Throughout almost the entire eighteenth century the editorial chairs of the different periodicals seem to have been filled for the most part by St John’s men. Terrae Filius appeared first in 1721 under the guidance of Nicholas Amhurst of St John’s. In 1789 _The Loiterers_, a literary weekly, was launched before the public by James Austen of St John’s. His brother, H. T. Austen of the same college, materially assisted him by contributing a number of delightful imaginative articles. This paper was filially dedicated by the editor to the President and Fellows of his college, and ran successfully for two years. The present-day members have done their best to maintain the literary traditions of this college, for that nine days’ wonder, the _Tuesday Review_, was edited and run by two rash men of St John’s.
Amhurst took it upon himself to fill the post of cat-o’-nine-tails to the University, and in his “secret history” lashed at everybody and thing that was not to his liking, or that seemed to him to constitute in any way an abuse. He discovered for himself, in all their abundance, the manifold troubles of an editor, but was not to be coerced or cajoled into anything that he did not consider fit and proper.
“In a work of this nature,” he wrote in the preface to the second edition of Terrae Filius, “it is very hard to please any, and impossible to please all. The different tempers and tastes of men cannot relish the same style or manner of writing any more than the same dish or the same diversion: fops love romances; pedants love jargon; the splenatic man delights in satire; and the gay courtier in panegyric; some are pleased with poetry; others with prose; some are for plain truths, and some for disguise and dissimulation. I was aware of this when I began, and, in my second paper, reserved to myself a liberty to be in what humour I pleased, and to vary my manner as well as my subject, hoping thereby to please most sorts of readers; but I quickly found myself disappointed in my expectations, having often received, by the same post, complaints from some of my correspondents, that I was too grave for the character of Terrae Filius; and from others, that I affected levity too much for one who styled himself a reformer. In answer to both of the objections I shall beg my readers to consider that as, on one hand, it ought not to be expected that a man should keep his face upon the broad grin for half a year together; so, on the other, I cannot apprehend that it is at all necessary for a reformer to be a puritan, always in the dumps, and always holding forth with a dismal face and a canting tone:--