Here speech seemed to fail him,--he threw himself into a chair, and, to relieve his mind, kicked away the advertisement sheet of the morning's newspaper with so much angry vehemence that Alwyn laughed outright.
"What ails you now, Villiers?" he demanded mirthfully.. "You are a regular fire-eater--a would-be Crusader against a modern Saracen host! Why are you choked with such seemingly unutterable wrath! ... what of the Press? ... it is at any rate free."
"Free!" cried Villiers, sitting bolt upright and shooting out the word like a bullet from a gun,--"Free? ... the Press? It is the veriest bound slave that was ever hampered by the chains of party prejudice,--and the only attempt at freedom it ever makes in its lower grades is an occasional outbreak into scurrility! And yet think what a majestic power for good the true, REAL Liberty of the Press might wield over the destinies of nations! Broadly viewed, the Press should be the strong, practical, helping right hand of civilization, dealing out equal justice, equal sympathy, equal instruction,--it should be the fosterer of the arts and sciences, --the everyday guide of the morals and culture of the people,--it should not specially advocate any cause save Honor,--it should be as far as possible the unanimous voice of the Nation. It SHOULD be,--but what IS it? Look round and judge for yourself. Every daily paper panders more or less to the lowest tastes of the mob, --while if the higher sentiments of man are not actually sneered at, they are made a subject for feeble surprise, or vapid 'gush.' An act of heroic unselfishness meets with such a cackling chorus of amazed, half-bantering approval from the leading-article writers, that one is forced to accept the suggestion implied,-- namely that to BE heroic or unselfish is evidently an outbreak of noble instinct that is entirely unexpected and remarkable,--nay, even eccentric and inexplicable! The spirit of mockery pervades everything,--and while the story of a murder is allowed to occupy three and four columns of print, the account of some great scientific discovery, or the report of some famous literary or artistic achievement is squeezed into a few lukewarm and unsatisfactory lines. I have seen a female paragraphist's idiotic description of an actress's gown allowed to take more space in a journal than the review of a first-class book! Moreover, if an honest man, desirous of giving vent to an honest opinion on some crying abuse of the day, were to set forth that opinion in letter form and try to get it published in a leading and important newspaper, the chances are ten to one that it would never he inserted, unless he happened to know the editor, or one of the staff, and perhaps not even then, because, mark you! his opinion MUST be in accordance with the literary editor's opinion, or it will be considered of no value to the world! Consider THAT gigantic absurdity! ... consider, that when we read our newspapers we are not learning the views of Europe on a certain point,--we are absorbing the ideas of the EDITOR, to whom everything must be submitted before insertion in the oracular columns we pin our faith on! Thus it is that criticism,--literary criticism, at any rate,--is a lost art,--YOU know that. A man must either be dead (or considered dead) or in a 'clique' to receive any open encouragement at all from the so-called 'crack' critics. And the cliquey men are generally such stupendous bigots for their own particular and restricted form of 'style.' Anything new they hate,--anything daring they treat with ridicule. Some of them have no hesitation in saying they prefer Matthew Arnold (remember he's dead!) to Tennyson and Swinburne (as yet living).. while, as a fact, if we are to go by the high standards of poetical art left us by Shakespeare, Keats, Shelley, and Byron, Matthew Arnold is about the very tamest, most unimaginative, bald bard that ever kindled a lucifer match of verse and fancied it the fire of Apollo! It's utterly impossible to get either a just or broad view of literature out of cliques,--and the Press, like many of our other 'magnificent' institutions, is working entirely on a wrong system. But who is going to be wise, or strong, or diplomatic enough to reform it? ... No one, at present,--and we shall jog along, and read up the details of vice in our dailies and weeklies, till we almost lose the savor of virtue, and till the last degraded end comes of it all, and blatant young America thrones herself on the shores of Britain and sends her eagle screech of conquest echoing over Old World and New."