THE PRESS.-SOUTHEY.

295

will speak; and, it may be, louder and longer too than Buonaparte's batteries. Wellington himself cannot silence their fire. And if their engine-their organ- the Press, speak trumpet-tongued against the Great Measure, and the Great Man who carried it by stealing a march on the Friends of the Constitution, so as to take them fatally on flank, and by bribing its Enemies, so as to bring them down in formidable array in front of the army of the Faithful surprised in their position-does he hope, powerful as he is in Place, in Genius, and in Fame, to carry by siege, by sap, or by storm, that Battery which ere now has played upon Thrones till they sunk in ruins, and their crowned Kings fled eleemosynary pensioners into foreign lands!

Shepherd. I didna ken, sir, you had thought sae highly o' the Gentlemen o' the Periodical Press.

North. Periodical! Time is not an element, James, that can enter into any just judgment on the merits of such a question. The same minds are at work for the Press all over Britain, whatever may be the seasons of their appearance in print. I do think very highly of many of the Gentlemen of the Press. Nor does it matter one iota with me, whether they set the Press a-going once a-year or once a-day.

Shepherd. I see there's nae essential distinction.

North. With all my reverence for Mr Southey, I cannot help thinking, that by speaking so bitterly and contemptuously in some passages of his admirable Progress and Prospects of Society, of magazines and newspapers, he has glanced aside from the truth, and been guilty of not a little discourtesy to his literary brethren.

Shepherd. He shouldna hae done that—but ye maunna be angry at Mr Soothey.

North. Nor am I. Why, James, the self-same men who write in the Quarterly Review, of which, next and equal to the accomplished and powerful Editor,' Mr Southey is the ornament and support, write, and that too not by fits and starts, but regularly, and for both fame and bread, in magazines and newspapers. For many years the Editor of the Quarterly Review, along with our friend the Professor, who still lends me his aid-contributed, as Mr Southey and all the world know, largely to the Magazine which I have the honour of 1 John G. Lockhart.

2

2 Wilson.

296 SOUTHEY'S ATTACK ON MAGAZINES REPELLED.

feebly editing; and so did and do some of Mr Southey's most esteemed personal friends, such as Mr Lamb and Mr Coleridge. Indeed I could show Mr Southey a contribution-list of names that would make him stare-from Sir Walter Scott to Sir Peter Nimmo.

Shepherd. Mr Soothey maun hae meant to except Blackwood. North. I fear not, James.

Shepherd. That's stupit.

North. The editor of Colburn's Magazine1 is illustrious over Europe the best critic, and one of the best poets of his age; and many of his contributors are, elsewhere, successful and influential authors. In brief, I would beg leave to say most kindly to the Laureate, that as much, and perhaps more varied talent, is shown in those two Magazines every month, than in that Review every quarter; and that, without any disparagement to the best of all Quarterly Reviews.

Shepherd. I confess I canna help agreein wi' you, sirthough, at the same time, it's kittlier to write in the Quarterly than in Maga. At ony rate, Lockhart aye sends me back my articles

North. Which I never do.

Shepherd. Dinna ye?—um.

North. True, we of Maga are not so pompous, authoritative, dogmatical, doctorial (perhaps, however, fully more professorial), as ye of the Quarterly; we have not the same satisfaction in constantly wearing wigs, and occasionally shovel

hats; nor do we, like ye, at all times, every man's son of you, indite our articles with a huge pile of books encumbering our table, in a room surrounded by maps, and empty of all bottles save one of eye-water. Our mice do not come from mountains in labour, but out of small chinks and crannies behind the chimney-cheeks of our parturient fancies. When our mountains are in travail they produce mammoths. Absurd, trifling, and ridiculous, we often too often, are,-ye never; but dull, heavy-nay, stupid-ye sometimes are, while with us, these are universally admitted to be the most impossible of all impossible events in nature. In mere information or what is called knowledge-learning, and all that—facts, and so forth-we willingly give ye the pas: but neither are we ignorant; on the contrary, we are well acquainted with arts and literature, and in the ways of the world-up both to trap 1 Thomas Campbell.

MAGA AND THE QUARTERLY.

297

and to snuff, which, save your reverences! you are not always to the degree your best friends could wish. You have a notion in your wise heads, that you are always walking in advance of the public; we have a notion in our foolish ones, that we are often running in the rear. Ye would fain lead; we are contented to drive. As to divinity, ye are all doctors, some of you perhaps bishops; we, at the best, but licensed preachers. Ye are all Episcopalians, and proud ye are of showing it; we are all, or nearly all, Presbyterians, and think no shame to own it. Whether ye or we are the more or the less bigoted to our respective creeds, it is not for us to say; but we do not scruple to think, that on this point we have greatly the advantage over our brethren of the south. Anti-catholics we both are and at the risk, perhaps, of some little tautology, we add-Christians. In politics we are steady as the polestar; so perhaps are ye: but clouds never obscure our brightness; whereas, for some few years past, such is the dense gloom in which it has been hidden, your pole-star has, to the eyes of midnight mariners, been invisible in the sky. To sum up all in one short and pithy sentence, the Quarterly Review is the best periodical in the world except Blackwood's Magazine, and Blackwood's Magazine the best periodical in the world except the Quarterly Review.

