Volume 79 — BIOGRAPHY GONE MAD.

At certain intervals, ever since the days of Solomon, it has been found necessary, as a matter of sheer duty, to lift the voice of warning against that much study which wearies the flesh, and the making many books of which there is no end. It is now several years since a strong protest was raised in this Magazine against the too common and most reprehensible practice of raking among dead men’s ashes, and violating the confidences of the living, for no higher purpose than the gratification of biographic weakness and vulgar curiosity. Man is indeed, as Goethe has said, ever interesting to man, and no species of bookmaking finds readier excuses than biography. But man ought also to be sacred to man; and of all the injuries that can be inflicted on a dead man’s memory, none is more cruel than the act of the friendly ghoul who unnecessarily recalls him from the silence of the grave. Corruptio optimi est pessissima. Biography, well done, is one of the most instructive and interesting kinds of composition; ill done, it is about the worst. We call it ill done, either when a good subject is marred in the handling, or when the choice is an unworthy one. The number of men whose lives are worthy to be recorded for an ensample to mankind is really small. In saying so we are far from meaning to express a contemptuous opinion of human nature. Some of the best men that ever lived were those whose lives had fewest incidents, and offered the scantiest materials for the ingenuity of the bookmaker. Happy, it is said, is the nation whose annals are dull—happy also the man whose life escapes the chronicler, who passes at the end of his day’s work into the silent land, to enjoy “No biography, and the privilege of all the weary.”

A stupid biography of an interesting person is indeed a very lamentable thing; and not only so, but a grave injustice alike to the dead and to the living. Since the protest alluded to was uttered, there has been no lack of this sad work. The most conspicuous recent examples that occur to us are the Lives of Thomas Moore and of Lady Blessington. But though the life of a man of genius, served up in the form of hodge-podge, is rather a melancholy repast, there are biographic nuisances less tolerable still. The features of a Jupiter or an Apollo may be hard to recognise in the plaster of an incompetent dabbler; but if the model were really a noble one, something of the god will break through to edify the spectator. It is different, however, with the rude idol of the savage. The biography of a respectable mediocrity is, it may be safely said, among the least interesting or useful of literary performances. Minerva Press novels are bad enough (those who think the species is extinct are greatly mistaken); spasmodic poems are anything but enlivening; and numismatic treatises are not ambrosial fare; but against any of these we would back for true invincible unreadableness the Memoir and Remains, we will suppose, of the Rev. Jabez Jones, D.D., late pastor of Ramoth-Gilead Chapel, Battersea. We select our instance from the class of religious biographies, because it is by far the most numerous, and the most distinctly chargeable with the sin of bookmaking. Jabez, we have no doubt, was in his day and generation an excellent man, though given, as his Memoirs of course will amply testify, to unnecessary groaning. But why his life should have been written, is a mystery to be solved only by the astute publisher, who calculates on a sale of several hundred copies among the bereaved congregation of Ramoth-Gilead. The sorrowful biographer, whose name on the title-page plainly marks him as an eligible candidate for the degree of D.D., will inform us in a “sweet” preface that the materials of the present work were put into his hands, &c.; that, painfully conscious of his own inability, he had long, &c.; but that a perusal of the documents had so deeply impressed him with the importance of giving the world, &c.; that such as it is, in short, he commits it—and then is pretty certain to follow a piece of nauseous blasphemy as to the nature of the patronage to which the pious speculation is held entitled.^[5] The number is perfectly sickening of bereaved husbands, sons, and fathers, who practise this strange alchemy on the penitential tears and devout breathings, the sick-bed utterances and dying ejaculations of sainted wives, mothers, and babes.

But bad as it is causelessly to exhume the poor victim of mortality in order to make him sit for his likeness, the posthumous method of biography is the natural and becoming one. Only when a man has finished his work, and escaped beyond the reach of human passions and cares, is it fitting to delineate his character and trace the story of his devious path through life. The practice of biographising living men, however, has now become very common. The publication of éloges used formerly to be reserved as a posthumous honour, but this generation is wiser, and writes the éloge while the subject of it can himself enjoy its perusal in the land of the living and the place of hope. One would think it a curious evidence of regard, independently of the question of delicacy, to adopt so suggestive a method of reminding a man that he is due to posterity. But tastes differ, and some men are not averse to the Charles V. method of trying on their shrouds, to see, as the old woman said, what “a bonnie corpse” they will make. With us in Britain this practice of spiritual vivisection, or ante-mortem inquests, has been confined for the most part to short sketches, pretentiously critical in general, and very seldom of any value. Fundamentally gossiping in its character, this school of literary sketchers (what may be called the Biographical Life Academy) has appealed mainly to the weak curiosity that hungers after any small scraps of information regarding the private life and habits of living notorieties. Such curiosity is no doubt extremely natural, but the men who have undertaken the function of gratifying it, have, as might be supposed, been distinguished by no qualities less than by discernment and good taste, correctness of outline being with them a small consideration compared to abundance and strength of colour. This vulgar species of authorship, the servants’-hall gossip of the literary family, has, we hope, seen its palmy days.

On the other side of the Atlantic, however, the business seems to flourish, like all other business, with great briskness. Our American friends, excellent people as they are in so many respects, have long been known to us as pre-eminent in the gossiping line; one of the chief characteristics of the Anglo-American race being intense curiosity—an admirable principle, as every one knows, when subordinate to a high end, a decided weakness when not. To say that the American people universally are influenced by the spirit of vulgar curiosity, would be as unjust as it would be to charge the whole British nation with foulness of taste because the Mysteries of London has found myriads of readers. But that the fashion has been exemplified very extensively by Americans of making the public familiar with the insides of private drawing-rooms, and telling the world how popular poets and historians handle a tea-pot or blow their noses, is a fact not to be denied. Among a people recognising, or professing to recognise, as the fundamental principle of government and society, the Irishman’s profound axiom, that “one man is as good as another—faith, and a great dale betther too!” it is not indeed surprising that in the sphere of literature, as well as in others, they should make more free with the characters and habits of private life than is by us old-fashioned Britons considered tasteful and becoming. Having now, however, passed their infancy, and in literature as well as in social development “progressed” towards manhood, it is high time that they should put away childish things. It has always grieved us to see citizens of the great Republic betray so weak-minded a delight in scrutinising the costume and domesticities of English aristocrats, or the private life and fixings of American democrats.

In the department of contemporary biography, it must be confessed our energetic cousins have fairly got the start of us. It seems, in fact, to have attained the rank of an “institution” among the other beautiful machinery of their political life. When Jullien visits the provinces, he heralds his coming by means of a set of fascinating portraits, which announce from every print and music shop window that the great Conductor is at hand. Somewhat similar, but more intellectual and elaborate, is the proceeding of the American “coming man.” No aspiring senator now thinks of trying for the Presidency without securing in good time the services of a competent biographer to relate the heroic story of his life, and make his transcendent merits known to all whom it may concern. Even a meditative Hawthorne turns his vision-weaving pen to such service, and considers it no way unworthy of his genius to polish off an electioneering biography of General Franklin Pierce. So deeply do politics mingle in the current of American life; so sweet to the aspiring statesman are the uses of biography!

But if the lives of politicians be written for the admiration of mankind and the good of the State, should the lives of the mightier men who make and unmake presidents and governments be esteemed less worthy of that honour? Assuredly not. At it then, ye diligent Yankee scribes, and hasten to convert into obsolete absurdity the oft-quoted line of the dull old fellow who sang—

“The world knows little of its greatest men.”

