the application of photography, which,
because of its ability to image an actual scene, has taken the
place of the craftsman who, working from rapid notes, assisted by
his power of imagination, contrived to represent not merely the
facts, but, also, something of their meaning. The illustration
of news pamphlets was common in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries. In 1740, The Daily Post contained a narrative
of admiral Vernon's attack on the Spaniards at Porto Bello
illustrated with a view of the fleet, the fortifications, the
harbour, the position of the Spanish fleet and the town; and
Owen's Weekly Chronicle, in 1758, portrayed the British attack
on Rochefort. These are said to be the earliest attempts in a
newspaper to illustrate a news article 1
The Observer, a Sunday paper still in existence, was the first
to adopt wood engraving after Bewick's development of the art;
but, in 1806, The Times had an illustration, slightly influenced by
Bewick's method, of Nelson's funeral car. The Observer's illus-
trations of the Cato street conspiracy in 1820, of the trial of queen
Caroline in the same year and the coronation of George IV, of his
visit to Ireland in the following year and of the famous murder of
Weare by Thurtell, Probert and Hunt in 1823, were striking
instances of ability to cater for a public on the look-out for
sensational effect. The Observer, indeed, was a worthy fore-
runner of the cheap illustrated newspapers numerous at the end
of the century.
The Illustrated London News was, however, a great leap forward.
Among the thirty-two woodcuts of the first number was a view of
the burning of Hamburg, apparently drawn from the inner Alster.
Some of the character-sketches are as good as any published
since, and far more distinctive than any photographic illustrations.
Kenny Meadows, Birkett Foster, John Leech, Sir John Gilbert,
Alfred Crowquill and their colleagues, employed by Herbert
Ingram, were associated with writers already known, and the
paper soon attained a large circulation. It was followed by The
Pictorial Times and this, again, by many others; but, chief
among its surviving competitors are The Graphic, The Queen,
The Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News, The Field, The
Sphere. The Graphic made a step in advance when it was sup-
plemented by The Daily Graphic.
1 The Pictorial Press (1885), by Mason Jackson.
## p. 202 (#232) ############################################
202
The Growth of Journalism [ch.
We have noted several praiseworthy, but unsuccessful, attempts
to found journals, and, although this narrative deals mainly with
the nineteenth century, we may add references to two which fall
in the twentieth. One was the issue of The Pilot, partly in com-
,
petition with The Guardian. The literary quality and variety of
interest in the articles of The Pilot deserved a success which was
not attained The difficulties in the way of fighting a well-
established periodical are very great, a newcomer having to incur
expenses practically equalling those of the periodical with which
it competes, while its advertising revenue is, necessarily, very small
in comparison; and it often happens that the strain involved in
such conditions is greater than the projectors are able or willing
to bear. A similar comment may be made upon the fate of
The Tribune, intended, by its projector, to take a position at the
head of liberal journalism. The intention was admirable ; and,
from a purely literary point of view, many were the regrets
when it was learnt that the paper was a financial failure.
If the history of the newspaper press of the provinces' could
be traced in detail, it would be found, in the main, the vehicle
of opinion entirely independent of that expressed in London,
admitting the leadership of the London press as little as other
members in parliament would allow it to those sitting for London
constituencies. The provincial press has, indeed, been much
more free than the London press from the influence of political
organisers. It has been read by weavers and shoemakers no
less than by employers of labour and professional men? No
doubt, newspapers printed in London have always had a wider
circulation in the provinces than country newspapers have had
in London. One of the prosecutions which Cobbett and the
Hunts underwent was for reprinting an article written for and
published in The Stamford News; and, though London has
exercised an attraction for newspaper writers because of the
greater variety of opportunities which it offers them, many news-
papers published out of London have been as well written and
edited, as careful and, within limits, as enterprising in the
collection of news, and as skilled in the arrangement of material,
as any London journal. Several of the country newspapers
existing at the end of the nineteenth century could boast a career
longer than that of any London paper, though many bave dis-
appeared, and some, in the course of a long life, have lost
the importance which, as compared with rivals, they once possessed.
