Chapter IV: Part 4

Poor old frivolous knight-errant! away he goes for ever out of human ken, with both eyes bandaged now, and all his enterprises accomplished; and, at the same time with him, dies off also another form of resistance to oppression, where the performer was of far humbler rank, and came in aid of justice in a much more legitimate way. There seems to have been no town in France of sufficient importance to have a court of civil or criminal process, which did not maintain a champion as one of the chief officers of its administration. The duty of this distinguished functionary was to supply any lack of evidence which might occur in the course of a trial; and as it was generally necessary to obtain the assistance of two witnesses in the conviction of a culprit, the champion watched over the cause, and when only one witness was producible, threw his sword into the scale which he believed to be just, and did battle with any one who would take up arms on behalf of the other side. All through the early centuries, the office of town or precinct champion was as well recognised, and considered as indispensable, as that of notary or judge. But some terrible things happened in the fifteenth century, which put the arbitrement of the sword into disrepute. Printing and gunpowder, when they came to maturity, were fatal to many a stout-armed gentleman, who had been installed in his honourable post of champion of the town, and had brought up his children with the honourable ambition of handling his sword and stepping into his shoes. How many Oxford coachmen and Cheltenham “whips,” in the same way, had to descend from the box, and turn their energies into other channels, on the first whistle of the railway engine!

It happened one day, says Alexis, in the first page of the second volume (which is equivalent to the middle or latter end of the fifteenth century), that a good many people were collected in the great chamber of the town-hall of Troyes, along with the mayor and bailiffs, when a curious question arose, as to which of all the trades and conditions were the worst. Everybody, as might be expected, laid claim to that bad eminence on behalf of his own. But at last it was arranged, that on that evening, and at their succeeding meetings, the question should be thoroughly gone into, and every man give some account of the evils he complained of, so that the company might decide after a full hearing of the evidence. On this hint the different personages speak. There is a beggar who paints a wretched picture of the state of his fraternity, even in those days of meritorious alms and food at the monastery gates.

“Who denies,” he cries, “that the beggar’s state is the most miserable of all?—who? Why, the bad Christians, the hard-hearted rich; and they are so plentiful now! How often have I heard it said in the days of my prosperity, that the poor were in the happiest state; that their revenues were secured on the charity of the public; and that they lived without care, with nothing to do but say their paternosters, and hold out their hands! Alas, alas! nobody thought of adding how often their hands remained empty—how often they had to submit in patience to the hunger of many days, to the cold of many months.”

Then come the farmer, the messenger, the comedian, and many more; but after the noble (for even he has discomforts to complain of), the tale is taken up by a person who is minutely described and introduced by the name of Vieuxbois.

Vieuxbois, who remembers the time when he was champion of the city, and believes that he is so still, though there is now neither champion nor lists, generally sits near the chimney. He is always dressed in an old suit of clothes, very tidy and clean, and always carries a long iron sword suspended by a sash of red silk. His face is so haggard and thin that it is nothing but bone. People call him more than a hundred years old, but he has the vanity of being thought young, and only confesses to ninety. This evening he rose from his chair, and having saluted the company several times with his sword, he resumed his chair, and thus began:—

“Gentlemen, you are all complaining of your callings, which proves, at least, that callings are still left you; but for us miserable champions—for us, the most miserable of you all—there is no calling left except in name. Oh! the long past, happy, blessed days of France! days, above all, of the fourteenth, thirteenth, twelfth centuries!—why can’t I prolong them into the present time! Then the sword of the champion was honoured—it decided where the judge was puzzled. Then the champion, the lists, the trumpet, the charge in every doubtful case: but now there is so much knowledge! there is so much learning! no more doubts—no more puzzled judges—and the champion’s occupation’s gone! But oh! little did my grandfather, the Champion of Chalons—he was hanged in that office—foresee this wretched time. Just before he was turned off, he summoned my father, who had fled from the scene in tears, and said, ‘Champion, my son, weep not: it does not become a champion to weep: the cause I supported was just. I die because I did not parry in carte. Study the carte, my son; it is the best of the thrusts: you must deliver it free—you must have your wrist well placed. My adversary made a movement—it was against all the rules—but it deceived me. Champion, my son, attend to your trade—it is a good one; and above all, I beseech you, do not neglect the carte.’ But the people became impatient, and cried out for his execution; they were enraged because he had undertaken the defence of a wretch whom they considered guilty; and disdaining to reason with his inferiors, my grandfather shrugged his shoulders two or three times in sign of contempt, and died like a true and noble champion.

