[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] S n t,—It is not necessarily
a vicious or depraved taste that leads the larger part of our adult population to feast every Sunday on the garbage of the week.
A little thought will show that the educated reader of the dignified daily paper and the reader of the commonly called gutter press demand and are presented with exactly the same amount of information on sensational topics. The method of presentation is, of course, vastly different, and it must needs be so. The cultured person has sufficient imagination to supply himself with all the details which his paper with a proper reticence omits, but the uncultured person (about four-fifths of the population) has very little imagination. His emotions are more crude, he has very little idea of what constitutes good taste, and he would not be too happy with a closely printed column of small print. So if he is to be kept as well informed as the educated and imaginative few, he must have the salient (and salacious) features flung at him from screaming headlines. And his columns must be frequently broken with startling sub-titles in heavy type, again to help him to what his betters can help themselves to.
It is all in deplorable taste, of course, but the taste of any class usually is deplorable to a more cultured class. Would there be such a thing as taste at all if we were all on one level of aesthetic appreciation ?
' This Sunday sensationalism is the exact literary equivalent of the old-fashioned melodrama. It usually finishes on the side of the angels, and if the worst it does is to turn the cultured stomach we need not worry.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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