PROFESSIONAL PUFFERY.*

IT is not easy to say whether the volume before us reflects most discredit on Mr. George Measom for writing it, on the the Direc-

tors of the Great Eastern Railway for giving it their official sanction, or on the tradesmen and others who have had recourse to Mr. George Measom's aid in attracting public notice. Many

of the latter are indeed of great and unquestioned respecta- bility, but it is precisely on this very account that they are so• much to blame for even giving professional puffers access to their premises. We do not happen to have previously met with Mr- George Measom's name or works, but it appears from the title- page and the preface of this volume that "we," i. e., Mr. George• Measom, "issue" it as one of a series of similar guides, compiled- during " fifteen years' continuous labour as a railway topographer." As a photograph of the author adorns this preface, it might be- briefly described as an "illustrated guide" to a well-known pro- verb in which the words " none repente " occur. The " wonderful

success" which, according to his own account, has attended Mr. Measom's efforts is on the same authority to be attributed to the-

" extraordinary cheapness" of his volumes. With regard to the former point, Mr. Measom himself of course knows best ; the cheapness of any volume like the one before us we beg most emphatically to deny.

What the Official Guide to MI Great Eastern Railway pro- fesses oattwardly to be is a railway itinerary for the four- counties traversed by the various lines of that system, giving: more or leas detailed accounts of the scenery, objects of in-

terest, local history, and local traditions of every town or vil- lage on or near any of those lines. This is in itself neces-

sarily a defective plan if the work be intended as a handbook to the entire district, but would still, if well carried out, have resulted in a most readable and entertaining book. Mr. Walter White, for instance, even had his rambles in the Eastern Counties been, confined to the railways, would have still combined clever gossip, with accurate description, and produced a work from which every- body could have derived amusement and pleasure. But Mr. Measom, after his fifteen years' experience, either has not sense enough to make this part of his Guide accurate or readable, or has. learned daring that period to treat public requirements in such matters with contempt. Nothing can be much worse than the gazetteer element of the volume. It is in general a mere farrago, of bits of general history worked into some local connection, in appropriate poetical quotations, and extracts from county direc- • The Offleal Illustrated Guide to the Great Eastern Railway. By George Measom L:ndou : C. OriMu at.d Co. 1565. tories which the lapse of a generation has rendered of little practical use ; the whole being garnished with engravings of which the beat are second-rate and the majority second-hand. The letter-press, when relevant, is generally incorrect ; the engravings, even when originally intended for the scenes they profess to illustrate, are invariably worthless. In many instances indeed, such 83 the sketch of Harwich from the sea, the utter want of resemblance renders it very clear that they have done duty before for some place very unlike those that they now represent. The one we have mentioned may, for all we know, have stood for every small and dirty seaport throughout Mr. Measom's series. He can hardly have hoped to escape detection. Even where they have not manifestly been intended for other places, the figures in the foreground are in general strangely

like those in which a past generation delighted. Even those who share in the popular impression that East Anglians are so very much behind the age, will scarcely be brought to believe that in front of East Anglian objects of interest are to be found an elderly East Anglian gentleman in a broad hat and tailed coat, or an elderly East Anglian lady, with a coal-scuttle bonnet and rectilineal dress, holding the hand of a fat little East Anglian boy or girl, in the costume of the same period, who points with the disengaged hand to whatever in the scene may be thought likely to excite the interest of docile and corpulent children. In one case it is difficult not to admire Mr. Measom's boldness. He takes his readers across to Holland by the Harwich route, and gives them a pretty woodland sketch, with Birkett Foster's name in the corner, as " Near Amsterdam." Shortly afterwards he interrupts a quotation to remark calmly, —" At the first glance our picture in the preceding page appears to represent an English scene, but it is not so, for many such spots are to be found within an easy walk of Amsterdam " We cannot say that a second glance effected any change in the opinion which, as Mr. Measom correctly anticipated, we had formed from the first.

