AN OLD " SATURDAY " REVIEWER.* Taa author of this
curious collection, whose Life of a Prig attracted in its day considerable attention, and who, by his choice of Sir ICenelm Digby for a subject, proved himself well- read and capable in a much graver field, almost disarms criticism in his little preface by a pleasant joke. A few of the
essays, he says, were once reprinted in a little book entitled Duke Domum:—" The large first edition of that work went off very rapidly (uninsured, in a fire at the printer's), and instead of issuing a second I have added a great many other articles to those which appeared in the ill-fated first, under anew title." He adds that the articles before us, originally written for the Saturday .Reoiew many years ago, required a slight re-editing before they could be published at all, and even so, must be taken as a description of the past rather than of the present, pointing to an entire change since their appearance, in English manners, customs, and surroundings. Entire, indeed, is that change since the birth of the famous Saturday, which made a landmark—or as it would now be called, in common with cricket-matches and bicycle-races, a record—in the history of English journalism. The half-essay, half-article, constructed out of nothing on an epigrammatic principle, infinitely clever and provokingly attractive, was the staple commodity of half the paper. When its first specimens appeared they were read more like a new Dickens or Thackeray coming out in numbers than as a dry addition to the bead-roll of newspapers. Nobody of that date can fail to remember the sayings attributed to Lord Salisbury or the late Lord Bowen, with their sharp points and polished steel, or how it was recorded of Vernon Smith when he was made a Peer, under the form of an apparent epitaph, that "he had his political faults, and they were many. Let us hope that he had his political virtues, though they probably were few." "He is gone to the Lords, but we will not deplore him." And who will not recall the distinguished Nonconformist who, "through the combined malignity of his sponsors and ancestors, rejoiced, or rather suffered, in the name of the Reverend Jabez Inwards "? Those were the days when Sanders and Venables were names to conjure with ; and when it is reported that a distinguished Eublic man, at the time an obscure undergraduate at the University, was so fired with the desire to become a man of letters of the Saturday Reviewer's type, that on finding his early essays in that direction rejected he shut himself up in his study with the first numbers of the paper. There he so impregnated him- self with its style of thought and expression, that when he tried again his work was prompt and mechanical in its success.
The early Saturday is conspicuously before us in the volume now in our hands, and forms a curious study of those set methods which made the journal what it was. We have the brief sharp sentences, each rounded into the semblance of an epigram, even where the point is not always very clear. We have the studiously cynical form of thought, which in spite of ourselves suggests a rather shallow foundation. The founders of the Saturday, apart, of course, from their public and political work, appeared to keep on hand a certain stock of so-called social subjects, which connected themselves at once with a certain vein of reflection. They worked themselves out almost like mathematical problems, to a set and certain formula.
Our essayist in the present case selects with no apparent care his subjects whereupon to pessimise, and if he himself dubs his remarks by the name of platitudes, it must be acknowledged to be his own affair. We could not choose a better instance of his modus operandi than is contained in his paper upon "Literary Husbands," which starts with the frank statement that "there is a comfortable doctrine
• The Platitudes of a Pessimist. By the Author of The Life of a Prig," " The Life of Sir Beeelm Digby," &a. London Regan Paul, Trench, and Co.
held by wives that all husbands are more or less selfish, and we admit that there is much to be said in sup- port of this theory. Hunting husbands, shooting hus- bands, Parliamentary husbands, and business husbands, generally seek their own amusement as the principal end of their lives, while the pleasures of their wives are regarded as desirable but secondary objects : but none of the above-mentioned are so purely selfish as certain literary husbands.' For our own part, we take exception to the line of argument at the start on account of its absolute identity with the eternal assumption of comedy and romance, which was founded so generally upon the wickedness of husbands,. at all events until it took up the wickedness of wives for a change, that the very reiteration created a kind of belief in it. We do not believe that the experience of real life, founded upon a thousand happy and domestic homes, bears out the theory in the least; and the sentence that we have chosen for analysis contradicts itself. When the writer couples sporting husbands with business husbands (practically covering the whole world of the idle and the busy) as preferring their amusement to their homes, he does not make us under- stand whether he means to imply that sporting is the business of one set, or business the amusement of the other. We feel like Touchstone over Orlando's ode, that we could rhyme it in that way by the hour together. We believe that after a short period of incubation we could turn out specimens as sound of honest early Saturday, all pointing in a directly opposite direction. Let us briefly consider the epigram which follows:—" Strictly pleasure-seeking husbands often study their own amusement only, while they worship their wives. Literary husbands also study their own amuse- ment only, while they worship themselves." But if the strictly pleasure-seeking husband—truly a very strange and apocryphal personage, for what is it to be "strictly "pleasure- seeking ?—is so good as to worship his wife, how can he possibly be said to study his own amusement only ? If to worship his wife be not his own amusement, is it then his business as apart from the pleasure which he strictly seeks ? Does he spend his hours of evening recreation in the music-halls, and pass his business-day in an attitude of worship before his wife? In that case the wife has really a fairly good time of it, if she appreciates worship, and must rather be glad than not when in his strict search for pleasure he leaves the business of worship for awhile. As for the wretched man of letters—and being one himself, the essayist should know— who seeks his own amusement only, while he worships him- self, we presume that here, too, the hours are allotted. His hours of amusement must be away from his desk, when we have certainly known some literary men grateful for a wife's company ; and we presume, therefore, that it is during his hours of work that he worships himself. It may be that the forging of epigrams creates an atmosphere of self-raised incense around the dreaming epigrammatist, but we should have said ourselves that the hours devoted to composition are as a rule very laborious, and not idolatrous at all. It is surely a good thing to be pleased with your work when it is done, be it an article, or a speech in the House, or a stroke on the Stock Exchange. But it is a long way from that to idolatry while it is being done. If we have dwelt at length upon one specimen of our essayist's work it is only because one essay is really typical of all. We do not know whether he really wishes or means to be taken seriously, but we fancy not. It was in the moulding of paradoxes and of aphorisms that the Saturday Reviewer of the early period took delight, and the present one has fairly achieved his purpose in calling our attention to the absolute change of habits and customs that has passed over us since then. It is a study in itself. "Sir, you have all the time there is," said a dignified Indian to s. modern visitor who complained of the want of it. Nevertheless, there is but little time now for aphorism or for paradox. If there were, the concluding remark of the essay we have cited, that "there are also such persons as literary wives ! but they are a subject upon which we should tremble to enter," would of itself be enough to lead us into a full disquisition upon the changes which have happened in our lives since then. Fresh from a visit to Oxford after twenty years, and a bewildered survey of woman's latest kingdom in the heart of the old life of monastic celibacy, the present writer wonders what a. Saturday Reviewer of the early type would write about them now.
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