The Beau Ideal We are, as readers may on occasion
have noticed, not a little proud of our founder, first editor, and distant father-figure, the radical R. S. Rintoul of Dundee. Journalists are much of a muchness in some respects, however their principles and policies may differ, and it can't be denied that we do not always resist the temp- tation to take ourselves too seriously. The other evening our Common Market correspondent (who is certainly taken seriously, and deservedly, however he takes himself) was leafing through the journals of his great-grandfather, John Hunter, an Edinburgh lawyer of literary tastes and a wide acquaintance, when he came on the following entry for a date in March, 1839:
We reached town about nine o'clock and while we were having some oysters Rintoul, Editor of the Spectator, dropped in and staid till near two in the morning. I found him more agreeable than I expected and he really talked well and with gusto on many literary topics. His conceit is excessive—and after all he is only clever. But then he is clever and that's something—and the very beau ideal of a news- paper editor, keeping all his assistants (much superior men to himself) in dire subordination and imparting a unity of tone to the whole by his knack of touching up and cutting and carv- ing. When all is done he fancies he has done all. We had a great deal of talk about old times when he was Editor of the Dundee Advertiser and had Mudie, a man of great but ill-regulated talent, as his coadjutor.
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