“My father also was hanged. You are astonished, gentlemen; that is because you did not know the good old times, when, the moment a champion was vanquished, he was dragged from the lists, and hoisted on the gallows. After having been victorious a great number of times, he died at last, not from want of courage or address, but because he slipt. He died, recommending me always to wear sharp-headed nails in my shoes. I can declare that his fate was much regretted by the people, while the person for whom he fought, and who was going to be hanged along with him, had the bad taste to find fault with him in coarse insulting language. He was an advocate, and always an uncivil sort of man. My father was a man of fine manners and excellent temper. ‘Master Martean,’ he said, ‘neither you nor any of your craft are able to give me lessons in the management of my sword. I shall speak to you no more.’ He kept his word; the next moment they were run up. My mother brought me my father’s sword: and though it was at that time a little taller than myself, I managed to draw it from the sheath and swing it at arm’s-length. This was thought a good augury, and great expectations were entertained of me when I should be old enough to be champion. When I was twenty, my active life began. Two men of distinction, each above sixty years of age, had accused each other without sufficient proofs. The judicial duel was ordered, of course. A beautiful closed ring raised on the banks of the Marne was crowded on the following day with all the rank and fashion of Champagne—for such sights were already become rare. The combat was on the point of beginning. I was at the summit of felicity. My eyes flashed brighter than my arms. The party for whom the opposite champion was engaged, perhaps perceived this, for offers of accommodation were made, and the duel was at an end. The disappointment of the spectators was immense. The authorities feared an uproar, and to quiet the populace, it was proposed by the mayor and magistrates that I should marry the daughter of my adversary, and that a fête should be given in honour of the event. Her name was Championnette: she was beautiful as the day—she was just sixteen; and you may imagine I offered no opposition to the match. The wedding rejoicings commenced at once, and the enclosure where the combat was to have taken place, could scarcely contain the dancers. Next day there were joustings with sword and lance. The trumpets of the town-hall had never ceased their music, and at night there were bonfires and illuminations.”

After his marriage with Championnette, it was impossible for him to be the hostile champion to his father-in-law; and his travels in search of occupation take him through several districts in France. In all he finds the dignity of the office decaying, its privileges denied, and its income annihilated. He goes from place to place, but the scales of justice were now getting so evenly balanced that he seldom required the sword to adjust the weight. He comes, among other places, to Lyons. “What do you take us for?” says the bailiff. “Perhaps you think Lyons a Gothic town of the fourteenth century. Lyons is a polished city, enlightened and civilised, where everybody knows how to write. Nobody, therefore, can now deny his signature. Go rather to some out-of-the-way valley in the Jura or the Vosges. It is possible a champion may still be useful among the savages there.” It is impossible to describe the indignation of the gallant Vieuxbois on this insulting speech. However, he restrains his wrath, and passes on, but no better reception awaits him wherever he goes. At last there is a glimpse of prosperity and a chance of work when he gets to the valley of the Aspe, among the Pyrenees. The magistracy of that small republic receive him courteously, but even here he finds he comes too late. “‘We might have sent you,’ said the rulers of the republic, ‘into the valley of Lavedan, but it has no intention now of seeking a champion to resist our claims.’ ‘And why did the valley wish to fight you?’ I inquired. ‘It was because their little abbé, St Sevin, irritated against the valley of the Aspe, uttered his curse upon it. Whereupon every year we were visited with great storms and tempests, and sometimes for months the hail fell upon our republic, but we were miraculously avenged. The earth, and all the inhabitants, and all the cattle, great and small, were struck with sterility throughout the Lavedan. To get remission of this dreadful plague, they came and begged for mercy on the valley of the Aspe. Peace was made between the two valleys, and Lavedan was absolved from the sin of its old abbé. During the eighty years of this treaty, the conditions have several times been broken. Our republic demanded satisfaction. The valley of Lavedan wished to defend itself by a champion, but has not been able to find one. We therefore have no occasion for your services, but if a few acres of ground, a few sheep and oxen, a cottage such as you see——’

“Thanks, gentlemen of the republic of the Aspe,” says Vieuxbois, “my fathers were gentlemen, and lived by the sword. I am not yet so fallen as to maintain myself by flocks and herds.” But years pass on, and no doubt he looked back on the offers he had rejected with useless regret. Meanwhile his family becomes numerous, but they are victims of the advancing arts and sciences. One is a transcriber of manuscripts, and the press throws his pen out of work. Another illuminates old books, and engraving upsets his colours. Another is a maker of bows and arrows, and arbalists and other engines of war, but gunpowder and cannon unstring all his bows, and knock his ballistas in pieces. A grandson is sedulously educated for the profession of a fool; but as a profession it falls into disrepute, and the jester unlearns his quiddities, keeps his features at rest like other people, and starves as becomes a reasonable man. The only happy one of the family is another grandson, who is blessed with such a tremendous eruption on his face that he has got admission to a leprosy-house, where he is wonderfully fed and kindly treated. The eruption is not leprosy; but, in the alarming scarcity of real sufferers by that malady, the office-bearers of the houses of retreat, who derive great salaries for their posts (which they execute by deputy), are glad to accept a pensioner with so near a resemblance to the true disease; for what would they do if leprosy disappeared altogether? The story of the old champion comes to an end, and it is difficult to imagine that any of the other complainants can give a more wretched account of their position. But misery is, in fact, in that century, the characteristic of all conditions of life. As the ages move on, men get better; their places become more defined.—The remaining volumes of the work are occupied with the progress of the people, and their gradual elevation into civil consideration and political power. We may return to the same portrait-gallery for pictures of the innkeepers, the fishermen, the town-criers, the merchants, the nurses, the lawyers, and the artists of the different periods. They are all drawn from the life, and are warranted likenesses. But at present we have said enough.

