_Selection from the Correspondence of the late Macvey Napier, Esq._
Edited by his son, MACVEY NAPIER. London: Macmillan & Co.
Mr. Macvey Napier, who succeeded Francis Jeffrey in the editorship of
the great Whig Review, had, of course, a perfect right to preserve the
letters which are published in this volume, and to study them in private
as much as he pleased. Indeed, for anything that appears to the contrary
in the "Introduction" by his son, the present Mr. Macvey Napier, they
may have been bequeathed by the original recipient with instructions
that they should some day be published. An edition, privately circulated
a short time ago, led to "representations that a correspondence of so
much interest ought to be made more accessible," and the present volume
is the result; but it might be maintained that the writers of such
letters would, if they could have been consulted, have objected to their
publication; and that to send them forth to the world in all their
nakedness was, at all events, not a delicate or magnanimous thing to do.
"Much might be said on both sides." Paley, in his chapter on the
original character of the Christian Morality, remarked that though a
thousand cases might be supposed in which the use of the golden rule
might mislead a person, it was impossible in fact to light on such a
case. That was a hazardous observation, for the truth is that when we
once get beyond elementary conditions of being and doing, we find human
beings differ so very widely, and in such utterly incalculable ways,
that it is in vain to poll the monitor in the breast on questions that
do in fact arise daily--five hundred in a thousand will vote one way,
and five hundred in another. "How would you like it yourself?" is a
question that elicits the most discordant replies. I have a very
positive feeling that I should have left many of these letters in the
portfolio, or put them into the fire; but when I look about me for a
standard which I could take in my hand to Mr. Napier, I am baffled--he
might produce one of his own that would silence me on the spot. And
when one has taken up a book to comment upon it with as little reserve
as may be, it seems idle, if not Irish, to begin by saying that the most
amusing or most fertile things in it ought never to have seen the light.
This point may recur before we have done; and in the meantime it should
be remarked that nothing very momentous, either to the honour or the
disgrace of human nature in general, or literary human nature in
particular, can be extracted from this correspondence. A late essayist
used to tell a true anecdote of a distinguished statesman who had lived
many years and seen as many changes as Ulysses. A friend asked him
something like this: "Well, now, you have had a great deal to do with
mankind, and you have outlived the heats and prejudices of youth; what
do you think of men in general?" And the veteran replied: "Oh, I like
them--very good fellows; but"--and here we shall mollify his language a
little--"but condemnably vain, you know." And really that is about the
worst thing you can find it in your heart to say of literary men after
running through these letters--"very good fellows, but very vain, you
know."
Another point which lies less near the surface, and has at least the
look of novelty, would perhaps be this. It is the most frequent and most
voluminous of the writers who unconsciously tell us the most about
themselves; and who, with the pleasing exception of Jeffrey, show us the
most of their unamiable sides. But there is comfort for impulsive people
in the fact that it is not always the most self-controlled and
inoffensive of the writers who win upon us. The Brougham-Macaulay feud
runs sprawling through these pages till we are tired of it; and some of
poor Brougham's letters are downright venomous. But the total absence of
disguise and the blundering boyish inconsistency disarm us. Taking the
letters one by one, the moral superiority is with Macaulay on Brougham
as against Brougham on Macaulay, but taking the correspondence in the
lump, it is something like Charles Surface against Joseph Surface, in
another line--only, of course, there is no hypocrisy. While you come to
feel for Brougham in his spluttering rages, you feel also that Macaulay,
in his too-admirable self-continence, can do very well without your
compassion, whatever he may have to complain of. It is easy to discern
that Brougham honestly believed in his own superiority to the young
rival who outshone him, and yet that he was inwardly tormented.
