"Let him who speaks beware Of whom, of what, and when, and where."
The Aristotelian rule I had adopted soon brought me into difficulties, probably from want of skill in applying it. It was in propagandist journalism that I had ventured, which I mention for the purpose of saying that it is not, as many suppose, a profitable profession. It is excellent discipline, but it is not thought much of by your banker. Its securities are never saleable on the Stock Exchange. Nevertheless, the Press has its undying attraction. It is the fame-maker. Without it noble words, as well as noble deeds, would die. Day by day there descend from the Press ideas in fertilising showers, falling on the parched and arid plains of life, which in due season become verdant and variegated. Difficulties try men's souls, but true ideas expand them. And they have done so. Literature is a much brighter thing than it was when I first began to meddle or "muddle" in it, as Lord Salisbury would say.
Nothing was thought classical then that was not dull No definition of importance was found to be utterly unintelligible until a University man had explained it. All is different now--let us hope.
Instances of the progress of literary opinion are perhaps more instructive and better worth remembering. In 1850, when George Henry Lewes and Thornton Hunt included my name in their published list of contributors to the _Leader_, it cost the proprietors, I had reason to know, £2,000. It set the Rev. Dr. Jelf, of King's College, on fire, and caused an orthodox spasm of a serious kind in Charles Kingsley and Professor Maurice, as witness their letters of that day.
One journal projected by me in 1850 is still v issued--_Public Opinion_. Mr. W. H. Ashurst asked me to devise a paper I thought the most needed. As Peel had said, "England was governed by opinion," I suggested that this opinion should be collected. I wrote the prospectus of the new journal, specifying that each article quoted should be prefixed by a few words, within brackets, setting forth what principles, party, or interest it represented--whether English or foreign. Mr. Ashurst put the prospectus into the hands of Robert Buchanan, father of the late Robert Buchanan, and the earlier issues followed the plan I had defined. The object was to collect intelligent and responsible opinion.