BIOGRAPHY GONE MAD.

At certain intervals, ever since the days of Solomon, it has been found necessary, as a matter of sheer duty, to lift the voice of warning against that much study which wearies the flesh, and the making many books of which there is no end. It is now several years since a strong protest was raised in this Magazine against the too common and most reprehensible practice of raking among dead men’s ashes, and violating the confidences of the living, for no higher purpose than the gratification of biographic weakness and vulgar curiosity. Man is indeed, as Goethe has said, ever interesting to man, and no species of bookmaking finds readier excuses than biography. But man ought also to be sacred to man; and of all the injuries that can be inflicted on a dead man’s memory, none is more cruel than the act of the friendly ghoul who unnecessarily recalls him from the silence of the grave. _Corruptio optimi est pessissima._ Biography, well done, is one of the most instructive and interesting kinds of composition; ill done, it is about the worst. We call it ill done, either when a good subject is marred in the handling, or when the choice is an unworthy one. The number of men whose lives are worthy to be recorded for an ensample to mankind is really small. In saying so we are far from meaning to express a contemptuous opinion of human nature. Some of the best men that ever lived were those whose lives had fewest incidents, and offered the scantiest materials for the ingenuity of the bookmaker. Happy, it is said, is the nation whose annals are dull—happy also the man whose life escapes the chronicler, who passes at the end of his day’s work into the silent land, to enjoy “No biography, and the privilege of all the weary.”

A stupid biography of an interesting person is indeed a very lamentable thing; and not only so, but a grave injustice alike to the dead and to the living. Since the protest alluded to was uttered, there has been no lack of this sad work. The most conspicuous recent examples that occur to us are the Lives of Thomas Moore and of Lady Blessington. But though the life of a man of genius, served up in the form of hodge-podge, is rather a melancholy repast, there are biographic nuisances less tolerable still. The features of a Jupiter or an Apollo may be hard to recognise in the plaster of an incompetent dabbler; but if the model were really a noble one, something of the god will break through to edify the spectator. It is different, however, with the rude idol of the savage. The biography of a respectable mediocrity is, it may be safely said, among the least interesting or useful of literary performances. Minerva Press novels are bad enough (those who think the species is extinct are greatly mistaken); spasmodic poems are anything but enlivening; and numismatic treatises are not ambrosial fare; but against any of these we would back for true invincible unreadableness the Memoir and Remains, we will suppose, of the Rev. Jabez Jones, D.D., late pastor of Ramoth-Gilead Chapel, Battersea. We select our instance from the class of religious biographies, because it is by far the most numerous, and the most distinctly chargeable with the sin of bookmaking. Jabez, we have no doubt, was in his day and generation an excellent man, though given, as his Memoirs of course will amply testify, to unnecessary groaning. But why his life should have been written, is a mystery to be solved only by the astute publisher, who calculates on a sale of several hundred copies among the bereaved congregation of Ramoth-Gilead. The sorrowful biographer, whose name on the title-page plainly marks him as an eligible candidate for the degree of D.D., will inform us in a “sweet” preface that the materials of the present work were put into his hands, &c.; that, painfully conscious of his own inability, he had long, &c.; but that a perusal of the documents had so deeply impressed him with the importance of giving the world, &c.; that such as it is, in short, he commits it—and then is pretty certain to follow a piece of nauseous blasphemy as to the nature of the patronage to which the pious speculation is held entitled.[5] The number is perfectly sickening of bereaved husbands, sons, and fathers, who practise this strange alchemy on the penitential tears and devout breathings, the sick-bed utterances and dying ejaculations of sainted wives, mothers, and babes.

But bad as it is causelessly to exhume the poor victim of mortality in order to make him sit for his likeness, the posthumous method of biography is the natural and becoming one. Only when a man has finished his work, and escaped beyond the reach of human passions and cares, is it fitting to delineate his character and trace the story of his devious path through life. The practice of biographising living men, however, has now become very common. The publication of éloges used formerly to be reserved as a posthumous honour, but this generation is wiser, and writes the éloge while the subject of it can himself enjoy its perusal in the land of the living and the place of hope. One would think it a curious evidence of regard, independently of the question of delicacy, to adopt so suggestive a method of reminding a man that he is due to posterity. But tastes differ, and some men are not averse to the Charles V. method of trying on their shrouds, to see, as the old woman said, what “a bonnie corpse” they will make. With us in Britain this practice of spiritual vivisection, or _ante-mortem_ inquests, has been confined for the most part to short sketches, pretentiously critical in general, and very seldom of any value. Fundamentally gossiping in its character, this school of literary sketchers (what may be called the Biographical Life Academy) has appealed mainly to the weak curiosity that hungers after any small scraps of information regarding the private life and habits of living notorieties. Such curiosity is no doubt extremely natural, but the men who have undertaken the function of gratifying it, have, as might be supposed, been distinguished by no qualities less than by discernment and good taste, correctness of outline being with them a small consideration compared to abundance and strength of colour. This vulgar species of authorship, the servants’-hall gossip of the literary family, has, we hope, seen its palmy days.

