| Show as I 1 D I 1 ORS OF TODAY TO DAY EVOLUTION OF TIIE THE response Nsf tr jale NEWSPAPER MAN i position Is little more than a century ur y old francis jeffrey of th the edinburgh review the first of a mow JN timorous glass class the editor as lie is now best known the responsibly conductor of a newspaper or periodical is a comparatively recent production of civilization ho he is indeed but little more than a century coutur iol old fl tho the word is much older for it lias has been in use for nearly years but it originally 1 1 meant like the french edi tear bublis her and an editor of that kind was sometimes even called an odit edit ioner a particle word this use of the term however scon became obsolete and from the be beginning inning of the eighteenth C century tho the world of readers has been bee n familiar with the editor althe second mccond kind 7 that is one who prepares or revises and anilo annotates tates and arranges the work of another or of others for publication li A learned editor of the modern variety has lately laid it down that a good writer will be a bad editor and a good editor a bad stylist and hiss his own use of tie the odious word vi ord stylist may be held to go sonic some way to prove the truth of his diction but the statement is too sweeping to bo be accepted as it stands it contains of course a measure of truth for the qualities required lor for effective textual criticism lor fox the patient collation of texts and authorities and for abeta the various other kinds of detailed work regarded by modern scholarship as edl tor tori lally ally important are very different from those abose needed for ori original I lial compo then their there therona cis tl tae ab third kind hind of editor tho the responsible conductor of journal or periodical who is hardly traceable much jillich beyond the beginning of 0 the nineteenth century it is curious to recall now the primitive nature of the editorial arrain arrangements which l were made when the thel the edinburgh review was started the small band of northern scholars who cultivated literature on a little oatmeal seem to have thought that a review could be satisfactorily conducted by a committee of nearly a dozen aut this wag waa soon founds to be an impracticable arrangement ran gement and the responsible authority 6 was lodged in the reviews first real editor francis jeffrey somewhat similar attempts have been made occasionally in later days to place the editorial authority more or less in commission so to speak though 0 not with such a naive ignoring of possibilities as characterized the start of the edinburgh review but such experiments experiment have not usually been very successful francis jeffrey in charge of tho edinburg review was the real father of all who have since gince occupied the editorial chair of paper or periodical it may be objected that magazine editors existed before jeffreys lay day but it would be hard to show that any so s 0 called editor functions real jy corresponding to those pros pres ont ent day successor goldsmith was for a lehe lethe chief writer in the review the monthly ho diu ala hack ciack work vork of every kind hind work ill livland more prosperous lays days he never cared to claim as his own for it was vas written under tinder hard an and d degrading conditions but tho the real conductor odthe of the monthly was its proprietor griffiths the bookseller whom dubbed illiterate t and a whose power yas was shared by ills wife Gol goldsmith dumith complained that all he wrote was tampered with by these nahn aaa jointly filled ahe adl 14 ell chair al r lave ahw ct itse again who 1 founded the Gent lemans ill magazine agazine was also alshits als oits its responsible emi conductor ductor and in those cases where a magazine or other periodical publication was identified not with a bookseller or cy publisher but with a well known writers name tue the walter was not an editor in the modern sense for ills his business was to write stor for the most part ills his own paper not to accept or reject sift and arrange and correct the contributions of others jt was Yas in fit this way that defoe conducted ills his review steele and addison the taller spectator and guardian fielding tho th convent consent G arden journal lo and johnson the rambler andi ana idler occasional numbers cofone of one or other ather of af these papers or of tho the many other periodical publications the connoisseur world adventurer or and the like alilce might ho be wr written itten by a casual contributor but in ill tho the main they were ax written itten in each case by the one or two men who sl started arted and it i the express lou maybo mayba alioN allowed vea gaii an them johnson did much to abolish tho days and traditions of grub street and to enhance tho dignity b of the profession of letters francis jeffrey first invested the editorial chair wl with th an autho authority rity which coin respect |
