their works.
Thirdly, there is in reality nothing in them at all. And this also must
be allowed by their readers, if paragraphs, which contain neither wit,
nor humor, nor sense, nor the least importance, may be properly said to
contain nothing.... Nor will this appear strange if we consider who are
the authors of such tracts--namely, the journeymen of booksellers, of
whom, I believe, much the same may be truly predicated as of these
their productions. But the encouragement with which these lucubrations
are read may seem most strange and more difficult to be accounted for.
And here I cannot agree with my bookseller that their eminent badness
recommends them. The true reason is, I believe, the same which I once
heard an economist assign for the content and satisfaction with which
his family drank water-cider--viz., because they could procure no better
liquor. Indeed, I make no doubt but that the understanding as well as
the palate, though it may out of necessity swallow the worse, will, in
general, prefer the better.'

These sarcasms are probably not much overcolored, for, with one or two
exceptions, newspapers had sunk to a very low state indeed, and this may
be looked upon as one of the most degraded periods in the history of
journalism with which we have had to deal, or shall hereafter have to
encounter. The _Champion_, of course, was intended to be 'the better.'
It did not, however, meet with any very great success, but still with
enough to encourage Fielding in his attacks. In 1747 he dealt another
heavy blow at the Jacobites, by commencing the _Jacobite Journal_, in
which they were most mercilessly ridiculed and satirized. His opponents
replied as best they could, but they were not masters of the keen and
polished weapons which the great novelist wielded, and they were
therefore obliged to content themselves with venomous spite and abuse.
The ablest of these antagonists was a newspaper entitled _Old England,
or the Constitutional Journal_, an infamous and scurrilous publication,
to which, however, the elegant Lord Chesterfield did not think it
derogatory to contribute. Among other celebrities who were associated
with the press at this time, we find Lord Lyttelton, Bonnell
Thornton--the author of the _Connoisseur_, an essay paper, which, though
inferior to the _Spectator_ and _Tatler_, may be read with great
pleasure and profit, even at the present time--the famous Beckford,
Edward Moore, and Arthur Murphy. This last