On the other side of the Atlantic, however, the business seems to flourish, like all other business, with great briskness. Our American friends, excellent people as they are in so many respects, have long been known to us as pre-eminent in the gossiping line; one of the chief characteristics of the Anglo-American race being intense curiosity—an admirable principle, as every one knows, when subordinate to a high end, a decided weakness when not. To say that the American people universally are influenced by the spirit of vulgar curiosity, would be as unjust as it would be to charge the whole British nation with foulness of taste because the _Mysteries of London_ has found myriads of readers. But that the fashion has been exemplified very extensively by Americans of making the public familiar with the insides of private drawing-rooms, and telling the world how popular poets and historians handle a tea-pot or blow their noses, is a fact not to be denied. Among a people recognising, or professing to recognise, as the fundamental principle of government and society, the Irishman’s profound axiom, that “one man is as good as another—faith, and a great dale betther too!” it is not indeed surprising that in the sphere of literature, as well as in others, they should make more free with the characters and habits of private life than is by us old-fashioned Britons considered tasteful and becoming. Having now, however, passed their infancy, and in literature as well as in social development “progressed” towards manhood, it is high time that they should put away childish things. It has always grieved us to see citizens of the great Republic betray so weak-minded a delight in scrutinising the costume and domesticities of English aristocrats, or the private life and fixings of American democrats.

In the department of contemporary biography, it must be confessed our energetic cousins have fairly got the start of us. It seems, in fact, to have attained the rank of an “institution” among the other beautiful machinery of their political life. When Jullien visits the provinces, he heralds his coming by means of a set of fascinating portraits, which announce from every print and music shop window that the great Conductor is at hand. Somewhat similar, but more intellectual and elaborate, is the proceeding of the American “coming man.” No aspiring senator now thinks of trying for the Presidency without securing in good time the services of a competent biographer to relate the heroic story of his life, and make his transcendent merits known to all whom it may concern. Even a meditative Hawthorne turns his vision-weaving pen to such service, and considers it no way unworthy of his genius to polish off an electioneering biography of General Franklin Pierce. So deeply do politics mingle in the current of American life; so sweet to the aspiring statesman are the uses of biography!

But if the lives of politicians be written for the admiration of mankind and the good of the State, should the lives of the mightier men who make and unmake presidents and governments be esteemed less worthy of that honour? Assuredly not. At it then, ye diligent Yankee scribes, and hasten to convert into obsolete absurdity the oft-quoted line of the dull old fellow who sang—

“The world knows little of its greatest men.”

Let it not henceforth be said, to the reproach of civilisation, that the world was ignorant during their lives of the birth and genealogy, the schoolboy adventures and manly freaks, the trials and the triumphs of such men as Horace Greeley and James Gordon Bennett. Be careful to inform us, ye veracious cinder-gatherers—for posterity will not pardon the omission—the length, breadth, and weight of these remarkable men,—their complete phrenological development (so far as the addition of abnormal bumps by hostile shillelahs can permit accuracy),—the kind of clothes they wear—the kind of pens they write with, whether quill, iron, or brass—the ink they use, whether common blue-black or sometimes black-and-blue, or perhaps a cunning distillation of ditch-water—the attitude in which they sit when discharging their thunder at the heads of kings and cabinets, or composing their delicate invectives at one another;—in short, let us have perfect daguerreotypes of these supremely interesting and estimable men.

Behold! the thing is done, the good work has actually been commenced. There, lying before us, in all the square-rigged ugliness of New York upgetting, are the first-fruits of this new field of biographic enterprise—the lives, in two stout volumes, of the “two noble kinsmen,” the two great Arcadians whose names we have above mentioned. Many of our readers, perhaps not grossly illiterate persons either, will look up and ask, Who are Horace Greeley and James Gordon Bennett? While duly pitying the limitation of culture implied in such a query, we cannot be too hard on these poor ignoramuses, as we must plead guilty to having been ourselves frequently staggered, in reading American books, by meeting names associated with those of Milton and Aristides, as utterly new to us as was, till recently, that of his Majesty Kamehameha III., Dei gratiâ king of the Sandwich Islands. These two men, then, let all such ignoramuses know, are the editors of two widely circulated New York papers—the two most widely circulated, we believe, of any in America.[6] What other claims they have to the honours of biography and the remembrance of posterity, we shall consider by-and-by. Meantime we have to say of the books that they are the most unique things in the way of biography, or indeed of literature, that have come in our way since America, about a year ago, furnished us with the autobiography of one of her smartest citizens. They are of very different character—as different as the men whose lives they profess to record—but in both the biographic muse appears in a state of decided inebriety, highly unbecoming the ancient dignity of her vocation. In the work of Mr Parton she is what is called half-seas over, unsteadily hilarious, and amusingly absurd, hiccuping out smart things now and then in a way that is irresistible, then suddenly looking grave and uttering sublimities that are still more outrageously laughable. In the anonymous companion-volume she is far gone towards mortal insensibility; she might be said, in fact, to be in _delirium tremens_, but that there is not a single flash of the wild energy that diversifies the symptoms of that shocking malady. It is pure dazed stupidity and double-vision from beginning to end. We have met nothing comparable to it in all our experience of biographies.

