ESSAYS IN JOURNALISM
Even before I left the City I had already made some tentative excursions
into the realm of journalism. My first experiment, I remember, had
something of a grotesque conclusion.
An early friend of mine, Arthur O’Neil, the younger half-brother of
Henry O’Neil, the painter of _Eastward Ho_, had somehow persuaded a
modest capitalist to venture a small sum of money in the establishment
of a weekly journal called the _Dramatic and Musical Review_. We were
both keenly interested in the drama, and I had assisted at O’Neil’s
first venture in the shape of a pantomime at the old Sadler’s Wells
Theatre.
To judge by the scene that occurred during the later stages of the
entertainment, it could not have been deemed wholly successful. I
remember that the members of the orchestra had to divide their attention
between the music of the harlequinade and the shower of stone
ginger-beer bottles that were hurled like hail from a hypercritical
gallery.
O’Neil, who was older than I, and who had already had some slight
experiences as a journalist, with a desire to encourage my budding
ambition, asked me to do a criticism on a recently published volume of
Longfellow’s Poems for this same _Dramatic and Musical Review_, of which
he was the proud editor. I duly received and duly corrected the printed
proof of my article with feelings of exaltation only to be realised by
those who, for the first time, see their ideas in printed type, and then
waited with eager expectation for the day of publication.
The office was situated in that older part of the Strand near St.
Clement Danes which is now no more, and the publisher owned the two-fold
responsibility of also issuing another weekly journal entitled the
_Labour News_. Twopence was, I think, the price of our artistic organ,
and as early as I could on the Saturday morning I presented myself at
the office and tendered the sum required. Almost overwhelmed with
excitement I rapidly scanned the columns of this slender journal to find
the first-fruits of my pen. But my search yielded nothing but
disappointment. The article was not there. I stood in the tiny office
crushed by a sense of failure and misfortune, and was just going out
into the grey street when the enterprising boy behind the counter,
actuated by the simple desire to do business, asked me if I wanted a
copy of the _Labour News_.
As a fact I wanted nothing but some place to hide the sense of
humiliation which overpowered me, but as he added, “It’s only a penny,”
I took the journal and went out into the street, and, as I listlessly
scanned its pages through, I found, to my astonishment, my lost article
on Longfellow’s Poems.
It turned out afterwards that the _Dramatic and Musical Review_ in that
particular week had more than its needed supply of “copy,” and the
_Labour News_, on the other hand, finding itself short of material, a
bright idea had come into the printer’s mind that the review of
Longfellow’s Poems might be appropriately set beside advertisements as
to the advantages of Canadian Emigration.
Little by little, from this first ludicrous start, I gained a modest
footing in the world of journalism, at first as dramatic critic to the
_Echo_, then edited by Arthur Arnold, brother of Sir Edwin Arnold, so
long connected with the _Daily Telegraph_.
My services upon the _Echo_ were not particularly lucrative, the payment
for an article being rarely more than six or seven shillings; and my
fare to and from Clapham Junction, where we lived at the time, and the
necessary modest meal before the theatre began, almost entirely absorbed
the sum that I earned.
From the _Echo_ I drifted to the _Globe_, which was then under the
editorship of Dr. Mortimer Granville, and here my work began in
something like earnest. During my services as dramatic critic I had
become acquainted with Thomas Purnell, and it was he who secured for me
a regular position upon the staff of the _Globe_.
Our work there was sufficiently strenuous. There were three of us
stationed in a room above the editorial sanctum, and here, between the
hours of nine o’clock in the morning and twelve, we were engaged upon
three columns of notes which formed the first page of the paper. The
three of us were Purnell, Francillon the novelist, and myself; and the
life, wholly new to me, was at the time strangely fascinating and
attractive.
Purnell was himself one of the quaintest and most characteristic figures
I have ever encountered. A regular Bohemian in a Bohemia that has long
lost its sea-board, he had the Bohemian frank detestation of work and
utter disregard of all social conventions, and yet with these
peculiarities were linked a fine taste and a personality of real
distinction.
