Farewell the courage and the heart of gold!
Hail and Farewell!
To complete these American references I may add that Punch in 1907 made great play out of the letter addressed by an American "Clippings Agency" to Petrarch, offering to send him press-cuttings of his works. But America has no monopoly of these solecisms. Fourteen years later, when the Phoenix Society revived The Maid's Tragedy, a similar offer was made by a London press-cutting agency to "John Fletcher, Esq." and "—Beaumont, Esq."
JOURNALISM
Already in the early 'nineties the altered status of journalism and the journalist had leapt to the eyes of Punch, who himself was in a sense born and bred in the "Street of Ink." I pass over his ironical disapproval of the St. James's Gazette when that journal, in October, 1892, "sincerely hoped that there was no truth in the rumour that a paper for children will shortly make its appearance, entirely written and illustrated by children under fifteen years of age." The project never materialized, but its spirit has been translated into action by the literary enterprise of our modern enfants terribles. The adult journalist in the 'nineties was not to suffer from this unfair competition for a good many years to come. Meanwhile he could at least congratulate himself that he was better housed and paid: it was not until 1904 that the "wisdom of the East" began to interfere with his freedom as a war correspondent.
THE WISDOM OF THE EAST
Japanese Officer (to Press Correspondent): "Abjectly we desire to distinguish honourable newspaper man by honourable badge."