A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
ONE interesting point—for the meticulously minded—about the achievement of The Times in publishing its 5o,000th number last Saturday is the decision of the Prime Minister that the name of that great paper is a plural. " I congratulate The Times" he wrote, " on the publication of their 5o,000th number." King George, on the other hand, sent congratulations on its 5o,000th number ; the constitutional effects of this divergence I must leave to legal or historical authorities to determine. At all events both sovereign and Prime Minister meant what we all mean, that the record of the greatest newspaper in the world is a matter not only of congratulation to the singular or plural Times, but to the whole community which it instructs, admonishes and guides. A life of 156 years, or IS9 if the Daily Universal Register from which The Times sprung be counted, makes the i16 years of The Spectator look but a modest span. And through all the history of the paper, it may be noted, the Walter dynasty, in one capacity or other, has persisted. Times change, and so far as seemed requisite (but no farther) The Times has changed with them. In the form and make-up it favoured in the middle of last century it is to modern eyes unreadable. But Victorian eyes would, on their side, have been deeply shocked to find the Old English title, without- which The Times was unthinkable, replaced by clean clear Roman. That is as it should be—Victorian for the Victorians, Georgian for the Georgians, and in God's good time, we can be satisfied, Elizabethan for the Elizabethans.
* * * *
Previous page