When I first met him he had just completed a series of papers in the
_Athenæum_ upon the drama under the signature of “Q,” winning some
little renown in a sharp controversy with Charles Reade, in which he was
certainly not worsted.
My other stable companion, Francillon, was of an exactly opposite
temperament. Endowed with considerable imagination, which was happily
exhibited in _Pearl and Emerald_, a novel which had been published in
the _Cornhill Magazine_, he was by habit plodding and industrious,
qualities which aroused in Purnell a degree of disapproval that
sometimes almost verged on resentment.
“Now, Francillon,” he used to say, “loves work. I don’t. I hate it; I
loathe it! People will tell you, my dear Carribus”--for so he often
addressed me--“that to work is to pray. Well, of the two, _I_ find it
easier to pray. Why should I work?” he used to add, with an air of deep
and earnest conviction. “I want nothing, only my twopence. All I need is
a herring and a glass of ale, and when I have earned that I like to be
idle. Some men, so they say, like work. I don’t!” And he did not.
One fixed appointment which he held was to contribute a weekly article
on Conservative Policy to the pages of an important provincial paper.
Long before the day came when this article had to be despatched by the
evening post he used to look upon the impending task with something like
horror, and yet nothing could ever induce him to anticipate by an hour
the execution of his labours.
Indeed, as a rule, he never wrote it at all. When the day came and we
had finished our morning’s work on the _Globe_, he would generally
invite Francillon and myself to a frugal lunch at the old Gaiety
Restaurant, and when the invitation was issued we always knew what was
in store for us. As the lunch neared its end he would breach the subject
by imploring us to supply him with a topic.
“It’s the topic, my dear boy, there’s the devil of it. If I only had a
topic I could do it in an hour”--a purely fallacious statement, seeing
that no amount of topics would ever have induced him to do it
single-handed at all.
Francillon would sometimes heave a sigh, and then with newly-lit cigars
we would wend our way back to the old _Globe_ office, where our
working-room overlooked the chapel of the Savoy. By that time either
Francillon or I had found a topic, for although I was then, and have
since remained, a Liberal in politics, I found it not difficult, and
sometimes even diverting, to engage in the advocacy of Conservative
Policy in the service of our indolent friend.
Perhaps it was I who generally found the subject for the article, and
when I announced it Purnell would reply, “Then begin, my dear boy; begin
it, Carribus; the thing’s done.”
In those days a leading article always consisted of three paragraphs,
and the three paragraphs of this authoritative statement on Conservative
ideas were on these happy occasions divided between the three of us,
Purnell always reserving to himself the conclusion, not because I think
he had any special aptitude in bringing the argument to an end, but
because it gave him a longer time to smoke his pipe before his turn came
to set upon his task.
And so it came about that I having opened the debate, Francillon at the
same time would be busily engaged in the discussion necessary for the
central paragraph, while Purnell, looking over our shoulders with
chuckling glee, and passing contentedly from chair to chair as he saw
his task nearing its end, would finally be persuaded to sit down at his
own desk and scribble about eight sentences which were supposed, by
their invincible logic, to confirm and strengthen the Tory convictions
of the city to which the article was to be despatched.
But hurry and scurry as we would, this terrible task was scarcely ever
finished till within a few minutes of the time for post, and even then
it often happened that one of us had to come to Purnell’s rescue and try
as best we could to adjust the scattered arguments which he had been
vainly endeavouring to set in logical sequence.
His delight on these occasions was unbounded. The weekly price for these
essays was three guineas, and I think he received it with all the
greater zest from the consciousness that he had not rightly earned it.
Purnell’s social ambitions were few, and all social obligations he
boldly repudiated. It was one of his most deeply seated convictions that
no man was compelled to reply to any letter of invitation, whatever the
source from which it might have come, and he defended this position with
great show of legal force.
“If,” he said, “a lady had asked me whether in the event of her writing
me an invitation I would reply to it, and I had answered in the
affirmative, then, my dear Carribus, the agreement would be complete.
