forefathers with much respect, until one wet day in the country I found myself shut up with them. I won't say what I suffered; better judges of literature than myself admire them still, I know. I will only remark that I don't admire them. I don't say they are the dullest novels ever printed, because that would be invidious, and might do wrong to works of even greater pretensions; but to my mind they are dull.

When Dr. Johnson is free to confess that he does not admire Gray's Elegy, and Macaulay to avow that he sees little to praise in Dickens and Wordsworth, why should not humbler folks have the courage of their own opinions? They cannot possibly be more wrong than Johnson and Macaulay were, and it is surely better to be honest, though it may expose one to some ridicule, than to lie. The more we agree with the verdict of the generations before us on these matters, the more, it is quite true, we are likely to be right; but the agreement should be an honest one. At present very extensive domains in literature are, as it were, enclosed and denied to the public in respect to any free expression of their opinion. They are splendid, they are faultless,' cries the general voice, but the general eye has not beheld them. Nothing, of course, could be more futile than that, with every new generation, our old authors who have won their fame should be arraigned anew at the bar of public criticism; but, on the other hand, there is no reason why the mouths of us poor moderns should be muzzled, and still less that we should praise with alien lips.'

6

'Until Caldecott's charming illustrations of it made me laugh so much,' said a young lady to me the other day, 'I confess-though I know it's very stupid of me-I never saw much fun in John Gilpin.' She evidently expected a reproof, and when I whispered in her ear Nor I,' her lovely features assumed a look of positive enfranchise

ment.

'But am I right?' she inquired.

'You are certainly right, my dear young lady,' said I, 'not to pretend admiration where you don't feel it; as to liking John Gilpin, that is a matter of taste. It has, of course, simplicity to recommend it; but in my own case, though I'm fond of fun, it has never evoked a smile. It has always seemed to me like one of Mr. Joe Miller's stories put into tedious verse.'

I really almost thought (and hoped) that that young lady would have kissed me.

'Papa always says it is a free country,' she exclaimed, but I never felt it to be the case before this moment.'

For years this beautiful and accomplished creature had locked this awful secret in her innocent breast-that she didn't see much fun in John Gilpin. You have given me courage,' she said, 'to confess something else. Mr. Caldecott has just been illustrating in the same charming manner Goldsmith's Elegy on a Mad Dog, and

-I'm very sorry-but I never laughed at that before, either. I have pretended to laugh, you know,' she added, hastily and apologetically, 'hundreds of times.'

'I don't doubt it,' I replied; this is not such a free country as your father supposes.'

'But am I right?'

'I say nothing about "right," I answered, 'except that everybody has a right to his own opinion. For my part, however, I think the Mad Dog better than John Gilpin only because it is shorter.'

Whether I was wrong or right in the matter is of no consequence even to myself; the affection and gratitude of that young creature would more than repay me for a much greater mistake, if mistake it is. She protests that I have emancipated her from slavery. She has since talked to me about all sorts of authors, from Sir Philip Sidney to Washington Irving, in a way that would make some people's blood run cold; but it has no such effect upon me-quite the reverse. Of Irving she naïvely remarks that his strokes of humour seem to her to owe much of their success to the rarity of their occurrence; the flashes of fun are spread over pages of dulness, which enhance them, just as a dark night is propitious to fireworks, or the atmosphere of the House of Commons, or a Court of Law, to a joke. She is often in error, no doubt, but how bright and wholesome such talk is as compared with the platitudes and commonplaces which one hears on all sides in connection with literature!

6

As a rule, I suppose, even people in society ('the drawing-rooms and the clubs') are not absolutely base, and yet one would really think so, to judge by the fear that is entertained by them of being natural. I vow to Heaven,' says the prince of letter-writers, that I think the Parrots of Society are more intolerable and mischievous than its Birds of Prey. If ever I destroy myself, it will be in the bitterness of having those infernal and damnable "good old times" extolled.' One is almost tempted to say the same-when one hears their praises come from certain mouths of the good old books. It is not every one, of course, who has an opinion of his own upon any subject, far less on that of literature, but every one can abstain from expressing an opinion that is not his own. If one has no voice, what possible compensation can there be in becoming an echo? No one, I conclude, would wish to see literature discoursed about in the same pinchbeck and affected style as are painting and music; 3 yet that is what will happen if this prolific weed of sham admiration is permitted to attain its full growth.

3

The slang of art-talk has reached the 'young men' in the furniture warehouses. A friend of mine was recommended a sideboard the other day as not being a Chippendale, but having a Chippendale feeling in it.'

JAMES PAYN..

NEWSPAPER CORRESPONDENTS IN
THE FIELD.

MUCH has been said and written lately on the position of war correspondents with an army in the field. The new rules relating to them have raised a journalistic storm. Most newspapers have accepted them as a personal insult to the press. A few have taken a higher

line, have been above a class prejudice, and have recognised what was necessary for the public good. Mr. Archibald Forbes, in the January number of this Review, dissects the much-abused rules piecemeal, and gives to the public what he presumably supposes to be, or intends that it should suppose to be, a fair statement of the case. Many will widely differ from him.