Let it not henceforth be said, to the reproach of civilisation, that the world was ignorant during their lives of the birth and genealogy, the schoolboy adventures and manly freaks, the trials and the triumphs of such men as Horace Greeley and James Gordon Bennett. Be careful to inform us, ye veracious cinder-gatherers—for posterity will not pardon the omission—the length, breadth, and weight of these remarkable men,—their complete phrenological development (so far as the addition of abnormal bumps by hostile shillelahs can permit accuracy),—the kind of clothes they wear—the kind of pens they write with, whether quill, iron, or brass—the ink they use, whether common blue-black or sometimes black-and-blue, or perhaps a cunning distillation of ditch-water—the attitude in which they sit when discharging their thunder at the heads of kings and cabinets, or composing their delicate invectives at one another;—in short, let us have perfect daguerreotypes of these supremely interesting and estimable men.

Behold! the thing is done, the good work has actually been commenced. There, lying before us, in all the square-rigged ugliness of New York upgetting, are the first-fruits of this new field of biographic enterprise—the lives, in two stout volumes, of the “two noble kinsmen,” the two great Arcadians whose names we have above mentioned. Many of our readers, perhaps not grossly illiterate persons either, will look up and ask, Who are Horace Greeley and James Gordon Bennett? While duly pitying the limitation of culture implied in such a query, we cannot be too hard on these poor ignoramuses, as we must plead guilty to having been ourselves frequently staggered, in reading American books, by meeting names associated with those of Milton and Aristides, as utterly new to us as was, till recently, that of his Majesty Kamehameha III., Dei gratiâ king of the Sandwich Islands. These two men, then, let all such ignoramuses know, are the editors of two widely circulated New York papers—the two most widely circulated, we believe, of any in America.^[6] What other claims they have to the honours of biography and the remembrance of posterity, we shall consider by-and-by. Meantime we have to say of the books that they are the most unique things in the way of biography, or indeed of literature, that have come in our way since America, about a year ago, furnished us with the autobiography of one of her smartest citizens. They are of very different character—as different as the men whose lives they profess to record—but in both the biographic muse appears in a state of decided inebriety, highly unbecoming the ancient dignity of her vocation. In the work of Mr Parton she is what is called half-seas over, unsteadily hilarious, and amusingly absurd, hiccuping out smart things now and then in a way that is irresistible, then suddenly looking grave and uttering sublimities that are still more outrageously laughable. In the anonymous companion-volume she is far gone towards mortal insensibility; she might be said, in fact, to be in delirium tremens, but that there is not a single flash of the wild energy that diversifies the symptoms of that shocking malady. It is pure dazed stupidity and double-vision from beginning to end. We have met nothing comparable to it in all our experience of biographies.

The sole ground on which these volumes claim any notice, contemptible as they both are (though not in equal degree) in matter and treatment, is that which gave some importance to the infamous revelations of Barnum. They are in some degree typical; their subjects at least are so in a very considerable degree—“representative men” of their kind, and so far important. A newspaper editor is in all civilised countries an important personage. We are not going here to enter on an elaborate consideration of the functions and influence of the press—so let nobody dread a homily. The subject has been often enough handled well and ill, and lately we have heard a good deal about it. We are nowadays rather given to flourishing about the “Fourth Estate.” There is a tendency towards cant on this as on all other interesting subjects. The Fourth Estate is a grand fact, but let those who have any pretensions to connection with it rather strive to keep it so than talk magniloquently about it. As for those who have not, let them take care that it does its duty, and does not go beyond it. Newspaper editors, we say, are important personages; but they are like other human beings, some of them eminent for intellect and virtue, many of them highly respectable for both, others of them dignified by neither. The anomalous and fluctuating conditions of newspaper life make it inevitable that men should sometimes attain high influence in virtue of connection with the press, whom neither nature nor education has eminently qualified for the guidance of their fellow-men. This applies, of course, peculiarly (though not exclusively) to America, where, on the admirable Irishman’s maxim above quoted, everybody is equally fit for everything—faith, and a great deal fitter too! where toll-keepers and publicans are colonels in the army, and the man who fails as a ratcatcher turns his hand to preaching, and, if that fail also, straightway sets up a newspaper. But though applying peculiarly to the American press, our statement is not exclusive of Britain. Journalism is becoming, indeed, with us more and more of a recognised profession—a profession, too, calling for special gifts and training—gifts and training, higher and more liberal, to those who think rightly of their vocation, than do any of the three hitherto exclusively entitled “learned.” The press is no more with us, if ever it has been, a kind of literary Diggings, where the outcasts and desperadoes, the halt, the maimed, and the blind, of every other calling, may find a precarious refuge and irregular adventurer-work, from forging of thunderbolts to winnowing of ash-buckets. But it is true, nevertheless, that the fundamental conditions of success in this career are compatible with a moral and intellectual standard by no means exalted. It is a common mistake, that high literary ability is the first requisite for editorial success. The fact is nearly the other way. The first requisite is knowledge of men, the second confidence, and the third perseverance. Let a man possess the concentrated gifts of a whole academy of belles lettres, and be deficient in shrewd practical discernment of what suits the public, he may pipe ever so melodiously, but he will get few subscribers to dance. Let him know, or imagine that he knows, ever so well what suits the public, if he have not a quick eye to see what other men are fit for, and how far they can be trusted to do his work, he may shut his shop and retire. Let him possess encyclopædic knowledge, and the readiest flow of winged words, but if he be not a man of hard-working, dogged persistence, he might as well sow the great Sahara as undertake to conduct a newspaper. A paper once fairly established may, indeed, conduct itself successfully, despite an unpractical and easy editor; for good machinery compels even inert matter into activity and order. But to rear a paper into vigorous existence amid a host of competitors—to make bricks without straw, and snatch the bread of victory out of the jaws of famine—the editor or conductor must be, in the first place, a man of business—it is of very subordinate importance that he be a man of letters. Hence it is sometimes objected, that newspapers, being in so many cases merely commercial speculations, must necessarily subordinate principle to profit. The objection is neither sound in logic, nor, in this country at least, true in fact. The manufacturer of shawls and blankets is not the less an honest man and estimable citizen because his primary object is not the good of the community but his own private advantage. His shawls and blankets are not the less excellent and indispensable because he converts them into pelf. If the shawl-manufacturer indeed become a power in the State, and begin to arrogate high virtue to himself for his services to the public, and to dictate laws in virtue of the prosperity of his business, it is reasonable that we should apply to him something analogous to the question, “Doth Job fear God for nought?” Applying this test to the press of our own country, we arrive, on the whole, at satisfactory conclusions. If we do not see so much as we could wish of a grave sense of responsibility, and a careful weighing of facts and motives, we know how much is due to the terrible exigencies of time. This we are assured of, that in no other profession or occupation is there more of manliness and fair play; in none other is the professional honour so untarnished by the contact of lucre; and, so far as chastity of sentiment and expression is concerned, “the freest press in Europe (Mr Macaulay might have said, in the world) is also the most prudish.” Occasional examples of recklessness and violence, of meanness and bad taste, invalidate in no wise the force of this general assertion. Newspaper editors and writers are, we repeat, human like others. To expect that they should in every case display faultless wisdom and virtue is a devout imagination, but an extremely vain and irrational one. As to the paltry £. S. D. considerations, we have, for our own part, often admired, as a striking example of the innate virtue of human nature, despite its depravity, the magnanimous zeal which sustains so many newspaper proprietors in the task of instructing the public at a very swinging loss to themselves!

