In a not very wise speech delivered while presiding at the opening of a
new series of lectures in connection with the Greenwich Branch of the
Society for the Extension of University Teaching, Lord WOLSELEY modestly
admitted "that whatever information he had acquired in life had been
acquired from the ordinary penny newspaper which he had read day by
day." No doubt this rather humiliating fact accounts for the florid
style of the proclamations "Our Only General" used to publish in Egypt
and elsewhere--proclamations at the time recognised as having the tone
of Astley's in the good old days of the _Battle of Waterloo_ and other
military melodramas. However, if it pleases Lord WOLSELEY to give
materials for a future biography, that is no one's concern but his own.
Unfortunately he touched upon another matter, about which he knows
evidently very little, if anything at all. His Lordship spoke in very
disrespectful terms of what he called the "Shilling Dreadful," which, he
declared (in this instance accurately enough), was "prized by many
people." Certainly the novelette is more popular than _The Soldier's
Pocket-book_, although both _brochures_ are equally works of
imagination. So it should be, considering that amongst the authors who
have produced it have been WILKIE COLLINS, HUGH CONWAY, F. ANSTEY,
ROBERT BUCHANAN, GRANT ALLEN, WALTER BESANT, RHODA BROUGHTON, and others
equally well known to fame. He concluded by remarking, "that if men of
all politics were to be shaken up in a bag, he believed there would be
very little difference between them." Quite true, if the bag were shaken
sufficiently long to complete the transformation--but it would be rather
a brutal experiment!
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