No More Learning

Though probably few, either of statesmen or
of economists, would accept without large reservations the views
advocated by Ruskin, these views have influenced life and legisla-
tion; and those who bear in mind how closely the two sections of
his work were associated in his own mind will doubt whether
the aesthetic teaching can be entirely superseded. It was the
conviction that while life without industry is guilt, industry
without art is brutality, which drove Ruskin to examine the kind
of industry by which the modern world escapes guilt-only to fall
into brutality. At any rate, the intense humanity which inspires
all Ruskin's work, economic and aesthetic alike, can never become
antiquated. A false conception of aesthetic principle is fatal to
him who holds that art exists for art's sake, but not necessarily
to him who holds that the end of art is to raise life from brutality
to graciousness.
Nearly all our subsequent aesthetic criticism is derived from,
or more or less deeply influenced by, Ruskin. Benjamin Robert
Haydon stands quite apart from him. Though a far older man
than Ruskin, Haydon, as the author of printed works, comes after
him in chronological order; for, even Haydon's Lectures on
Painting and Design, the earliest of which was delivered in 1835,
was not published till near the close of his life; and the fascinating
Autobiography, which is his sole title to literary fame, was


## p. 157 (#187) ############################################

111] Haydon. Mrs Jameson. Symonds 157
posthumous. Ruskin's scathing judgment on Haydon as an artist
is well known. In Modern Painters, he singles out Haydon and
Barry as examples of the desire of greatness as such, or rather
of what appears great to indolence and vanity, and states that
nothing except disgrace and misguidance will ever be gathered
from such work' as theirs. Whether this be so or not, the Auto-
biography is entirely unaffected. It has that value which must
always belong to any sincere revelation of a human soul, and takes
a very high rank in that delightful class of books which Ruskin
himself afterwards enriched by his charming Praeterita. Haydon's
Autobiography is not, however, except in a very slight degree, a
work of aesthetic criticism, and he is connected with this group
rather through his paint-brush than through his pen.
It was otherwise with Anna Brownell Jameson. She, too, was
greatly senior to Ruskin, and had made a name as a miscellaneous
author while he was still a boy. The facility of her style makes
her volumes pleasant reading, and her analyses of Shakespeare's
heroines won, and have retained, as they deserve, considerable
popularity. But the very title of one of her works, The Loves of
the Poets, is suggestive of superficiality and popularity in the
less favourable sense; and the fact that, in her Characteristics of
Women, she, without qualification, ranks lady Macbeth as in-
tellectually the superior of her husband, proves the suspicion to be
well founded. She was in the field before Ruskin, but she was
deeply influenced by him, and her various books on different groups
of legends and legendary art bear his mark. Ruskin, however, in
Praeterita, has pronounced a characteristically candid and gently
satirical judgment upon her.
But it was in Ruskin's own university that the aesthetic school
took root, though its flowers and its fruit were not precisely what
he would have desired. The disciples never gave that weight to
ethics which the master desired, and, as time went on, they paid it
less, rather than more, attention. Of this group, John Addington
Symonds may be described as an outlying member, and his principal
work, Renaissance in Italy, illustrates the weakness of the school
to which he belonged. It is lacking in unity and is one-sided,
not only in the sense that it dwells upon art and passes lightly
over other factors in the history of the period, but, in the treat-
ment of art itself, emphasis is laid upon the emotional element at
the expense of the intellectual. Symonds's other works, likewise,
fall short of greatness. His poems are accomplished rather than
inspired. His literary monographs and criticisms do not rise
>


## p. 158 (#188) ############################################

158 Critical and Miscellaneous Prose
[CH.
much above the average of their kind; and, sometimes, as in
Shakespeare's Predecessors in the English Drama, they are not
sufficiently thorough on the side of scholarship. Symonds's prose
style is nearly always too highwrought and too diffuse.
On a far higher plane of literature stands Walter Pater; but
he, though he was influenced by Ruskin, is singularly different
from the elder writer, and the difference sheds back a light upon
the master's theories. Ruskin, bowed with sorrows though he was,
remained unconquerably optimistic, and, so long as he was capable
of work, he laboured with even excessive hopefulness at schemes
of social regeneration. Pater retires from the dust of con-
flict into an artistic seclusion. The conclusion of his Studies
in the History of the Renaissance is, in the highest degree,
significant. Its teaching is that, to beings like men, beings under
sentence of death, but with a sort of indefinite reprieve, the love
of art for art's sake is the highest form of wisdom. 'For art comes
to you, proposing frankly to give nothing but the highest quality
to your moments as they pass, and simply for those moments'
sake. ' The Oscar Wilde development had not the good will of
Pater any more than that of Ruskin; but it logically follows from
Pater's principle.
Pater was one of the most fastidious of literary artists. By his
artistic theory he was driven to seek perfection of style. If art
for art's sake is the highest thing of all, if life is a series of
moments and its aim is to make each moment as exquisite as it
can be made, it follows that each sentence, in a sense, is an
end in itself. The result is a style beautiful indeed-at its best
very beautiful—but overlaboured. The purpose partly defeats
itself. The whole suffers from the excessive pains bestowed upon
the parts, and the reader shares the oppression felt by the writer.
Pater's literary career began with the essay entitled Winckel-
mann, which he contributed, in 1867, to The Westminster Review,
and this, with other papers contributed to periodicals, constituted
the volume which was published in 1873. In the second edition,
the conclusion which has been quoted above was omitted, because
Pater felt that it might mislead young men. It was, however,
subsequently restored; and the conceptions it indicates form the
substance of the fine romance, Marius the Epicurean, which shows
clearly that Pater's own epicureanism was of a very noble sort, but
which fails, like every form of epicureanism, to show why any one
kind of pleasure should be the pleasure of all. Imaginary
Portraits followed, and then Appreciations, Plato and Platonism


