Revue

“ He turned to private tuition and to literary criticism. After the publication of successful articles in the Revue Bleue, he became connected with the Revue des Deux Mondes, first as contributor, then as secretary and sub-editor, and finally, in 1893, as principal editor. ”

“ Can there be any doubt about the traits and outward signs of a noble character, and is not the style of an author the manners of his soul?
Is there a lyceum lecturer in the country who is above manoeuvring for the applause of his audience? or a writer who is willing to make himself of no account for the sake of what he has to say? Even in the best there is something of the air and manners of a performer on exhibition. The newspaper, or magazine, or book is a sort of raised platform upon which the advertiser advances before a gaping and expectant crowd. ”

“ The managers may know what the audience wants, just as the editors of some of the most sensational newspapers say that they make a newspaper to suit the public. The newspaper need not be well written, but it must startle with incident and surprise, found or invented. An observer must notice that the usual theatre-audience in New York or Boston today laughs at and applauds costumes, situations, innuendoes, doubtful suggestions, that it would have blushed at a few years ago. Has the audience been creating a theatre to suit its taste, or have the managers been educating an audience? ”

“ Then, for the benefit of the smaller number who are really interested in the drama as a serious art, the editor-in-chief might avail himself of the fact that the Sunday issue, while it is still a newspaper containing the news of the preceding twenty-four hours, is also a magazine, to be read in more leisurely fashion, and therefore at liberty to treat timely topics with a larger freedom. ”

“ Almost every kind of writing is used by newspapers. All kinds of literature are printed in them—the scholarly essay, the article of argument, the expository editorial paragraph, the story of fiction, the language of verse, the consideration of art, music, the play, all sorts of description of all kinds of happenings in every part of our old earth—and all are written without uniformity of diction or construction. There is no style that the newspaper rejects. The experienced editor seeks diversity of writing and of topic in every column. ”

“ And, finally, as to your proposal of making some public journal the vehicle of a discussion independent of the lectures, I regret that I feel again obliged to decline pledging myself to concur in it. While I reserve to myself the right of noticing and replying to any communication which may appear, in a duly authenticated form, in any of the public journals, I must at the same time express my conviction, that a newspaper is not the most desirable medium for disquisition on the deep and awful subjects which must pass under review in a controversy like that in which we are about to engage. ”

“ Almost all newspaper editorial articles, critiques of the drama or of music, and all news articles are written at a single sitting and under the constant admonition to “hurry up” both mind and movement. The writer must acquire the art of instant concentration of thought on the one subject, of instantly recalling precedents and of quickly foreseeing results. ”

“ There is an editorial tradition—it might almost be termed a superstition—which I think will have to be abandoned. It is that a certain space in the journal must be filled with editorial, and that some of the editorials must be long, without any reference to the news or the necessity of comment on it, or the capacity of the editor at the moment to fill the space with original matter that is readable. There is the sacred space, and it must be filled. ”

“ But I must say a word of literature in which I shall not speak of it in its ordinary sense, and shall yet speak of it in that sense which of all perhaps, in the present day, should be considered the most ordinary. I mean the every-day periodical literature of the press. Most of those who can read, it is to be hoped, read books; but all who can read do read newspapers. ”

“ In the narrow sense of the term, they are not literary reviews; the function of periodicals that discuss present day politics, sociology, theology, history, science, art and numerous other generic subjects is more inclusive and appeals to a much larger audience than the periodical of literary criticism. In the quarterlies and monthlies we look for the most authoritative reviews of the important books of the day; but for general [Pg xxxvii] literary review and gossip, a new class of monthlies, best represented by Dr. ”

“ Dear Sir—In a late paragraph respecting the Southern Literary Messenger, you did injustice to that Magazine, and perhaps your words, if unanswered, may do it an injury. As any such wrong is far from your thoughts you will, of course, allow the editor of the Messenger the privilege of reply.
The reputation of a young Journal, occupying a conspicuous post in the eye of the public, should be watched by those who preside over its interests, with a jealous attention, and those interests defended when necessary and when possible. But it is not often possible. ”

“ It is true that if I opened the newspapers I generally read to the contrary in them—but if there were some few serious organs of public opinion among these journals, edited by courageous and talented men, who did their best to serve their country by their writings, whatever their opinions might be, how many more had editors who were mere slander-mongers, and columns all the more eagerly read, the more calumnious they were, and the more they pandered to every envious and subversive passion. ”

“ For periodicals—newspapers, magazines, reviews—are the Fools' Paradise of the commonplace, the mediocre, the orthodox, the respectable. As the strength of a chain must be measured by its weakest link, so the thought of a periodical must be measured by the thought of its most imbecile subscribers. ”

“ Scholars sneer at and would fain dispense with them altogether; and the public, grown lazy and helpless by this constant use of props and stays, can now scarce brace itself even to get through a magazine article, but reads in the daily paper laid beside the breakfast plate a short notice of the last number of the long established and popular review, and thereupon passes its judgment and is content. ”

“ Not only are the editorials of a single editor and the editorials from a single newspaper collected and published in book form, but the editorials of one paper are reprinted on the editorial pages of other papers, they are reprinted as advertisements, they are copied in the news columns of the press, and they are collectively copied in an effort to secure a consensus of public opinion on important questions. ”