Macaulay's forbearance was of the kind _qui coûte si peu au gens
heureux_. The editor, Mr. Napier, was, we may conjecture, the greatest
sufferer of the three. Much was owed to Brougham as a man of enormous
intellectual force; to which, apart from his past services, great
respect was due: but Macaulay was by far the best writer, and (to employ
a bull which is common enough) incomparably the most attractive
contributor. The strength of his hold upon the Review and its editor is
apparent on every tenth page of the book, and comes out forcibly enough
in a letter from Sir James Stephen to Mr. Napier. Mr. Napier had
written to Sir James, expressing some delicate surprise that no article
from his pen had reached the Review for a long time. Sir James excuses
himself in this fashion:--
"I know that many of your contributors must be importunate for a
place; that you must be fencing and compromising at a weary rate;
that there are many interests of the passing day which you could not
overlook; and that we should all have growled like so many fasting
bears if denied the regular return of the Macaulay diet, to which we
have been so long accustomed."
Sir James was an exceedingly busy man, and he was not professedly a man
of letters like Macaulay; but we may, if we like, read between the lines
in these excuses and find a little pique there, as well as a just sense
of an editor's difficulties.
Another point which lies broadly and prominently upon the surface in
these letters is a very unpleasant one. It is scarcely credible how much
dull conceit and sheer ignorant arbitrariness there often is in the
minds of able and cultivated men. It does not seem even to occur to them
that their own range may be limited, and their judgments upon many (or
even a few) topics not worth ink or breath. It should hardly be
offensive to an ordinary man to be told, or at least to find it tacitly
assumed, that he could not have invented fluxions, painted like
Rembrandt, or sung like Pindar. Why, then, should it be difficult for
any cultivated specialist, of more than ordinary faculties, to make the
reflection that he must be deficient in some direction or other? Yet we
find in practice that it is not only difficult, but impossible, in the
majority of cases. Mr. Napier seems to have invited, or at all events
not to have repelled, free criticisms on his Review from the
contributors in general, and the outcome is little short of appalling.
If ever there was an able man it was Mr. Senior, yet these are the terms
in which he allows himself to speak of an article on Christopher
North--or rather of Christopher North himself:--"The article on
Christopher North is my abomination. I think him one of the very worst
of the clever bad writers who infest modern literature; full of bombast,
affectation, conceit, in short, of all the _vitia_, _tristia_, as well
as _dulcia_. I had almost as soon try to read Carlyle or Coleridge." Now
Mr. Senior was, of course, entitled to dislike Christopher North, and
there is plenty to be said against him in the way of criticism; but the
charge of "affectation" is foolish, and the whole passage pitched in the
most detestable of all literary key-notes. John Wilson was a man of
genius, whose personal likings and rampant animal spirits led him most
mournfully astray. He was wanting also in love of truth for its own
sake; but he was as much superior to Mr. Senior as Shakspeare was to
_him_. And the addition about Carlyle or Coleridge--_or_ Coleridge!--is
just the gratuitous insolence of one-eyed dulness. There is enough and
to spare of blame ready in any balanced mind for either of these great
writers, but they can do without the admiration of wooden-headed prigs,
however able. The point, however, is that it never dawns upon the mind
of even so clever and cultivated a man as Mr. Senior, that his head may
have gaps in it.
Another instance to the same purport may be selected from a letter from
Mr. Edwin Atherstone, the poet--for it would perhaps be hard and
grudging to deny him the title, since he found an audience, and I have a
vague recollection of having once read verses of his about Nineveh or
Babylon which had in them power of the picturesque-meditative order.
Now, this is the way in which Mr. Edwin Atherstone speaks of Dr. Thomas
Brown, the metaphysician:--"For myself, I know not a writer, with the
exception of Shakspeare, Milton, Homer, and Scott, from whom I have
derived such high delight as from Dr. Brown."
Was ever such a category put on paper before? It is as if a man should
say his favourite musical instruments were the organ, the harp, the
trumpet, the violin, and the sewing-machine. Brown was one of the most
readable of metaphysicians; he made some acute hits, and he wrote
elegant verses; but his position in Mr. Atherstone's list is as
inexplicably quaint as that of "Burke, commonly called the Sublime," in
the epitaph on the lady who "painted in water-colours," and "was first
cousin to Lady Jones."