The power of the press is greatly aided, as every one knows, by the mystery which shrouds the writer, merging all personality of the individual in the mysterious plurality of the organ through which he speaks. It is not John or Thomas that proclaims the danger of the nation, the incapacity of a Minister, the justice or injustice of a deed. It is an unknown voice, uttered out of darkness, and therefore formidable—the voice not of one, but of many, and therefore claiming respect. The voice of a Greek tragedian sounded through his mask more awful than it really was; and the majestic buskin raised a very ordinary figure to the kingly height of Agamemnon. The “we” of John or Thomas, through the speaking-trumpet of the Times, becomes a very different pronoun from the “I” of these gentlemen uttered through their individual windpipes. If any argument were necessary to prove that this formidable anonymousness is not only essential to the liberty of the press, but the true safeguard of its health and honesty, we might point for proof to the Press of those States, whether despotic or free, where it is not tolerated. In the United States, for example, there is almost as little anonymous writing as in Paris or Vienna. There is no statute on the subject, and no legal censorship exists, but the state of public feeling makes it almost impossible for a man to conceal his personality. The writer may not put his name to his articles, but if he does not, it is only because he finds it unnecessary. Is the press there more honest, more discreet, more tender of individual character than in Britain? No candid American will answer that question with an affirmative. The press of America is not the less formidable, not the more honest and scrupulous, that its principal writers are known or notorious men.

The character of the two nations is illustrated by some of their distinctive peculiarities in this respect. With us the tendency is to merge the individual in the body—with them the notion of liberty is associated with the clear recognition of individual independence. Here the newspaper editor is generally the invisible head of an association—there he is a right-well-known entity of flesh and blood, as cowhide and rattan applications have too often most strikingly demonstrated. There the journal is generally his, and his name figures conspicuously at the head of its columns—here he belongs more frequently to the journal, and, while wielding a great power in the community, his personal existence is a kind of myth, and his name may never have been heard by the great majority of his readers. The American editor, on the contrary, must make himself known, or he will not be listened to. All pugnacious republicans must have the means of knowing who it is that abuses them. The occupant of the White House must be made familiar with the name of the man who attacks or defends his policy, whose mouth may be silenced, or whose fidelity rewarded by a due share of the federal dollars. Let it not be imagined that any uncomplimentary remarks we make on the American press are intended to apply universally. So speaking, we should convict ourselves at once of ignorance and dishonesty. There are American newspapers and editors of high and unblemished character, as there are American politicians worthy of a better fate than to be kept waiting three months for the election of a Speaker. But of the American press generally the criticism still holds good, that, while boasting to be the freest in the world, it is in practical thraldom to an inextricably tangled system of democratic terrorism. Improvement there has been, we delight to think, within the last dozen years—so much so, that even papers which were the very offscourings of journalism, have become, in their European editions at least, fit for decent mortals to read. Out of a total of nearly three thousand papers, circulating among so mixed and changeful a population, it is little wonder, also, that there should be a large class of papers at which a cultivated man of any nation must look with contempt and sorrow. We know too well, from examples in our own colonies—as in India and Australia—how, in heterogeneous and young communities, where men of high talent and education seldom resort except in the established paths to success, newspapers are apt to fall into the hands either of government agents or of reckless adventurers, with the natural result, in the one case, of insolence and servility, in the other, of indecent violence and gossiping personality. That, therefore, in a country like the United States, where men of intelligence and enterprise are never at a loss for profitable occupation, the press should be left in a great measure to those who can get nothing better to do, need not surprise us; nor, as the necessary result, that its moral and intellectual standard should hitherto have been such as a civilised and educated nation would, if it were not too busy, and too jealous of foreign criticism, have viewed with consternation as a professed mirror of itself.

While willingly granting thus much, the painful fact remains, that the papers which have all along enjoyed the largest share of public countenance in the United States, are those whose conductors have most openly set at defiance every sentiment of justice, decency, and good taste. The mere circulation of a journal is not, indeed, a conclusive test of its importance as an organ of public opinion, but it clearly enough points out what way the taste of the majority lies, and in a land of universal suffrage it gauges exactly the amount of its political influence. Our Weekly Dispatch has perhaps twenty readers for the Spectator’s one, but the one reader probably has more power in the commonwealth than the twenty. In a commonwealth, on the other hand, where all men are equally good, a hundred thousand Barnums are as good as a thousand centuries of Washington—faith, and in American politics, “a great dale betther too!” Thus it is that the most widely circulated paper becomes the greatest power in the State, and a power to which, even while loathing it, presidents and politicians are forced to bow the knee. Unwilling as we are that Mr James Gordon Bennett should lose any of the benefit accruing to him from these remarks (which, of course, he will turn duly to account),^[7] we have no hesitation in saying that they are intended to apply par excellence to the organ which, under his consummate management, has resolved one of the most singular problems of modern times. That problem may be stated thus: Given the minimum of literary ability, and the maximum of moral worthlessness—to educe out of their combination a machinery which shall control the political action of a Great Republic, and attain a leading place among the recognised mouthpieces of twenty million English-speaking freemen. There is a question of maxima and minima over which Dr Whewell might puzzle his knowing head till doomsday, if he omitted to take into his calculations an element or two of the plus description! What these elements are, we must, however, leave for after consideration. In the mean time we propose to treat our readers to a few of the biographic delicacies furnished by the considerate Mr J. Parton. We consider his volume in every way entitled to the precedence. It was the first published, and evidently suggested the rival performance. It has all the marks of honesty about it, and, compared with the Life of Bennett, is a perfect chef-d’œuvre of ability. Its subject, in like manner, if considerably removed from our idea of a hero or a gentleman, is, compared with the editor of the New York Herald, a very Bayard in chivalry, a Job in uprightness.

Mr Parton sets about his work in a very thorough-going manner. The industry with which he has raked together all the information that could possibly be gathered regarding not only Horace Greeley, but Horace’s ancestors to the third and fourth generation, is quite inconceivable; and his own ingenuous account of his preliminary labours is well calculated to awaken, if not the admiration, at least the astonishment of the reader. The style of procedure is exquisitely characteristic; and, as he himself phrases it, “the reader has a right to know the manner” thereof. Let us thank heaven that the promulgation of the recipe is not likely here to instigate imitation. First of all, the ingenious youth procures, “from various sources, a list of Mr Greeley’s early friends, partners, and relations; also a list of the places at which he had resided.” The young bloodhound! This done, “all those places I visited; with as many of those persons as I could find I conversed, and endeavoured to extract from them all that they knew of the early life of my hero.” From these veracious sources this high-minded young scribbler compiled the narrative of the great man’s early years, not disdaining even to accost drunken “old soakers” on the highway who might “hiccough out” a little tale about Greeley; and where he could not ferret out information on the spot, applying for it by letter. But this was a small portion of the self-imposed labour, which included a diligent inspection of the complete files of the “New Yorker, Log Cabin, Jeffersonian, American Laborer, Whig Almanac, and Tribune,” nearly every number of which, “more than five thousand in all,” he carefully examined. After such a course of reading, our wonder is, not that the biographic muse is slightly maudlin, but that she survived to put two sentences together!

