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

THE PRESS.

JUDICIAL PLEASANTRIES.

IT is quite enlivening, these foggy days, to witness the bright col.-
ruscations that occasionally flash from the judicial anvil in Westminster
Hall. (in Wednesday Mr. Maenamara applied to the Court of
Common Pleas to make a rule absolute for a new trial, the defend-
ant having been taken by t 4 urprise. It appeared that his attorney had
been misled by the Times newspaper, which stated that the Court
would sit at eleven o'clock, when in fact it sat at ten. In showing
cause, Mr. Watson stated that the attorney had only conic down to
court at half-past ten to instruct counsel, and was then looking about
to " call one from the stand, as he would a cab." " Perhaps," said
Mr. Justice Manic, "he was looking for a Fitzroy !"
On Thursday, in the Exchequer, in the midst of a learned argument
upon the construction of an act of Parliament, in which the pronoun
" he" occurred, the learned Chief Baron observed, "It has been the
course of modern legislation to enact that the word he may be read
she." " Precisely so." added Mr. Baron Alderson, " and the singular
may be read fur We. plural; ergo, tone man may be taken to mean
three Konen r

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