1 See Bamford's Passages in the Life of a Radical (1840—4).
## p. 203 (#233) ############################################
>
IV]
The · Provincial' Press
'
203
There were country papers in the early part of the eighteenth
century; and, though they copied from their London contem-
poraries much of their general and foreign news, they printed
information peculiar to the districts in which they circulated.
The ‘provincial' press has attracted men of ability. The Sheffield
Iris had, as editor, James Montgomery the poet; Hugh Miller,
the geologist, edited The Edinburgh Witness ; James Hannay,
The Edinburgh Courant ; William Henry Ireland was editor of
The York Herald when, in 1823, Sydney Smith sent to it for
publication the manuscript of his earliest political speech, that at
the Three Tuns in Thirsk. That Sydney Smith and his friends should
want their speeches to be published in this way, indicates the
importance of the country press at the time! John Mackay Wilson,
author of Tales of the Borders, edited The Berwick Advertiser;
William Etty, the painter, was a compositor on The Hull Packet;
De Quincey, during a part of his residence in the lake district,
walked once a week into Kendal to edit The Westmorland Gazette
and see his leading article printed; Alexander Russel, of The
Scotsman, was as influential and as independent as any writer in
the United Kingdom. These men flourished in days when, accord-
ing to some writers, the provincial press was a weak reflex of
opinions published in London-a statement which would be
entirely ridiculous if applied to the latter half of the nineteenth
century, when the extended use of the telegraph had made it
possible for the provincial newspapers to receive simultaneously
with the London press reports of important occurrences and
speeches, and to comment upon them the same night. Indeed,
there have been occasions when complaints were made in behalf
of an eminent statesman that, though he spoke in London, the
provincial newspapers could print his speech and leading articles
upon it, while his supporters in the London press could not do
more than print his speech—commenting on it the following day.
As in London, so in the country, the removal of taxes upon
paper, newspapers and advertisements gave a great impetus to
journalism, many papers being started, and not a few of the
weeklies being converted into dailies. Space will not permit a
sketch of these, valuable though it would be, if not, indeed,
essential, in any complete narrative of the industrial, social and
educational development of the country. Mention, however, must
be made of The Manchester Guardian, because, at the end of the
century, through a variety of causes, it became the chief morning
1 See G. W. E. Russell's Sydney Smith, p. 109.
## p. 204 (#234) ############################################
204
[CH. IV
The Growth of Journalism
exponent of liberal policy in the United Kingdom, and because,
during many years, there were associated with it writers of the
highest rank in special subjects. It is remarkable that these
qualities did not, in any way, lessen its experience of the keen
competition set up by less expensive journalism. Manchester had
been the scene of the first endeavour to issue a daily paper in
the provinces. This was in 1811! Another journal issued outside
London should, also, be mentioned because of its metropolitan
character. The Scotsman was founded in Edinburgh in 1817, to
promote reasoned liberal opinions. It developed into a daily paper,
and, in the hands of Alexander Russel, achieved a wide and sound
reputation. Its support was wholly given to the liberal party until
1885.
The halfpenny evening papers of the biggest centres in the
provinces and Scotland are better arranged than those of London.
Like the chief morning papers, they are connected with London
by private telegraph wires, and it would be impossible for any
London evening newspaper to obtain, within their areas, a circula-
tion of more than a few dozen copies, bought for some especial
feature.
The tendency of journalism towards the end of the century
was not of the kind anticipated by writers and thinkers of the
middle period. It depended more and more upon advertise-
ments; in many cases, the cost of procuring news and articles,
and printing and publishing them, are materially greater than
the prices charged for the newspapers; and those with very
large circulations are not always noted for careful ascertainment
of facts or for deliberation in their political judgments.
The journalist has no title to usurp the functions of prophet,
and, therefore, no attempt is made here to look into the future.