We are treated to a preliminary sketch of the history of Londonderry (not omitting the siege), and the Scoto-Irish colony who thence emigrated to New England. To the hasty reader all this may seem highly unnecessary, but to those who are desirous deeply to penetrate into a “nature” so uncommon as that of Horace Greeley, it is supremely important, as we are told that “from his maternal ancestors he derived much that distinguishes him from men in general.” Another chapter is devoted to the paternal ancestors, regarding one of whom it is interesting to learn that he was a “cross old dog,” “as cunning as Lucifer,” and that he died at the age of sixty-five, with “all his teeth sound!” At length, at page 33, we come to the great fact of Horace’s birth. As has been the case with many great men, it was attended with some remarkable circumstances. To these our biographer does full justice. His account of the interesting scene is too fine to be omitted:—

“The mode of his entrance upon the stage of the world was, to say the least of it, unusual. The effort was almost too much for him, and, to use the language of one who was present, ‘he came into the world as black as a chimney.’ There was no sign of life. He uttered no cry; he made no motion; he did not breathe. But the little discolored stranger had articles to write, and was not permitted to escape his destiny. In this alarming crisis of his existence, a kind-hearted and experienced aunt came to his rescue, and by arts, which to kind-hearted and experienced aunts are well known, but of which the present chronicler remains in ignorance, the boy was brought to life. He soon began to breathe; then he began to blush; and by the time he had attained the age of twenty minutes, lay on his mother’s arm, a red and smiling infant.”

If the reader does not grant that to be one of the most graceful climaxes in biographic literature, we shall not write another word. Presuming on a general unanimity on this point, we proceed. The red and smiling infant in due time of course turned out a prodigy; “he took to learning with the promptitude and instinctive irrepressible love with which a duck is said to take to the water,” and was able to read “before he had learned to talk.” In spelling he soon became pre-eminent; and great marvels are recorded of his orthographic prowess. Unfortunately he was less distinguished by those virtues which we usually desiderate in boys. Though never afraid of ghosts, or overawed by superiority of rank or knowledge, he was eminently deficient in physical courage. “When attacked, he would neither fight nor run away, but ‘stand still and take it;’” the report of a gun “would almost throw him into convulsions.” Fishing and bee-hunting were the only sports he cared for, “but his love of fishing did not originate in what the Germans call the ‘sport impulse.’ Other boys fished for sport; Horace fished for fish.” Bee-hunting, again, “was profitable sport, and Horace liked it amazingly. His share of honey generally found its way to the store.” His passion for books was generally attributed to indolence, and it was often predicted that Horace would never “get on.” Superficial idea! Even in very early life, says Mr Parton complacently, he gave proof “that the Yankee element was strong within him. In the first place, he was always doing something; and in the second, he had always something to sell.”

Notwithstanding Horace’s remarkable cleverness, we are told that he was sometimes taken for an idiot—a stranger having once inquired, on his entering a “store” in a brown study, “what darn fool is that?” Even his own father declared that the boy would “never know more than enough to come in when it rains.” These pleasing anecdotes are given on the authority of a bibulous old wretch, whom the indefatigable Mr Parton encountered and cross-questioned on the highway. He was quite drunk at the time, but “as the tribute of a sot to the champion of the Maine Law, the old man’s harangue was highly interesting.” Mr Parton sets it down to the praise of his hero, that though brought up in the bosom of New England orthodoxy, “from the age of twelve he began to doubt,” and “from the age of fourteen he was known, wherever he lived, as the champion of Universalism.” Here the biographer indulges in what he considers appropriate reflections, and points out to his readers the valuable effects of youthful infidelity. “The boy,” he coolly observes, “seems to have shed his orthodoxy easily.”^[8] Horace Greeley was in a fair way of training for his editorship.

The juvenile Universalist had long been ambitious of becoming a printer, and at last obtained a vacant apprenticeship in the office of Mr Amos Bliss, proprietor of the Northern Spectator. The great event is described with elaborate circumstantiality. The young “tow-head” proved a first-rate workman, and presently tried his hand at composition. “The injurious practice of writing ‘compositions,’” says his biographer, “was not among the exercises of any of the schools which he had attended.” Considering the general literary character of editorial writing in the United States, we are not surprised to find an American pronounce the early practice of composition injurious; the sentiment evidently is not peculiar to Mr Parton. Early attention to style might of course tend to weaken that native force in the use of epithets which apparently conduces so much to editorial success. Horace also joined a debating society, where he proved himself a perfect “giant.” His manners were entirely free from aristocratic taint, or any weak tendency to politeness. “He stood on no ceremony at the table; he fell to without waiting to be asked or helped, devoured everything right and left, stopped as suddenly as he had begun, and vanished instantly.” Again, “when any topic of interest was started at the table, he joined in it with the utmost confidence, and maintained his opinion against anybody.” He never went to tea-parties, never joined in an excursion, and “seldom went to church.” A most interesting young man, on the whole, was Horace Greeley.

At length the Northern Spectator broke down, and the apprentice was left to shift for himself. His departure is described in quite a choice Minerva-Press style. “It was a fine cool breezy morning in the month of June 1830; Nature had assumed those robes of brilliant green which she wears only in June, and welcomed the wanderer forth with that heavenly smile which plays upon her changeful countenance only when she is attired in her best. Deceptive smile!” &c. &c. Horace at length determined to try his fortune in New York, and with ten dollars in his pocket, a shabby suit on his back, and a small bundle on his stick, landed “at sunrise, on Friday the 18th of August 1831,” near the Battery. The biographer, as in duty bound, comes out strong, and Benjamin Franklin, with his penny roll, appears in the proper place to garnish the story. “The princes of the mind,” says he, waxing sublime, “always remain incog. till they come to the throne.” Poor Horace’s appearance “was all against him.” Certainly, if the vignette representation of the youth with which Mr Parton has adorned his volume conveys any adequate idea of his aspect that morning, the statement is emphatically true. The prince of the mind was incog. with a vengeance—a more calculating and skinny-looking young Yankee it would be difficult to imagine. To the portrait on the opposite page, of the adult Horace in his white greatcoat—bought from an Irish emigrant!—we must, however, give the palm as a thoroughly characteristic representation of a full-blown Yankee Wilkes-Bentham Socialist, Maine Law champion, Vegetarian, Spirit-rappist, and we don’t know what else. The following bit of information is important:—

“The gentleman to whose intercession Horace Greeley owed his first employment in New York, is now known to all the dentists in the Union as the leading member of a firm which manufactures annually twelve thousand artificial teeth. He has made a fortune, the reader will be glad to learn, and lives in a mansion up town.”

To the event which gave Horace his “First Lift” in the world, the biographer devotes a whole chapter. That event was the establishment of the first Penny Paper. The idea originated in the head of an unfortunate medical student afflicted by Providence with ready cash to the amount of fifteen hundred dollars. Horatio David Sheppard, unwisely neglecting his pestle and scalpel, took to dabbling in newspapers and magazines, and in due time found himself minus his dollars. Speculatively musing as he passed through Chatham Street, a great mart of penny wares, he was struck with the rapid sales effected by the energetic stall-keepers and itinerant venders of shoe-laces. Parting with an odd cent or penny seemed so natural and easy a proceeding that the offer of any article for that sum seemed irresistible. Might not a newspaper be produced at one cent with certain success? The idea, it must be admitted, was a happy one. As might have been expected, however, the proposal at first excited unbounded ridicule, and for eighteen months Dr Sheppard could not get “one man” to believe in its feasibility. At last, on New Year’s Day, 1833, appeared the Morning Post, published by “Greeley and Story,” price two cents. It lived only twenty-one days, dying from pure want of funds. The idea was soon after successfully realised by other speculators, and in a few years the penny press was able to take society by the throat. Its first reception is thus described:—

“When the respectable New Yorker first saw a penny paper, he gazed at it (I saw him) with a feeling similar to that with which an ill-natured man may be supposed to regard General Tom Thumb, a feeling of mingled curiosity and contempt; he put the ridiculous little thing into his waistcoat pocket to carry home for the amusement of his family; and he wondered what nonsense would be perpetrated next.”