But I never said anything of the kind, never would; and therefore, my
dear boy, there’s no privity of contract.”
But there was one invitation he took care to answer, an invitation to
pass a week-end with a certain noble lord in the country. I do not think
that he was in any grave sense a “snob,” but he was deeply impressed
with the sense of his powers of fascination over women, and his handsome
picturesque face, I think, entitled him to the belief that it was not
mere idle boasting.
At this particular party he happened to know that several charming
ladies of the family would be present, and it was this fact, I think,
which made him very eager, if he could, to accept the invitation. But
the question of a fitting wardrobe raised a difficulty, and here again
he threw himself in all candour upon Francillon and myself.
The rare letter of acceptance had been sent, and the day for his
departure had arrived, but in this question of dress he was still
lamentably unprepared. We met in hasty consultation in a little
eating-house called the Coal Hole, which lay down a narrow court at the
south side of the Strand.
It was Saturday. The shops would soon be closing, and there was no time
to lose. He had money enough for his railway ticket, but none for such
idle luxuries as clothes. His only proffered contribution to the
necessities of the occasion was a tarnished disreputable bag which he
had brought down empty to the office in view of the projected excursion.
He had no great faith in it himself, and it was discarded with scorn by
those whom he had pressed into his service. And so in the end Francillon
and I had to provide a modest valise and stock it with a wardrobe that
would suffice for the three days’ stay, and I can recall now the air of
triumph with which he started upon his journey, robed in a new
pilot-jacket which we had added as the final feature of his outfit.
Our little circle on the staff of the _Globe_ was later joined by
Churton Collins, now the Professor of English Literature at the
University at Birmingham, then only a boy fresh from Oxford, but a boy
whose mind was already stored with a knowledge of English literature
such as I suppose few men of his generation can boast. His prodigious
memory both in prose and poetry I certainly have never encountered in
another; and through many an evening, when he dined quietly with us in
our rooms in Great Russell Street, did we wonder and delight to listen
to him as he passed from author to author, not always reciting things
of his own choice, but responding with equal readiness to any call that
might be made upon him when the choice was made by others.
But this wondrous memory sometimes played him tricks in his first essays
as a journalist. For as there was no time and no opportunity in the
_Globe_ office to verify any quotation, his literary articles, which
were always packed with quotations from the poets, were generally
subject to correction in some small particular, and for this reason
evoked a shower of correspondence which irritated and annoyed our worthy
editor.
This same editor, on the other hand, was often a source of annoyance to
_us_. Our time was short for the work we had to do during the morning,
and we resented the constant pencil-notes which he used to send up from
the room below, or the repeated calls up the speaking-tube, the whistle
of which stood next to Purnell’s desk.
One day we determined to mark our disapproval of this vexatious and
harassing policy. We were accustomed sometimes, when money was short, to
be content with a lunch of cocoa and biscuits prepared by ourselves. A
kettle on this occasion stood puffing on the fire, and when the whistle
of the speaking-tube had gone for about the thirtieth time, a demoniacal
idea of vengeance entered into the mind of Purnell. The call this time
was for me, and Purnell having answered that I was coming to speak in
answer, went with stealthy steps towards the fireplace and seizing the
kettle poured the whole of its contents down the tube.
It is not perhaps wonderful that this resulted in something like a
crisis in the internal arrangements of the office, and very nearly ended
in the dismissal of the entire literary staff.
Another comrade of those days, though he rarely wrote in the _Globe_,
was Camille Barrère, now the distinguished Ambassador of the French
Republic at Rome. Barrère and I were for many years close allies. I had
assisted him in his first essay in English journalism when he
contributed to the _Pall Mall Gazette_ a series of articles on the
Commune, with which he had been in some sense associated. He was always
a brilliant and gifted creature, and his rapid advancement from the hour
when he was first befriended by Gambetta could never have been any
surprise to those who knew him well.