## p. 159 (#189) ############################################

111] Walter Pater. Hugh Miller 159
and the charming 'imaginary portrait,' The Child in the House.
This was the last volume published during Pater's life, but several
followed it posthumously. Pater gave a colour of his own to
everything he touched. His criticism reveals so much of himself
that the question is naturally suggested, whether it reveals as
much of the artist or the writer criticised. But it must be remem-
bered that the criticism that does not carry the atmosphere of
personality is a singularly dull affair; and, also, that Pater was un-
usually well endowed with both the emotional and the intellectual
gifts of the critic. There are few whose judgments are deserving
of closer attention.
While Pater represented the aesthetic movement in its most
earnest phase, Oscar Wilde gave utterance to its principles in
the language of persiflage. In verse and in prose, in lyrics, in
'trivial comedies for serious people' that sparkled with wit, in
essays often bright with raillery and occasionally weighty with
thought, he proved that he possessed a remarkably varied genius.
The Ballad of Reading Gaol and De Profundis are the product
of his tragic overthrow, and are well worth all that he had pre-
viously written.
Of the ill-defined genus miscellaneous prose, there is no
species more delightful than that of the essay in the stricter
sense of the word, the essay which is the expression of a mood
rather than, like Macaulay's, a fragment of history, or, like
Matthew Arnold's, a fragment of criticism. Quite a considerable
group of essayists in this stricter sense belongs to the Victorian
period. The eldest of the group were Hugh Miller and Robert
Chambers, both born in 1802, the one in the north, and the
other in the south, of Scotland, both, ultimately, editors in Edin-
burgh. The most valuable of Miller's contributions to journalism
have been gathered into books which have a coherence of their
own, like The Old Red Sandstone and the delightful auto-
biography My Schools and Schoolmasters; but much still remains
in the form of scattered essays, of which one volume was published
in 1862 and another in 1870. Science, however, on the one hand,
and religious controversy, on the other, absorbed most of Miller's
energy, and, though he was the greater writer of the two, left him
a smaller place, in this particular sphere, than Robert Chambers,
the founder, in conjunction with his elder brother William, of
Chambers's Journal. Both the brothers were busy writers, and
the younger had a gift of humour which served him in good stead
in the numerous essays which he contributed to his own journal.
a


## p. 160 (#190) ############################################

160
[ch.
Critical and Miscellaneous Prose
It was to Hugh Miller's journal The Witness that John Brown
contributed his first noteworthy paper. But, though Brown
became a man of letters, he never ceased to be a physician. He is
doctor in the medical sense as unalterably as Samuel Johnson is
doctor in the academic sense. It seems to have been partly by
accident, and partly through domestic insistence and encourage-
ment, that Brown gradually became a writer as well as a physician.
Hence, his entry was late and his production always remained
leisurely. His earliest paper in The Witness appeared in 1846,
and the total of his work fills only three small volumes. It is
fortunate for Brown's fame that the fact is so. His genius was
beautiful and delicate rather than robust, and the characteristic
charm of his essays is not of a sort that is susceptible of great
expansion or of indefinite repetition. The essayists of the personal
and confidential type are never voluminous writers. There is,
nevertheless, considerable variety in Brown's work. His papers
on medical subjects afford pleasant and profitable reading; he is
an excellent critic both of art and of literature; he shows great
sensitiveness to natural beauty and great power of describing
it. But he is happiest of all when he deals with the dog. Here,
he is not only unsurpassed but unequalled. The most deservedly
famous of all his writings is the beautiful story Rab and his
Friends. But he has delineated many dogs besides Rab, and
always admirably.
While Brown was born a citizen of the Scottish capital,
Alexander Smith only became a citizen by adoption. Though
seldom read, he is still known by name as one of the 'spasmodic'
poets; but, until lately, it was half forgotten that he was also a
skilful writer of prose, author of an extremely pleasant story, of
the most readable of guide-books, if A Summer in Skye may be
degraded by that description, and, above all, of Dreamthorp, one
of the finest volumes of essays since Lamb's. The friends who,
shortly after his death, predicted that he would take rank below
only a few of the greatest of British essayists, were not bad critics.
Smith had the temperament of the essayist and the clearest possible
understanding of the principles of the form of art which the
essayist attempts. Nowhere in our literature is there a better
exposition of the essay as conceived and written by Montaigne
than in the second essay of Dreamthorp, On the Writing of
Essays; and there are not many better examples of 'atmosphere
than the title essay.
On a much lower plane stand Smith's two contemporaries,


## p. 161 (#191) ############################################

111]
Robert Louis Stevenson
161
A. K. H. Boyd and John Skelton. Boyd first became widely
known through the volume of pleasant but garrulous and
unsubstantial essays entitled Recreations of a Country Parson,
which he had contributed to Fraser's Magazine. It was the
earliest of many volumes which continued to appear at short
intervals down to 1896, when The Last Years of St Andrews was
published. There was a stronger fibre in Skelton, whose pseu-
donym Shirley was subscribed to some of the most readable of
the papers contributed to Fraser's Magazine and Blackwood's
Magazine during the latter half of the nineteenth century. From
his earliest production Nugae Criticae to The Table Talk of
Shirley, Skelton showed great skill as an essayist, blending in a
rare degree the love of nature with the love of books, and im-
parting both to the reader through a style redolent of the writer's
own personality. Skelton was a historian as well as an essayist.
Though he is, perhaps, sometimes advocate rather than judge in
his essays and books on Mary queen of Scots, they who most
widely differ from him in opinion must be sensible of, and grateful
for, the charm of his presentation of the case.
Of all this group, the greatest was Robert Louis Stevenson?
Versatility was one of Stevenson’s most conspicuous qualities, for,
besides being the foremost essayist since Lamb and a master of
fiction, whether in the form of romance or in that of short
story, he was also a dramatist and a poet. The essay, however,
was the form in which he first gave promise of his future distinc-
tion, and the publication of Ordered South may be regarded as
his real entrance upon literature. Ordered South lifts the veil
from Stevenson's life and gives insight into conditions which
profoundly affected all his work. It is the essay of an invalid,
and an invalid Stevenson was destined to remain till the end.
But he was an invalid with the spirit of a robust adventurer.
A victim to tuberculosis, who, at times, could scarcely breathe
and who seemed to need all his energies in order merely to live,
he was a lover of the sea and a daring voyager, and, long after he
had reached manhood, still played, with tireless zest, a war-game
of his own invention. In his case, broken health did not quench,
but rather stimulated, the heroic in his nature. Hence, feeble as
was his hold on life, in forty-four years he accomplished far more
than the vast majority of those who live the full span in the en-
joyment of vigorous health. The body was weak, but the spirit
was indomitable. It was the eagerness of his spirit and his keen
1 See, ante, vol. XIII, chap. vi.
11
E. L. XIV.
CH. III.