If such was the reception of the cheap press among the go-ahead New Yorkers, it need not surprise us that in our own steady-going community it should have been still less favourable. The experience of the last few months, however, has pretty well demonstrated the absurdity of the principal objections. The anticipated peril to the health of society has, as every believer in the national good sense well knew, proved a chimera. British intellect and morals fortunately are not dependent on taxes and high price; and the gradual removal of all restrictions on the freedom of the press has only shown more signally that this people needs no legal bridling to keep on the path of decency and order. The number of cheap papers has indeed proved much smaller than was anticipated, few people seeming to have been aware how much energy and capital are required for the establishment of a paying penny paper—a fact which was alone sufficient to answer the fears of those who looked in June 1855 for the coming of the Deluge. In New York the case unfortunately was far otherwise. The Father of the American Penny Press, if to any one man that title is due, must be regarded as having treated his country in a way the reverse of what St Patrick did for Ireland—as a male Pandora, in fact, who opened the lid that shut in a countless brood of very hideous creatures. The thing will end well, we hope, as we hope for a millennium; and improvement, as we have admitted, there already is. But that the birth of the cheap press in America was followed by a deluge of quackery, virulence, and indecency which has not yet entirely subsided, is a fact written in disgraceful characters on pages innumerable, and legible on the skins of men now living, had they not been tougher than bison’s hide. That such should have been the result of cheapening the favourite stimulant of the American rabble was perfectly inevitable, and that the new development of journalism was accompanied by marked features of superiority is undeniable. The increase of violence and slander was itself a point of superiority in the eyes of the vulgar herd,—for coarseness passed for strength, and scurrility for smartness, the American’s “darling attribute.” But, among a people of intense activity and inquisitiveness, the increased energy in the procuring of news (whether true or false) must be looked upon as the chief cause of the immense popularity attained in so few years by the principal American journals. To this source, rather than to any general predilection for the vile and malicious, would we seek to attribute the extraordinary success of papers in which libel and indecency constituted a regular stock in trade. This is certainly no excuse for the patronage so bestowed, but it at least helps to explain it in a way not utterly destructive of our respect for a whole community.

And now, to return to our Horace. Of his dignified manners towards his workmen the following may suffice as an example. It is interesting, moreover, as showing that the extraordinary voracity of his early years had given place to utter indifference to considerations so low as the eating of dinner:—

“There was not even the show or pretence of discipline in the office. One of the journeymen made an outrageous caricature of his employer, and showed it to him one day as he came from dinner. ‘Who’s that?’ asked the man. ‘That’s me,’ said the master, with a smile, and passed into his work: The men made a point of appearing to differ in opinion from him on every subject, because they liked to hear him talk; and, one day, after a long debate, he exclaimed, ‘Why, men, if I were to say that that black man there was black, you’d all swear he was white.’ He worked with all his former intensity and absorption. Often such conversations as these took place in the office about the middle of the day:—

“(H. G., looking up from his work)—Jonas, have I been to dinner?

“(Mr Winchester)—You ought to know best. I don’t know.

“(H. G.)—John, have I been to dinner?

“(John)—I believe not. Has he, Tom?

“To which Tom would reply ‘no,’ or ‘yes,’ according to his own recollection or John’s wink; and if the office generally concurred in Tom’s decision, Horace would either go to dinner or resume his work, in unsuspecting accordance therewith.”

With that interesting proneness to heresy of all kinds which distinguishes Mr Greeley, he soon after adopted the semi-vegetarian principles of a certain Rev. Dr Graham, who, says the biographer, “was a discoverer of the facts, that most of us are sick, and that none of us need be; that disease is impious and disgraceful, the result in almost every instance of folly or crime.” The italics are Mr Parton’s, whose digestion, it is to be hoped, is unexceptionable.

At length, early in 1834, Horace, with two partners, started the New Yorker, a weekly paper, “incomparably the best of its kind that had ever been published in this country;” so good, in fact, that after seven years of hard struggle it gave up the ghost. We would rather believe that its want of success was due to the incompetency of its management; but if the editor was in the habit of uttering such unpalatable truths as is contained in the following specimen, we are afraid it must be conceded with the biographer that the New Yorker was not half enough spicy, or fawning:—

“The great pervading evil of our social condition is the worship and the bigotry of Opinion. While the theory of our political institutions asserts or implies the absolute freedom of the human mind—the right not only of free thought and discussion, but of the most unrestrained action thereon within the wide boundaries prescribed by the laws of the land, yet the practical commentary upon this noble text is as discordant as imagination can conceive. Beneath the thin veil of a democracy more free than that of Athens in her glory, we cloak a despotism more pernicious and revolting than that of Turkey or China. It is the despotism of Opinion.”

The New Yorker having never, during its whole term of existence, reached the paying point, the poor editor was obliged to keep the pot boiling by other means. In 1838 he undertook the sole charge of the Jeffersonian, a paper of a class peculiar to America, and denominated “Campaign Papers.” The noble purpose of the Jeffersonian is thus described by Greeley himself: “It was established on the impulse of the Whig tornado of 1837, to secure a like result in 1838, so as to give the Whig party a Governor, Lieutenant-governor, Senate, Assembly, United States Senator, Congressmen, and all the vast executive patronage of the State, then amounting to millions of dollars a year.”

The Jeffersonian existed only one year, having served its end. The labours of the editor were enormous; “no one but a Greeley” could have endured it all. In 1840 he started another “Campaign Paper,” in the interest of General Harrison. The absorption of the editorial mind during this exciting season is illustrated by another of those graceful anecdotes, in which our biographer delights—relating how Mr Greeley arrives late at a political tea-party (Sunday evening), and straightway plunges into a conversation on the currency; how the worthy landlady asks him in vain to take tea; how she begs him to “try a cruller anyhow,” and is rudely repulsed; how she places a large basket of these unknown delicacies on his knees, and he mechanically devours every morsel; how, fearing the consequences, she substitutes for the “cruller” basket a great heap of cheese; how the remarkable boa-constrictor gobbles it all up; and how, finally, he was none the worse of it all. “Anecdotes,” says Mr P., are “precious for biographical purposes.”

The Log Cabin had a circulation of from 80,000 to 90,000, and yet such was the easy virtue of the subscribers that the proprietor made nothing by it, and the last number contained a moving appeal “to the friends who owe us.” Such, also, is political gratitude, that Mr Greeley did not even receive the offer of an office in acknowledgment of his valuable services, at which his biographer is duly disgusted. He adds the following significant anecdote:—

“Mr Fry (W. H.) made a speech one evening at a political meeting in Philadelphia. The next morning a committee waited upon him to know for what office he intended to become an applicant. ‘Office?’ said the astonished composer—no office.’ ‘Why, then,’ said the committee, ‘what the h—ll did you speak last night for?’ Mr Greeley had not even the honour of a visit from a committee of this kind.”

