MR. JAMES GRANT ON THE NEWSPAPER PRESS.* Tint author of
these two bulky tomes may well lay claim to some experience of the subject which he treats, for he tells us that he has been connected with the Press nearly all his life, has edited a daily newspaper for twenty years, and has written fifty-five volumes, as well as thousands of leading articles. Yet the result of all this practice and all these opportunities of knowledge is most unsatisfactory. Mr. Grant's style is slipshod, his grammar is dubious, the information he gives us is at once scanty and untrust- worthy, and his mistakes are portentous. We do not quite under- stand the purpose of the book, for the scraps of second-hand antiquarianism at the beginning do not compose a history, while the gossip about the newspapers of the present day is too vague to be of any practical service. It is probable that Mr. Grant met with somecurious facts in the course of consulting an ordinary book of reference, and that he had heard many other curious traditions or strange rumours during his own life as an editor. To put these things together may. have been a more or less pleasing task, and, no doubt, it never occurred to the writer to test the accuracy of his informants. Indeed, Mr. Graub carefully and wisely abstains from referring us to his authorities, and we are therefore left at times to choose between accepting some astonishing state- ment and exposing ourselves to the charge of ignorance. This is not a pleasant alternative, but Mr. Grant is so often hopelessly and ludicrously wrong, that whenever we meet with a new fact in his pages we may safely treat it as a blunder. He himself remarks, with much simplicity, that the detection of historical errors has a very painful and injurious effect, as inspiring us with distrust "as to the truth of that which we most earnestly desire to believe." And in these words he has unconsciously furnished the best possible motto for his own book, the surest test of his own capacity.
As a general rule Mr. Grant indulges in such vagueness of state- ment that he can escape exposure, if not detection. But when he does commit himself to anything definite, his faculty of blundering is most highly developed. Thus in one of his opening chapters he tells us of a law passed in the reign of that despotic sovereign Charles II., under the auspices of Archbishop Laud. For a moment we think this must be a misprint, and that Mr. Grant is alluding to the reign of Charles I., but the passage comes in chronological order after the Restoration and after the Great Fire of London. Then we are told that Lord Chatham, who died in 1778, brought an action for libel against the Public Advertiser in 1785. Shirley, the dramatist, who died in 1666, is called one of the dramatists of the eighteenth century, and is ranked with Foote. Dr. Ilawkesworth is mentioned as "the editor, or indeed I might almost say, the author of the Rambler, for he wrote nearly the whole of its papers." As it was always supposed that Dr. John- son himself wrote the whole of the Rambler, with the exception of four papers, this is a rather startling statement ; nor is it the less startling when we are presented with "a few of the sentences • The Newspaper Press ; its Origin, Progress, and Present Position. By James Grant. 2 vole. London: Tinsley Brothers. 1871. with which he (Dr. Hawkesworth) concludes the Rambler," as a proof of the success with which he imitated the style of Dr. John- son. On consulting the Rambler, however, we find the explana- tion of Mr. Grant's error. He has mixed up the Adventurer with the- Rambler. We are not surprised to find Goldsmith's familiar line, " To party gave up what was meant for mankind," attributed to. Pope, but there is something unusual in the hesitation with which Mr. Grant qualifies his error. There is no such uncertainty when he speaks of Dennis's attack on Cato calling forth " a pamphlet in which he was held up to crushing ridicule as if he had been a, maniac, under the odd title of 'The Narrative of Dr. John Norris concerning the Strange and Deplorable Frenzy of Mr. John Dennis." As Mr. Grant has probably never heard that Popo- was the writer of this pamphlet, or that the crushing ridicule of which he speaks was dull and coarse ribaldry, he may think that he is giving the reading public a new curiosity of literature. In another place he falls into a more trivial error, but one which is significant of his ordinary practice. It was said of some lawyer- that whenever he maintained any proposition there was perfectly certain to be a decided case in exact opposition to it. In like man- ner, when Mr. Grant pauses to express his surprise that none of our writers of fiction have chosen the title of "Births, Marriages, and Deaths" for any of their works, we know that there must be s novel under that name, and we need only look amongst Theodore Hook's works to find it.
