e sort that I remember was a miserable old
man who haunted the British Museum. No one knew where he lived; but
his work, such as it was, usually went in with punctuality, and he
drank the proceeds. He died in a stall of a low public-house, and was
buried by the parish. No one but his editor and one or two cronies
knew his real name, and he appeared to be utterly friendless. But the
modern leader-writer must beware of strong liquors. Usually he is a
keen, reposeful man who has his brain cool at all hours. The immense
drinking-bouts of old times could never be indulged in now; and
indeed, if a journalist once begins to take stimulants as stimulants,
his end is not far off. Let us mention the kind of feats which must be
performed. A powerful minister makes a speech after eleven o'clock at
night; the leader-writer receives proof-sheets; he must grasp the
whole scope of the speech in a flash, and then proceed with the mere
mechanical work of writing. Twelve hundred words will take about an
hour and twenty minutes to set down, and then the MS. must be rushed
piece by piece to the composing-room. Again, supposing that news of
some great disaster arrives late. An article must be swiftly done, and
the writer must have a theory ready that will hold water. Work like
this needs a quick wit, a copious vocabulary, and an absolutely steady
hand. Moreover, the leader-writer must unhappily be invariably ready
to write "nothings" so that they may look like "somethings." News is
scarce, foreign nations show a culpable lack of desire to kill each
other, no moving accident has occurred--and the paper must be filled.
Then the leader-writer must take some trivial subject and weave round
it a web of graceful and amusing phrases. One brilliant scholar once
wrote a most charming and learned article about pigs; and I have seen
a column of grave nonsense spun out on the subject of an unhappy cat
which fixed its head in a salmon-tin!

This hurried writing on trifling matters brings on a certain looseness
of style and thought; but the public will have it, and the demand
creates the supply of a flimsy, pleasant, literary article. The best
leaders are now written by fine scholars. In travelling over the
country I have been amused by simple people who imagined that the
articles in a journal were produced by one secret and utterly
mysterious being. These good folk are mightily surprised on finding
that the admired leaders are done by a troop of men who