Mr Greeley at length ventured on the bold experiment of starting a new daily paper. There were already eleven in New York; but a cheap Whig paper^[9] was wanted, and accordingly, on the 10th April 1841, appeared the New York Tribune, price one cent. It began with only six hundred subscribers, and encountered much opposition, but was “from its inception very successful.” The Tribune, says Mr Parton, was “a live paper,” and it prospered by opposition. “Fight was the word with it from the start—Fight has been the word ever since—Fight is the word this day.” One thing was wanting to success—an efficient business-partner. Such a man was found in the person of Mr Thomas M‘Elrath. The biographer shouts and rubs his hands with ecstasy at such a combination of excellence as was now realised. Hear him:

“Roll Horace Greeley and Thomas M‘Elrath into one, and the result would be, a very respectable approximation to a Perfect Man. The Two, united in partnership, have been able to produce a very respectable approximation to a perfect newspaper. As Damon and Pythias are the types of perfect friendship, so may Greeley and M‘Elrath be of a perfect partnership; and one may say, with a sigh at the many discordant unions the world presents, Oh! that every Greeley could find his M‘Elrath! and blessed is the M‘Elrath that finds his Greeley!”

And woe to the Greeley that finds his Parton!

For a complete history of this respectable approximation to perfection, says Mr Parton, “ten octavo volumes would be required, and most interesting volumes they would be.” Mr Parton gives us instead the small dose of “over” 200 octavo pages, and we are bound to say that it is at least 190 too many. In these weary sheets the curious will find a full account of Mr Greeley’s exertions in defence of Fourierism, Whiggism, Teetotalism, Anti-Slavery, Woman’s Rights, and Irish Rebellion, his libels on Fenimore Cooper, his motions in Congress, his lectures, his European travels, his personal appearance, his private habits, &c. &c.

“For Irish Repeal,” among other good causes, the Tribune “fought like a tiger,” the magnanimous editor accepting a place in the Directory of the Friends of Ireland, “to the funds of which he contributed liberally.” Mr Greeley is not a warlike man, as his boyish experiences have indicated, but incendiarism and bloodshed in British territory are things for which he willingly sacrifices a few dollars. Our readers are aware that the publication of the wildest fictions, pleasantly denominated “hoaxes,” constitutes an attractive element in American journalism. In August 1848, New York red-republicanism was “on the tiptoe of expectation for important news of the Irish rebellion.” The fortunate Tribune obtained exclusive intelligence, and hastened to publish, “with due glorification,” a flaming account of the great battle of Slievenamon (afterwards known as “Slievegammon,”) in which 6000 British troops were killed and wounded. “For a day or two the Irish and the friends of Ireland exulted; but when the truth became known, their note was sadly changed.” The editor, we learn, was absent at the time, but there is no doubt he would have exulted as much as any man to hear of the “stench” of a three-mile shambles of British soldiers. His tone on the subject of the Russian war has betrayed no weak sympathy with the Western combatants; and doubtless he takes a brotherly interest in the insane and detestable conspiracies now or lately hatching among the unhappy exiles of Erin.

In November of that year, Mr Greeley was elected to a seat in Congress, by a machinery the corruption of which is testified by no less a person than himself. He was very active as a member, and soon made himself prominently obnoxious by exposing various legislative jobs. Some of the lively scenes that occurred are described at immense length. Mr Parton draws no flattering conclusion from the reception of his hero in the House of Representatives. Let our American friends console themselves with the assurance that his testimony is not decisive.

“An honest man in the House of Representatives of the United States seemed to be a foreign element, a fly in its cup, an ingredient that would not mix, a novelty that disturbed its peace. It struggled hard to find a pretext for the expulsion of the offensive person; but not finding one, the next best thing was to endeavour to show the country that Horace Greeley was, after all, no better than members of Congress generally.”

In 1849, the Tribune, with its habitual predilection for the fanatical and revolutionary, or, as Mr Parton loftily phrases the thing, “true to its instinct of giving hospitality to every new or revived idea,” devoted large space to the promulgation of Proudhon’s delightful ideas on the subject of Property. Among other things also, says our chronicler, it began a rejoinder to the Evening Post in the following spirited manner,—the only specimen we choose to quote of Mr Greeley’s vituperative abilities:—

“You lie, villain! wilfully, wickedly, basely lie!”

This observation, placidly remarks the historian, “called forth much remark at the time.” The person to whom it was addressed was William Cullen Bryant. With the same instinctive hospitality towards every form of delusion, the Tribune opened its accommodating columns to the Spirit-Rappers, who, notwithstanding a few hundred cases of insanity and other small evils, have, in Mr Parton’s opinion, done much good. About the same time it took up the Woman’s Rights humbug, acknowledging that the ladies are perhaps unwise in making the demand, but maintaining that no sincere republican can give any adequate reason for refusing them “an equal participation with men in political rights.” A whole chapter is devoted to Mr Greeley’s platform exhibitions, which it seems are very frequent and edifying—Horace having, as Mr Parton tells us, a benevolent appreciation of the delight it gives “to see the man whose writings have charmed and moved and formed us.” Not only does he lecture as often as possible, but

“At public meetings and public dinners Mr Greeley is a frequent speaker. His name usually comes at the end of the report, introduced with ‘Horace Greeley being loudly called for, made a few remarks to the following purport.’ The call is never declined; nor does he ever speak without saying something; and when he has said it, he resumes his seat.”

The remarkable man!

In 1851, Horace went to see the World’s Fair in Hyde Park. No foolish curiosity or sentimentality instigated the philosophic editor; his main object, as announced (the American editor keeps his readers regularly informed on all his movements) in the Tribune, being to inspect “the improvements recently made, or now being made, in the modes of dressing flax and hemp, and preparing them to be spun and woven by steam or water power.”

The departure and passage are carefully described; Mr Parton having apparently paid a steward to note, watch in hand, all the phenomena of Horace’s sea-sickness. Nothing that he saw in this effete country seems to have in the least impressed his great mind. The royal procession would have faded before “a parade of the New York Firemen or Odd Fellows.” The Queen he patronisingly noticed, and was even “glad to see,” though “he could not but feel that her vocation was behind the intelligence of the age, and likely to go out of fashion at no distant day;” but not, poor thing! “through her fault.” The posts of honour nearest her person should have been confided, he thought, to “the descendants of Watt and Arkwright;” the foreign ambassadors should have been “the sons of Fitch, Fulton, Whitney, Daguerre, and Morse,” &c. &c. Hampton Court he thought “larger than the Astor House, but less lofty, and containing fewer rooms.” Westminster Abbey was “a mere barbaric profusion of lofty ceilings, stained windows, carving, graining, and all manner of contrivances for absorbing labour and money;” less adapted for public worship “than a fifty thousand dollar church in New York.” He gives credit to the English for many good qualities, but thinks them “a most un-ideal people,”—he, the romantic Greeley! “He liked the amiable women of England, so excellent at the fireside, so tame in the drawing-room; but he doubts whether they could so much as comprehend the ideas which underlie the woman’s rights movement.” (The amiable women of England may well console themselves under a doubt so complimentary to their common sense.) In Paris the great man was apparently in better humour, devoting two days to the Louvre—a wonderful fact. His great political sagacity shines forth in his estimate of French affairs in June 1851. France he found as “tranquil and prosperous as England herself;” as for fear from Louis Napoleon, he “marvels at the obliquity of vision whereby any one is enabled, standing in this metropolis, to anticipate the subversion of the Republic.” In Italy his first remark was, that he had never seen a region so much in want of “a few subsoil ploughs.” Edinburgh, it seems, was honoured, before his return to New York, by a visit from this great unknown; and we are proud to learn that it “surpassed his expectations.”

