of date. Longer experience has only confirmed the present writer's
opinion, expressed here from the very beginning: "Everybody who knows
the composition of any respectable journal in London knows very well
that the articles which those of our own way of thinking dislike
most intensely are written by men whom to call bravoes in any sense
whatever would be simply monstrous. Let us say, as loudly as we
choose, if we see good reason, that they are half informed about some
of the things which they so authoritatively discuss; that they are
under strong class feeling; that they have not mastered the doctrines
which they are opposing; that they have not sufficiently meditated
their subject; that they have not given themselves time to do justice
even to their scanty knowledge. Journalists are open to charges of
this kind; but to think of them as a shameless body, thirsting for the
blood of better men than themselves, or ready to act as an editor's
instrument for money, involves a thoroughly unjust misconception."

As to the comparative effects of the two systems on literary quality,
no prudent observer with adequate experience will lay down an
unalterable rule. Habit no doubt counts for a great deal, but
apart from habit there are differences of temperament and peculiar
sensibilities. Some men write best when they sign what they write;
they find impersonality a mystification and an incumbrance; anonymity
makes them stiff, pompous, and over-magisterial. With others,
however, the effect is just the reverse. If they sign, they become
self-conscious, stilted, and even pretentious; it is only when they
are anonymous that they recover simplicity and ease. It is as if an
actor who is the soul of what is natural under the disguises of his
part, should become extremely artificial if he were compelled to come
upon the stage in his own proper clothes and speaking only in his
ordinary voice.

The newspaper press has not yet followed the example of the new
Reviews, but we are probably not far from the time when here, too, the
practice of signature will make its way. There was a silly cry at one
time for making the disuse of anonymity compulsory by law. But we
shall no more see this than we shall see legal penalties imposed
for publishing a book without an index, though that also has been
suggested. The same end will be reached by other ways. Within the last
few years a truly surprising shock has been given to the idea of a
newspaper, "as