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    Untitled Article

    Bulwer ' s boot , even in matters of fact . For the sake of being amusing , he could not be content to discuss , he thought it necessary to paint . But , for a picture , details are necessary as well as

    outlines : and the details which were requisite for correctly fillin g up the picture , Mr . Bulwer often did not know- This is particularly conspicuous in all that he writes about France . Thus , to take one instance among many , Mr . Bulwer dwells much , and with reason , on the characteristic fact ( a fact connected with many other differences between the two countries ) of the great personal consideration possessed in France by the leading journalists , while in England men are ashamed rather than proud of a connection with even the most successful newspaper . Almost all Mr . Bulwer ' s general remarks on this subject are just and pertinent ; but he must needs illustrate his assertions by an

    imaginary conversation between a supposed editor of ' The Times ' and M . Bertin de Vaux . In this conversation there are some clever traits of satire , but the part which is borne in it by the representative of French journalism must , by every Parisian who reads it , be felt as laughably incongruous and absurd ; the smallest blunder being that M . Bertin de Vaux , peer of France , late deputy for the department of Seine et Oise , is confounded with M . Bertin Vaine , principal editor and responsible manager of the Journal des Debats .

    This reminds me of a most portentous piece of ignorance of the state of society in England which M . Chales displays , in conjunction with a curiously perverse misapplication of a true principle . We are all familiar with that kind of philosophic pedantry , which , when it has got hold of a few truths which it conceives to be a test of superiority over the vulgar , applies them d . tort et & travers , and sees proof of ignorance of them in the bare fact of maintaining an opinion different from its own on any subject .

    Thus M . Chales declares Mr . Bulwer to be entirely mistaken in deeming the position of a man of letters to be a more desirable one in France than in England ; and then favours his readers with a column and a half of observations on the intrinsic worthies sness of the character of a mere man of letters , a writer by profession , a hack , who does not write because he has something to sa y , but who must find something to say in order that he may

    write , and by writing may obtain food or praise . Undoubtedly , this is a character of no great worth or dignity , and the observations of M . Chales on the subject are perfectly just , and the more just the more out of place ; for , as M . Chales ought to have well known , Mr . Bulwer was not complaining of any neglect shown to such literary hacks , who , on the contrary , are almost

    the only prosperous persons among our public writers ; but of the almost insuperable obstacles with which those writers have to Rtni ggle who are not mere * hommes de lettresy * but students , giving forth to the world the fruits of their studies ; and the very

    Untitled Article

    The Journal des DibaU and the English . 391

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), June 2, 1834, page 391, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2634/page/7/