“In the composition of this work,” says our judicious biographer, “I have, as a rule, abstained from the impertinence of panegyric.” When, therefore, he tells us that the rolling together of Greeley and M‘Elrath, after the manner of a dumpling, would result in something like perfection; that Greeley is “too much in earnest to be a perfect editor;” that “he is a Born Legislator,” and “could save a nation, but never learn to tie a cravat;” that he is “New York’s most distinguished citizen, the Country’s most influential man,” and editor of the best paper in existence; that, in short, he is “the Franklin of this generation—Franklin liberalised and enlightened,”—we are to take these statements as the sober expression of bare hard fact; and the reader is left to conclude from them how much might have been said by a more partial and weak-minded biographer—his imagination is left to fill up the outline of a Greeley’s perfections!

But does the reader wish to see the man himself—to know his height and weight, not metaphorically, but actually, in British feet and inches, and in pounds avoirdupois? So pleasant and laudable a desire the amiable Parton is far from disappointing; for does not the great man say that “there’s no use in any man’s writing a biography unless he can tell what no one else can tell.” Here, then, reader, you have it, what no one else assuredly could, would, or should dream of telling you but the inimitable, the unapproachable Parton:—

“Horace Greeley stands five feet ten and a half inches, in his stockings. He weighs one hundred and forty-five pounds. Since his return from Europe in 1851, he has increased in weight, and promises to attain, in due time, something of the dignity which belongs to amplitude of person. He stoops considerably, not from age, but from a constitutional pliancy of the back-bone, aided by his early habit of incessant reading. In walking, he swings or sways from side to side. Seen from behind, he looks, as he walks with head depressed, bended back, and swaying gait, like an old man; an illusion which is heightened if a stray lock of white hair escapes from under his hat. But the expression of his face is singularly and engagingly youthful. His complexion is extremely fair, and a smile plays ever upon his countenance. His head, measured round the organs of Individuality and Philoprogenitiveness, is twenty-three and a half inches in circumference, which is considerably larger than the average. His forehead is round and full, and rises into a high and ample dome. The hair is white, inclining to red at the ends, and thinly scattered over the head. Seated in company, with his hat off, he looks not unlike the ‘Philosopher’ he is often called; no one could take him for a common man.”

Now, then, reader, if you do not give us credit for introducing you to the acme of modern biography, we pronounce you the most ungrateful and least discriminating of human beings. “If Horace Greeley were a flower,” says J. P., “botanists would call him single, and examine him with interest.” “He is what the Germans sometimes style ‘a nature.’” And if J. P. also were a flower, botanists would inevitably pronounce him “a tulip.” He is what in Scotland we sometimes call “a natural”—otherwise known as “a halfling;” or, in vernacular English, a born fool. Horace Greeley is not, to our mind, a person very agreeable or very venerable; but intensely as we dislike his bad qualities, and those of his paper (in some respects a good one—very attentive, in its own peculiar way, to literature, and excellently printed^[10]), his dreary fanaticism and vulgarity, his bigoted Yankeeism, his strong anti-British feeling—much as we dislike all this, we do not like to see him made absolutely ridiculous, had he no other good quality than the pleasure he takes in farming. We are not surprised, however, to learn that he has few friends, “and no cronies.” His biographer, at least, is not among the former; for any man would accept his chance against a Kentucky rifle sooner than a biography at the hands of Mr J. Parton. There is this comfort, at least, that Horace Greeley “has no pleasures, so called, and suffers little pain,” otherwise, we imagine, the admiring scribbler would not, with such inconceivable indelicacy, have opened the doors of his closet, and exhibited him in puris naturalibus to the gaze of the world.

Turn we now to the veracious record of the Life and Adventures of the Jack Ketch of editors, the redoubtable and happily unparalleled James Gordon Bennett, with whom, for several reasons, we must be brief. The author has of course sought no counsel from “Mr Bennett, nor any one connected with him.” The work is a pure labour of love, “a spontaneous act of literary justice” to the character of a noble and much maligned man. The former statement we perfectly believe, as we imagine the consultation would naturally proceed from and not to the subject of the memoir. As to the spontaneity, there can be little doubt that the work was prompted by the dumpy and infatuated volume of which we have attempted faintly to shadow forth the beauties,—as to “justice,” no man is more dreadfully in earnest for justice than when he defends himself. The motto prefixed from Dr Johnson is admirable: “History, which draws a portrait of living manners, may perhaps be made of greater use than the solemnities of professed morality, and convey the knowledge of vice and virtue with more efficacy than axioms and definitions.” Which being applied to the present case, may be interpreted to signify that the life of a notorious blackguard is more eloquent than a sermon of Dr Blair, and conveys the knowledge of virtue, through the exhibition of its contrary, with more impressiveness than all the proverbs of Solomon! In this sense the Life of Mr James Gordon Bennett might, in faithful and competent hands, do as much good as the Newgate Calendar, or Defoe’s Autobiography of an Unfortunate Female,—it might carry along with it, as this preface says, “not a few valuable lessons.” Unhappily, however, the genius of this biographer is utterly unequal to the subject, and instead of a lifelike and instructive portraiture, he has produced a senseless and incredible daub. More speaking by far is the portrait which fronts the title-page. It represents in sharp outline the face of a hard-headed, heavy-browed, obstinate man; vulpine sagacity in the wrinkles of the mouth and the corners of the eyes; long upper-lip and heavy under-jaw, and bold vulturine nose seeming to scent carrion from afar. The eyes are upturned in sculptured lifelessness—in artistic justice, we presume, to that unfortunate ophthalmic defect known as a diabolical squint. The portrait, we say, is better than the book, and tells, though probably a flattering likeness, a clearer and more honest story.

“Is it not,” inquired Mr Dickens in New York, “a very disgraceful circumstance that such a man as So-and-so should be acquiring a large property by the most infamous and odious means, and, notwithstanding all the crimes of which he has been guilty, should be tolerated and abetted by your citizens? He is a public nuisance, is he not?—Yes, sir. A convicted liar?—Yes, sir. He has been kicked, and cuffed, and caned?—Yes, sir. And he is utterly dishonourable, debased, and profligate?—Yes, sir. In the name of wonder, then, what is his merit?—Well, sir, he is a smart man!” Such is the satisfactory solution of the problem to which we have already alluded, the solution of the Barnum phenomenon, and with it of all analogous phenomena. Similar is the testimony of the smart young man whom we have just parted with. “Every race,” he says, “has its own ideas respecting what is best in the character of a man.... When a Yankee would bestow his most special commendation upon another, he says, ‘That is a man, sir, who generally succeeds in what he undertakes.’” Let no delicate and high-minded person, therefore, be astonished that such a man as James Gordon Bennett, whom the respectability of New York has for twenty years loathingly patronised, should have attained a commanding position among the spiritual powers of the American Republic. He is a man of undeniable “smartness”—not in our sense, indeed, for we have never seen a line of his composition that exhibited anything above what could be called third-rate mediocrity of thought and style, but in the sense of keen appreciation of means and ends, audacious scheming, impenetrability to shame, and invincible endurance of chastisement. His inflictions in this respect, both moral and physical, he has uniformly turned to the best account: in a sense different from that of the Psalmist, he can say that it was good for him to be afflicted. No man probably ever made more dollars by the proclamation of his own disgrace. A mere catalogue of the horse-whippings he has undergone during his long career of inglory, would astonish the nerves of our readers.^[11] Each new infliction has been prominently blazoned in the columns of the Herald, and the attractive words “Cow-hided Again!!!” have been duly followed by a rush of buyers and a cheering flow of cents into the pockets of the complacent victim! On this subject his own testimony and that of his biographer are singularly frank and decided:—

“Since I knew myself, all the real approbation I sought for was my own. If my conscience was satisfied on the score of morals, and my ambition on the matter of talent, I always felt easy. On this principle I have acted from my youth up, and on this principle I mean to die. Nothing can disturb my equanimity. I know myself—so does the Almighty. Is not that enough?”

