DEATH OF MR DELANE.

Globe, Volume XXII, Issue 1845, 21 January 1880, Page 3

DEATH OF MR DELANE.

The death is announced of Mr John Thaddeus Delane, who wbb editor of the " Times " for nearly forty years. Ho retired a little more than two years ago, and died at the age of sixty-two. Moßt of the London papers have biographies of the deceased, who was the foremost man in the journalism of London for more than the third of a eantury. The "Times" itself says of him : —"Mi Delane had in a remarkable degree several qualities which are indispensable to success in all business of importance. He was capable of long application and concentrated attention. After hours of work, under harassing and perplexing circumstances, he had ample reserve of Btrength for those critical emergencies which make the greatest demand on the powers of apprehension and judgment. He could always seize on the main point at issue, and lay his hand on that upon which all the rest depended. It seemed a kind of intuition that enabled him to forsee at once the impending fate of a cause or the result of a campaign, but it was a practical and methodical power. He could distinguish between the relevant and the irrelevant in the calculation of probabilities as well as in the conduct of an argument. In a continual experience of mistakes and disappointments—for, as we have said, the nightly birth of the broadsheeet is not without its agonies and mishaps —he maintained more equanimity and command of temper than most people do under the petty harasses of private life. Compelled, as he was occasionally, to be decisive even to abruptness, and to sacrifice the convenience of contributors and subordinates to the paramount interest of the public, he never lost the respect or affection of those who could sympathise with him in his work, make due allowance for his difficulties, and think less of themselves than of the great issues at stake. In these days a groat man is expected to master a bulky report in one day, and deliver it in flowing sentences the next; but the former process ia performed in the quiet of a study, and the latter with the comfortable feeling that so long aB the orator is on his legs he has possession of the audience. If he is not clear, he can be diffuse; if he misses the point himself, he can take care that his hearers miss it too ; he cin at least lead his foes a dance as well as his friends and adn.irers. Mr Delane could always, at a moment's call, give a succint epitome, in terse, telling Ecglish, of any speech or debate, any ro:>k, any correspondence he had react or listened to ; and many a writer and speaker might havo been thankful to learn from him, for tho first time, the real purport and drif l of all the sentences or facts they had been stringing together. He did this without being either tediouß or slapdash, if we may use the word, for his was an honest attempt to do justice even to those with whom ho did not agree. The facility with which he did this, and the sometimes marvellous manner in which he would present the real substance of addrfsses beyond the patience of ordinary hearers or readers, made him most welcome, almost too welcome, in every society in this country. The self-denying ordinance Mr Delano had to submit to is not to bo estimated simply by the usual repugnance to put business before pleasure, work before play, or by tho natural and universal preference shown by educated men for what is called good society. _____^_^_^^^^___