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Typo: A Monthly Newspaper and Literary Review, Volume 7
[miscellaneous paragraphs]
« The press, » says George Higinbotham, « exercises a great influence over human intelligence, and a far greater, and even an awful influence over human ignorance. »
Mr W. H. Wright, the « electric printer, » of Buffalo, sends his good wishes for the new year on his January calendar, and adorns it with his own portrait, surrounded by lightning flashes. The Durant Counter card (also printed by Mr Wright) is a neat piece of work in four colors.
It is recorded of Lowell that at a Papyrus Club dinner, a few years ago, he talked about his first book, the five hundred copies of which did not sell, and were put away in a lumber-room. One night the lumber-room was found to be in a blaze, and the books were destroyed. « I learned recently, » added the poet, « that a copy of that first book is worth £6, and in view of this fact the advice that it seems most fitting I should give to all literary folk is to burn their first books! »
All the way from Chicago comes a copy of a back number of an English paper advertised for in Typo to complete a file. And some folks think advertisements are not read! We thank our American friend for his courtesy.
An epigram on the wealthy folk of Sydney is attributed to Lord Rosebery. « They sit on twenty-two-guinea chairs and look at sixteen-shilling oleographs. » The point of the satire is lost by its localisation. It would apply equally well to hundreds of other cities.
« The London Lancet says: 'No smoker can be a well man.' » So quotes Mr George M. Powell, in a contemporary. The Lancet may have expressed such an opinion; but it is safe to say that the seven words in quotation marks were neither written by an Englishman, nor published editorially in any English paper. Mr Powell has given good reason to guess that he is an American citizen.
Probably the maker-up is partly responsible for the way of dealing with stewed mutton chop which we find in the cookery columns of a contemporary. The whole receipt occupies thirty-six lines; but the following passage from the middle will suffice to show the originality of the method recommended: « When half-cooked turn the meat over and add more liquid if necessary. When done serve with a will, throw them into cold water until they are perfectly cold. Then peel and cut crosswise in slices with a sharp knife. »
Collectors of autographs should ponder the case of Mr John S. Kennedy, of New York, who purchased in Edinburgh a large number of interesting and curious manuscripts. These, to the number of 202, he presented to the Lennox Library. An examination, by the experts of the British Museum, reveals the fact that only one script of the whole lot is genuine. The early historical documents of various periods, they report, are very absurd writings, and are all on paper of the same make.—No doubt there are more of the same kind in the market.
Little folks there are who include all fluids under the generic name of « drink; » but such a mistake would scarcely be looked for on the part of a professedly scientific writer. Yet in the scientific column of a contemporary, in a note on « the whiteness of foam, » we read: « Foam is always white, whatever may be the color of the beverage itself. The froth produced on a bottle of the blackest ink is white, and would be perfectly so were it not tinged, to a certain extent, by particles of the beverage which the bubbles hold in mechanical suspension. »
« Jack Bennett, » in Newspaperdom, gives good advice to country newspapers. « If you are getting out a paper, have some style about it. A woman with her hair coming down and her dress pinned on may be a genius: slatternliness is no evidence of it. A genius may be a sloven. A sloven is not a genius. Keep a clean dress of new type. A ring-fighter may look up to his trade with his face mashed; but type doesn't. Have an intelligent, intelligible, systematic, compact, convenient make-up. Outside appearances count. Use type that wears well, prints clean, and is easily read. »
Mr Herbert Spencer has been much entertained by a letter from a pushing publisher in a western state, asking how much he would take for the exclusive right of issuing his poem, the Faerie Queene, in the United States.
Tennyson's songs (says the Spectator) are miracles of gaiety or pathos or wonder or grief, especially of grief. Our language has never elsewhere reached the special beauty of his « Tears, idle tears, » or his « Break, break, break, » nor for magic of sound has the spell of his « Blow, bugle, blow » ever been commanded by another.
The Globe News Ink Company and George Mather & Sons Company of Chicago, have arranged to open in suite 204 Herald buildings, Chicago, a bureau of information for all visiting printers and publishers, who may have their letters and telegrams addressed to the office. A staff of attendants will be there during the whole period of the Fair.
In refusing a rule nisi against a home paper for commenting on a pending case, Lord Chief Justice Coleridge remarked that the Bench « must not bring proceedings for contempt into contempt by making them too common, »—« an epigrammatic remark » (says the Stationery Trades Journal) « which deserves to become classical. »
It may not be generally known (says an English contemporary) that a careful revision of the Apocrypha has been in progress for some years. The agreement with the University Presses of Oxford and Cambridge, dated 1872, bound the two companies who revised the Old and New Testaments to undertake this work also. Accordingly, on the completion of their labors on the New Testament, the revision of the Apocrypha was begun. The result of the revisers' work will be published by the Universities.
In the bright lexicon of the tenth-rate reporter the word « alleged » has the foremost place. What he supposes it to mean would be hard to say. Two typical examples appear in a late Wanganui paper, A woman is fined £25 and £5 costs for illegal traffic in liquor, and her partner in the offence is sentenced to imprisonment. The charge is proved on the clearest evidence—the report is headed « Alleged sly grog-selling. » A young man walking with his sweetheart is set upon by a bully who owes him a grudge and who has three more larrikins at his back; he is pummelled, knocked down, and kicked; the lady has a fainting-fit. This is an « alleged assault. »
Messrs George Robertson & Co., Melbourne, have published a volume of the poems of Mr G. H. Supple, a veteran Irish writer, who in his time has contributed to Bentley's Miscellany, Duffy's Ballad Poetry of Ireland, the Australasian, and the Melbourne Review. In his old age, he is in reduced circumstances, and threatened with blindness. We are not acquainted with Mr Supple's verse, and therefore quote the criticism of the Argus. According to this authority, it is animated by that half-humorous half-pathetic spirit which breathes through some of the finest effusions of the Irish bards; and proves him to have been gifted with the quick emotions which beget the poetry of feeling, and with the faculty of giving it expression, sometimes in the best lyrical form.