The worst examples of all, however, come from the letters of Francis
Jeffrey himself. Jeffrey has been underrated, and he was a most amiable
man; but some of the verdicts he thought fit to pronounce upon articles
in the _Edinburgh_, when edited by Mr. Napier, are _saugrenus_. In one
case he is about suggesting a contributor, to deal with a certain topic,
and is so polite as to say that the name of Mr. John Stuart Mill had
struck him:--"I once thought of John Mill, but there are reasons against
him too, independent of his great unreadable book and its elaborate
demonstrations of axioms and truisms."
There might be weighty "reasons against" Mr. Mill, but what his "Logic"
could have to do with the question is not clear. It never seems to have
crossed Jeffrey's mind that he _might_ be totally disqualified for
forming an opinion of a book like that; and, having called it
"unreadable" (though to a reader with any natural bent towards such
matters it is deeply interesting), he actually puts forward the fact
that Mill had written it as a reason against his being entrusted with
the treatment of a political topic in a Whig Review. Editors are human,
and the editorial position is a very troublesome one. An editor may lose
his head, as an overworked wine-taster may lose his palate. In a word,
allowances must be made; but, after a disclosure or two like this, it is
difficult not to conclude that the Review owed no more of its success to
its former editor than it might have owed to any intelligent clerk. But
we cannot let Jeffrey go yet. The following passage relates to an
article on Victor Cousin:--
"Cousin I pronounce beyond all doubt the most unreadable thing that
ever appeared in the _Review_. The only chance is, that gentle
readers may take it to be very profound, and conclude that the
fault is in their want of understanding. But I am not disposed to
agree with them. It is ten times more _mystical_ than anything my
friend Carlyle ever wrote, and not half so agreeably written. It is
nothing to the purpose that he does not agree with the worst part of
the mysticism, for he affects to understand it, and to explain it,
and to think it very ingenious and respectable, and it is mere
gibberish. He may possibly be a clever man. There are even
indications of that in his paper, but he is not a _very_ clever man,
nor of much power; and beyond all question he is not a good writer
on such subjects. If you ever admit such a disquisition again, order
your operator to instance and illustrate all his propositions by
cases or examples, and to reason and explain with reference to
these. This is a sure test of sheer nonsense, and moreover an
infinite resource for the explication of obscure truth, if there be
any such thing."
Now, the writer of the article in question was Sir William Hamilton. "He
may possibly be a clever man, but beyond all question he is not a good
writer on such subjects." So much for Jeffrey.
"Nec sibi coenarum quivis temere arroget artem,
Non prius exacta tenui ratione saporum."
Poor Mr. Carlyle is again dragged in, and Sir William is pronounced "ten
times more _mystical_" than he--"mystical" in italics. When a writer,
using the word mystical opprobriously, prints it in italics, it is
usually safe to decide that he knows nothing of metaphysics. The
concluding sentences are instructive examples of editorial
self-confidence: "If ever you admit such a disquisition again, _order
your operator to_" do so-and-so. Thus, the treatment of Mill and
Hamilton being equally ignorant and inept, there is no escape for the
ex-editor. Both verdicts were after the too-celebrated
"this-will-never-do" manner, and that is all.
In the communications from literary men there are some fine instances of
just self-consciousness. Tom Campbell writes, with great warmth and
alertness, to promise an article upon a new work about the Nerves; but
shortly afterwards writes again, candidly confessing that he had found,
upon looking again at the work, that his aptitude for scientific detail
was not great enough to enable him to do justice to the subject. A
letter from William Hazlitt is so striking, both for its truthfulness
and its clear-headedness, as to deserve quoting in full. He had been
written to by Mr. Napier for some contributions to the _Encyclopædia
Britannica_, and he replies, from his well-known retreat at Winterslow
Hut, in these terms:--
"I am sorry to be obliged, from want of health and a number of other
engagements, which I am little able to perform, to decline the
flattering offer you make me. I am also afraid that I should not be
able to do the article in question, or yourself, justice, for I am
not only without books, but without knowledge of what books are
necessary to be consulted on the subject. To get up an article in a
Review on any subject of general literature is quite as much as I
can do without exposing myself. The object of an Encyclopædia is, I
take it, to condense and combine all the facts relating to a
subject, and all the theories of any consequence already known or
advanced. Now, where the business of such a work ends, is just where
I begin--that is, I might perhaps throw in an idle speculation or
two of my own, not contained in former accounts of the subject, and
which would have very little pretensions to rank as scientific. I
know something about Congreve, but nothing at all of Aristophanes,
and yet I conceive that the writer of an article on the Drama ought
to be as well acquainted with the one as the other."