## p. 162 (#192) ############################################

162
[CH.
Critical and Miscellaneous Prose
sympathy with men of action that saved Stevenson from the be-
setting sin of the artist in words, the temptation to subordinate
meaning to sound.
It was not until the publication of Treasure Island as a
separate volume in 1883 that Stevenson was generally recognised
as a great writer; but, prior to that, he had written and published
some short stories and many essays. The records of personal
experience which are embodied in An Inland Voyage and in
Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes are essentially essays.
Fugitive papers were gathered into volumes, intimate and con-
fidential, as in Virginibus Puerisque, or critical, as in Familiar
Studies of Men and Books. Both in matter and in manner
they were excellent, but they did not make their author
famous. Other volumes, akin in spirit and substance, were
added in later years—fragments of autobiography and travel,
such as The Amateur Emigrant, The Silverado Squatters
and in the South Seas, and collections of miscellaneous
In
papers, such as Memories and Portraits and Across the Plains.
In all his work of this class Stevenson is easy, graceful and
friendly, except on occasion, when, as in A Christmas Sermon,
the tone is too lofty for these adjectives. But there, too, he
.
is intimate, and there, perhaps more clearly than anywhere
else, he reveals the moral interest which underlies most of
his work.
The body of short stories grew along with the essays, and
Stevenson was a master of story-craft no less than of essay-craft.
He never surpassed some of his earlier tales : The Pavilion
on the Links and Thrawn Janet both appeared before Treasure
Island. But, among English-speaking people, it is difficult to
make a great reputation out of short stories. The stories pub-
lished under the title The New Arabian Nights were supposed
to be responsible for the unpopularity and failure of London,
the periodical in which they originally appeared. Stevenson
might, therefore, have added masterpieces such as Markheim
and The Beach of Falesa, and still have remained obscure. But,
after Treasure Island, he was obscure no longer, and the brilliant
success of that excellent story for boys won readers for the essays
and the short stories who, save for it, would have paid no heed
to them. It made Stevenson a prosperous man, and did much
to determine the direction of his subsequent efforts. It was
followed by a series of romances—Kidnapped, with its sequel
Catriona, The Black Arrow, The Master of Ballantrae and


## p. 163 (#193) ############################################

111]
Stevenson,
Rands
163
others, down to his masterpiece Weir of Hermiston and the un-
finished St Ives. In these romances, Stevenson is at his best, like
Scott, when he is dealing with his native land ; but a comparison
with the Waverley novels shows that, fine as his work is, it falls
decidedly short of the greatest. Only in Weir of Hermiston does
he for a moment rival Scott. Stevenson was growing till he
died, and the wonderful creation of the old judge, one of the
best drawn characters in prose fiction, deepens the regret that
his days were numbered. Like Dickens, he had the excellent
habit of identifying himself with his characters, and this, no doubt,
explains his success. He acted their parts while he dictated, and
imitated their voices.
In other departments, Stevenson's work was less excellent.
The dramas wherein he collaborated with Henley were not very
successful ; but it must be added that their failure was largely
due to imperfect acquaintance with the conditions of the theatre.
Both writers were too highly gifted to produce work destitute of
literary merit, and Beau Austin, in particular, seems, from this
point of view, to deserve more success than it won.
Stevenson has been called the laureate of the nursery, but the
title has also been claimed for William Brighty Rands; and it
seems more justly to belong to the elder writer. Certainly,
Rands preceded Stevenson, and the latter has nothing finer than
Rands's 'Great, wide, beautiful, wonderful World. From 1864
onwards, in Lilliput Levee, Lilliput Revels, Lilliput Lectures and
Lilliput Legends, in verse and in prose, Rands was second only to
Lewis Carroll and Juliana Horatia Ewing in the production of
those books about childhood and for childhood, which are among
the most striking features of recent English literature. He wrote
and wrote well, for adults as well as for children. His essays,
Tangled Talk, are, it is true, disappointing ; but his Chaucer's
England, though not a work of profound learning, is a very
interesting book; and his Henry Holbeach, Student in Life and
Philosophy, proves that he was a thinker as well as a skilful
writer. The uncertainty of the judgment of contemporaries is
vividly illustrated by the fact that this striking book passed
almost unnoticed and remains unknown except to students, while
Sir Arthur Helps's commonplace Friends in Council, which is also
the work of a student in life and philosophy,' won for its author
a high place among writers of the second grade. Helps attempted
history, the drama and prose fiction, as well as the dialogue on
social questions by which he won his fame. His histories are
a
11-2


