The Press. — London, England, 1853-11-19 00:00:00

NOVEMBER 19, 1853. SKETCHES OF RADICALS. 6. THE RADICAL NOVELIST. WHEN, some years ago, a disorderly mob assembled in a public place fora purpose which nobody could define, and of which, as it proved, the police were the best critics, Mr. P. L. D. B. F. tiproggs mounted on an eminence and uttered an harangue. "Gentlemen," said he, " the man-of-letters is now the most potent public man in Europe. " Lamartine is a mau of letters : I. gentlemen, am a man-of-letters r The cheering was terrific ; Sproggs was escorted home, and enjoyed a kind of triumph ; and the sale of his weekly work, the " Secret History high Lift," instantly went up in a style highly gratifying to his assignees. and which told, it is to be hoped, on his last dividend. Sproggs is not a fine writer, nor a man of education, nor known at all to decent people ; but you are much mistaken if you think he cares a snuff about that. He has a larger audience than Bulwer Lytton probably, awl is perfectly satisfied with his own importance is his walk. He and Squitt, author of " Murder Hall," the " Gipsy's Warning," Skunk of the " London Luminary " (price ld.l, ke., constitute a peculiar set of men, who enjoy each, as far as numbers go, more readers than Chateaubriand ever had, and live in a kind of under-world of literature of their own. They have their sets and circles, and entertain each other, I dare say, and have their jealousies and interests, like other men : they keep up a kind of Beggar's Opera under the world of letters, and Literary Li/;' Behar Stairs. How it all came about, who shall say ? Who are they ? Where did they come from ? These questions you may leave hopelessly to Inspector Field. But what they are now has its interest. They are loud in cheap literature, and do influence thousands ; and become curious objects of inquiry, even as rats in sewers do in these sanitary times. It is a very painful and absolutely certain tact, that a man may, by what our plain-spoken progenitors called downright blackguardism, corrupt half a million of people, undisturbed, in this country. The liberty of the subject demands it, you observe, and it' you had up a cheap novelist for prosecution, and plainly handled him as an obscene knave, Liberalism would be up in arms throughout the lend. They would tell us that though Sproggs was indefensible, yet once admit the precedent, and who would be safe ? Nay, 1 . dare say Sproggs would be made a martyr of: the chance of injuring tiovernment generally would be too good to be missed, and Sproggs would be pro nounced a sufferer in the cause of Hampden—and sell better than ever. The most respectable of the Radicals say, " (live us good news papers cheap" and "we shall beat the blackguard interest in a fair tight." This is amiable enough. Unfortunately, a cheap well-inten tioned paper don't sell (as the proprietors of the Poor Mon's Lang), price Id., well know). All education implies control ; no schoolmaster could carry on a month if he had no power to eject scoundrels from the place ; and those who propose to " educate the people " by means of newspapers (whatever we may think of the idea) have always the odds against them, in competing for a rude multitude, with those who deliberately appeal to that multitude's passion and ignorance. But as to getting angry with Sproggs, I warn you against giving him any such gratification. The worse you suppose him to lie, the higher you rate his social prospects. When a ',arson is indignant, or an elderly lady of piety shocked, Sproggs justly feels tickled. It is by deserving Botany Bay that he flourishes in Nightshade terrace. He and his friends of the class, the literati of that order, well know that their journals flourish precisely by the qualities which make the writers contemptible. and that it' you elevated the style you would ruin the circulation of those works. If a literary objection might be made to the writing of Sproggs by one who has with great previous precaution ventured on a glance at them. it would be to what 1 may presume to designate their somewhat monotonous character. If you dip at random you find the " licentious monarch," with his group of courtiers. still ensnaring the innocence of the middle and lower class with his " gilded saloons." After the author has done all that his imagination enables him to do to show how attractive such pursuits may be supposed to be—presto! begins he with:— " By such heartless tyranny do the oligarchs who prey on the blood of," &c., &e. There is no variety ; for after picturing the " royal voluptuary" he at once flies off to the " brutal oligarch " and between these magnetic points the dead corruption of his intellectual natura—Mahomet-like— is suspended! . . . Hatred cuustitutes his politics. Thus, as THE PRESS. 685 everybody calls himself a politician who can put half a dozen words together, in which 6overnment is abused. Sproggs is Political. He thugs his literary small beer with Radical poisons, and corrupts while he intoxicates. There are more harmless men among the Itadieal novelists.and of these eheap narrators some. at all events, are not obscene. It is always refreshing in the warfare of our period to turn to the mere fool, and have a little quiet ehat with him. Of the above mentioned Squitt T think less vindietively. and with him I In tninquifly to remonstrate. &utt is now writing a fiction, in which there is a" titled ruffian figuring away every week, who, I fear, will be the death of me. The absurd unnatural strut of that being for he is not human at all, whether " titled " or not) through those columns is a weariness to the flesh. Ile has married a tradesman's daughter for her money, and is going to murder her in a tower in the country. Ile is also a high political man. l I am willing to hope that the existing Cabinet am no way delineated here.) Ile talks and she talks in a way that no human being ever did on our planet. The lord has a gamekeeper who keeps people locked up, and bribes several men to hold their tongues—from which I begin to dread that he has been at these wicked games from early youth. Unfortunate Squat! How does Squitt get hundreds of thousands of readers to listen to this mass of malignant balderdash? I.et us hope that at least our titled friend will die penitent Lit' as far off as a hundred numbers hence—for tiquitt is prolix), stud part with melancholy from these reflections on the personal infinity which so curiously seems to mix itself up with revolutionary politics. TILE NEW REFORM BILL MINISTERIAL PROG RA NI \IE. With strikes at our 110Orstep, and war in olle more step. And a " generous public" beginning to storm, In hopes to conte►tt them, next year we present them A very " large measure " of thorough Reform. We might be more timid if Radical Jemmy . 41 Not promised a sweeper, to tickle the mob ; But now, truce to terrors, don't think about errors— Dash in for the voices of JosErn and Cos. Of Parliament bounties 'tis true that the counties At present possess but a fifth of their share ; But the rule of "needs must" is at variance with justice— Who'd strengthen the hands of antagonists there ! Hurrah, then, for cotton ! all parties me rotten, Save those of the great manufacturing towns ; For trade in this mill•ago rides rampant o'er tillage, And the people of cities must govern the clowns• So well get up a leader, to settle each reader. And prove dear as mud, be he never so dull, Small towns are grown black o' late, large ones immaculate, — Chatham and Liverpool, Blackburn and Hull. But then there's the I►allot—ench C a binet, palate, Whig, Itn►lical, Renegade, how shall we pleame ? "r is a were open question, which ea►+ nian'ts digestion May manage or not, Ith the diet agrees. 'Though we olive had a policy (all now its folly aee), Liberal-Conservative christened of old, 'Tis useless to foster the arrant impo►►ture, When Tories are angry and Churchmen aro cold. Our poor Coalition t,o keep in condition, Fur further support we must send round the hat So a child we'll affiliate, made to conciliate Chartist and Radical, Papist and Rot. At Manchester mammon and 60veniment gammon The old British Lion may grumble and storm ; With the Times to write crammer«, we heed not his elamours ; hurrah for our measure of total Reform !