At that time, like the rest of us, he was having a hard struggle for
life. We were together on the _Echo_, and together on the _Pall Mall
Gazette_, and I can remember in the old days of the Arts Club how often
we sat and planned vague, large schemes for the reorganisation of
journalism, which should yield us more complacent editors and a rate of
higher remuneration, which we fancied our merits deserved.
Barrère had passed some of his earlier years in England, and his
knowledge and power over our tongue were remarkable, but now and then
some small idiomatic fault would slip out unawares, and one day, when he
had just received what he considered an inadequate cheque from the
_Echo_, he cried out indignantly that he “would like to wring the throat
of Arnold.”
Unlike poor Purnell, the choice of a topic never presented any
difficulty to him. Almost any subject served him for a light and
graceful essay, and the fertility of his invention in this regard was
more than remarkable. Happily for his own sake, and for the sake of the
nation which he has served with so much distinction, he need no longer
rack his brains, as in the old days, for the material that would fill a
column in the _Echo_; and though it is many years since we met, I know,
through many messages that I have received from him, that he looks back
with kindly remembrances to those times when we struggled side by side.
It is a strange thing about a journalist’s career, when it is
successful, that at the first it seems so hard to get the work to do,
and then later so hard to do the work that comes. In those early days
every new opening was only won after a struggle, yet within a very few
years I found myself almost overwhelmed by the tasks that were laid upon
me.
From the _Globe_ I passed to the _Pall Mall Gazette_, where I succeeded
Professor Colvin as its Art Critic; from the _Pall Mall_ to the
_Saturday Review_ and the _Examiner_; and then a little later I joined
the staff of the _World_, which had recently been founded by Edmund
Yates.
These different changes of occupation brought many new friends and many
new editors, but of all those under whom I have served I think I should
signalise Mr. Frederic Greenwood as by far the most inspiring to his
contributors. Not that to be numbered among Mr. Greenwood’s contributors
always implied a peaceful career; he was an autocratic commander, whose
powerful personality loved to assert itself in every department of his
paper, and he and I in those days had sharp encounters with regard to
that particular arena of art criticism over which I thought I was
entitled to exercise independent control.
But those differences are long forgotten, and the remembrance that
survives is of a keen and ardent intelligence that communicated its own
warmth of purpose to all who served under his banner.
Very different in type was Mr. Harwood, the editor of the _Saturday
Review_. On the quiet evenings that I sometimes passed at his house in
Regent’s Park, when he would spend most of the time after dinner in
playing on his violoncello, it seemed hardly possible to realise that he
was the capable conductor of what was even then a mighty organ of public
opinion.
I suppose that hardly any British journal has ever boasted among its
contributors so many eminent men in so many varied ways of life as one
could see gathered at the great annual dinner of the _Review_ in the
“Trafalgar” at Greenwich, presided over by Mr. Beresford Hope.
Mr. Harwood had succeeded Mr. Cook, and had inherited many of the
traditions of the great founder of the _Review_. His editorial office at
the time I joined him was situated in The Albany, where he was assisted
as sub-editor by my old friend, Mr. Walter Herries Pollock, who
afterwards succeeded to the editorial chair.
I did little of the more serious work upon the paper, my duties, as a
rule, being confined to those middle articles, as they were called,
which formed at that time one of its salient features. I suppose the
aptitude for finding and treating such lighter subjects was not too
common; at any rate, I know that my contributions of that sort always
met with a generous welcome, and Mr. Harwood himself, despite his grave
exterior, was sometimes singularly happy in the choice of subjects for
fit treatment in this lighter vein.
A young man who has gained an entry into the journalistic world can
sometimes get through a prodigious amount of work, and at the time I am
speaking of it often happened that within the week, besides my morning
duties upon the _Globe_, I would furnish one, and sometimes two,
articles to the _Saturday Review_, an article to the _Examiner_, another
to the _World_, and, in addition, three or four columns of art criticism
to the _Pall Mall Gazette_, apart from regular work in the same
department for the _Manchester Guardian_, and occasional articles in
other daily or weekly journals.