The sole ground on which these volumes claim any notice, contemptible as they both are (though not in equal degree) in matter and treatment, is that which gave some importance to the infamous revelations of Barnum. They are in some degree typical; their subjects at least are so in a very considerable degree—“representative men” of their kind, and so far important. A newspaper editor is in all civilised countries an important personage. We are not going here to enter on an elaborate consideration of the functions and influence of the press—so let nobody dread a homily. The subject has been often enough handled well and ill, and lately we have heard a good deal about it. We are nowadays rather given to flourishing about the “Fourth Estate.” There is a tendency towards cant on this as on all other interesting subjects. The Fourth Estate is a grand fact, but let those who have any pretensions to connection with it rather strive to keep it so than talk magniloquently about it. As for those who have not, let them take care that it does its duty, and does not go beyond it. Newspaper editors, we say, are important personages; but they are like other human beings, some of them eminent for intellect and virtue, many of them highly respectable for both, others of them dignified by neither. The anomalous and fluctuating conditions of newspaper life make it inevitable that men should sometimes attain high influence in virtue of connection with the press, whom neither nature nor education has eminently qualified for the guidance of their fellow-men. This applies, of course, peculiarly (though not exclusively) to America, where, on the admirable Irishman’s maxim above quoted, everybody is equally fit for everything—faith, and a great deal fitter too! where toll-keepers and publicans are colonels in the army, and the man who fails as a ratcatcher turns his hand to preaching, and, if that fail also, straightway sets up a newspaper. But though applying peculiarly to the American press, our statement is not exclusive of Britain. Journalism is becoming, indeed, with us more and more of a recognised profession—a profession, too, calling for special gifts and training—gifts and training, higher and more liberal, to those who think rightly of their vocation, than do any of the three hitherto exclusively entitled “learned.” The press is no more with us, if ever it has been, a kind of literary Diggings, where the outcasts and desperadoes, the halt, the maimed, and the blind, of every other calling, may find a precarious refuge and irregular adventurer-work, from forging of thunderbolts to winnowing of ash-buckets. But it is true, nevertheless, that the fundamental conditions of success in this career are compatible with a moral and intellectual standard by no means exalted. It is a common mistake, that high literary ability is the first requisite for editorial success. The fact is nearly the other way. The first requisite is knowledge of men, the second confidence, and the third perseverance. Let a man possess the concentrated gifts of a whole academy of _belles lettres_, and be deficient in shrewd practical discernment of what suits the public, he may pipe ever so melodiously, but he will get few subscribers to dance. Let him know, or imagine that he knows, ever so well what suits the public, if he have not a quick eye to see what other men are fit for, and how far they can be trusted to do his work, he may shut his shop and retire. Let him possess encyclopædic knowledge, and the readiest flow of winged words, but if he be not a man of hard-working, dogged persistence, he might as well sow the great Sahara as undertake to conduct a newspaper. A paper once fairly established may, indeed, conduct itself successfully, despite an unpractical and easy editor; for good machinery compels even inert matter into activity and order. But to rear a paper into vigorous existence amid a host of competitors—to make bricks without straw, and snatch the bread of victory out of the jaws of famine—the editor or conductor must be, in the first place, a man of business—it is of very subordinate importance that he be a man of letters. Hence it is sometimes objected, that newspapers, being in so many cases merely commercial speculations, must necessarily subordinate principle to profit. The objection is neither sound in logic, nor, in this country at least, true in fact. The manufacturer of shawls and blankets is not the less an honest man and estimable citizen because his primary object is not the good of the community but his own private advantage. His shawls and blankets are not the less excellent and indispensable because he converts them into pelf. If the shawl-manufacturer indeed become a power in the State, and begin to arrogate high virtue to himself for his services to the public, and to dictate laws in virtue of the prosperity of his business, it is reasonable that we should apply to him something analogous to the question, “Doth Job fear God for nought?” Applying this test to the press of our own country, we arrive, on the whole, at satisfactory conclusions. If we do not see so much as we could wish of a grave sense of responsibility, and a careful weighing of facts and motives, we know how much is due to the terrible exigencies of time. This we are assured of, that in no other profession or occupation is there more of manliness and fair play; in none other is the professional honour so untarnished by the contact of lucre; and, so far as chastity of sentiment and expression is concerned, “the freest press in Europe (Mr Macaulay might have said, in the world) is also the most prudish.” Occasional examples of recklessness and violence, of meanness and bad taste, invalidate in no wise the force of this general assertion. Newspaper editors and writers are, we repeat, human like others. To expect that they should in every case display faultless wisdom and virtue is a devout imagination, but an extremely vain and irrational one. As to the paltry £. S. D. considerations, we have, for our own part, often admired, as a striking example of the innate virtue of human nature, despite its depravity, the magnanimous zeal which sustains so many newspaper proprietors in the task of instructing the public at a very swinging loss to themselves!