## p. 164 (#194) ############################################

164
[CH.
Critical and Miscellaneous Prose
treated elsewhere? His dramas are forgotten. His Realmah
resembles the works of Disraeli in that it is partly political, but
it is not, like them, a document of historical significance. His
Brevia, a collection of short essays and aphorisms, makes con-
spicuous that lack of substance which is evident in Friends in
Council. This charge cannot be brought against the thought of
William Rathbone Greg, whose Creed of Christendom, in spite of
its sympathetic moderation, in 1851 fluttered the dove-cots of
orthodoxy. Enigmas of Life, fully twenty years later, testified
to his permanent interest in the ultimate problems of existence.
The expression is sometimes striking, but the principal charm of
the book arises from the atmosphere of sincerity which pervades
it. Greg was a philosophical politician, as well as a philosophical
student of religion ; and, in Rocks Ahead and Mistaken Aims
and attainable Ideals of the Artizan Classes, and in a number
of essays, he showed himself to be by no means easy in mind as to
the tendency of the times. Like Bagehot, he saw that democracy
was inevitable, and, like Bagehot, he felt that the problem how to
give the masses their due share of power without making them
all-powerful was still unsolved.
The nursery work of Rands links on, at one point, to the work
of Andrew Lang’, whose many-coloured fairy books were, of course,
not of his own composition, but gathered out of many lands and
many ages in the course of his studies in mythology and folk-lore.
Lang seemed to have all the necessary gifts of the essayist; yet,
already, his essays have lost somewhat of their flavour. Only now
and then, as in the lightly humorous philosophy of prefaces in the
preface to The Orange Fairy Book, does Lang strike the true
note firmly; and he has not enough of this quality to keep his
l
essays in permanent remembrance. He dissipated his powers and
attempted too much. Folk-lore, the occult, history, the Homeric
question, literary criticism—in all he was active. Under such
conditions, it was scarcely possible to be quite first-rate in any
department. Specialists in each could point out his mistakes;
but it remains much to his credit that he never failed to make
himself interesting. The fact that, whether right or wrong, he is
interesting in every page of his short sketch of English literature
is not the least striking illustration of this power.
Two 'rolling stones,' both of whom gathered moss, as the
elder hinted in the title of one of his books, were Laurence
i See, ante, chap. 11.
? See, ante, chap. II, and vol. XIII, chap. vi.


## p. 165 (#195) ############################################

IN]
Oliphant. Hearn
165
Oliphant and Lafcadio Hearn. Oliphant's books bear testimony
to his wanderings. His earliest volume dealt with Khatmanda ;
and his next, The Russian Shores of the Black Sea, caused him
to be consulted when the Crimean war broke out. In two wars,
he acted as correspondent of The Times. He was in Japan while
Japan was still in the medieval stage, and nearly lost his life in an
attack in which the weapon of the assailant was a two-handed
sword. So stirring a life afforded rich materials for various
lively narratives from his pen, and for the essays which were
gathered up near the close of his life in Episodes in a Life of
Adventure. But the most extraordinary episode of all was
Oliphant's subjection to the 'prophet' Thomas Lake Harris,
whom the disciple believed to be not only a prophet, but the
greatest poet of the age,' and to whom he surrendered the whole
of his property. One outcome of this discipleship was Sympneu-
mata, a singular book, the joint composition of Oliphant and his
wife, who both wrote, or believed that they wrote, under the
dictation of a spirit. Other products were of a very different
sort; for Oliphant seems to have united with this trait of enthu-
siasm a marked talent for business, which the prophet was shrewd
enough to employ for his own benefit. Hence, The Autobiography
of a Joint-Stock Company, in which Oliphant embodied the
knowledge he had gained of the methods of American financiers.
In the literary sense, however, Oliphant's most valuable work was
the satiric fiction Piccadilly, which shows him to have been a keen
observer and a penetrating critic of the society of his time.
Long afterwards, he returned to the realm of fiction in Altiora
Peto, and proved that he still retained his old fineness of touch.
Lafcadio Hearn began his career as a contributor to two
Cincinnati journals, but it was a subsequent residence at St Pierre,
Martinique, that gave him the materials for his first noteworthy
work, Two Years in the French West Indies. In this, he showed
that power to receive and faithfully to reproduce impressions,
which was his special gift; and his position in literature must
depend upon this gift as it was exercised in relation to Japan,
whither he migrated in 1891. Probably no one can instruct
the man of the west about what Japan was before the completion
of the process of modernisation so well as Hearn ; but that he
does so on the strength of mere impression is shown by the fact
that, though he married a Japanese wife, he could neither speak
to her or to his children in their own language, nor, after a residence
of fourteen years, so much as read a Japanese newspaper. What
a


## p. 166 (#196) ############################################

166
сн
Critical and Miscellaneous Prose [CH. III
is valuable in his work is not his reasoned opinions, but the feeling
produced in his soul by what he saw and heard ; and it is im-
portant to notice, as Gould insists, that what he saw was little
more than a blur of colour; for he was ‘probably the most myoptic
literary man that has existed. ' Hence, the best of the Japanese
books is the first, Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan, because in it
he was forced to rely almost wholly on impression. In his later
volumes, he reacts on the impressions and injures them. For this
reason, the latest, Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation, though
the most ambitious—for it is an attempt to present in one lordly
dish the cream of all he had learnt about Japan—is far from being
equal to those early glimpses. Besides scenes, Hearn produced
tales, both in America and in the Japanese period.
He betrays
in them an unhealthy love of the gruesome; but he could, on
occasion, rise to a high level, as he proved by his masterpiece in
this form, the story of Karma.
While Oliphant and Hearn found their literary capital in the
distant and unfamiliar, the sphere of Richard Jefferies was, as the
title of one of his volumes indicates, the fields and the hedgerows
around us. His task was to show that the unfamiliar lay beneath
men's eyes. He belongs to the class of field naturalists like
White of Selborne, and, in days more recent than even those of
Jefferies, Denham Jordan, who is better known by his pen-name
'A Son of the Marshes. ' But Jefferies was more ambitious than they
and wider in his range. In Hodge and his Master, he deals with
the human element in rural life; but he does not show that complete
comprehension which he shows of beast and bird and flower. His
name first became familiar through The Gamekeeper at Home ;
and, for the ten years of life which remained to him, he was a
diligent writer. All who are qualified to judge, testify to his
accuracy of observation as recorded in volume after volume, down
to Field and Hedgerow, which appeared after his death ; but,
while the style is good, there is a marked tendency to catalogue
minute facts which, doubtless, have a value as natural history, but
hardly any from the point of view of literature. On the other
hand, a certain vein of poetry is present in all the works of
Jefferies. It is especially rich in Wood Magic, and it gives charm
to the fine spiritual autobiography, The Story of My Heart.


