[32] The 'Classified Index' contains only about 40,000 references; while the number of books in the 'Catalogue' is 45,000. The book referred to in the Index is only once mentioned, in whatever form it has appeared. To equalize the number, we have added 10 per cent. to each division of the Index, in our calculation.
[33] These are the words of an official puff, in 16 pages, called 'An Analysis of the Irish National School-books.' A more impudent document was never put forth by the Curlls of a past or present age. The manufacturers of the Irish Reading Lessons pirated a copyright belonging to the writer of this volume (occupying 47 pages, in 10 of their Lessons), 'The Mineral Kingdom,' which was written by Mr. Leonard Horner. Their 'Analysis' says, that these "most interesting facts and reasonings relating to Organised Remains are extracted from the writings of Buckland and other celebrated Geologists."
CHAPTER VI.
Cheap Fiction—Penny Periodicals.
The Railway Libraries—by which generic term we mean single volumes, printed in small type on indifferent paper, and sold mostly at a shilling—are almost wholly devoted to novels, English or American. Whatever be the quality of the fiction so published, we may ask, without any general depreciation of such works, if the popularity of this class of reading has not a tendency to indispose for other reading, however attractive be the mode in which information, historical, critical, or scientific, be presented; and is it not a necessary consequence that books of another character than novels should be compelled to address themselves to a smaller class of readers, and must, therefore, of necessity be dearer? If this be true of the railway books, it is equally true of the weekly sheets. The demand for fiction amongst the largest class of readers has forced upon every weekly periodical the necessity for introducing fiction in some form or other. The writers of eminence cannot put forth their powers in this direction without charging a higher price for their numbers than those in which inferior writers are employed at low salaries. The higher price necessarily induces a smaller sale. The dealers in cheap periodicals say, "you have no chance for a sale unless you give as much paper as the others give for a penny!" In this respect, some of the more extensively circulated of these sheets would appear to defy all reasonable competition. They are sold for 50s. per thousand; their paper and machine-work cost, at the very least, 45s. Out of this 5s. per thousand they have to pay their publishing expenses, their writers, their woodcuts, their composition, their stereotype casts. It is a neck-and-neck race for a very doubtful "plate;" and what may appear a slight addition to the weight of the "riders," in the shape of another halfpenny a pound upon their paper, would "distance" the greater number of them. When the popular estimate of a publication is that of the square inches which it contains of print, it requires no critical judgment to be assured that the amount of genius or knowledge engaged in its production is not very great. Hence, for the most part, a deluge of stories, that, to mention the least evil of them, abound with false representations of manners, drivelling sentimentalities, and impossible incidents. And yet they are devoured with an earnestness that is almost incomprehensible. The moralist may say—
"England, the time is come when thou shouldst wean
Thy heart from this emasculating food."
How is the weaning to be set about for this babyhood of the popular intellect?
The insuperable obstacle to a successful competition with the existing class of penny periodicals is their pre-eminence in external cheapness. They were all founded upon the principle of attraction by low price alone. They employed the meanest "slaves of the lamp" in their production. Sheets came out double the size of any other penny sheet, badly printed on the thinnest paper, but nevertheless they were the largest sheets; their roots were thus planted in the popular earth. Some who bought them turned away from their filth and their folly; others welcomed these qualities. Gradually the sense of the better class of artisans operated, whilst they continued their offences, to reduce their number of customers. They changed their style; they became decent, but they remained stupid. The weeds were kept down, though not rooted out, in that garden: a few gaudy flowers were planted; fruit there was little. They have maintained their hold, by their external cheapness, against any attempt to produce a higher literature, with better paper and print. They have beaten almost every competitor who has sought to address the same class of buyers with something higher, intrinsically as cheap, but not so cheap to the eye. The unequal war is still being waged.