Volume 183302
England and the English / by Edward Lytton Bulwer.
- Edward Bulwer-Lytton
- Date:
- 1833
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: England and the English / by Edward Lytton Bulwer. Source: Wellcome Collection.
57/370 page 41
![THE RICH CONTRIBUTOR. 4] rature owes to them. It is a cloak more con- venient to a man moving in a large society, than to the scholar, who is mostly centred in a ‘small circle. The rich man has no power to gain by a happy criticism, but he may have much malice to gratify by a piquant assault. Thus the aristocratic contributors to a journal have the most insisted upon secrecy, and have used it to-write the bitterest sallies on their friends. The unfortunate Lord Dudley dies, and we learn that one of his best compositions was a most truculent attack, in a Quarterly Re- view, upon his intimate companion—of course he was anxious not to be known! There are only two classes of men to whom the anony- mous is really desirable. The perfidious gen- ‘tleman who fears to be cut by the friends he in- | jures, and the lying blackguard who dreads to be horsewhipped by the man he maligns. With one more consideration I shall conclude this chapter. I intimated at the commencement of it, that the influence of the press was the great antagonist principle to that of the aristo- eracy. This is a hacknied assertion, yet it is pregnant with many novel speculations. The influence of the press is the influence of opinion ; yet, until very lately, the current opi- nion was decidedly aristocratic: — the class](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b33029362_0002_0057.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