## p. 167 (#197) ############################################

CHAPTER IV
THE GROWTH OF JOURNALISM
To pass from the conditions recorded in the chapter entitled
'The Beginnings of English Journalism' to those with which
the close of the nineteenth century was familiar, is almost like
being carried on the magic carpet of oriental romance from the
middle of the Sahara to the bustling, electricity-lighted thorough-
fares of a modern European capital. The chapter to which
reference is made treats of the hand-written letter in which
some, more or less professional, observer, for the benefit of a
few known subscribers in the country, detailed whatever gossip
he was able to pick up in the taverns and streets of London. His
lineal descendants are still to be seen in the writers of the London
letter which figures in the columns of nearly every daily provincial
paper, and finds, latterly, a counterpart in several of the journals
established in London. The information in these London letters
differs, for the most part, from that which is to be obtained in
the ordinary news columns, and has nothing in common with the
reasoned leading article, in which is discussed the uppermost
political incident of the day. The chapter above referred to took
its readers from these manuscript letters through various experi-
ments in printed news-books and sheets of intelligence, issued by,
or in behalf of, groups of politicians, or news purveyors, to the
establishment of The London Gazette and the few occasional
journals which made their appearance towards the end of the
seventeenth century. The transition from a small pamphlet
containing some definite piece of news, and bearing an appropriate
title, to the sheet published periodically under a distinctive and
'regularly repeated name, carrying not one but a great variety of
collected items of news, was, in itself, great; but, when the change
was brought about, the convenience and attractiveness of it
ensured permanence.
i See, ante, vol. vii, chap. xv.


## p. 168 (#198) ############################################

168
[CH.
The Growth of Journalism
>
There was even a public ready for the news writer. Howell,
in his Familiar Letters, tells that the ploughman, the cobbler
and the porter would spare no effort to educate their children,
and the records of the university of Cambridge show numerous
instances of the sons of husbandmen being entered as students.
Apart, then, from the necessity to the merchant and trader of being
acquainted with current events, it is natural that the country,
as a whole, should wish to be supplied with news. Dr Johnson
characterised English common folk as more educated, politically,
than the people of other countries, and this because of the
popularity of newspapers. The extent of the influence of the
cheap newspaper in the early part of the eighteenth century is
shown by the petition of publishers against the legislation
described by Swift as ruining Grub street by the imposition
of a tax which extinguished all halfpenny newspapers and many
of the more highly priced. It was urged that halfpenny news-
papers were used very largely throughout the country as a means
of teaching children to read, and that, without them, there would
be a failure in this respect. In these conditions, statesmen could
not fail to recognise that the newspaper press might be made to
serve their purposes, and they did not hesitate to employ men of
marked ability and political knowledge to supplement or give
finish to the work of the professional inhabitants of Grub street.
For these higher services, payment was made, sometimes in coin-
Swift says that he refused £50 offered to him by Harley in 1710–11
-and, otherwise, by statę or church preferment, or by admission
to social comradeship. Publishers of newspapers, also, found it
to their profit to employ writers who could mix the useful with the
pleasant.
The growth of journalism in the eighteenth century was ex-
pedited by Palmer's establishment of a series of stage coaches,
leaving London at stated hours and carrying parcels as well as
passengers, distribution being thus much more rapid and regular
than when it depended upon the older waggon. Meanwhile, news-
papers had to struggle against the hand of authority. Prose-
cutions for libel were numerous, and daring writers had to stand in
the pillory, besides being imprisoned and fined. Parliament, in
especial, was jealous of the news collector; though, now and
again, some member might protest that the constituencies had a
right to know how their parliamentary representatives spoke and
voted, leading politicians and the houses, as a whole, resented,
i Section viii, Letter viri (circa 1646).


## p. 169 (#199) ############################################

IV] Eighteenth Century Newspapers 169
as breaches of privilege, any account of their proceedings, and
Cave, one of the earliest and most celebrated of parliamentary
reporters, recorded the discussions as if they took place in China,
referring to individual statesmen by entirely fictitious names,
which, like those employed in Gulliver's Travels, were, doubtless,
understood by very many readers. Nor were prosecutions for the
publication of parliamentary reports confined to London. Quite
early in the eighteenth century, some of the leading provincial
cities and boroughs could boast their own newspapers.
The
Newcastle Courant was established in 1711, and its publication
continued into the second half of the nineteenth century. The
Liverpool Courant was printed in 1712, Berrow's Worcester
Journal in 1709, The Salisbury Postman in 1715, The York
Mercury about 1720, The Leeds Mercury and The Northampton
Mercury in 1720. Manchester, somewhat late in the field, had a
newspaper, The Gazette, in 1730. Cave, in 1722, sent reports of
,
the proceedings of parliament to The Gloucester Journal, whose
owner, thereupon, was brought into direct conflict with the house
of commons.
Some of the journals in this intermediate period were, in fact,
collections of essays; and the writers of the chief among them,
such as Swift, Addison and Steele, are dealt with in other chapters.
Johnson's essays, for the most part, were, like those of Goldsmith,
,
written as the literary attractions of news-sheets; it being recog-
nised that the public, while eager to buy current news, wanted,
also, some more substantial and lasting literary food. Like
similar efforts of journalism at the end of the nineteenth century,
they were composed with rapidity,recording momentary impressions
aroused, probably, by some piece of current gossip; being, in
this respect, entirely removed from the earlier essay associated
with the name of Bacon. Through the whole period, however, is
to be noted a constant progress in the collection and dissemina-
tion of news.
Charles Lamb divided books into two classes, one of which is
literature, and the other not; and, perhaps, it may be said that
some journalism is literature and other is not. A sketch of
journalism in the nineteenth century must include both, whether
or not it attempts to differentiate between them. In any reasoned
survey of the period, it is impossible to ignore among newspaper
writers a changing attitude which synchronised with a change in
their readers. The journalism of the beginning of the century
was, mainly, intended for the wealthy and educated classes, though


