BOOKS OF THE DAY
" The Saturday Reviler "
1 WISH that a gifted writer, with courage and industry, would give us a History of English Literary Reviewing. He would, I suppose, begin among the elegant magazines of the eighteenth century, he would then pass on through all the magisterial sonorities of the Quarterly and the Edinburgh, and he would afterwards exhume with particular delight the brisk and acid reviews of the famous Victorian weeklies—the Saturday, Spectator, and Athenaeum. And here, possibly, his pleasant labours would come to their natural ending. For something prevails today—it may be respect or kindliness, timidity or debility—which deprives our journalism of anything like the vigour and the damnable honesty of the great Victorians. This may or may not be a good thing. Perhaps the journalism of the mid-Victorian age, like its Parliamentary style, was often out- rageously brutal. But I feel a reactionary joy, without repentance, when I wipe the dust off the early volumes of the Saturday Review, and when I peruse its lively, venomous, cheering pages, often so potently obtuse, and yet so brave and right in attacking vulgarity, nonsense, and—above all things—pretence. Hilarity and audacity, with resistance to dangerous advances in reform, give the Saturday a tang and arrogance which are very unlike the majestic Liberalism of its great rival, The Spectator. Prejudice and absurdity are not altogether absent, but they are made respectable by adamantine honesty of purpose.
The Saturday Review was founded by John Douglas Cook and Beresford Hope in 1855. It let loose a group of brilliant writers, eager to enjoy all the delights of anonymous invective. These new crusaders attacked almost every form of sentiment and innova- tion. There was a profusion of targets. But there was one favourite annoyance which had to be left alone: Ritualism was protected by the queer High-Anglican principles of Beresford Hope.
Although it would be wrong to say that the Saturday reviewers never praised anyone, and were never generous, their policy was that of demolition and assault. Cook was a bullish, turbulent, ruddy and irascible creature who lived in the famous bachelor quarters of the Albany. He secured the loyalty and liking of his colleagues, and a manly alliance was consolidated by the Saturday annual dinner. His editorship was undoubtedly successful. " We are popular," he said, " because we are so independent." He in- sisted, from the very beginning, upon the " Protestant right." The fearful image of democracy was intolerable. Not less to be feared were the foolish pretensions and affectations of women. The police- man was the true representative of morality, and the worst of all epithets was that of " sentimental." Wickedness was " radically in- curable," and the only way of dealing with it was to impose heavier punishments. Public executions (only abolished in 1868) were spectacles of a highly edifying nature. This does not suggest a particularly progressive attitude, and it is carrying the doctrine of anti-sentimentalism too far, but it is, at any rate, independent. So, too, is the view of Dickens as a mischievous demagogue, whose Tale of Two Cities is only " puppy pie and stewed cat." And so, pre-eminently, is the assertion that Gladstone is not a statesman at all, while Mr. Disraeli is only a statesman of " a very low order."
As for the poets, they fare badly at the hands of Cook and his crew. Mr. Browning writes the " sort of thing " which should " if possible, be stopped," and Morley's attack on Swinburne is an outburst of raging Puritanism which has never been surpassed. After these assertions of the " Protestant right," it is not a little surprising to observe how the Saturday develops an admiration of Darwin, even when we remember that Huxley was among its contributors.
Mr. Bevington dates the decline of the Saturday from the year 1887, and he is probably right ; although we must not forget the brief period of brilliance under Frank Harris between 1894 and 1898. The fate of the paper in 1933 is well known, and a level of tragic absurdity was reached in the winter of 1936, when Lady Houston, denouncing Mr. Baldwin, was describing her dreams and offering her cure for colds. After Lady Houston's death the paper fluttered on for a while, discredited and attenuated, and it expired without obsequies or notice in 1938.
Mr. Bevington's book is in every respect admirable. It is one of the Studies in English and Comparative Literature, published by the University of Columbia, and is yet another of those happy examp of American scholarship which have now become so justly celebrat I have only a sentence left in which to commend it whole-hearted'
to intelligent readers of every description. C. E. VULLIAMY.
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