This criticism of the modern type of righteous indignation must have come into many people’s minds, I think, in reading Dr. Horton’s eloquent expressions of disgust at the “corrupt Press,” especially in connection with the Limerick craze.  Upon the Limerick craze itself, I fear Dr. Horton will not have much effect; such fads perish before one has had time to kill them.  But Dr. Horton’s protest may really do good if it enables us to come to some clear understanding about what is really wrong with the popular Press, and which means it might be useful and which permissible to use for its reform.  We do not want a censorship of the Press; but we are long past talking about that.  At present it is not we that silence the Press; it is the Press that silences us.  It is not a case of the Commonwealth settling how much the editors shall say; it is a case of the editors settling how much the Commonwealth shall know.  If we attack the Press we shall be rebelling, not repressing.  But shall we attack it?

Now it is just here that the chief difficulty occurs.  It arises from the very rarity and rectitude of those minds which commonly inaugurate such crusades.  I have the warmest respect for Dr. Horton’s thirst after righteousness; but it has always seemed to me that his righteousness would be more effective without his refinement.  The curse of the Nonconformists is their universal refinement.  They dimly connect being good with being delicate, and even dapper; with not being grotesque or loud or violent; with not sitting down on one’s hat.  Now it is always a pleasure to be loud and violent, and sometimes it is a duty.  Certainly it has nothing to do with sin; a man can be loudly and violently virtuous—­nay, he can be loudly and violently saintly, though that is not the type of saintliness that we recognise in Dr. Horton.  And as for sitting on one’s hat, if it is done for any sublime object (as, for instance, to amuse the children), it is obviously an act of very beautiful self-sacrifice, the destruction and surrender of the symbol of personal dignity upon the shrine of public festivity.  Now it will not do to attack the modern editor merely for being unrefined, like the great mass of mankind.  We must be able to say that he is immoral, not that he is undignified or ridiculous.  I do not mind the Yellow Press editor sitting on his hat.  My only objection to him begins to dawn when he attempts to sit on my hat; or, indeed (as is at present the case), when he proceeds to sit on my head.

But in reading between the lines of Dr. Horton’s invective one continually feels that he is not only angry with the popular Press for being unscrupulous:  he is partly angry with the popular Press for being popular.  He is not only irritated with Limericks for causing a mean money-scramble; he is also partly irritated with Limericks for being Limericks.  The enormous size of the levity gets on his nerves, like the glare and blare of Bank Holiday.  Now