## p. 170 (#200) ############################################

170
[ch.
The Growth of Journalism
underneath it was a stratum of popular writing struggling against
authority which gladly would have suppressed it; at the end, with
the exception of a few weekly reviews—and, perhaps, of a few
penny daily papers, and of The Times—journalism appealed
to a lower average of social standing, and, making allowance
for educational progress in the nation, to a lower average of
literary appreciation. The enormous circulations of which today
certain newspaper owners loudly boast result, largely, from
an endeavour to cater for classes whose education has been
restricted to the elementary school, or who, of more advanced
schooling, always run with the crowd-possibly a tendency
natural to democratic times. Writing so near to these develop-
ments, it would be premature to pronounce judgment upon
them.
As to amenities, journalism, in many ways, has improved during
the century. Nojournal in the front rank would now apply to a rising
statesman language such as The Times, in the early forties, used about
Macaulay, when it referred to him as 'Mr Babbletongue Macaulay,'
and said, 'he was hardly fit to fill up one of the vacancies that have
occurred by the lamentable death of Her Majesty's two favourite
monkeys. ' One may suppose that Sir Walter Scott had such con-
ditions in mind, when, having dissuaded his son-in-law Lockhart
from journalism, he wrote : ‘none but a thorough-going black-
guard ought to attempt the daily press, unless it is some quiet
country diurnal. ' Dickens's sketch of Eatanswill journalism was
very little of an exaggeration. On the other hand, it is doubtful
whether, in the closing years of the century, there was such intimate
connection between journalism and writers upon whose work
time will impress the hallmark of literature, as in the first half of
the century. The newspaper work of Coleridge was done in the
last years of the eighteenth century, and the beginning of the
nineteenth. Many of Hazlitt's criticisms of literature, art and
the drama were written for daily or weekly journals. Perry, pro-
prietor and editor of The Morning Chronicle, complained of the
length of Hazlitt's dramatic criticisms; but the public for which the
journal was written looked for articles which, in the literature of
the country, have taken a position far above that accorded to the
writings of any dramatic critic—and there were several of dis-
tinguished ability—at the end of the century. Charles Lamb,
also, was a dramatic critic, and, although what he did, in this
domain, is of less value than much of his other writing, it
possesses permanence, because a man so steeped as was Elia in
6


## p. 171 (#201) ############################################

Iv]
Art Criticism
171
Elizabethan literature could scarcely fail to invest his criticism with
atmosphere?
In regard to another branch of art, if we turn to Lamb or
to Hazlitt, by way of gauging the alteration in the attitude of
critics—and, therefore, apparently, of their readers—towards
painting, we find that criticism, at the beginning of the century,
dealt with the artist's ability to imagine and realise some scene or
incident, taking for granted all questions of technique and of what,
nowadays, is styled decorative pattern, whereas, recent art criticism
has been more and more devoted to these? Hazlitt, who, like
many modern critics, had received, unprofitably, some training
as a painter, protests against the idea that a critic ought to
possess practical acquaintance with the art, and the protest
involves the belief that a critic, writing for the public, has nothing
to do with the artist's craftsmanship. The alteration of attitude
has thus been enormous, and, intellectually, the later outlook is
smaller. In the political world, also, while the average of writing,
and, possibly, of instructed thought, no matter to what side or
party it may be devoted, has, doubtless, improved, there is now
less direct connection between statesmen of the first rank and
journalism. Greville could point to articles in The Morning
Chronicle of the fifties as attributable either to Palmerston or
to the ambassador of Napoleon III; The Times could make and
maintain an unique reputation abroad, because it was supposed to
voice the opinions of important members of the British govern-
ment. Henry Reeve, who, between 1840 and 1855, wrote for
The Times 2482 leading articles, characteristically dwelt, in his
journal, on the surpassing value of his knowledge of cabinet
matters. Perhaps, allowance must be made for his pride in his
work; but the association between cabinet ministers and certain
newspapers was, undoubtedly, intimate in the first half of the
century. On the other hand, a large degree of independence
was shown, and, although great editors might not un-
,
naturally, be influenced by the society in which they moved, they
did not come under suspicion of corruption. Their general
1 Much dramatic criticism by Leigh Hunt, as, later, that by G. H. Lewes, comes
within the same class, being based on literary principles.
? As an instance, in the case of Charles Lamb, may be cited the papers he wrote
for The Athenaeum in 1833. There is no mention of Titian's brushwork. Lamb's
interest in the Ariadne lay in the artist's conception of the situation indicated by
Ovid, and his power of impressing this conception upon the mind of an intel.
igent observer. This, also, was Thackeray's standpoint, in his criticisms of
paintings.


## p. 172 (#202) ############################################

172
[CH.
The Growth of Journalism
character, in this respect, appears in a letter from earl Grey to
princess Lieven in 1831 :
I saw the article last night in The Courier, and it vexed me very much. We
really have no power over that, or any other paper in great circulation. All
that we can do is by sending them sometimes articles of intelligence (bat
even to this I am no party) to conciliate them, when public opinion is not
against us. But when there is a strong general feeling, as in the case of
Poland, it is quite impossible to control them.
Lord Palmerston, in reply to Horsman, who had insinuated that he
was influencing The Times, protested that, between himself and
Delane, there was no bond but that of ordinary social intercourse.
At the present day, though, occasionally, information is given
privately by ministers to journalists, the latter have grown more
and more shy of seeming to be under the influence of ministers;
they are afraid lest a reputation of this kind should damage them
in public estimation. Ministers, on their part, have adopted a
somewhat different method of appealing to the public, or to
foreign powers. The development of reporting, and of the trans-
mission of news, has led them chiefly, though not invariably, to
make their appeals from the public platform, or from their places
in parliament. This change has caused the political pronounce-
ments of our leading journals to be regarded as less weighty.
How far they represent a large mass of public opinion is always
debatable; a political party having the support of the great majority
of journals with large circulations has, at times, gone to the country
only to find itself in a very decided minority. In sum, therefore,
journalism would seem to have lost authority because statesmen
have adopted other means of publishing their views, while it has
not gained materially in influence derived from a pretension
to represent the general trend of opinion in the country, or,
what is even more questionable, to direct this opinion. In 1888,
there arose a controversy as to whether journalism was advancing
or retrograding. The Spectator held that the influence was
declining yearly. Matthew Arnold, in 1887, describing what was
known as the new journalism, said :
It is full of ability, novelty, variety, sensation, sympathy, generous instinct;
its one great fault is that it is feather-brained. It throws out assertions at
a venture, because it wishes them true;. . . and to get at the state of things
as they truly are, seems to have no concern whateverl.
Prophets, in journalism or politics, are always unsafe.
Two features of newspaper work which had their rise in the
1 The Nineteenth Century, May 1887.