“ In our own day there is still another source of information, which, agreeably or odiously according to the temperament of the reader, keeps us in touch with courts and what goes on there—the periodical press; while afar off in the future one can imagine the historian bent over his desk, surrounded by books and knee-deep in newspapers, selecting and weighing events, studying characters, developing personalities, and passing what he hopes may be a final judgment on the court and period he is considering. ”

“ An immense, imposing, and highly useful current of literature flows through the magazines, which have, by their number, beauty, and adaptation, come to be a distinguishing feature of the nineteenth century. This class of literature is usually called “Periodical,” and it embraces the magazines and reviews devoted to general literature and science, the class magazines devoted to particular branches of science, art, or industry, and the publications of schools and societies. Most periodicals published in the English language are monthlies. ”

“ Modern editorials have been reprinted, as those from the London Times,—"third leaders" that "are meant to turn the reader from affairs and interests of the moment to a consideration 'of man, of nature, and of human life' in their larger, more permanent aspect. In one or another form they represent the daily demand and supply of material for thought. ... They are journalism; but in them journalism is extending itself towards, is even becoming, literature." ”

“ It is essential to good work that the book be absolutely true in the press, and that the head mark and the top of the board which has been pulled down, be on a level with the top surface of the jaw of the press. ”

“ The journalism of the reign has been so intimately associated with literature that were my space more ample I should have chosen to devote a chapter to that subject alone. Many of the men I have mentioned, perhaps most of them, have at one time or another contributed to the journals or magazines of the day. ”

“ Not less important than the preservation of newspapers is that of reviews and magazines. In fact, the latter are almost universally recognized as far more important than the more fugitive literature of the daily and weekly press. Though inferior to the journals as historical and statistical materials, reviews and magazines supply the largest fund of discussion concerning such topics of scientific, social, literary, and religious interest as occupy the public mind during the time in which they appear. ”

“ A young man who has gained an entry into the journalistic world can sometimes get through a prodigious amount of work, and at the time I am speaking of it often happened that within the week, besides my morning duties upon the Globe, I would furnish one, and sometimes two, articles to the Saturday Review, an article to the Examiner, another to the World, and, in addition, three or four columns of art criticism to the Pall Mall Gazette, apart from regular work in the same department for the Manchester Guardian, and occasional articles in other daily or weekly journals. ”

“ We shall have to consider the rise and performances of two great individual writers, one of whom entirely re-created, if he may not almost be said to have created, the criticism of art in England, while the other gave a new temper, if not exactly a new direction, to the criticism of literature; and we shall have, in regard to periodicals, to observe the rise, in the first place of the weekly newspaper, and then of the daily, as competitors in strictly critical and literary work with the quarterly and monthly reviews, as well as some changes in these latter. ”

“ The modern American magazines have now fallen heir to the power exerted formerly by pulpit, lyceum, parliamentary debates, and daily newspapers in the moulding of public opinion, the development of new issues, and dissemination of information bearing on current questions. ”

“ I deal here first with editing, by which I do not mean the management of a whole newspaper—for this has no connection whatever with the art of letters—but the selection, arrangement, and annotating of work produced by another hand, and entrusted to the journalist for publication in his columns. The work is far easier than might appear at first sight. ”

“ To make interesting what is often considered dry and unattractive in proceedings of various public meetings, is the chief problem in writing news stories concerning them. Simple, clear explanation of the meaning of significant parts of the proceedings, lively accounts of debate on various measures, and vivid description of persons and scenes connected with them—all add to the interest of the stories. Too often, however, insignificant incidents of casual interest are played up as features of meetings of importance to the subordination or even to the exclusion of matters of vital concern. ”

“ A newspaper is a living organism, threaded through with the nerves of men and women, inspired by their spirit, animated by their ideals and thought, the living vehicle of their own adventure of life. So The Tribune seemed to us then, in that last [Pg 108] hour, when we looked back on our labor and comradeship, our laughter, our good times together on “the rag,” as we had called it. ”

“ They even publish a magazine in our language—or in what they confidently believe to be such—which is certainly amusing, and in its way instructive, for it shows the utter hopelessness of our becoming intelligible to them. ”

“ More and more must these requirements be fulfilled by the aspiring journalist. As the world passes from the Rule of Force—force of prowess, force of habit, force of convention—to the Rule of Numbers, the daily journal is destined, if it survives as a power, to become the teacher—the very Bible—of the people. The people are already beginning to distinguish between the wholesome and the meretricious in their newspapers. Newspaper owners, likewise, are beginning to realize the value of character. ”

“ A Work of Fiction by some novelist of highest position will run through the pages of the Magazine, and will be illustrated by artists of known excellence. With a full sense of what is involved in their promise, and with a firm resolution to abide by their pledges, the Publishers undertake to spare no exertion that is necessary to secure the highest class of contributions, to place the Magazine in the first rank of serials, and to fit it to take its place on the table and on the shelves of all classes of cultivated Englishmen. ”

“ It is a well-known fact among successful magazine editors that their most striking successes have been made by material to which unknown names were attached, where the material was fresh, the approach new, the note different. That is what builds up a magazine; the reader learns to have confidence in what he finds in the periodical, whether it bears a famous name or not. ”

“ The Phrenological Journal proves that the increasing years of a periodical is no reason for its lessening its enterprise or for diminishing its abundance of interesting matter. If all magazines increased in merit as steadily as The Phrenological Journal, they would deserve in time to show equal evidences of popularity. ”