The great dependence of newspaper properties upon advertise-
ments may or may not subject them to a rude shock, or, as a
result of a reorganisation of industrial conditions, to a gradual
loss of revenue. In either case, no doubt, the contraction of their
activities in the matter of the very expensive collection of news
would be probable, since a growth in circulation cannot com-
pensate for the shrinkage of advertisements. Our task has been
to record the past of English journalism, and this, as we have
endeavoured to show, has been at least in harmony with the
general development in arts and science, and in the industrial,
social and political conditions of the country.
1 Andrews's History of British Journalism, vol. II, p. 124.
## p. 205 (#235) ############################################
CHAPTER V
UNIVERSITY JOURNALISM
The man in the train has settled habits and views, definite
experience of life, its problems and difficulties. The under-
graduate changes yearly, and is in the tentative period of
youth, though the influence of his school and his restricted
atmosphere (in England, at any rate) keep him fairly constant
in type. He has much of the freedom of manhood without
its responsibilities. For him, life is a comedy, or, at most,
a tragi-comedy; he has not begun to understand. He writes, if
he writes at all, at leisure, and the product of idle hours beneath
the shade, as Horace hints, is not often destined to be remembered
beyond the year. Horace, who owed his success largely to a good
schoolmaster and the university of Athens, is, in tone and form,
the ideal poet of university life. He is half-serious, half-sportive,
with an exquisite sense of form and metre, and he has more
university imitators than a dozen good prose writers can boast.
These imitators have a zeal for form due to their reading. The
study of the ancient classics gives a sense of conciseness, and
a detestation for the mere verbiage which is frequent in ordinary
journalism. University journalism thus follows a great tradition,
but it does not start a new one.
An anarchic age like the present is inclined to underrate the
sense of tradition, which does not, perhaps, foster the most seminal
minds; but modern masters of prose and verse have mostly
been trained in it, and the maxim, 'the form, the form alone is
eloquent,' is worth remembering. In particular, the sense of
comedy which comes from playing at life has found expression
in classical parody and light verse. Here, Cambridge can show
a long line of masters whom she has trained, from Prior and
Praed to Thackeray, Calverley and J. K. Stephen. Oxford, more
in touch with the world, has been more serious and more prolific
## p. 206 (#236) ############################################
206 University Journalism [CH.
in prophets, but can claim a first-rate professor of the sportive
mood in Andrew Lang. Calverley, however, is the leading master
and his inimitable short line has had many disciples :
The wit of smooth delicious Matthew Prior,
The rhythmic grace which Hookham Frere displayed,
The summer lightning wreathing Byron's lyre,
The neat inevitable turns of Praed,
Rhymes to which Hudibras could scarce aspire,
Such metrio pranks as Gilbert oft has played,
All these good gifts and others far sublimer
Are found in thee, beloved Cambridge rhymer1
Among many excellent composers of parody in verse, A. C.
Hilton is pre-eminent. The two numbers of The Light Green,
which are mainly his work, were produced just before and after
he took his degree at Cambridge (1872), and are still sold in
reprints. They represent a solitary flowering of wit and crafts-
manship, for he died young. The Light Green ridiculed The
Dark Blue, a magazine now forgotten, which was published in
London, but was understood to represent the life and thought of
young Oxford? Hilton's supreme achievement is a parody of
Bret Harte's Heathen Chinee. The Heathen Pass-ee secretes
about his person tips for examination purposes instead of the
cards of his prototype:
On the cuff of his shirt
He had managed to get
What we hoped had been dirt,
But which proved, I regret,
To be notes on the rise of the Drama,
A question invariably set.
In the crown of his cap
Were the Furies and Fates,
And a delicate map
of the Dorian States,
And we found in his palms which were hollow,
What are frequent in palms,-that is dates.
The last two lines are perfect in point, expression and likeness
to the original. Almost equally famous are The Vulture and
the Husbandman, after Lewis Carroll, and The Octopus, after
Swinburne.