Journalism has adopted the rôle of the injured party. It has, no doubt, personally suffered. It possesses the means of making itself heard, and it has not scrupled to use them. Few, with the exception of war correspondents and soldiers, have been behind the scenes on active service. The former say they are cruelly ill-used, and have cried out indignantly: the tongues of the latter are tied. They may rush into print if they like, but to do so would go sorely against the grain, while their opinions would be considered biassed. Therefore it turns out that only one side is heard. There is, however, another. I can lay claim, like Mr. Forbes, to having seen something of I have even acted for a short time as a war correspondent. I am not a soldier, and I am convinced, from personal observation in different campaigns, that every word of the new press regulations is necessary, and that, if they are withdrawn, a general in command of a force in the field will have either to incur the odium of enacting new ones for the guidance of correspondents accompanying him, or to adopt some other means for their control.

war.

Newspaper correspondents have of late years grown to be acknowledged as a necessary part of our armies during a campaign, but their position with such forces has, in many ways, been that of guests. They have held no recognised official status. The amount of reliable news given to them from head-quarters has depended entirely on the inclination of the general in command; therefore their chief sources of information have hitherto been the general conversation of camps, and what they themselves have seen, the conclusions

drawn from such sources, and varying according to the common sense of the writer, forming the substance of their home news; the trustworthiness of it depending entirely on the character and ability of the sender.

The reliance placed at home upon information so derived, and in many cases the results from it, have been out of all proportion to the sources from which it sprang.

Now, I am not one of those who loathe the sight of a war correspondent. There are men who can scarcely be civil to them on service; who seem unable to get rid of the feeling that

A chiel's amang them takin notes,

And, faith, he'll prent it;

who look upon them as spies, and treat them with offensive curtness. I have had many friends amongst them. It is impossible not to admire their spirit of adventure, their fund of anecdote, their abundance of resource. Mr. Forbes's Plevna telegram, which he refers to in his article, was a professional triumph. For some time it was adopted as the Russian official report. His individual energy, his great experience, his quick perception, fairly entitle him to rank amongst the best military critics of the day. We must not gauge all correspondents by his standard, neither must we grant to any of them, however able, the recognised position of military censors.

It is this position of capable critic and censor of things military which they assume that is injurious to the well-being of our armies. Why should the fact of a man being a war correspondent enable him to form more just opinions than any other civilian?

Nowadays a stipulated form of preparation is deemed necessary for candidates for any profession, yet anyone is at liberty to go fresh from the London pavements to the seat of war, never having seen a battalion field-day in his life, and to write, forsooth, as if he had studied military details from his babyhood. The oi Toλλoì take the doctrines of his 'prentice hand' as infallible, and on the strength of them scream for promotion or recall as he recommends.

By all means let us have letters from the seat of war, but let them remain what they were originally intended to be, the everyday narrative of a campaign, but of no professional consequence.

The question at issue is, Is the presence of uncontrolled and irresponsible writers with an army in the field injurious to its efficiency? Decidedly, Yes; and chiefly for these reasons, viz. Mr. Forbes's supposed objections to their presence :

1. That they may detrimentally affect public opinion at home, either by unpleasant and inopportune truth-telling, or by wanton lying.

2. That they may produce discontent and want of confidence in an army in the field, by hostile criticisms on its leader.

3. That they may give information to the enemy by revealing prematurely intentions and combinations, or by forwarding for publication details of strengths, fortifications, means of or shortcomings in transport, supplies, &c., of which the enemy may take advantage. And I would wish to add two more :

4. The custom of parading officers' names before the public for admiration on no official authority.

5. The danger of sensational writing.

Mr. Forbes almost playfully disposes of the first two, and seems to think the third of little importance, as it is the recognised custom of correspondents to give information to the enemy.

Now, all Mr. Forbes's objections, and most of the remarks of the press, are based on the assumption that without the presence of uncontrolled correspondents in the field we shall never get fair criticism. They assume that newspaper representatives at the seat of war are unprejudiced judges; they assume that they are capable military critics; and they assume that it is for the public good that every military detail of an army in the field should be liable to ventilation in the public press; also they claim for correspondents to be accepted by the public as critics, thereby placing in their hands much of that public's power. Nay, more than this; they claim for them to be military advisers. The correspondent of the Daily News, telegraphing from the seat of war in Zululand, dated Durban, July 14, after making the most violent strictures on an officer then holding a high command, reports that he has made certain representations as to a purely military matter which have not been followed. Three months have elapsed since, having passed down the Zulu coast from Mozambique, I made strong representations in favour of the possibility of effecting a landing thereon, and the project has only just been carried into effect.' The representative of a London journal telegraphs home that a general of division has neglected his advice! We had better, forsooth, make over the command of our armies to our correspondents.

6

It is the assumptions upon which the arguments against the new rules are based which are misleading; it is the claims which are put forward which are dangerous.

The army is a machine employed by a nation to gain a nation's ends; and if it can be proved that under certain conditions the efficiency of the machine suffers, the nation suffers, and it is a shortsighted, unpractical, theoretical policy for the nation to insist upon what are no doubt in the abstract its rights, if by so doing it cripples itself. The British public has, without doubt, the right to inquire into every detail of the working of its own establishments, to require, should it deem fit, that those details should be laid before the world, and to form its own judgments accordingly; but even the most ordinary events of campaigning life would be hardly judged by the