Shepherd. Haw-haw-haw!-maist capital!-0, sir, but you're beginnin to wax wutty. You were rather a wee prosy about an hour sin' syne, but the toddy, I'm thinkin, 's beginnin to work, and after a few jugs ye talk like an opium

eater.

North. Opium-Eater!1 "Where has he hid his many-coloured head?"

Shepherd. I kenna. But he's like the lave o' the Lakerswhen he wons in Westmoreland, he forgets Maga, and a' the rest o' the civileezed warld.

North. Now, James, all this being the case, why will Mr Southey sneer, or worse than sneer, at Moon-Maga, and her Star-satellites ?

Shepherd. We maun alloo a great man his crotchets. There's nae perfection in mortal man; but gin I were to look for it onywhere, 'twould be in the life, character, and warks o' Robert Soothey.

1 Mr De Quincey, the English Opium-Eater, is one of the interlocutors in the next Noctes.

298

NEWSPAPERS: THEIR DEFENCE BY NORTH.

North. With respect, again, to Newspapers,—generally speaking, they are conducted with extraordinary talent. I'll be shot if Junius, were he alive now, would set the world on the rave, as he did some half-century ago. Many of the London daily scribes write as well as ever he did, and some better; witness Dr Gifford and Dr Maginn, in that incomparable paper the Standard, or Laabrum; and hundreds, not greatly inferior to Junius, write in the same sort of cutting trenchant style of that celebrated assassin. Times, Chronicle, Globe, Examiner, Herald, Sun, Atlas, Spectator (one of the most able, honest, and independent of all the Weeklies), are frequently distinguished by most admirable writing; and the Morning Journal, though often rather lengthy, and sometimes unnecessarily warm, constantly exhibits specimens of most powerful composition. The Morning Post, too, instead of being what it once was, a mere record of fashionable movements, is a political paper now, full, for the most part, of a truly British spirit, expressed with truly British talent. If Zeta1 be really hanged, the editor of the Morning Journal should let him alone; if he be really unhanged, he ought to give the able editor of the Morning Journal a good hiding.

Shepherd. He's aiblins no fit. But what's the meanin o' that?

North. Confound me, James, if I know.

Shepherd. Mr Southey, though, I'm thinkin, does not deny tawlent to the daily or weekly Press; he anathemateeses their pernicious principles.

North. True. But does he not greatly exaggerate the evil? Most pernicious principles some of them do, with a truly wicked pertinacity, disseminate; but those which love and spread truth, though perhaps fewer in number, are greater in power; and even were it not so, truth is stronger than falsehood, and will ultimately prevail against her, and that, too, at no remote time. Besides, I do not know of any newspaper that is devoted to the sole worship of falsehood. We must allow some, nay, even great differences of opinion in men's minds, even on the most solemn and most sacred subjects; we ought not to think everything wicked which our understanding or conscience cannot embrace: as there is sometimes

1 "Zeta," says the American editor, "was an anonymous letter-writer in the Morning Post. It was even said that Lord Ellenborough was the author."

DEMAGOGUES AND INFIDELS.

299

found by ourselves, to our own dismay, much bad in our good, so, if we look with clear, bright, unjaundiced eyes, we may often see much good in their bad; nay, not unfrequently we shall then see, that what we were too willing to think utterly bad, because it was in the broad sheet of an enemy, is entirely good, and feel, not without compunction and selfreproach,

"Fas est et ab hoste doceri."

Shepherd. Are you no in danger o' becomin ower candid the noo, sir; in danger o' rather trimmin?

North. No, James; I am merely trimming the vessel of my own moral reason-removing to the centre the shifted ballast, that, on my voyage to the distant shores of truth, she may not, by making lee-way, drift out of her course, and fall in among the breakers; and then, after putting and seeing all right, I return like a good pilot to the wheel, and, with all sail set, work up, with my merry crew, in the wind's eye, to the safest harbour in all the Land of Promise.

Shepherd. That's a weel-supported simile. You aye speak wi' uncommon smeddum on nowtical affairs.

North. Question-Who are the dangerous writers of the day? Answer-Demagogues and Infidels; there being included in the latter, and indeed also in the former-so, in truth, there is no such distinction-Deists and Atheists. The lowest and worst Demagogues are mostly all dunces; and therefore I must opine, not alarmingly dangerous to the stability of the state, or the well-being of the people. Still they are pests; they pollute alehouses, and make more disgustful gin-shops; the contagion of their bad thoughts sometimes sickens the honest poor man with his humble ingle-irritates his weary heart, confuses his aching head, and makes him an unhappy subject, fit, and ripe, and ready for sedition. Luckily the members of this gang occasionally commit overt acts of which the law can take hold; and, instead of writing them down, which, from the utter debasement of their understandings, as well as that of all their unwashed proselytes, is below the province of the press, and indeed impossible, you tie them down in a cell, and order them to be well privately whipt, or you make them mount the tread-mill, and insist on their continuing to reason, step by step, in a circle.

Shepherd. Besides, many o' them, sir, get hanged for crimes