‘More subtle web Arachne cannot spin;
Nor those fine threads which oft we woven see
Of scorched dew, do not in the air more lightly flee!’
Others dine with Lords and Academicians—for God’s sake, take care what you say! Would you strip the Editor’s mantel-piece of the cards of invitation that adorn it to select parties for the next six months? An Editor takes a turn in St. James’s-street, and is congratulated by the successive literary or political groups on all he does not write; and when the mistake is found out, the true Simon Pure is dismissed. We have heard that it was well said by the proprietor of a leading journal, that he would take good care never to write a line in his own paper, as he had conflicting interests enough to manage, without adding literary jealousies to the number. On the other hand, a very good-natured and warm-hearted individual declared, ‘he would never have another man of talents for an Editor’ (the Editor, in this case, is to the proprietor as the author to the Editor), ‘for he was tired of having their good things thrust in his teeth.’ Some Editors are scrubs, mere drudges, newspaper-puffs: others are bullies or quacks: others are nothing at all—they have the name, and receive a salary for it! A literary sinecure is at once lucrative and highly respectable. At Lord’s-Ground there are some old hands that are famous for ‘blocking out and staying in:’ it would seem that some of our literary veterans had taken a lesson from their youthful exercises at Harrow or Eton.
All this is bad enough; but the worst is, that Editors, besides their own failings, have friends who aggravate and take advantage of them. These self-styled friends are the night-shade and hemlock clinging to the work, preventing its growth and circulation, and dropping a slumberous poison from its jaundiced leaves. They form a cordon, an opake mass round the Editor, and persuade him that they are the support, the prop, and pillar of his reputation. They get between him and the public, and shut out the light, and set aside common sense. They pretend anxiety for the interest of some established organ of opinion, while all they want is to make it the organ of their dogmas, prejudices, or party. They want to be the Magazine or the Review—to wield that power covertly, to warp that influence to their own purposes. If they cannot do this, they care not if it sinks or swims. They prejudge every question—fly-blow every writer who is not of their own set. A friend of theirs has three articles in the last number of ——; they strain every nerve and make pressing instances to throw a slur on a popular contribution by another hand, in order that he may write a fourth in the next number. The short articles which are read by the vulgar, are cut down to make room for the long ones, which are read by nobody but the writers and their friends. If an opinion is expressed contrary to the shibboleth of the party, it is represented as an outrage on decency and public opinion, when in truth the public are delighted with the candour and boldness displayed. They would convert the most valuable and spirited journal into a dull pamphleteer, stuffed with their own lucubrations on certain heavy topics. The self-importance of these people is in proportion to their insignificance; and what they cannot do by an appeal to argument or sound policy, they effect by importunity and insinuation. They keep the Editor in continual alarm as to what will be said of him by the public, when in fact the public will think (in nine cases out of ten) just what he tells them.
These people create much of the mischief. An Editor should have no friends—his only prompter should be the number of copies of the work that sell. It is superfluous to strike off a large impression of a work for those few squeamish persons who prefer lead to tinsel. Principle and good manners are barriers that are, in our estimate, inviolable: the rest is open to popular suffrage, and is not to be prejudged by a coterie with closed doors. Another difficulty lies here. An Editor should, in one sense, be a respectable man—a distinguished character; otherwise, he cannot lend his name and sanction to the work. The conductor of a periodical publication which is to circulate widely and give the tone to taste and opinion, ought to be of high standing, should have connections with society, should belong to some literary institution, should be courted by the great, be run after by the obscure. But ‘here’s the rub’—that one so graced and gifted can neither have his time nor his thoughts to himself. Our obligations are mutual; and those who owe much to others, become the slaves of their good opinion and good word. He who dines out loses his free agency. He may improve in politeness; he falls off in the pith and pungency of his style. A poem is dedicated to the son of the Muses:—can the critic do otherwise than praise it? A tragedy is brought out by a noble friend and patron:—the severe rules of the drama must yield in some measure to the amenities of private life. On the contrary, Mr. —— is a garretteer—a person that nobody knows; his work has nothing but the contents to recommend it; it sinks into obscurity, or addresses itself to the canaille. An Editor, then, should be an abstraction—a being in the clouds—a mind without a body—reason without passion.——But where find such a one?
THE LETTER-BELL
The Monthly Magazine.] [March, 1831.
Complaints are frequently made of the vanity and shortness of human life, when, if we examine its smallest details, they present a world by themselves. The most trifling objects, retraced with the eye of memory, assume the vividness, the delicacy, and importance of insects seen through a magnifying glass. There is no end of the brilliancy or the variety. The habitual feeling of the love of life may be compared to ‘one entire and perfect chrysolite,’ which, if analysed, breaks into a thousand shining fragments. Ask the sum-total of the value of human life, and we are puzzled with the length of the account, and the multiplicity of items in it: take any one of them apart, and it is wonderful what matter for reflection will be found in it! As I write this, the Letter-Bell passes: it has a lively, pleasant sound with it, and not only fills the street with its importunate clamour, but rings clear through the length of many half-forgotten years. It strikes upon the ear, it vibrates to the brain, it wakes me from the dream of time, it flings me back upon my first entrance into life, the period of my first coming up to town, when all around was strange, uncertain, adverse—a hubbub of confused noises, a chaos of shifting objects—and when this sound alone, startling me with the recollection of a letter I had to send to the friends I had lately left, brought me as it were to myself, made me feel that I had links still connecting me with the universe, and gave me hope and patience to persevere. At that loud-tinkling, interrupted sound (now and then), the long line of blue hills near the place where I was brought up waves in the horizon, a golden sunset hovers over them, the dwarf-oaks rustle their red leaves in the eveningbreeze, and the road from —— to ——, by which I first set out on my journey through life, stares me in the face as plain, but from time and change not less visionary and mysterious, than the pictures in the Pilgrim’s Progress. I should notice, that at this time the light of the French Revolution circled my head like a glory, though dabbled with drops of crimson gore: I walked comfortable and cheerful by its side—
‘And by the vision splendid