Mr. Edmund Yates, the founder and editor of the _World_, had given me a
generous welcome from the first, and I recall an incident in connection
with a series of articles I had done for him which at the time filled me
with no little pride. In this series I had dealt week by week with the
more important organs of the British press, and I was fortunate enough
to win for these papers a considerable amount of attention. But, for the
time, Edmund Yates had carefully withheld the secret of their
authorship, and one day when I was visiting my old master at Bruce
Castle School the subject came into our conversation, and he told me
that the report was about that they were written by a prominent
leader-writer of the _Times_.
At this my pride could no longer contain itself, and his incredulity and
astonishment when I announced myself as the author gave me a moment of
the keenest pleasure.
Yates had many enemies in those days, and the new features which he had
introduced into English journalism were in many quarters profoundly
resented. But he was generous and warm-hearted to his friends, and
beneath those lighter gifts which made for immediate success he
possessed a deep, sincere love of literature. It was at his house that I
first met the late Mr. Archibald Forbes, a man of rare force and grit,
and possessed, as a writer, of a style of trenchant sincerity and power
that in my opinion placed him easily at the head of that great race of
special war-correspondents which may be said to have been founded by the
late Sir William Russell. None of them all, however, could equal Sir
William in social grace and readiness of wit. His store of anecdotes
garnered from a rich experience of many men and many lands seemed ever
inexhaustible and ever new.
Forbes was of a widely different type. His experience had been won in a
harder school, but his rapid and vivid powers of expression, his ability
to set forth in picturesque presentment events which had only just
happened, were, I think, altogether unrivalled. When it is remembered
that many of these descriptions were sent rushing over the wires at the
close of a day when other men of less energy would have been exhausted
after many hours spent in the saddle, and when it is observed with what
potent directness of narrative, often rising to real greatness of style,
the story he had to tell was presented to his readers, it will be
conceded, I think, that he had no equal in the particular branch of
journalistic literature to which he had devoted himself.
We became close friends almost from our first meeting, which, as I
remember, was on the occasion of a dinner given by Edmund Yates to the
contributors to the _World_, and later, when I became editor to the
_English Illustrated Magazine_, he rekindled some of the earlier
memories of his fighting days in a series of articles that included a
delightful account of the struggles which preceded his appointment as a
special correspondent to the _Daily News_.
It was during the Franco-German War that the _Daily News_ leapt into
sudden prominence, in virtue of its splendid correspondence yielding a
vivid picture of the conflict from both sides of the campaign, and it
was incontestably to the energy and judgment of the late Sir John
Robinson that this immediate success was due.
The quiet, kindly personality of Sir John would scarcely have suggested
the sure and rapid power of organisation he undoubtedly possessed, and
his quickness of insight in the selection of the fit man for the work to
be done was vividly illustrated in the account which Mr. Forbes wrote
for the _English Illustrated Magazine_ of his first meeting with the
genial manager of the _Daily News_.
It is possible that Forbes had somewhat embroidered the sober facts of
the situation in order to heighten its picturesque effect, for I
remember that on my next meeting with Sir John, after the publication of
the article, he was somewhat whimsically annoyed to find that his own
share in this historical transaction had been slightly disfigured to
suit the exigencies of Mr. Forbes’s narrative.
Forbes had asserted that at a point in the negotiations he conceived the
idea that his services were not desired, and was leaving the office in
disgust when Robinson ran after him and brought him back. It was this
little piece of added embroidery that Sir John declared to be not
absolutely historical, but I feel sure, at least, that Forbes never
intended to do injustice to the manager of the _Daily News_, for in our
many talks concerning his struggles at this time he always acknowledged
how deeply he had been indebted to his great employer.
Another of the staff of the _Daily News_ war-correspondents was Hilary
Skinner, whose younger brother had been the dearest friend of my youth,
from the time when we were schoolmates at Bruce Castle School.
