The Obserber.

Observer, Volume 4, Issue 85, 29 April 1882, Page 98

The Obserber.

Saturday, April 29th, 1882. ■

CENSORS OF THE PKESS,

Among the many ludicrous airs affected by some of our ruuslirooin magnates, there are none so amusing as tbeir pretended attitude towards the Press. Men destitute alike of education, politeness, refinement, or taste, attempt to pose as arbiters of pleasure, play, literature, and the fine arts, as if all the talents could be purchased by , the pound weight like soap and candles. There is something intensely absurd in the spectacle of a man who can only "with difficulty sign his, own name, and whose intellect has never aspired to anything more elevating than mere moneygrubbing, attempting to set up as a sort of modern " Petronius, and criticising the tone and composition of literary matter through which he can just spell his way with about the same ease and facility as an elephant walking along a tightrope. In the majority of these cases this class of critics have no opinions of their own. They have made money by accident, fortuitous circumstances, or the Grradgrind process of sucking the brains and overworking the energies of their employes and dependants. They take their opinions on politics, literature and social ethics ready-made, like their gloves, from some one richer, or more pretentious and conceited than themselves. They weigh respectability in a banker's scales, and assess virtues and talents like a column of L. s. d. in a ledger. Literary pursuits, unaccompanied with wealth and social distinction, seem to such minds as these, aimless, eccentric, unpractical, and visionary. They regard literary men with the same patronising condescension as they would a pet dog, or a second-rate clerk, because they may be useful in ministering to their vanity, or advertising their importance. If the great patron happens to be a large advertiser or a man of influence, he imagines that he can snub a reporter with impunity, because he can go behind him and appeal to the selfish instincts of his employer, and it is not every newspaper proprietor who has the manliness and independence to support his literary staff, at the sacrifice of a well-paid advertisement or a profitable order for job printing.

TAKTUFFIAF CRITICS. There is also your hypercritical and super? fastidious purist, who affects to condemn certain newspapers as "low," not because his judgment has been educated to appreciate a high type of morals, ov a pure and elevated style of literature, but because his vulgar instincts suggest that' an affectation of looking down upon certain things makes other people lookup to him as a man of refined tastes and critical judgment. This man, like the mushroom magnate, is a mere toady to the opinion of some other censor, generally as ignorant and pretentious as himself, but louder and more assertive. There is the man whose mind is moulded in mediocrity, and is apprehensive of innovation ; the ■ religious hypocrite who thinks 1 the works of Dickens (which he disdains to read) naughty, and would have the tone .of the new»f papers modelled on that of "Hurvey's Mediiia-^ , tiqns Amongst the Tombs," or some; such, dismal " '■■:■ ■:■ ■•■"■■ ■'• ■•■■■■'.:■. :' ; y. ; ' ; ■''■:- v. :;v;;V<.§|; M <,\!'V'?" 1A ,'1 .■^^^■_v^■^.v.: ; '^O■'■^.^^•^;^vv^^^WKv>:SS;^; j-> „ v-m< r)u>i*

r^ -t-— — ; the snuffle-buster who hates the '} tone of the Press, and resents its encroachments upon the pulpit ; and the, 'waited who fears that the argus-eyed journalist will see through and tear off the thin disguise . that conceals his true character from the world. The peculiarity about these people is that while they are always protesting that they never read certain newspapers, they are singularly familiar with their contents. They do not subscribe for < the obnoxious prints, and the plain inference is that they are not above the meanness of borrowing them from some one who does. Anyone who would have the temerity to go about the streets jrablicly proclaiming that A.'s flour was badly . .adulterated, that B.s goods were shoddy, or that C.'s scales were false, would be promptly punished as a libeller, but there is nothing to prevent A. 33. and 0. telling all their friends that such and such newspapers are "low rags," because a public journal, in the abstract, like a corporation, is regarded as having neither a body to be kicked nor a soul to be damned.