One chief experiment which the Review was established to try was that of signed articles.  When Mr. Lewes wrote his Farewell Causerie, as I am doing now, he said:  “That we have been enabled to bring together men so various in opinion and so distinguished in power has been mainly owing to the principle adopted of allowing each writer perfect freedom; which could only have been allowed under the condition of personal responsibility.  The question of signing articles had long been debated; it has now been tested.  The arguments in favour of it were mainly of a moral order; the arguments against it, while admitting the morality, mainly asserted its inexpediency.  The question of expediency has, I venture to say, been materially enlightened by the success of the Review.”  The success of other periodicals, conducted still more rigorously on the principle that every article ought to bear its writer’s signature, leaves no further doubt on the subject; so that it is now almost impossible to realise that only fifteen or sixteen years ago scarcely anybody of the class called practical could believe that the sacred principle of the Anonymous was doomed.  One of the shrewdest publishers in Edinburgh, and also himself the editor of a famous magazine, once said to me while Mr. Lewes was still editor of this Review, that he had always thought highly of our friend’s judgment “until he had taken up the senseless notion of a magazine with signed articles and open to both sides of every question.”  Nobody will call the notion senseless any longer.  The question is rather how long the exclusively anonymous periodicals will resist the innovation.

Personally I have attached less stern importance to signature as an unvarying rule than did my predecessor; though, even he was compelled by obvious considerations of convenience to make his chronique of current affairs anonymous.  Our practice has been signature as the standing rule, occasionally suspended in favour of anonymity when there seemed to be sufficient reason.  On the whole it may be said that the change from anonymous to signed articles has followed the course of most changes.  It has not led to one-half either of the evils or of the advantages that its advocates and its opponents foretold.  That it has produced some charlatanry, can hardly be denied.  Readers are tempted to postpone serious and persistent interest in subjects, to a semi-personal curiosity about the casual and unconnected deliverances of the literary or social star of the hour.  That this conception has been worked out with signal ability in more cases than one; that it has made periodical literature full of actuality; that it has tickled and delighted the palate—­is all most true.  The obvious danger is lest we should be tempted to think more of the man who speaks than of the precise value of what he says.