The honesty of this is quite refreshing. There is one more letter, of a
similar order, which deserves to be signalized. In August, 1843,
Macaulay, being pressed for more frequent contributions, writes from the
Albany that he can promise, at the very utmost, no more than two
articles in a year:--
"I ought to give my whole leisure to my History; and I fear that if
I suffer myself to be diverted from that design as I have done, I
shall, like poor Mackintosh, leave behind me the character of a man
who would have done something if he had concentrated his powers
instead of frittering them away. There are people who can carry on
twenty works at a time. Southey would write the history of Brazil
before breakfast, an ode after breakfast, then the history of the
Peninsular War till dinner, and an article for the _Quarterly
Review_ in the evening. But I am of a different temper. I never
write so as to please myself until my subject has for the time
driven away every other out of my head. When I turn from one work to
another a great deal of time is lost in the mere transition. I must
not go on dawdling and reproaching myself all my life."
There is something melancholy in this, admirable as it is. Macaulay had
begun to watch the shadow on the dial too closely to permit him to do
much miscellaneous work with an easy mind. There is an important lesson
for men of letters in the sentence,--"When I turn from one work to
another, a great deal of time is lost in the mere transition." Here lies
the great difference between serious literary work and that of ordinary
business, where the mind is solicited by one thing after another in
rapid succession. In the first case, time and energy have to be expended
in evolving from within a fresh impulse for every topic. The most
readable writings of Southey are those which he produced fragment by
fragment, on topics for which little renewal of impulse was required. To
write a great poem in scraps, all by the clock, was a task which only a
very conceited and rather wooden man would have attempted; and the
result we know, though there are fine things in Southey's longer poems.
A powerful passage by Cardinal Newman on the difficulties of literary
work is almost too well known to bear quoting, but a living poet, Mrs.
Augusta Webster, has put the case so fairly that Macaulay's shade--which
is, of course, a shade that reads everything--may be gratified by seeing
in a handy way a few of her sentences:--
"Occupations of study, scientific research, literary production--of
brain-work of any kind that is carried on in the worker's private
home with no visible reminder of customer or client--are taken to be
such as can lightly be done at one time as well as another, and
resumed after no matter what interruptions, like a lady's
embroidery, which she can take up again at the very stitch she left
her needle in. Professions of this sort not only admit, but in many
instances require, considerable variation in the amount of daily
time directly bestowed on them,--_directly_, for the true student is
not at his work only when he is ostensibly employed, but whenever
and wherever he may have his head to himself,--and there is no
measure of visible quantity for the more or less results of
application.... The literary man probably fares the worst of all. He
is not merely not protected by the manual part of his processes, but
it is his danger. It is so easy--what anybody can do at any time!...
Of course the simple fact is that it is more difficult for this
class of persons to practise their vocations under the drawback of
perpetual breaks, actual and (what comes to nearly the same thing)
expected, than it is for 'business men.' Let the attention of the
solicitor, for instance, busied on the points of an intricate case,
be perforce diverted to another matter, there is lost from that case
just the time diverted, and a little extra to allow for the mind
which returns to any interrupted course of thought, never returning
to it exactly at the point at which it was forced to leave it. But
there are the recorded facts; the direct conclusions to be drawn
remain unaltered; nothing has disappeared, nothing has lost its
identity. But suppose, let us say, a dramatist, devising his crisis
after hours, perhaps days, of gradual growth, to the moment when he
sees it before him as a reality.... Force his attention away, and he
has lost, not merely the time he needed to complete a spell of
works, with something over for the difficulty of resuming, but the
_power_ of resuming. All has faded into a haze; and the fruit of
days, may be, has been thrown away at the ripening, for such moments
do not come twice."