Special brilliance is certainly needed to make university
6
1 J. K. S. , Lapsus Calami, •To C. S. C. ' See, ante, vol. XIII, chap. vi.
? Russell, G. W. E. , Collections and Recollections, chap. XXVIII.
## p. 207 (#237) ############################################
y] The Cambridge Review
207
magazines live; their humour is limited in scope, and refers to
persons who do not survive in the public memory; jests pass with
many repetitions from Oxford to Cambridge and back again, and
even to America, where an old story of Whewell is now current
concerning a new professor of encyclopaedic range. Hence, a
great number of university magazines are forgotten, and a study
of them at large does not suggest that they deserved to be more
than ephemeral. The Shotover Papers, or Echoes of Oxford
(1874—5) may serve as a typical example of parodies and com-
ments which, praised in their day, have now lost their savour. In
such magazines, the social history and atmosphere of the univer-
sity are fairly recorded for the future historian; but the Promethean
touch which lifts the local to the permanent is wanting. Great
men, however, will always attract great attention even by their
immature efforts. Thus, The Snob and The Gownsman are still
remembered because they contained the work of Thackeray; but
they were not brilliant periodicals; and comic treatments, by com-
paratively unknown persons, of subjects set for prize poems are
quite as good as Thackeray's Timbuctoo.
The credit of having been the first lasting university organ be-
longs to The Cambridge Review, which was started in 1879, and has
been published weekly in term time ever since. The first number
expresses the idea that university men are too busy to have much
time for journalism; but the purpose of the Review-to give a
representation of the life and thought of the university-has been
well maintained. It has a semi-official claim, too, on serious
readers, in publishing weekly the university sermon. Perpetual
discussions of university topics which, to the outsider, seem of
small moment is characteristic of all universities; learned and
sedentary persons are prone to controversy; and, perhaps, for this
reason, the Review has not paid so much attention to belles lettres
as some of its light-hearted predecessors. It has, however, had
its humours, as the selections in The Book of the Cambridge
Review (1898) show, and, for many years, it has excelled every
February in valentines, ingenious quotations and perversions
of quotations, addressed to men of note both in and outside
Cambridge.
In the nineties, The Granta started as a light and bright com-
mentator on Cambridge affairs, and absorbed some of the humour
which would otherwise have found a place in the Review. The
wayward genius of J. K. Stephen, already an accomplished rimer
in his Eton days, shone in both periodicals. His verse is the more
## p. 208 (#238) ############################################
208 University Journalism [CH.
astonishing inasmuch as it was casually and rapidly produced.
His best known lines (The Cambridge Review, 1891),
When the Rudyards cease from kipling
And the Haggards Ride no more! ,
have become so familiar that their author is often forgotten.
Of other Cambridge periodicals, the best are The Cambridge
University Magazine, which came out under the title The
Symposium in 1840, and contained some good work by George
Brimley, and The Tatler in Cambridge (1871—2) which was
illumined by the wit of A. W. Verrall. The Cambridge Observer
was started in 1892 by a small group including G. W. Steevens,
an Oxford man then in Cambridge, S. V. Makower and others.
Largely ignoring the ancient classics, it set out épater le bourgeois,
and was defiantly propagandist concerning foreign authors. It
contested the claim of contemporary critics, and discovered
the best of all art in the New English Art club. Such a paper
could not last, but did something, in spite of its extravagancies, to
enlarge the average mind of the university.
The Oxford Magazine, which was started in 1883, has lasted
till today, and secured a recognised position as a commentator on
university affairs. Resembling The Cambridge Review in general,
it differs in being the organ of the don. The talent for writing
English is more widely valued at Oxford than at Cambridge;
essays figure largely in examinations; and the Oxford paper is
more elaborately written than its contemporary. It is, in fact, ,
almost too well written, and loses, sometimes, in irony and para-
phrase what it would have gained by naturalness. It has that
excessive use of negative forms of expression which is character-
istic of Jane Austen and it has maintained an excellent standard
of serious verse. The pieces in Echoes from the Oxford Magazine:
being reprints of Seven Years (1890) form a collection unrivalled
for brilliancy. R. W. Raper is supreme in his parody of Whitman.