To these positive blunders, which will be apparent to people of ordinary reading, we might add a long list of others that cannot be so easily rectified. Stories such as that of Lord Campbell act- ing as dramatic critic for a morning paper and reviewing Romeo and Juliet as a new play may be true or false, but cannot be dis- proved without infinite labour. The question whether Mr. Disraeli edited the Representative has been set at rest since Mr. Grant has published his book, and we have no doubt the contradiction of what Mr. Grant has asserted so positively will be taken by hint as another instance of Mr. Disraeli's want of affability. It is true that in this case Mr. Grant had given his authority. "If any one should still have a doubt on the subject," he says, "I would refer him to 'Chambers' Book of Days,' where the fact is asserted as one beyond all question." But though a positive assertion in any book is enough Tor Mr. Grant, it will convey little weight to more critical minds. It must often happen that these positive assertions are met with as positive contradictions, and when neither side has any special means of knowledge, it may be difficult to decide between them. In these cases Mr. Grant's mode of dealing is peculiarly happy. A controversy about the year in which the Daily Courant was first published is put an end to by the authority of Mr. Grant himself and of a writer in the Times. Some persons, we are told, have fixed on the date of 1702, others on that of 1703, others on that of 1709. Mr. Grant has carefully examined the facts of the case, not one of which is communicated to us, and decides in favour of 1702. There can be no appeal from a judgment given without facts and without reasons, but Mr. Grant obligingly adds, "Of course, if I am correct in my belief that the year 1702 is the correct date, Mr. Townsend is equally correct when, in his Manual of Dates, he assigns the year 1702 as the year in which the Daily Courant started into existence." When we pass from tha earlier periods to the present time, we find Mr. Grant equally judicious in keeping out facts which might upset his theories. Hill treatment of the Times is a notable instance. Often as he indulges in vague admiration of the prices paid to writers on the leading journal, he is seldom precise in his figures, and he scarcely ever gives a name. We are told of one man who wrote an article in Fraser's Magazine, and who was at once offered very high terms to contribute to the Times, but we do not know who he was, what he wrote, or what was paid him. Of the table of contents of the Times Mr. Grant judiciously says, " One gentle- man, I am told, has that sole duty assigned to him, and receives in return a salary so large that I should not like to name it, though it has been mentioned to me." Again, we are told that 011(i anonymous gentleman, "since, I am sorry to say, dead," re- ceived £30 for a review only three columns in length ; and that another was paid £200, or, as Mr. Grant with a temporary forget- fulness of arithmetic reckons, £20 each for twelve leading articles. Several chapters filled with details of this kind will no doubt add largely to the importance of the Times, and make it feel, to use Mr. Grant's own elegant phraseology, gratified and grateful. The most striking fact recorded about the Daily Telegraph is that when the paper duty was taken off, "a party who knew well what he said," remarked to Mr. Grant that this measure would add £12,000 a year to the profits of that journal. We are glad to hear, on the authority of one who has written thou, ends of leading articles, that those of the Echo display an amount of ability which would do credit to any daily paper. But this is not surprising, when we are assured by Mr. Grant that the staff of the Echo comprises "names occupying a high place in the literature of the land." When he comes to the Record, Mr. Grant is much impressed by the masterly style in which its reviews are written, and by the great know- ledge displayed by its reviewers. But the paper has other and higher merits. It has exclusive information on all the chief mat- ters in Church and State, and it is always first to know what is said and done in Cabinet Councils. There is not a heresy which it has not attacked ; it has always been the first to enter the arena of conflict, and to fight the great fight of Faith and Evangelical religion, Such are Mr. Grant's sentiments as regards existing newspapers. It might be interesting to make a little selection of some of his ether opinions. His habit of indulging in such remarks as "only let the reader imagine if he can what would be the public surprise," 4' what man or woman of the year 1871 could imagine?" "how very strange it must seem to us," Ste., makes up one of the many varieties of twaddle. There is a startling statement as to the life led by editors of daily newspapers, and one which needs some explanation. "As a rule," we read, "editors of morning papers do not get to bed till nearly three o'clock on the /aiming morning." Does this mean that the editor of a morning paper does not go bed at all the first night of his tenure of office, and that in consequence of that he is always one night in arrear ? or does he go to bed on Tueeday morning for Monday night, and square his sleeping accounts at the end of the week ? We hope Mr. Grant's long experience will enable him to solve the mystery. Another hardship which presses upon editors, and which Mr. Grant himself has felt deeply, is the necessity of receiving visits from persons of high political or social standing. "I venture to say, on behalf of all editors of morning papers," writes Mr. Grant, "that they feel these visits to be matters of grave inconvenience, especially when they are protracted, and when the subjects on which they [sic] wish to converse are neither important nor urgent." And as Mr. Grant adds, on the subject of these troubles, 4g he best can paint them who has felt them most," we may fairly conclude that during his twenty years' editorship he was constantly pestered by princes and prime ministers stopping with him for hours to talk of the weather. We congratulate him on his release from such slavery, and as this is the only thing upon which we can congratulate him, we may as well take leave of his book before any other subject of remark suggests itself.
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