A GREAT JOURNALIST.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume IV, Issue 1011, 2 August 1883, Page 4

A GREAT JOURNALIST.

_ Mr George Augustus Sala, the wellknown English journalist, has gone to Moscow and reported the coronation of the Czar for'the Telegtaph. Probably no living person has been present at so many coronations, royal christenings, marriages, and funerals. Mr Labouchere, ; who-knows him well, has an excellent “Anecdotal Photograph” of him in a recent number of Truth , of '"Which the following extracts are interesting His career has been remarkable from the commencement, and furnishes a striking example of pluck and honest work. He is generally supposed to be gifted-with a sort of intuitive ■i knowledge ot every subject under the sun, r enabling him to dash off an ' article" bn any theme at a moment’s notice, without the smallest mental effort. It is true that he wields a facile pen; and Thackeray, referring to his abilities, once humorously described him as ‘ a horse big enough to pull any shay about.’ But he rarely gets credit for the years and years of laborious study by which he has qualified himself for the exacting duties of his profession. Still less do people realise the immense amount of unseen work Which is necessary to enable a public writer to keep abreast with the times. Mr Sala is a voracious reader, and can show folio after folio filled with extracts in his own hand, extending over maojK years, on political and social Questions of the day, in which the reihkv.of his extensive, and varied studies *are carefully arranged and codified for reference. These voluminous note-books may be called the stock-in-trade of his art; for though he pbssbsSis in a remarkable degree the gift .of a retentive memory, he is too mufch a master of his craft to rely upon it for facts, and his carefully indexed memoranda form an indispensable aid to his daily work. It is said that his article, ‘The Key of the Street,’which first brought him into notice, and attracted the attention of Charles Dickens, was the outcome of his having had to spend the small hours of a summer morning in perambulating the streets after being accidentally locked * . out’of. his house. At all events, it was a turning point in his life; and from that time forward he became a constant. contributor to ‘ Household Words/ and soon made his maik.” Notwithstanding the strain ot his journalistic work, “ which includes the well-known page of ‘Echoes of the Week and the ‘ Play-houses ’ in the Illustrated London News , besides other regular contributions to current literature, he has published a small library of novels, glories, essays, and travels, and has even perpetrated a burlesque, half a pantomime, and an adaption to the English stage (at the Surrey) of * Les FnSres Corses.’ "—New York Hoitrl '■ :