a sort of impersonal thing, coming from nobody knows
where, the readers never thinking of the writer, nor caring whether
he thinks what he writes, so long as _they_ think what he writes."
Of course it is still true, and will most likely always remain true,
that, like the Athenian Sophist, great newspapers will teach the
conventional prejudices of those who pay for it. A writer will long
be able to say that, like the Sophist, the newspaper reflects the
morality, the intelligence, the tone of sentiment, of its public, and
if the latter is vicious, so is the former. But there is infinitely
less of this than there used to be. The press is more and more taking
the tone of a man speaking to a man. The childish imposture of
the editorial We is already thoroughly exploded. The names of all
important journalists are now coming to be as publicly known as the
names of important members of parliament. There is even something over
and above this. More than one editor has boldly aspired to create
and educate a public of his own, and he has succeeded. The press is
growing to be much more personal, in the sense that its most important
directors are taking to themselves the right of pursuing an individual
line of their own, with far less respect than of old to the supposed
exigencies of party or the _communiques_ of political leaders. The
editor of a Review of great eminence said to the present writer (who,
for his own part, took a slightly more modest view) that he regarded
himself as equal in importance to seventy-five Members of Parliament.
It is not altogether easy to weigh and measure with this degree of
precision. But what is certain is that there are journalists on both
sides in politics to whom the public looks for original suggestion,
and from whom leading politicians seek not merely such mechanical
support as they expect from their adherents in the House of Commons,
nor merely the uses of the vane to show which way the wind blows, but
ideas, guidance, and counsel, as from persons of co-equal authority
with themselves. England is still a long way from the point at which
French journalism has arrived in this matter. We cannot count an
effective host of Girardins, Lemoinnes, Abouts, or even Cassagnacs and
Rocheforts, each recognised as the exponent of his own opinions, and
each read because the opinions written are known to be his own. But
there is a distinctly nearer approach to this as the general state of
English journalism th