“This,” says the biographer, “is not the language and spirit of a common mind. It is the essence of a philosophy which has not deserted a man who has never failed to republish every slander against himself, and who has been conscious always that calumnies cannot outlive and overshadow truth.”

A man whose conscience seems never to have given him much trouble, and whose ambition has been satisfied with the acquisition of wealth and political power, may well feel easy under the whips and scorns of a whole universe! This is assuredly, and we rejoice to think so, not the language and spirit of the majority of mankind. Those only despise the approbation of their fellows who have shaken off the attributes of humanity, and accept the reverse of the proverb, that “a good name is rather to be chosen than great riches.” The impious allusion to the Almighty is worthy of a Couthon or a Marat.^[12]

The success of such a journal as the New York Herald is an undeniable blot on the community on whose follies and vices it battened into prosperity. The damning fact cannot be denied, that it was not in spite but on account of their scandalous character that such journals first attracted public attention and secured a hearing. While, therefore, we diminish not a jot our abhorrence of the men who reared these monuments of their own infamy, we are bound to regard them as but the concentrated type of the character that pervaded their constituency. If the New York Herald was unprincipled and obscene, the readers of the New York Herald must have shared in these qualities. Its conductor may have been a scoundrel, but he certainly was no fool; he fed his readers with such food as suited their taste. Had that taste been purer, he was knowing enough to have provided cleaner fare: in a grave and religious community he would probably have preached with unctuous decorum. Already the taste of that community has improved (no thanks, assuredly, to him); the deluge of vituperation and indecency has subsided, and the New York Herald has followed the temper of the time. It may not, as the helpless biographer tells us it is, be “a familiar journal at every court throughout the world, and in all intelligent communities,” but, compared with its former self, it is positively respectable.

Granting, therefore, that James Gordon Bennett was as disreputable an editor as Dr Faust’s great patron ever let loose upon mankind, it is both philosophically and historically just that we should regard him, as Germans would say, not as an isolated phenomenon, but as a highly-remarkable-and-in-itself-much-embracing-development of social existence. The half-apologetic statements on this subject by the biographer, who is in general so preposterous in his partiality and admiration as to be utterly beyond criticism, are among the most curious things in the book. After describing the state of society and of journalism previous to 1833, he says:—

“A more fortunate position of circumstances cannot be imagined than that which presented itself for Mr Bennett’s talents at this period. He had been moulded by events and experience to take a part in the change which the Press was about to undergo....

“Mr Bennett was prepared in every way for the occasion. He had been just so far injured as to urge him to take hold of the world with but little mercy for its foibles, and with so little regard to its opinions that he could distinguish himself by an original course in Journalism. He felt as Byron did after the Scotch Reviewers had embittered his soul by their harsh treatment of his ‘Hours of Idleness.’ This was a mood highly favourable to the production of a rare effect. The dormant spirit of the people could only be awakened by something startling and novel, and circumstances had produced a man for the times.”

The early numbers of the Herald, we are told, were “agreeable, pleasantly written, and comparatively prudish.” The habits of the editor were “exemplary.” Finding that this sort of thing was “no go,” the astute adventurer took a bolder course, and flung aside those trammels of decency and moderation which would have impeded or ruined the prospects of a weaker and less original mind. The biographer admits that his hero behaved somewhat grossly, but argues, as one might plead in defence of a vampire or a cobra-de-capello, that he merely used the weapons which nature had given him, and that at any rate he was no worse than his neighbours.

“The improved taste of the present hour will not sanction the mode in which Mr Bennett at first undertook to be the censor of society: but a philosophical analysis of the means which were used in his peculiar and eccentric course (!) exhibits motives as the springs of action, which do not necessarily indicate a callous heart or a bad temper.... That Mr Bennett had been provoked to use any and all power at his command, to overturn the wanton assailants of his character, cannot be denied. He had but armed himself with the best instruments heaven had bestowed upon him, and his mode of warfare was quite as dignified as that which had been resorted to, and adopted for fifteen or twenty years before, by the Press generally.”

If instead of the blasphemous word “Heaven” we substitute another more congruous to the nature of the subject, the above may be taken as a sufficiently “philosophical” view of the point at issue. A little farther on there is a still clearer admission. After telling us that the public did not care for political articles in such small sheets as the Herald, the biographer shows how it became necessary for Mr Bennett to fill his paper with falsehood and obscenity:—

“It would have been folly, therefore, to have attempted to make a daily offering to the public of a newspaper, such as is accepted even at the present hour. Mr Bennett saw this—he felt it. He wrote to create an interest for himself and the Herald. In this he was pecuniarily wise, for had he taken a more dignified course, and thus have produced only such studied articles as he had contributed to the Courier and Enquirer, from 1829 to 1832, the Herald would not have existed for a single month, unless sustained by a sacrifice of capital which it was not in the power of Mr Bennett to command. All of his success depended upon his making a journal wholly different from any one that was in existence.”

And in that attempt the enterprising editor succeeded to a miracle, for certainly anything approaching to the Herald in its “peculiar” character, the literature of civilisation had not seen!

That there may be no mistake on the matter, the biographer, in summing up the transcendent merits of Mr Bennett near the close of the volume, assures us that the course pursued was perfectly deliberate:—

“On the 5th of May 1835, he commenced his work of regeneration by publishing the first number of the New York Herald, which, till it was established, was conducted with such peculiarities as secured it attention—peculiarities which seemed to have sprung from a mind resolved to carry out certain broad personal characteristics, which in themselves furnish the bitterest satire upon the true nature of political and social life known to the literature of any age or country. The course adopted was not based on impulse. There is no excuse for it on that ground. It was the fruit of the most careful reflection, as is proved by the fact that the original prospectus has not been departed from in any point whatever during a period of twenty years. The original design was to establish a journal which should be independent of all parties, and the influence of which should be grounded upon its devotion to the popular will—a plan which has found numerous imitators, and which is the only one suited to satisfy the demands of the public.”

Mr Bennett, who of course “endorses” these sentiments, is thus, it is evident, as much at ease in his “conscience” with regard to his past conduct as ever, and would, if the thing were to be done over again, do it con amore again. The popular will—not Truth or Righteousness; the most sweet voices of the rabble, not the still small voice of the man within the breast—that, then, is the creed of this “regenerator” of journalism—Apage Satana.

The best type of Scottish character is eminently distinguished by force and earnestness; but as a Scotchman, when he is good, is intensely so—a Scotchman, when he sells himself to Clooty, is perhaps of all human beings the most devoted servant of that personage. Scotland, which has produced such eminent examples of genius and nobleness in this century as Thomas Chalmers and John Wilson, had the misfortune to give birth also to James Gordon Bennett. Let her not grieve, for the same England that gave birth to John Milton, was the mother likewise of Titus Oates.

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