There are but few of Mr. Napier's own letters in this volume, so that we
have only indirect means of measuring his idea of his editorial rights
or duties as against contributors. There is one case in which Macaulay
complains strongly of certain excisions, and there is another in which
he defends certain phrases of his own which appear to have offended the
taste of Mr. Napier, who found them undignified, if not slightly vulgar.
He submits of course--all the mutilated ones submit--and he says he
submits "willingly;" but all the while we can too plainly see the wry
faces he is making. Mr. Napier was, apparently, a purist in the matter
of style; but there is something almost grotesque in the spectacle of a
man of his quality correcting Macaulay. It reminds one of _cet imbécile
Buloz_.[37] The case of Leigh Hunt was very different, for he sometimes
went to the extreme verge of decorum--quarterly review decorum, that
is--and beyond it. But we may safely conclude that Macaulay knew much
better than his editor how to turn a sentence, or when the use of a
French locution was desirable for ends of literary effect. Upon this
subject of imported phrases Mr. Napier was, it seems, very punctilious,
for with Mr. G. H. Lewes he must have had a brisk correspondence about
it. Mr. Lewes, who was then a young writer, anxious to get his feet well
planted, submits, with every possible expression of acquiescence, one
might almost say, of abject agreement; but it is easy to see that his
compliance was forced. Macaulay in his discussion of this little matter
with Napier, easily and decisively lays down the true guiding
principle:--"The first rule of all writing,--that rule to which every
other rule is subordinate,--is that the words used by the writer shall
be such as most fully and precisely convey his meaning to the great body
of his readers. All considerations about the purity and dignity of style
ought to bend to this consideration."
This, indeed, exhausts the subject; and leaves the editor only one
question to solve--namely, whether the writer whom he employs has
presumably a meaning fit to be conveyed to the readers of his
periodical. Upon that point he must use his own judgment; but it was
idle for a man like Mr. Napier to criticize the phrasing of a man like
Macaulay, who had ten thousand times his reading. For it is upon the
"reading" that the matter very largely turns. The force of a quotation
or a phrase imported from a foreign tongue depends, not upon the bare
meaning of the words, but upon the suggestiveness of certain
associations. This does not necessarily imply that the precise context
is recalled, or certain hackneyed trifles from Lucretius and Horace, and
a score of such chips in porridge, would be indecent. If it be said that
all this implies that an editor should be omniscient, or at lowest an
omnivorous reader, the reply is, that it certainly does--unless the
principle adopted in the conduct of the periodical be the more recent
one of choosing contributors largely on account of their names, and then
leaving them to answer for their own sins, if any. One thing is clear,
that if a man like Jeffrey--or like Napier--could be shown the number of
blunders he made in mutilating the writings of his contributors, he
would feel very much humiliated. Thackeray complains very bitterly of
the suppression of some of his touches of humour, and his sufferings at
the hands of a critic like Mr. Napier (able man as he was) must have
been terrible indeed.
The system recently adopted of having every article signed, has not
yielded the results which were predicted or expected by those who so
long struggled to get it introduced. It has led to "starring" more
outrageous and more audacious than any that was ever seen upon the
stage, and to mischief far more serious. The worst of these is the
substitution of a spurious sort of authority for the natural influence
or weight of the writing, even upon some of the most important topics
which can engage the human mind. The opinion, for example, of a
versatile politician, or traveller, or physicist, on a question of
religion or morals may be of no more value than that of the first man
you meet on passing into the streets. But it will attract attention in
proportion to the notoriety of the author, and though wise men may know
that it is weak or foolish, they may wait a long while for the chance of
saying so from any pulpit worth preaching in, because the platforms are
pre-engaged; and also because, the "organs of opinion" being bound to
live by keeping up a succession of attractive names in their pages, it
will not do to offend the owners of such names. One other result of the
recent system (not everywhere and always, of course, but generally and
most frequently) is a want of freshness in periodical literature. This
evil our American friends manage to escape; only they are much bolder
than we are, and do not stand in terror of the charge of levity. But, as
a rule, writers who are fit for starring purposes lose freshness in a
very short time; and then they do a still farther mischief by striking
that key-note of second-hand thought which is so prevalent, or at least
so common in even our better literature.
