ys, reviews,
letters, theatrical criticisms, &c, &c, as amusing as possible, but all
distinctly and boldly going to what in one's own view ought to be the
spirit of the people and the time. . . . Now to bind all this together, and
to get a character established as it were which any of the writers may
maintain without difficulty, I want to suppose a certain SHADOW, which
may go into any place, by sunlight, moonlight, starlight, firelight,
candlelight, and be in all homes, and all nooks and corners, and be
supposed to be cognisant of everything, and go everywhere, without the
least difficulty. Which may be in the Theatre, the Palace, the House of
Commons, the Prisons, the Unions, the Churches, on the Railroad, on the
Sea, abroad and at home: a kind of semi-omniscient, omnipresent,
intangible creature. I don't think it would do to call the paper THE
SHADOW: but I want something tacked to that title, to express the notion
of its being a cheerful, useful, and always welcome Shadow. I want to
open the first number with this Shadow's account of himself and his
family. I want to have all the correspondence addressed to him. I want
him to issue his warnings from time to time, that he is going to fall on
such and such a subject; or to expose such and such a piece of humbug;
or that he may be expected shortly in such and such a place. I want the
compiled part of the paper to express the idea of this Shadow's having
been in libraries, and among the books referred to. I want him to loom
as a fanciful thing all over London; and to get up a general notion of
'What will the Shadow say about this, I wonder? What will the Shadow
say about that? Is the Shadow here?' and so forth. Do you understand? . . .
I have an enormous difficulty in expressing what I mean, in this stage
of the business; but I think the importance of the idea is, that once
stated on paper, there is no difficulty in keeping it up. That it
presents an odd, unsubstantial, whimsical, new thing: a sort of
previously unthought-of Power going about. That it will concentrate into
one focus all that is done in the paper. That it sets up a creature
which isn't the Spectator, and isn't Isaac Bickerstaff, and isn't
anything of that kind: but in which people will be perfectly willing to
believe, and which is just mysterious and quaint enough to have a sort
of charm for their imagination, while it will represent common-sense and
humanity. I want to express in the title, and in the gra