## p. 173 (#203) ############################################

IV]
The War Correspondent
173
nineteenth century are the leading article and special correspond-
ence discussing foreign affairs, or describing war. The war corre-
spondent, indeed, may be said to have been born, run his full course
and expired in the second half of the century. Reputations such
as were made by W. H. Russell, of The Times, in writing of the
Crimean war, or by Archibald Forbes, of The Daily News, in the
Franco-Prussian war, and Henry Labouchere, describing Paris
in a state of siege, are no longer possible. Lord Raglan com-
plained that The Times published information which, even with the
then limited means of transmission, found its way back to Russia,
and interfered with his plans; both French and Germans thought
the messages of Forbes and his colleagues similarly detrimental;
and, in the war between this country and the Boers, which closed
the century, a very severe censorship was set up, which practically
extinguished the independence of the war correspondent. In
the wars of the earlier part of the twentieth century, military
authorities have kept war correspondents very many miles away
from the front, and government censorships have come into play,
with most striking effect. Foreign correspondents-of whom,
Henry Crabb Robinson, sent out by The Times in 1807, was one
of the earliest-have maintained their position. So, too, has the
leading article, despite the judgment of Richard Cobden, when he
was one of the proprietors of The Morning Star, that people did
not like leading articles,' and also despite the practice, followed by
a large part of the halfpenny press, of avoiding reasoned exposi-
tions of political principles.
The nineteenth century, however it may be contemned by
later critics of the Victorian drama, painting, music and fiction,
was, indeed, a period of revolution, and its changes in regard to
journalism were such that, whereas, at the beginning of the
century, a newspaper circulating two or three thousand copies a
day was looked upon as phenomenally successful, by the end of
the century, circulations rising to 250,000 or more daily were
recorded of the penny newspapers, which had now become the
dearer class; and much larger of the halfpenny press. There
had also been a multiplication in the number of daily and weekly
journals; and, in their supply of news, some of the best of
the provincial papers rivalled the majority of those published
in London. In the year 1800, so far as there is definite in-
formation,
barring the Irish capital, there were no daily journals published outside
London, and the total number of news sheets was only about 250, as


## p. 174 (#204) ############################################

174
[CH.
The Growth of Journalism
compared with nearly 2500 at the present time. Today, the total of daily
papers alone is over 2401.
In 1815, the number of newspapers in the United Kingdom was
252 ; but this was on the eve of an increase in the duties, and,
subsequently, there was a fall. In 1824, it is stated? ,
there were published in the United Kingdom, 266 papers in all. . . . In the
present year (1874) the aggregate number is 1585. Estimating the news
sheets printed in 1824, we cannot place the number at more than 30 millions.
In the present period, we do not doubt that the issue is 650 million sheets
per annum.
In 1832, E. L. Bulwer Lytton (afterwards lord Lytton), in his
famous speech advocating the abolition of the stamp, reckoned
that every newspaper paid 18. 4d. a sheet (a paper-maker's sheet)
in paper-duty, 4d. in stamp-duty and 38. 6d. for each advertise-
ment, this being equal, with cost of printing and agency added, to
5td. on a 7d. paper; so that but 14d. was left for literary and
other expenses, and for profits. To carry the figures a little
further, it is said that, in 1782, there was published in the United
Kingdom one newspaper to 110,000 inhabitants; in 1821, one to
90,000; and, in 1832, one to 55,000%. But the figures do not tell
the whole story. There had been a complete revolution in the
speed of printing. Prior to 1814, not more than 750 impressions
an hour could be obtained from one machine, and, if more than
one machine were operated, for each was required a duplicate set
of types. In 1814, John Walter, the second of that name who
owned The Times, showed that, with the aid of steam, newspapers
could be printed at the rate of 1100 copies per hour. Various
improvements were made afterwards, greatly expediting the work.
But, half-way in the century, papermakers made long rolls of
paper, to run in a press fitted with cylinders on which were
fixed, in the first instance, type, and, afterwards, cast metal plates
reproducing pages of type ; so that, by the end of the century, one
cylindrical press could print, at the rate of 25,000 copies per
hour, journals twice the size of those issued at the beginning of
the century. Further, when a mould of a page of type has been
taken, the printer can cast plates for about a dozen presses,
each producing its 25,000 copies, and, by the application of
photography to etching, it is possible to illustrate these rapidly
produced journals. The substitution of mechanical type-setters,
1
1 Sell's Dictionary of the World's Press for 1901.
? Francis, John C. , History of the Athenaeum, vol. 11, p. 326.
* Partington’s British Cyclopaedia of Arts, Sciences, etc. , vol. II, p. 94.