The volume is also strong in that humour which comes from
imitating in English the style and manner of an ancient author.
* L'Envoy,' concerning the purpose of The Magazine, is a good
specimen of Oxford prose.
As The Cambridge Review was supplemented by The Granta,
The Isis was started in 1892 as a light-hearted and flippant variant
on the sobriety of The Oxford Mayazine. A prominent feature
in the paper is the series of 'Isis Idols' with illustrations.
Of other Oxford magazines of the nineteenth century, The
1 J. K. S. , Lapsus Calami, • To R. K. ' See, ante, vol. XIII, chap. vi.
## p. 209 (#239) ############################################
v] Scots University Periodicals 209
Oxford Critic and University Magazine (1857), conducted chiefly by
undergraduates, was the first to shake off the lumbering verbosity
which came from Johnson and survived longer in the universities
than elsewhere. Its criticism was occasionally smart, but its verse
lacked distinction. The Oxford Spectator of Copleston and Nolan
(1868), in shape and size like Addison's famous periodical, is still
remembered as a deserved success. It was humorous on esoteric
subjects like Oxford philosophy, but, also, was capable of seizing
the charm of Oxford in such a passage as this :
When I look back to my own experience, I find one scene, of all Oxford,
most deeply engraved upon the mindful tablets of my soul. ' And yet not
a scene, but a fairy compound of smell and sound, and sight and thought.
The wonderful scent of the meadow air just above Ifley, on a hot May
evening, and the gay colours of twenty boats along the shore, the poles all
stretched out from the bank to set the boats clear, and the sonorous cries of
'ten seconds more,' all down from the green barge to the lasher. And yet
that unrivalled moment is only typical of all the term; the various elements
of beauty and pleasur
sure are concentrated there.
The conditions of academic life in Scotland differ considerably
from those prevailing in Oxford and Cambridge, and the resultant
journalism does not make so general an appeal as the best of the
English writing of the sort. The Scots tongue, in spite of its
unqualified successes with most English readers, is not known or
liked by all, and the same may be said of Scots humour, which is
apt to be grim, and of Scots metaphysics. Apart from these
differences of language, the Scots student has not the full advan-
tage of the corporate life from which it is difficult for the Oxford
or Cambridge undergraduate to differentiate himself. The first
magazine proper of Aberdeen, The King's College Miscellany
(1846), printed mathematical and physical problems with solutions,
and translations from Greek and Latin authors. Alma Mater,
also of Aberdeen, is the oldest of the existing Scots university
periodicals, starting in 1883. It is thus six years senior to The
St Andrews College Echoes, and The Glasgow University Magazine
of 1889, and four to the Edinburgh Student. During the first
half of the century, Aberdeen was a desert so far as literature is
concerned, and it was the vivid interest of Minto that suggested
to his students the idea of Alma Mater. It has done much to
bring together the diverse elements of the university, and, from
time to time, has had excellent plates. It has also done much in
the way of academic history and reminiscence, which, previously,
had been less cultivated here than in England. St Andrews claims
a light poet and parodist of distinction in A. W. Murray, the
14
E. L. XIV.
CH, V.
## p. 210 (#240) ############################################
210
[CH.
University Journalism
author of The Scarlet Gown (1891). Andrew Lang, indeed, might
have been one of the glories of St Andrews journalism; but the
n
weekly magazine which he helped to found never reached the
dignity of print.
The University Maga is the happiest of early efforts in
Edinburgh academic journalism. It ran for twenty-four weekly
numbers in 1835 and 1837—8. Edward Forbes was mainly respon-
sible for it, and contributed some good verses and a number of
excellent caricatures and sketches. It was altogether a lively
production, and reflects the spirit of the times better than its
fellows. It was not until 1887 that it was possible to establish
a university journal with a reasonable chance of permanence, and
this can be easily understood in an intensely independent and
individualistic society with no common meeting-place and prac-
tically no sport.