Alan Skinner afterwards rose to a distinguished official position in the
Straits Settlements, but at the time I am thinking of he had just been
called to the Bar; and when I, at a later date, left school to begin my
life in London, he and I passed many a long evening in the little set of
chambers he occupied in Old Square, Lincoln’s Inn. In those days he was
a versifier like myself, and, failing a wider audience, we used to
delight to read to one another our first essays in poetry.
The friendship between us was of the closest, and when he finally went
abroad to take up his official duties, the separation, I think, was felt
keenly by both. His elder brother, Mr. Hilary Skinner, was of a lighter
temperament, though he must have possessed strong force of character to
have endured the strenuous labours of a war-correspondent. A voluble and
insatiable talker, his conversation never needed the provocation of a
reply. In an endless stream of anecdote he would wander over a wide
world of men and things, never halting for a word, and rarely halting at
all. And yet the trials of the life he had adopted must have been a
severe strain upon a constitution that was by no means robust, and I
think the wear and tear of that life, though it was not long continued,
set a permanent mark upon his health.
Certainly this was so in the case of Archibald Forbes, who suffered much
during the later years of his life, suffering that had its origin, as he
told me, in a terrible two days’ ride in South Africa when he was racing
against time to reach the telegraph-office to cable his news home.
Among others of this special race of correspondents who came into my
life at this time were George Augustus Sala and William Beatty-Kingston.
With both, however, the record of war was only a passing incident in
their journalistic career.
Sala, I think, possessed a larger assortment of odd scraps of knowledge
than any man I have ever met, and although his chequered career
presented many vicissitudes, he had cultivated, as he told me, from
boyhood the habit of keeping a series of most carefully compiled
commonplace books, in which were recorded, under headings sometimes
quaintly chosen, every bit of information or historical allusion which
even remotely bore upon the subject in hand.
He told me that in the wildest and most disordered periods in his career
this habit had never deserted him, and one evening, when I was dining
with him in Mecklenburg Square, he showed me one entire shelf packed
with these little volumes, all written in the neatest of monkish hands,
and almost without a blot or scar.
I have often wondered what has become of those note-books from which he
drew such varied allusions for his characteristic articles in the _Daily
Telegraph_. They would be a treasure-store to many a budding journalist,
and as far as I could gather, from a rapid review of them during that
one evening at his house, a delight even to the casual reader.
Sala, like his friend Yates, was an accomplished speaker, and a keen
critic on all presumptuous pretenders in that department.
I remember one evening, coming away from a public banquet at which he
had admirably distinguished himself, I ventured to ask him what he
thought of the performance of a gentleman who had followed him, and who
I knew rather prided himself upon his achievements in this particular
direction.
“Oh!” said Sala in reply, “you mean so-and-so. Ah yes! Damned fluent,
damned fool!” The comment sounds harsh, but I do not think it was
unjust. He used to tell me that in the preparation and delivery of his
speeches there was always present to his mind the image of a furnished
house, and that he kept his material in order and sequence by suggesting
to himself, as he spoke, that he was inspecting the various apartments,
from the dining-room to the attic, and that in this way he could always
avoid any halt or confusion in the arrangement of the matter upon which
he was speaking.
Yates, I fancy, though his delivery was always admirable in effect, was
accustomed to learn his speeches by heart, and in this respect resembled
the late Sir Frederick Leighton, though with the latter the secret was
not so well kept.
William Beatty-Kingston, the last of the special correspondents to whom
I referred, had no aptitude for public speaking, but he was in many ways
highly accomplished. As an amateur musician I should think he had few
equals, and his absolute enjoyment when he was seated at the piano,
passing from the work of one great master to another, was a delight to
witness. I remember that one evening my wife and I had invited to meet
him a very gifted young Italian violinist, and it was a suggestion of
ours that after dinner they should try over some of the duets of the
great composers.
It was easy to see that at first they took no liking for one another.
