1830.] [ 509 ] 



A CHAPTER ON EDITORS I BY THE LATE WILLIAM HAZLITT. 



"Our withers are unwrung." 



EDITORS are (to use an approved Scotch phrase for what that is 

 Scotch is not approved?) a " sort of tittle-tattle" difficult to deal with, 

 dangerous to discuss. " A capital subject for an article, great scope, 

 complete novelty, and ground never touched upon !" Very true ; for 

 what Editor would insert an article against himself? Certainly none 

 that did not feel himself free from and superior to the common foibles of 

 his tribe.* What might, therefore, be taken for a satire in manuscript, 

 turns to a compliment in print the exception in this, as in other cases, 

 proves the rule an inference which we have endeavoured to express in 

 our motto. 



With one exception, then, Editors in general partake of the usual 

 infirmity of human nature, and of persons placed in high and honorary 

 situations. Like other individuals raised to authority, they are chosen 

 to fill a certain post for qualities useful or ornamental to the reading 

 public ; but they soon fancy that the situation has been invented for 

 their own honour and profit, and sink the use in the abuse. Kings .-ire 

 not the only servants of the public who imagine that they are the state. 

 Editors are but men, and easily " lay the flattering unction to their 

 souls" that they are the Magazine, the Newspaper, or the Review they 

 conduct. They have got a little power in their hands, and they wish to 

 employ that power (as all power is employed) to increase the sense of 

 self-importance ; they borrow a certain dignity from their situation as 

 arbiters and judges of taste and elegance, and they are determined to 

 keep it to the detriment of their employers and of every one else. They 

 are dreadfully afraid there should be any thing behind the Editor's 

 chair, greater than the Editor's chair. That is a scandal to be prevented 

 at all risks. The publication they are entrusted with for the amusement 

 and edification of the town, they convert, in theory and practice, into a 

 stalking-horse of their own vanity, whims, and prejudices. They can- 

 not write a whole work themselves, but they take care that the whole 

 is such as they might have written : it is to have the Editor's mark, like 

 the broad R, on every page, or the N. N. at the Tuilleries; it is to 

 bear the same image and superscription every line is to be upon oath : 

 nothing is to be differently conceived or better expressed than the Editor 

 could have done it. The whole begins in vanity, and ends too often in 

 dulness and insipidity. 



It is utterly impossible to persuade an Editor that he is nobody. 

 As Mr. Home Tooke said, on his trial for a libel before Lord Ken- 

 yon, " There are two parties in this cause myself and the jury ; 

 the judge and the crier of the court attend in thair respective places:" 

 so in every periodical miscellany, there are two essential parties 

 the writers and the public ; the Editor and the printer 's-devil are 

 merely the mechanical instruments to bring them together. There 

 is a secret consciousness of this on the part of the Conductor of the 

 Literary Diligence, that his place is one for shew and form rather than 

 use ; and as he cannot maintain his pretended superiority by what he 



* We give insertion to this article, one of the posthumous papers of Mr. Hazlitt, to 

 shew that we do not consider ourselves implicated in the abuses complained of; and that 

 we have no right to any share of the indignation so whimsically lavished upon our fra- 

 ternity. Ed. 