## p. 175 (#205) ############################################

IV]
Nineteenth Century Journalism 175
and, more especially, the linotype, for hand composition, has
greatly quickened and cheapened this department of production.
Viewed from the mechanical standpoint, therefore, journalism
shared to the full the inventive ability which marked the period,
and to this is due, in part, its extraordinary growth.
The collection and presentation of news may be regarded as
one of the applied arts—the application of literature to the
recording of current, and often very transient, facts, providing,
however, abundant material from which historians may reconstruct
the life of the century. The student of Greek and Roman history
must, of necessity, have recourse to such inscriptions as time
and vandalism have failed to obliterate; from these, he en-
deavours to picture the actual conditions of peoples, their every-
day work, their amusements, morality, hopes and fears. The
journalism of the nineteenth century is a much ampler record of
human activity in almost every direction, and this rapidly multi-
plied in volume as the century neared its close. Even advertise-
ments are indicative of national life, its industries and amusements,
educational and social institutions ; often of religious or political
and social thought. News embodied in today's journals is more
detailed and plastic. The development of reporting, aided by
railway transit, by telegraphy and, still later, by the telephone,
has placed readers in almost immediate touch with the thought of
the whole world ; and any observant person who has seen the
growth in size of the daily papers during the last quarter of the
century, and of the increasing variety of their reports, ought to
be able to trace many fresh paths of public activity, for example,
the formation of societies, and the holding of meetings for the
discussion of ideas upon every conceivable subject. Important,
too, has been the discovery that paper could be made from wood
pulp. But for this, it is certain there could have been no such
multiplication of newspapers as the century saw.
The extension of British journalism has been the result,
largely, of cheapness and of ability to obtain news in in-
creasing quantity, and, in some respects, with greater accuracy
-always with increasing speed. This was made possible only by
a constant growth of revenue from advertisements. In the course
of the century, shipping, manufacturing and finance were multi-
plied as if by some magician's wand, and, for daily information
regarding them, men of all classes had resort to the news-
paper press; the cost to individuals of obtaining such informa-
tion for themselves being, in most instances, prohibitive. The


## p. 176 (#206) ############################################

176
[CH.
The Growth of Journalism
construction of railways, and even the invention of the motor-
car, have revolutionised the means of placing newspapers in the
hands of readers. The enterprise shown in distributing The
London Evening Courier before the days of railways has been
outdone.
Politically, the century was highly favourable to the advance
of the newspaper press. In its earlier years, the nation was
exercised about the Napoleonic war. Later came demands for
the abolition of the corn-laws, catholic emancipation, popular
education, the extension of the franchise, with a host of other
political changes, often consequential upon what had gone before ;
the Crimean war, the Indian mutiny, the expansion of the British
empire, also did their part. The growing number of religious sects,
of projects for social betterment, the multiplication of universities
and of scientific and literary societies, new being added to old,
partly as a result of the university extension movement, the growth
of trade unions, the spread of concerts and of tours by dramatic
companies, each of them advertising and requiring notices of its
performances, the increasing work of representative local govern-
ing bodies, the planting of the schoolmaster in every little parish-
these things have converted the newspaper press from a luxury
into what seems to be a necessity of daily life. In Great Britain,
it must further be noted, newspapers, for most of the century,
have been unfettered by peculiar and restrictive legislation or
censorship. In earlier years, this was not so. It was held illegal
to publish the report of a criminal case heard before a magistrate,
but not finally decided ; and verdicts for libel were given against
newspapers on this account. Prosecutions at the instance of
governments were numerous ; parliament often called editors and
proprietors to its bar. The press, however, after not a little
struggling, was able to assert a large degree of freedom, though it
is noteworthy that, when the Newspaper society was founded, in
May 1837, one of its chief concerns was the amendment of the law
of libel, and that, seventy years later, the same subject was still
under consideration.
One consequence of the increased mechanical rapidity of
journalism in all its branches is the gradual disappearance, not
of Bohemianism, but of alcoholism, among journalists. It is
1 In Chas. A. Cooper's Fifty Years of Newspaper Work, it is related that, in 1865,
The Scotsman of Edinburgh altered its system of sending parcels by railway with such
effect that, whereas in February 1865, the circulation of the paper was 17,000 copies
per day, in 1877, it had grown to 50,000.


## p. 177 (#207) ############################################

IV]
The Revolution in Journalism
177
impossible to imagine the occurrence, at the end of the century, of
an incident like that detailed in James Grant's Newspaper Press,
when the one reporter left on duty by his colleagues in the house of
commons fabricated, for the benefit of an Irish colleague, a speech
by Wilberforce, eulogising the virtues of the potato, with the
result that the speech appeared in all the London newspapers
except The Morning Chronicle, on which the practical joker
himself was employed. Nor would it be possible for a famous editor
to be intoxicated night after night, like the editor of The Aurora,
depicted in William Jerdan's autobiography. Jerdan was a man
of considerable pretensions to literature, and, in 1817, produced
The Literary Gazette, the earliest weekly venture of the kind; for,
though The Examiner made a feature of dramatic, and, to some
extent, of literary, criticism, its main intention was political.
Newspaper men have become as reputable and trustworthy as
any workers in the nation. Proprietors and editors demand from
their staffs unvarying fitness for duty; a Coleridge, working
only when in the humour, could have little chance of employ-
ment. Nor would a brilliant but irregular Maginn (Thackeray's
captain Shandon) be likely to edit a newspaper written by gentle-
men for gentlemen,' or even one written, as sometimes seems to
happen, by the ignorant for the ignorant. Journalism, moreover,
has been yoked with the requirement of special knowledge of
science, the arts and literature. Journalism, in short, passed
through a revolution in the nineteenth century.
The business of providing the public with news has always
been precarious; more so in London than in the provinces,
though, even in the latter, there are many instances in which
newspapers have sprung up, made a reputation and maintained
it during many years, bringing wealth to their proprietors, and
providing professional writers with what appeared to be per-
manent means of livelihood, and have then been overtaken by
competitors, and, eventually, been extinguished. Still, there are,
in different parts of the country, many which have run their course
through the nineteenth century, and others which, though with
altered titles, can show a similar continuity. In London, there
are only three daily journals able to make such a boast.