Within five-and-twenty years from this date most of the existing morning
journals were established, and their advertising columns put on a guise
closely resembling that which they now present. We need not therefore
pursue our deep trenching into the old subsoil in order to turn up
long-buried evidences of manners and fashions, for they have ceased to
appear, either fossil or historical; we therefore boldly leap the gulf
that intervenes between these old days and the present.
The early part of the present century saw the commencement of that liberal
and systematic plan of advertising which marks the complete era in the
art. Princely ideas by degrees took possession of the trading mind as to
the value of this new agent in extending their business transactions.
Packwood, some thirty years ago, led the way by impressing his razor-strop
indelibly on the mind of every bearded member of the empire. Like other
great potentates he boasted a laureate in his pay, and every one remembers
the reply made to the individuals curious to know who drew up his
advertisements: "La, sir, we keeps a poet!"
By universal consent, however, the world has accorded to the late George
Robins the palm in this style of commercial puffing. His advertisements
were really artistically written. Like Martin, he had the power of
investing every landscape and building he touched with an importance and
majesty not attainable by meaner hands. He did perhaps go beyond the
yielding line of even poetical license, when he described one portion of a
paradise he was about to submit to public competition as adorned, among
other charms, with a "hanging wood," which the astonished purchaser found
out meant nothing more than an old gallows. But then he redeemed slight
manoeuvres of this kind by touches which really displayed a genius for
puffing. On one occasion he had made the beauties of an estate so
enchanting, that he found it necessary to blur it by a fault or two, lest
it should prove too bright and good "for human nature's daily food." "But
there are two drawbacks to the property," sighed out this Hafiz of the
Mart, "the litter of the rose-leaves and the noise of the nightingales!"
Certainly the force of exquisite puffing could no further go, and when he
died the poetry of advertising departed. Others, such as Charles Wright
of Champagne celebrity, have attempted to strike the strings; and Moses
does, we believe, veritably keep a poet; but none of them have been able
to rival George the Great, and we yawn as we read sonnets which end in the
invariable "mart," or acrostics which refer to Hyam and Co.'s superior
vests. Twenty years ago some of the daily newspapers admitted illustrated
advertisements into their columns; now it would be fatal to any of them to
do so. Nevertheless, they are by far the most effective of their class, as
they call in the aid of another sense to express their meaning. All but
the minors of the present generation must remember George Cruikshank's
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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