The power of the press is greatly aided, as every one knows, by the mystery which shrouds the writer, merging all personality of the individual in the mysterious plurality of the organ through which he speaks. It is not John or Thomas that proclaims the danger of the nation, the incapacity of a Minister, the justice or injustice of a deed. It is an unknown voice, uttered out of darkness, and therefore formidable—the voice not of one, but of many, and therefore claiming respect. The voice of a Greek tragedian sounded through his mask more awful than it really was; and the majestic buskin raised a very ordinary figure to the kingly height of Agamemnon. The “we” of John or Thomas, through the speaking-trumpet of the _Times_, becomes a very different pronoun from the “I” of these gentlemen uttered through their individual windpipes. If any argument were necessary to prove that this formidable anonymousness is not only essential to the liberty of the press, but the true safeguard of its health and honesty, we might point for proof to the Press of those States, whether despotic or free, where it is not tolerated. In the United States, for example, there is almost as little anonymous writing as in Paris or Vienna. There is no statute on the subject, and no legal censorship exists, but the state of public feeling makes it almost impossible for a man to conceal his personality. The writer may not put his name to his articles, but if he does not, it is only because he finds it unnecessary. Is the press there more honest, more discreet, more tender of individual character than in Britain? No candid American will answer that question with an affirmative. The press of America is not the less formidable, not the more honest and scrupulous, that its principal writers are known or notorious men.

The character of the two nations is illustrated by some of their distinctive peculiarities in this respect. With us the tendency is to merge the individual in the body—with them the notion of liberty is associated with the clear recognition of individual independence. Here the newspaper editor is generally the invisible head of an association—there he is a right-well-known entity of flesh and blood, as cowhide and rattan applications have too often most strikingly demonstrated. There the journal is generally his, and his name figures conspicuously at the head of its columns—here he belongs more frequently to the journal, and, while wielding a great power in the community, his personal existence is a kind of myth, and his name may never have been heard by the great majority of his readers. The American editor, on the contrary, must make himself known, or he will not be listened to. All pugnacious republicans must have the means of knowing who it is that abuses them. The occupant of the White House must be made familiar with the name of the man who attacks or defends his policy, whose mouth may be silenced, or whose fidelity rewarded by a due share of the federal dollars. Let it not be imagined that any uncomplimentary remarks we make on the American press are intended to apply universally. So speaking, we should convict ourselves at once of ignorance and dishonesty. There are American newspapers and editors of high and unblemished character, as there are American politicians worthy of a better fate than to be kept waiting three months for the election of a Speaker. But of the American press generally the criticism still holds good, that, while boasting to be the freest in the world, it is in practical thraldom to an inextricably tangled system of democratic terrorism. Improvement there has been, we delight to think, within the last dozen years—so much so, that even papers which were the very offscourings of journalism, have become, in their European editions at least, fit for decent mortals to read. Out of a total of nearly three thousand papers, circulating among so mixed and changeful a population, it is little wonder, also, that there should be a large class of papers at which a cultivated man of any nation must look with contempt and sorrow. We know too well, from examples in our own colonies—as in India and Australia—how, in heterogeneous and young communities, where men of high talent and education seldom resort except in the established paths to success, newspapers are apt to fall into the hands either of government agents or of reckless adventurers, with the natural result, in the one case, of insolence and servility, in the other, of indecent violence and gossiping personality. That, therefore, in a country like the United States, where men of intelligence and enterprise are never at a loss for profitable occupation, the press should be left in a great measure to those who can get nothing better to do, need not surprise us; nor, as the necessary result, that its moral and intellectual standard should hitherto have been such as a civilised and educated nation would, if it were not too busy, and too jealous of foreign criticism, have viewed with consternation as a professed mirror of itself.

While willingly granting thus much, the painful fact remains, that the papers which have all along enjoyed the largest share of public countenance in the United States, are those whose conductors have most openly set at defiance every sentiment of justice, decency, and good taste. The mere circulation of a journal is not, indeed, a conclusive test of its importance as an organ of public opinion, but it clearly enough points out what way the taste of the majority lies, and in a land of universal suffrage it gauges exactly the amount of its political influence. Our _Weekly Dispatch_ has perhaps twenty readers for the _Spectator’s_ one, but the one reader probably has more power in the commonwealth than the twenty. In a commonwealth, on the other hand, where all men are equally good, a hundred thousand Barnums are as good as a thousand centuries of Washington—faith, and in American politics, “a great dale betther too!” Thus it is that the most widely circulated paper becomes the greatest power in the State, and a power to which, even while loathing it, presidents and politicians are forced to bow the knee. Unwilling as we are that Mr James Gordon Bennett should lose any of the benefit accruing to him from these remarks (which, of course, he will turn duly to account),[7] we have no hesitation in saying that they are intended to apply _par excellence_ to the organ which, under his consummate management, has resolved one of the most singular problems of modern times. That problem may be stated thus: Given the minimum of literary ability, and the maximum of moral worthlessness—to educe out of their combination a machinery which shall control the political action of a Great Republic, and attain a leading place among the recognised mouthpieces of twenty million English-speaking freemen. There is a question of maxima and minima over which Dr Whewell might puzzle his knowing head till doomsday, if he omitted to take into his calculations an element or two of the plus description! What these elements are, we must, however, leave for after consideration. In the mean time we propose to treat our readers to a few of the biographic delicacies furnished by the considerate Mr J. Parton. We consider his volume in every way entitled to the precedence. It was the first published, and evidently suggested the rival performance. It has all the marks of honesty about it, and, compared with the Life of Bennett, is a perfect _chef-d’œuvre_ of ability. Its subject, in like manner, if considerably removed from our idea of a hero or a gentleman, is, compared with the editor of the _New York Herald_, a very Bayard in chivalry, a Job in uprightness.

