Mr Caxton, astounded.—“Made me read a newspaper every day!”
Uncle Jack, warming, and expanding his hands to the fire.—“As big as the Times!”
Mr Caxton, uneasily.—“Jack, you alarm me!”
Uncle Jack.—“And make you write in it, too,—a leader!”
Mr Caxton, pushing back his chair, seizes the only weapon at his command, and hurls at Uncle Jack a great sentence of Greek.—“Τους μεν γαρ ειναι χαλεπους, ὁσε λαι ανθροποφαγειν!”[[7]]
Uncle Jack, nothing daunted.—“Ay, and put as much Greek as you like into it!”
Mr Caxton, relieved, and softening.—“My dear Jack, you are a great man,—let us hear you!”
Then Uncle Jack began. Now, perhaps my readers may have remarked that this illustrious speculator was really fortunate in his ideas. His speculations in themselves always had something sound in the kernel, considering how barren they were in the fruit; and this it was that made him so dangerous. The idea Uncle Jack had now got hold of will, I am convinced, make a man’s fortune one of these days; and I relate it with a sigh, in thinking how much has gone out of the family. Know, then, it was nothing less than setting up a daily paper on the plan of the Times, but devoted entirely to Art, Literature, and Science—Mental Progress in short; I say on the plan of the Times, for it was to imitate the mighty machinery of that diurnal illuminator. It was to be the Literary Salmoneus of the political Jupiter: and rattle its thunder over the bridge of knowledge. It was to have correspondents in all parts of the globe; every thing that related to the chronicle of the mind, from the labour of a missionary in the South Sea islands, or the research of a traveller in pursuit of that mirage called Timbuctoo, to the last new novel at Paris, or the last great emendation of a Greek particle at a German university, was to find a place in this focus of light. It was to amuse, to instruct, to interest—there was nothing it was not to do. Not a man in the whole reading public, not only of the three kingdoms, not only of the British empire, but under the cope of heaven, that it was not to touch somewhere, in head, in heart, or in pocket. The most crotchety member of the intellectual community might find his own hobby in those stables.
“Think,” cried Uncle Jack—“think of the march of mind—think of the passion for cheap knowledge—think how little quarterly, monthly, weekly journals can keep pace with the main wants of the age. As well have a weekly journal on politics, as a-weekly journal on all the matters still more interesting than politics to the mass of the public. My Literary Times once started, people will wonder how they had ever lived without it! Sir, they have not lived without it—they have vegetated—they have lived in holes and caves like the Troggledikes.”
“Troglodytes,” said my father mildly—“from trogle, a cave—and dumi, to go under. They lived in Ethiopia, and had their wives in common.”