The Republican journal., 1902-07-31
GROWTH OF THE EDITOR
Francis Jeffrey Said to Be Father of the
Craft.
From the London Globe. |

|
Craft
From the London Globe.
The editor as he is now best known
the responsible conductor of news
paper or periodicals. comparatively
recent product Of civilization. He is.
! indeed, but little more than a century
! old. The word is much older, for it has
been in use for nearly 800 years; but it
! originally meant, like the French ''edi-
| teur'-publisher And an editor of
! that kind was sometimes even called an
! ''editioner particularly ugly word.
/ This use of the term, however, soon be-
! came obsolete, and from the beginning
of the eighteenth century the world of
readers has been familiar with the edi-
torof the second kind-that is, one who
| prepares or revises and annotates and
arranges the work of another, or of
Others, for publication.
This species of editor has undergone
a subprocess of evolution on his own
account. Between the conceptions of
editorial duty as understood by, say,
Pope and johnson in their work on
Shakespeare, for example, and those of
a preSent-day scholar who, under the
auspices of such body as the Claren.
inr Sonis,;oS or cl,,hs nrena ras ,',,o,, % no,.
clifton of a classic ar ranr;nts n,.n,''
scrint matarial With q wraath of cri.;oal
apparatus in the shape of Introduction
and notes and pendices-between
/ these notions of editorial duty there is
great gulf fixed,
WRITERS AND EDITORS.
A learned editor of tha modern v.r;
ety has latalv laid If down that So GOOD
writer viii he q had editor and y GOOD
editora A bad stylist." and his own use Of
tha odio,s word ..stvlist,, NAV ha Lald
To 90 some wav to move the trnth Of his
diftion Dnt the statement is foo
| swaenino to he accented as II stands
| II contains of ror1sp q measure ~
| truth for tIa ousrlities renuirad for Of
! factive taxtn.I criticism forthe natiant
collection of texts and authorities and
for the various other kinds of detailed
work regarded nv modern scholarshin
as pditorially imnortant are very ditYar
| emf from those needed for oripinal com.
nositjon Such ronsiderations as these
| hov-eve,. never occurred to tha Nritars
and publishers of the eirhteenth cen.
furv \ man made his name known hv
| his writings and then mt money in MS
nnurh Inv his pditinp-his name being a
| inarketahlp commodity -a1thouoh thp
n''+-I,i ,}1tor;ai ,,o,.I ,,"icrlit G i'+
sIiot oj''. aH'} nnrf,nntnrr 5, +ho u"1
win 'til'' 1o1hsn s',,,s' ''' ~, "s.1 olie
',a,,r., '-'''''>>'
t''''0'
EDlNBt R@i REVIEW.
| Then there is the third kind of editor
the responsible conductor of a journal
! OF periodical is hardly traceable
| much beyond the beginning of the nine
teenth century. 1t is curious to recall
| now the primitive nature of the edi-
| torial arrangements which We're made
when the Edinburgh Review was start
! ed. The small band of northern scholars
who cultivated literature on a little
! oatmeal seem to have thought that a
review could be satisfactorily con-
| ducted by a committee of nearly a
! dozen. But this was soon found to be
an imrracticable arrangement, and
j the responsible authority was lodged
i'll the reviews first real editor. Francis
| Jeffrey. Somewhat similar attempts
have been made occasionally in later
days to place the editorial authority
more or less in commission so to speak.
though with not such naive ignoring
of possibilities as characterized the
start of the Edinburgh, but such eX