CHAPTER VIII

OF THE LEADING PERIODICALS

AND NEWSPAPERS OF THE VICTORIAN ERA

IT is a common thing to hear said in our day that people read nothing but the magazines. There has indeed been such an extraordinary increase in our own time of periodical publications that we can imagine the conscientious student of the literature of the day hardly finding time to work his way through all the latest numbers in the space of a month, while a margin of leisure for looking at books would be to such a person a complete impossibility. It has, indeed, always been a standing mystery to us where the constantly increasing recruits of this noble army find any readers at all, and we have sometimes thought that the real cause of the constant multiplication might be that nobody in the present day feels called upon to read, while every one attempts to write, and desires to see him or herself in print.

The pages of the last new cheap magazine, however precarious its existence and doubtful its future, offer to the misunderstood genius an asylum at least as honourable and as lucrative as the wastepaper basket of the Nineteenth Century. There is possibly here an explanation of the mystery. For our purpose, however, it will be sufficient to give a glance at some of the chief periodicals of the day without attempting to throw a light upon the innumerable trivialities of this description which can hardly be called literature at all.

We have already recorded the origin of some of the older magazines which in most cases still exist. The three old quarterlies are still to the fore, and have still their public, though the immense competition of the monthly magazines has done much much to impair their position. The Edinburgh and the Quarterly, however, retain most of their prestige; the Westminster has perhaps of late fallen rather into the background. There are other magazines which are also published quarterly, but these are for the most part of a more or less technical kind. The Church Quarterly, for instance, is intended for Church of England readers, while the old-established but now defunct British Quarterly was the organ of the Nonconformists; the Asiatic Quarterly is of special interest to Anglo-Indians, the Historical Review to students of history,

and the Classical Review to scholars. But few if any of these are of first rate importance to the general public. The quarterly form has been decided to be too cumbrous for ordinary use, and the most serious and substantial magazines are now thrust upon an unwilling world every month. Three of these, in particular, which have been established in the last quarter of a century appear so much more akin to the old quarterlies than to any other form of periodical that we must speak of them before their contemporaries.

The first of these was due to the philanthropic enterprise of that goodly fellowship who had sounded the very depths of knowledge and convinced themselves that nothing could possibly exist beyond the reach of their plumb-line. The public, they decided, lacked instruction; it required to be told, and told over and over again, that its commonly received beliefs were out of date and must be given up forthwith on pain of the displeasure of science. For this purpose the Fortnightly Review was started in 1865 under the editorship of George Lewes, a very appropriate leader for such an enterprise, whose mantle fell some two years later upon the expectant shoulders of Mr. John Morley. The new periodical was to be Liberal in politics and agnostic where religious questions were concerned; it was at first published, as the title implied, every fortnight, but the

inconvenience of this method was soon obvious, and it became a monthly magazine. The Fortnightly has always kept up a high standard of ability in writing; on Mr. Morley's resignation of the editorship in 1882 it passed into the hands of Mr. Thomas Hay Sweet Escott, who relinquished it a few years later to the present able editor, Mr. Frank Harris, who has introduced a new and striking feature into the magazine by some remarkable short stories from his own pen. A rival to the Fortnightly was started a year after the appearance of the latter in the Contemporary Review, which was to be conducted on the same political lines but differed from it in having a religious basis, and was indeed chiefly intended to counteract the secularist teaching of the Fortnightly. The first editor was no less a person than Dean Alford, who was succeeded in 1870 by Mr. James Knowles. Seven years later, after a change of ownership, Mr. Knowles found himself unable to conduct the Contemporary in the free and unbiassed spirit which he considered necessary, and, resigning his post, set up a magazine of his own, the Nineteenth Century, which, as many of his old contributors followed him in his secession, sprang at once into an important position which it has never since lost. In the direction of the Contemporary Mr. Knowles was succeeded by the present editor, Mr. Percy Bunting. The three

magazines mentioned are now conducted in a generally impartial spirit and are glad to include all contributions on important subjects from whatever point of view they may be written. In the same connection may be mentioned the National Review, started as an exponent of Conservative principles in 1883 under the joint editorship of Mr. W. J. Courthope and Mr. Alfred Austin.

Of the older style of monthly magazines which were in vogue before the world became so alarmingly serious, we find a great number in circulation at the commencement of the reign. Besides Blackwood and Fraser, of which we have already spoken, and which held a much higher position than the rest, there were the Old Monthly Magazine, then conducted by James Grant, the New Monthly, edited by Theodore Hook, whose predecessors in this office had been Campbell and Bulwer, the Metropolitan Magazine, edited by Captain Marryat, and many others which have long disappeared. Blackwood still survives, as vigorous as ever though having recently passed its seventy-fifth birthday, and is remarkable for the unshaken consistency of its political opinions,-which are still virtually those of Wilson and Lockhart-and also as almost the last really literary magazine. Fraser has been less. successful. Its first brilliant days did not last very

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