Mr Parton sets about his work in a very thorough-going manner. The industry with which he has raked together all the information that could possibly be gathered regarding not only Horace Greeley, but Horace’s ancestors to the third and fourth generation, is quite inconceivable; and his own ingenuous account of his preliminary labours is well calculated to awaken, if not the admiration, at least the astonishment of the reader. The style of procedure is exquisitely characteristic; and, as he himself phrases it, “the reader has a right to know the manner” thereof. Let us thank heaven that the promulgation of the recipe is not likely here to instigate imitation. First of all, the ingenious youth procures, “from various sources, a list of Mr Greeley’s early friends, partners, and relations; also a list of the places at which he had resided.” The young bloodhound! This done, “all those places I visited; with as many of those persons as I could find I conversed, and endeavoured to extract from them all that they knew of the early life of my hero.” From these veracious sources this high-minded young scribbler compiled the narrative of the great man’s early years, not disdaining even to accost drunken “old soakers” on the highway who might “hiccough out” a little tale about Greeley; and where he could not ferret out information on the spot, applying for it _by letter_. But this was a small portion of the self-imposed labour, which included a diligent inspection of the complete files of the “_New Yorker_, _Log Cabin_, _Jeffersonian_, _American Laborer_, _Whig Almanac_, and _Tribune_,” nearly every number of which, “more than five thousand in all,” he carefully examined. After such a course of reading, our wonder is, not that the biographic muse is slightly maudlin, but that she survived to put two sentences together!

We are treated to a preliminary sketch of the history of Londonderry (not omitting the siege), and the Scoto-Irish colony who thence emigrated to New England. To the hasty reader all this may seem highly unnecessary, but to those who are desirous deeply to penetrate into a “nature” so uncommon as that of Horace Greeley, it is supremely important, as we are told that “from his maternal ancestors he derived much that distinguishes him from men in general.” Another chapter is devoted to the paternal ancestors, regarding one of whom it is interesting to learn that he was a “cross old dog,” “as cunning as Lucifer,” and that he died at the age of sixty-five, with “all his teeth sound!” At length, at page 33, we come to the great fact of Horace’s birth. As has been the case with many great men, it was attended with some remarkable circumstances. To these our biographer does full justice. His account of the interesting scene is too fine to be omitted:—

“The mode of his entrance upon the stage of the world was, to say the
least of it, unusual. The effort was almost too much for him, and, to
use the language of one who was present, ‘he came into the world as
black as a chimney.’ There was no sign of life. He uttered no cry; he
made no motion; he did not breathe. But the little discolored stranger
had articles to write, and was not permitted to escape his destiny. In
this alarming crisis of his existence, a kind-hearted and experienced
aunt came to his rescue, and by arts, which to kind-hearted and
experienced aunts are well known, but of which the present chronicler
remains in ignorance, the boy was brought to life. He soon began to
breathe; then he began to blush; and by the time he had attained the
age of twenty minutes, lay on his mother’s arm, a red and smiling
infant.”

If the reader does not grant that to be one of the most graceful climaxes in biographic literature, we shall not write another word. Presuming on a general unanimity on this point, we proceed. The red and smiling infant in due time of course turned out a prodigy; “he took to learning with the promptitude and instinctive irrepressible love with which a duck is said to take to the water,” and was able to read “before he had learned to talk.” In spelling he soon became pre-eminent; and great marvels are recorded of his orthographic prowess. Unfortunately he was less distinguished by those virtues which we usually desiderate in boys. Though never afraid of ghosts, or overawed by superiority of rank or knowledge, he was eminently deficient in physical courage. “When attacked, he would neither fight nor run away, but ‘stand still and take it;’” the report of a gun “would almost throw him into convulsions.” Fishing and bee-hunting were the only sports he cared for, “but his love of fishing did not originate in what the Germans call the ‘sport impulse.’ Other boys fished for sport; Horace fished for _fish_.” Bee-hunting, again, “was profitable sport, and Horace liked it amazingly. His share of honey generally found its way to the store.” His passion for books was generally attributed to indolence, and it was often predicted that Horace would never “get on.” Superficial idea! Even in very early life, says Mr Parton complacently, he gave proof “that the Yankee element was strong within him. In the first place, he was always _doing_ something; and in the second, he had always something to _sell_.”

