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.
Matthew Browne.
FOOTNOTES:
[37] One, at least, of the contributors whom Buloz tortured (Georges Sand wrote that she wished him “au diable” ten times a day, only he held her purse-strings) used to date his letters in this style:—“A vingt-cinq lieues de cet imbécile Buloz.”