It is amusing enough to recall the superstition of secrecy which
inspired the policy of the first Edinburgh Reviewers. Lord Jeffrey has
told us how the conspirators, Brougham, Sydney Smith, Horner, and
himself, used to meet by night in the back room of a printing-office,
and steal to their work by winding paths and back stairs, like
assassins. This was folly, though not inexcusably without rational
ground or motive, and one cannot resist the belief that the more modern
plan will work well some day, if it does not now. But the difference in
the results is not so great as might have been hoped for. Men of letters
do not now openly insult each other for differences of opinion in
politics or theology; but it is not any variation of mechanism which has
made the change, and, though less brutality of phrasing is now
permitted, it would be difficult to surpass in bitterness or unfairness
some of the signed and accredited criticism of our own day. On the
whole, it comes to this,--you can get no more out of given moral
conditions than there is in them. If public writers are clique-ish (a
word to disturb Mr. Napier in his grave, and certainly an ugly one) and
unjust to each other, it is because you cannot change the spots of the
leopard. A man who loves the truth will employ his pen conscientiously
and kindly, whether he writes anonymously or otherwise. To this it may
be added that there is something extremely quaint in one thing that we
may see taking place every week--the greater part of our newspaper
writing is still unsigned, and, considering what a hastily got-up
miscellany a newspaper necessarily is, it can hardly be otherwise. A
column of reviews in a newspaper is sometimes the work of as many hands
as there are books reviewed in it. But it might certainly have been
expected beforehand that reviewers who write without signature should be
both careful and moderate in attacking writers who sign, and who,
presumably, take more time over their work than contributors to
newspapers can generally do. Yet the newspaper columns in which
quarterly and monthly periodicals are reviewed are "too often" (we must
round the corner with the help of that commonplace) models of flippancy
and dogmatism.
On the whole, it is not from any mechanical changes of method that we
must expect improvement in Review literature. Of course, in largeness,
fulness, richness, and versatility the Review-writing of to-day is
immeasurably superior to that of the days when Macaulay and Brougham
fought for precedence in the _Edinburgh_. But so is the literature
reviewed--one is a big "rolling miscellany," and so is the other. It
does not seem to some of us that, _other things being made equal_, the
literature of our modern Reviews (using the word widely) is either
superior or inferior to that of the _Edinburgh_, for example. The
growth, however, of literature generally in force, colour, range, and
effectiveness, is something astounding. We note this, or rather it
overwhelms us, in turning over such a book as the Memoirs of Harriet
Martineau; and there is more than the insolence of new-fangled tastes in
putting such a question as--where would Campbell's "Pleasures of Hope"
be if it were published to-morrow? One day when Brougham had just left
(for London) a country-house where he had been staying, Rogers, who was
a fellow-guest with him, made some such remark as this--"In that
post-chaise went away this morning, Bacon, Newton, Demosthenes, and
Solon." It is not recorded that Rogers meant this as a joke; but where
would Brougham be after a little manipulation by Mr. Jevons or Mr.
Goldwin Smith? It would be tiresome to dwell upon this, and wrong to
suggest that the men were smaller because the outlook was less; but this
view, if anything, helps us to see the direction in which one of our
best hopes for literature must lie--namely, in its ever-increasing
volume. There will always be hostile camps, and there will always be
warriors of low _morale_, but as each camp enlarges, the _average_ pain
of those who suffer from injustice or neglect will be lessened. And this
observation is by no means addressed to mere questions of reviewing in
the minor sense, but rather to literature in the mass as representing
the culture of the time.
