listic career smelt
of sources entirely opposed to the conclusions upon which it broadened.
One secret of the belief in his love of his country was the readiness
of Rockney's pen to support our nobler patriotic impulses, his relish of
the bluff besides. His eye was on our commerce, on our courts of Law, on
our streets and alleys, our army and navy, our colonies, the vaster than
the island England, and still he would be busy picking up needles and
threads in the island. Deeds of valour were noted by him, lapses of
cowardice: how one man stood against a host for law or humanity,
how crowds looked on at the beating of a woman, how a good fight
was maintained in some sly ring between two of equal brawn: and
manufacturers were warned of the consequences of their iniquities,
Government was lashed for sleeping upon shaky ordinances, colonists were
gibbeted for the maltreating of natives: the ring and fervour of
the notes on daily events told of Rockney's hand upon the national
heart--with a faint, an enforced, reluctant indication of our not being
the men we were.

But after all, the main secret was his art of writing round English,
instead of laborious Latinised periods: and the secret of the art was
his meaning what he said. It was the personal throb. The fire of a mind
was translucent in Press columns where our public had been accustomed
to the rhetoric of primed scribes. He did away with the Biscay billow
of the leading article--Bull's favourite prose--bardic construction
of sentences that roll to the antithetical climax, whose foamy top is
offered and gulped as equivalent to an idea. Writing of such a kind as
Rockney's was new to a land where the political opinions of Joint Stock
Companies had rattled Jovian thunders obedient to the nod of Bull.
Though not alone in working the change, he was the foremost. And he was
not devoid of style. Fervidness is the core of style. He was a tough
opponent for his betters in education, struck forcibly, dexterously, was
always alert for debate. An encounter between Swift and Johnson, were it
imaginable, would present us probably the most prodigious Gigantomachy
in literary polemics. It is not imaginable among comparative pygmies.
But Rockney's combat with his fellow-politicians of the Press partook
of the Swiftian against the Johnsonian in form. He was a steam ram that
drove straight at the bulky broadside of the enemy.

Premiers of parties might be Captains of the State for Rockney: R