Notwithstanding Horace’s remarkable cleverness, we are told that he was sometimes taken for an idiot—a stranger having once inquired, on his entering a “store” in a brown study, “what darn fool is that?” Even his own father declared that the boy would “never know more than enough to come in when it rains.” These pleasing anecdotes are given on the authority of a bibulous old wretch, whom the indefatigable Mr Parton encountered and cross-questioned on the highway. He was quite drunk at the time, but “as the tribute of a sot to the champion of the Maine Law, the old man’s harangue was highly interesting.” Mr Parton sets it down to the praise of his hero, that though brought up in the bosom of New England orthodoxy, “from the age of twelve he began to doubt,” and “from the age of fourteen he was known, wherever he lived, as the champion of Universalism.” Here the biographer indulges in what he considers appropriate reflections, and points out to his readers the valuable effects of youthful infidelity. “The boy,” he coolly observes, “seems to have shed his orthodoxy easily.”[8] Horace Greeley was in a fair way of training for his editorship.

The juvenile Universalist had long been ambitious of becoming a printer, and at last obtained a vacant apprenticeship in the office of Mr Amos Bliss, proprietor of the _Northern Spectator_. The great event is described with elaborate circumstantiality. The young “tow-head” proved a first-rate workman, and presently tried his hand at composition. “The injurious practice of writing ‘compositions,’” says his biographer, “was not among the exercises of any of the schools which he had attended.” Considering the general literary character of editorial writing in the United States, we are not surprised to find an American pronounce the early practice of composition _injurious_; the sentiment evidently is not peculiar to Mr Parton. Early attention to style might of course tend to weaken that native force in the use of epithets which apparently conduces so much to editorial success. Horace also joined a debating society, where he proved himself a perfect “giant.” His manners were entirely free from aristocratic taint, or any weak tendency to politeness. “He stood on no ceremony at the table; he _fell to_ without waiting to be asked or helped, devoured everything right and left, stopped as suddenly as he had begun, and vanished instantly.” Again, “when any topic of interest was started at the table, he joined in it with the utmost confidence, and maintained his opinion against anybody.” He never went to tea-parties, never joined in an excursion, and “seldom went to church.” A most interesting young man, on the whole, was Horace Greeley.

At length the _Northern Spectator_ broke down, and the apprentice was left to shift for himself. His departure is described in quite a choice Minerva-Press style. “It was a fine cool breezy morning in the month of June 1830; Nature had assumed those robes of brilliant green which she wears only in June, and welcomed the wanderer forth with that heavenly smile which plays upon her changeful countenance _only when she is attired in her best_. Deceptive smile!” &c. &c. Horace at length determined to try his fortune in New York, and with ten dollars in his pocket, a shabby suit on his back, and a small bundle on his stick, landed “at sunrise, on Friday the 18th of August 1831,” near the Battery. The biographer, as in duty bound, comes out strong, and Benjamin Franklin, with his penny roll, appears in the proper place to garnish the story. “The princes of the mind,” says he, waxing sublime, “always remain incog. till they come to the throne.” Poor Horace’s appearance “was all against him.” Certainly, if the vignette representation of the youth with which Mr Parton has adorned his volume conveys any adequate idea of his aspect that morning, the statement is emphatically true. The prince of the mind was incog. with a vengeance—a more calculating and skinny-looking young Yankee it would be difficult to imagine. To the portrait on the opposite page, of the adult Horace in his white greatcoat—bought from an Irish emigrant!—we must, however, give the palm as a thoroughly characteristic representation of a full-blown Yankee Wilkes-Bentham Socialist, Maine Law champion, Vegetarian, Spirit-rappist, and we don’t know what else. The following bit of information is important:—

“The gentleman to whose intercession Horace Greeley owed his first
employment in New York, is now known to all the dentists in the Union
as the leading member of a firm which manufactures annually twelve
thousand artificial teeth. He has made a fortune, the reader will be
glad to learn, and lives in a mansion up town.”

To the event which gave Horace his “First Lift” in the world, the biographer devotes a whole chapter. That event was the establishment of the first Penny Paper. The idea originated in the head of an unfortunate medical student afflicted by Providence with ready cash to the amount of fifteen hundred dollars. Horatio David Sheppard, unwisely neglecting his pestle and scalpel, took to dabbling in newspapers and magazines, and in due time found himself _minus_ his dollars. Speculatively musing as he passed through Chatham Street, a great mart of penny wares, he was struck with the rapid sales effected by the energetic stall-keepers and itinerant venders of shoe-laces. Parting with an odd cent or penny seemed so natural and easy a proceeding that the offer of any article for that sum seemed irresistible. Might not a newspaper be produced at one cent with certain success? The idea, it must be admitted, was a happy one. As might have been expected, however, the proposal at first excited unbounded ridicule, and for eighteen months Dr Sheppard could not get “one man” to believe in its feasibility. At last, on New Year’s Day, 1833, appeared the _Morning Post_, published by “Greeley and Story,” price two cents. It lived only twenty-one days, dying from pure want of funds. The idea was soon after successfully realised by other speculators, and in a few years the penny press was able to take society by the throat. Its first reception is thus described:—

“When the respectable New Yorker first saw a penny paper, he gazed at
it (I saw him) with a feeling similar to that with which an
ill-natured man may be supposed to regard General Tom Thumb, a feeling
of mingled curiosity and contempt; he put the ridiculous little thing
into his waistcoat pocket to carry home for the amusement of his
family; and he wondered what nonsense would be perpetrated _next_.”