But we should never have troubled our readers with Mr. Measom if he had contented himself with compiling a worthless topographi- cal work. That which alone seriously demands exposure is his attempt, under cover of a railway guide, to foist upon the public a series of outrageous puffs of certain commercial firms and tradesmen's establishments, selected by Mr. George Measom for reasons bast known to himself for personal inspection. These puffs are in the shape of accounts of visits made to the warehouses or shops in question by Mr. George Measom himself, and consist invariably of indiscriminate, vulgar, and bombastic laudation of the character of the sellers and the quality of the things sold, interspersed, after the fashion of the worst style of American advertisements, with far-fetched quotations, jingling attempts at eloquence. As we have sail, many of the tradesmen visited by Mr. Measom are of far too high standing to be injuriously affected by Mr. Measom's praise, but they ought to have known Mr. Measom's object, and they will certainly find no benefit result from his advocacy. His system is as follows. After describing the more important towns on the line, he. devotes a special chapter to what lie terms their "commercial aspect." Without ,preteuding even to discriminate between the respective merits of competing establishments, he selects some one manu- facturer, wine merchant, or shopkeeper, bespatters him with personal flattery, and then proceeds to devote his whole command of the arts of puffery, acquired during the labours of fifteen years, to prove that everything sold by the object of his panegyric is the best of its kind in the world. Of course, as there are trades and professions in which retiring partners or assistants are bound not to set up for themselves within a certain distance of the original firm, so Mr. Measom takes care never to mar the effect of his praise in one quarter by repeating it elsewhere within too small a radius. Cambridge indeed, a town which to m my parents must present a very highly commercial aspect, has, strange to say, none whatever in Mr. Measom's eyes. At Chelmsford and Colchester, however, Mr. Measom seems to have been more en rapport with the commercial community, and at Norwich he is quite in his element. We will give one or two specimens of his way of doing things. At Norwich the resident partner in some works received us with the un- strained courtesy which is so characteristic of an English gentle- man." We can only hope that Mr. Measom is entitled to as little credit on this point as he is in the matter of his engravings. We should prefer not to believe that a manufacturer of the standing of the one in question showed any courtesy whatever to Mr. Measom. Then follows a description of the various processes of manufacture, in which everything is "immense," "extraordinary," "beauti- ful," " truthful," or " genuine." At Norwich also Mr. Measom gives a carriage-builder the full benefit of his most artistic style. The following is a specimen :- " This extraordinary manufactory, viewed in all its details, affords matter of deep interest to the visitor. Here may be seen carriages for every part of the world—for foreign potentates, for our colonies, for India, for Australia, and the most distant places; while the home market is kept well supplied with vehicles that cannot be rivalled."

Here, after an impressive prelude, the expanse of the universe, regal splendour, and the greatness of the British Empire are successively suggested to the mind, in order to yaise it to a due pitch of attention, and then comes the plain, practical puff. " The home market is kept well supplied with vehicles that cannot be rivalled." It may well be imagined that Mr. Measom concen- trated on this occasion all the resources of his art applicable to coach-building, and that no one else in the business in the Eastern Counties is noticed by Mr. Measom. Can, however, the firm which he has selected possibly fancy that they will derive any benefit from inducing or permitting him to obtrude this sickening trash on the public? Cannot people who receive him with " courtesy " see that the profound disgust with which every one whose opinion is worth having must read his effusions, may possibly result in distrust of the productions he is allowed to extol?

Wine merchants' cellars and breweries seem to have been amongst the most salient points in the commercial aspect of the towns visited by Mr. Measom, and his skill is sorely taxed to mete out to them all, share and share alike, quotations from the Bible, Pliny, and Plato—whose weight as an authority on wine, by the -way, he strangely ascribes to his being " contemporary with the prophet Malachi "—and Bacchanalian rhapsodies in praise of

"such wine as can be purchased" at . Indeed he has unfortunately in one case made an oversight, by which the identical passage of puffery allotted to the claret of a Chelmsford wine merchant is repeated verbatim at Colchester. No praise of course can be too high for the booksellers who are agents [° for the popular Official Railway Guide Books by George Measom." But we cannot give a full idea of his style without quoting the following from a detached puff of a London ironmonger, introduced in a chapter of " addenda," most probably as a specimen for country tradesmen of what he can do :—

" The whole history of our country's progress is to be found in our mines of coal, lime, and iron, written legibly in that district of country known as South Staffordshire. Into it was poured, countless ages ere man was creation's lord, vast stores of ironstone, and here garnered up lay entombed the gigantic vegetation of a primeval world, as the fuel with which to release the metal from the stony embrace of the elements which surround it ; while in close proximity is also found the flux, i. e., lime, which aids in liquefying and purifying the metallic iron (also formed from the elements of an earlier world)."

Therefore buy Mr. pots, kettles, and fire-irons. We are not, however, to suppose that South Staffordshire was originally

allotted as a "claim" to Mr. to the exclusion of all iron- mongers since Tubal Cain.

It may be thought perhaps that we have bestowed more notice on this contemptible work than it deserves. But it must be recol- lected that by permitting its dedication to themselves, the Directors of the Great Eastern have unfortunately rendered it too probable that many residents and visitors in East Anglia will be deluded into giving three and sixpence for a book discreditable as regards its real object, and worthless for that which it profemes.