The Italian, as a recognised professional, hardly concealed his sense of
superiority over the amateur, and Kingston, I knew, harboured a lurking
suspicion that the violinist would not be deeply interested in the work
of the great German composers to whom he was enthusiastically attached.
The brief passage of the dinner was for this reason a period of armed
neutrality, amusing enough to watch; and when afterwards they were
persuaded to make an adventure together it was done reluctantly, and
with no great hope on the part of either that the evening would present
any real enjoyment. It so happened, as they both knew, that my wife and
I were bound to make an early departure for a great fancy-dress ball
which had been organised by some of the foremost painters of the day,
but of course we invited Kingston and his companion to stay as long as
they liked, and leaving them with a sufficient store of whisky and soda
and cigars, we set out upon our more frivolous excursion.
The ball was kept up till late; it was past five o’clock before we
returned, little thinking to find our guests still in possession; and
our surprise was the greater when, on mounting to our single
sitting-room in Great Russell Street, we found, in the light of the
sunshine that was streaming into the room, Kingston and his companion,
both with coat and waistcoat removed, pounding away as hard as they
could go at some difficult composition which they were trying over for
the third time. The two artists, whom we had left with some misgiving in
an attitude of veiled hostility towards each other, were now, as we
discovered to our surprise, the closest friends, and, although the
morning was well advanced, Kingston insisted that we should sit down and
listen to one or two of the gems which they had been performing, and
which were now repeated once more for our benefit--the most persuasive
plea he urged being that in half an hour the public-houses would be
open, and that we could then replenish our slender store of whisky
which they had already exhausted.
Kingston had been for some time a special correspondent to the _Daily
Telegraph_ in Berlin, and afterwards came to London as its foreign
editor. Apart from his musical talent, he spoke with ease many foreign
languages, and in this respect resembled Sala, whose facilities as a
linguist were great, though, as he once confessed, he inclined by
preference to the languages of the Latin races. As he himself
picturesquely put it, “My tongue is hung in a Southern belfry.”
Of all the editors with whom my journalistic experience brought me into
contact, the man who stood nearest to me as a friend was Professor Minto
of the _Examiner_.
On the _Examiner_ I felt free and unfettered, free to choose any topic
that pleased me, and to treat it in whatever way seemed to me best. I
have always thought that Minto’s great powers as a critic of literature
have never been sufficiently recognised. His separate volumes on the
Poetic Writers and the Prose Writers of England contain some of the best
criticism of our time, and, in especial, the section in the former
devoted to the tragedies of Shakespeare has hardly been equalled in
fineness of perception and in sustained eloquence of style.
Though in many ways characteristically Scotch, he had a liberal and
supple mind, with a wide grasp and a generous outlook on political
affairs, and an appreciation even of lighter works of literature that
was hardly to be suspected from his grave and sober personality.
Very delightful were the little smoking evenings he instituted in the
offices of the _Examiner_, which were then situated near Wellington
Street in the Strand. There it was that I first met the late Bishop
Creighton, who was at the time a constant contributor to the paper.
Theodore Watts-Dunton was also a pretty regular visitor on these simple
social occasions, and there, too, I met that strangest of accomplished
scholars, “Student Williams,” who had long been known as an Oxford
coach, and who was now devoting himself to a journalistic career.
It is strange to reflect what a complete revolution has overtaken
English journalism in the period of thirty years that has passed since
the time of which I am speaking. Literature and journalism have now
almost parted company, and although the older tradition still honourably
survives in individual instances, it is impossible not to be conscious
that the function of a journalist, as it is now most widely accepted,
has entirely changed its character.
The sort of article that was eagerly sought for then is now rarely
welcomed, and when we recall the names of the men who wrote for the
_Saturday Review_, and the great body of accomplished writers who lifted
the _Pall Matt Gazette_ in its earlier days into a foremost position
among English journals, it will readily be conceded that the revolution
is already complete. Reporting has largely taken the place of criticism,
and the modern newspaper office, ordered on popular lines, more nearly
approaches day by day to a powerful agency for private inquiry and
detection.