Since the time when Jeffrey ruled the _Edinburgh Review_, and even since
the death of Mr. Napier, "the advertising element," and commercial
elements in general, have played a great and new part, an increasing
part, too, in the fortunes, and thus in regulating the quality and
tendency, of current literature. One result of this state of things is
an ever-increasing tendency to compromise in the expression of opinion.
In spite of the spirit of tolerance of which we hear so much, there was
perhaps never a time in which the expression of opinion was so much
emasculated in the higher periodical literature, or in which so much
trickery of accommodated phraseology was going forward. This will last
for a long time yet--as long as periodical literature is a matter of
commercial speculation. It is an evil omen that the greatest amount of
freedom now displayed is in political and scientific discussion. It is
difficult to see where the remedy is to come from in discussions of
another kind. Probably we shall have a lesson by the cataclysmic method
before very long. There is in this volume a letter from Brougham to
Napier, in which Brougham is very angry about an indirect disclosure of
Romilly's heterodoxy, and he goes off at a tangent to express a doubt
whether Macaulay was any better than Romilly, but is very anxious that
conventional conformity should be strictly maintained in the Review,
even to the length of concealing from the general reader as far as
possible such facts as that a man so good and "religious" as Romilly
could be a disbeliever in this, that, or the other. We have now got
beyond that; the accredited policy is in a vague way to trump the cards
of the dangerous people, and then nobody shows his hand fairly and
freely. Meanwhile, everybody feels uneasy, from a latent sense of
insincerity; and, when once the excitement is off, the natural
perception that out of nothing nothing can come, reassumes its sway.
The game cannot go on in this way for ever, though no one can foresee by
what accident the lights will be blown out, the tables thrown over, and
the stakes roughly dealt with at last.
A great difference, as might be expected, arises from the incredible
widening of what might be called the constituencies of opinion.
Political articles of the "inspired" order do not count as they did, or
were supposed to do, in the days of "Coningsby" even, much less as they
did a decade or two sooner. The effective currents of thought are far
too numerous and far too massive to be guided--nay, too numerous and too
massive for even the most conceited of propagandists or prophets to
fancy he could calculate them. What sort of figure as a publicist or
"inspired" political writer would a man like Croker cut at this end of
the century? It must have been a dolorous day for such as he when they
first felt sure the tides were coming up which were to sweep them and
their works into oblivion, or at least into limbo, and make successors
to their function impossible in future. We do not affirm that the
present phase of change is for the best; no theory of progress will
justify statements of that kind. In fact, things are quite bad enough;
but some security against certain evils there must be, in the fact that
these are days in which it is difficult to hide a wrong, or an error,
which has an immediate sinister bearing upon ends cherished by any
school of opinion. Who on earth would now think of calling the _Times_
the Thunderer? Just when middle-aged men of to-day were babies it was
thought finely argumentative, if not conclusive, to call the London
University "Stinkomalee"--in the interest of Church and King; but the
"hard hitting" of our own time is done in other fashion. Even if the
Marquis of Salisbury were to edit a paper he would not be able to make
much out of Titus Oates. But the allusion to that episode in another
sphere of action may remind us of the late Lord Derby, who might almost
be called the last of the old school of politicians. The mere mention of
his name seems to flash light upon the gulf we have traversed since the
days when the world was divided between a Whig organ and a Tory organ.
Simultaneously with the incalculable increase of devotion to science, we
have had an increase of devotion to ends held to be practical, and this
has largely governed our literature. The subject now barely hinted at is
well worth extended treatment. It is, however, no more than the truth
that there has been recently a great diminution of speculative
enthusiasm of all kinds, with a largely increased tendency to make
things pleasant for all parties. Convenience, in fact, becomes more and
more the governing factor of life; this tells upon our better
literature; and until the wind sets again from the old quarters--as it
certainly will some day--we shall feel the want of certain elements of
freshness, individuality, and moral impulse which touch us more closely
than we at first recognize in reading the old Edinburgh Reviewers.