France -- History -- Louis XVI, 1774-1793; France -- History -- Revolution, 1789-1799
Folded and hawked Newspapers exist in all countries; but, in such
a Journalistic element as this of France, other and stranger
sorts are to be anticipated. What says the English reader to a
_Journal-Affiche_, Placard Journal; legible to him that has no
halfpenny; in bright prismatic colours, calling the eye from
afar? Such, in the coming months, as Patriot Associations, public
and private, advance, and can subscribe funds, shall plenteously
hang themselves out: _leaves_, limed leaves, to catch what they
can! The very Government shall have its Pasted Journal; Louvet,
busy yet with a new “charming romance,” shall write
_Sentinelles_, and post them with effect; nay Bertrand de
Moleville, in his extremity, shall still more cunningly try
it.[281] Great is Journalism. Is not every Able Editor a Ruler of
the World, being a persuader of it; though self-elected, yet
sanctioned, by the sale of his Numbers? Whom indeed the world has
the readiest method of deposing, should need be: that of merely
doing _nothing_ to him; which ends in starvation!
Nor esteem it small what those Bill-stickers had to do in Paris:
above Three Score of them: all with their crosspoles, haversacks,
pastepots; nay with leaden badges, for the Municipality licenses
them. A Sacred College, properly of World-rulers’ Heralds, though
not respected as such, in an Era still incipient and raw. They
made the walls of Paris didactic, suasive, with an ever fresh
Periodical Literature, wherein he that ran might read: Placard
Journals, Placard Lampoons, Municipal Ordinances, Royal
Proclamations; the whole other or vulgar Placard-department
super-added,—or omitted from contempt! What unutterable things
the stone-walls spoke, during these five years! But it is all
gone; Today swallowing Yesterday, and then being in its turn
swallowed of Tomorrow, even as Speech ever is. Nay what, O thou
immortal Man of Letters, is Writing itself but Speech conserved
for a time? The Placard Journal conserved it for one day; some
Books conserve it for the matter of ten years; nay some for three
thousand: but what then? Why, _then_, the years being all run, it
also dies, and the world is rid of it. Oh, were there not a
spirit in the word of man, as in man himself, that survived the
audible bodied word, and tended either Godward, or else Devilward
for evermore, why should he trouble himself much with the truth
of it, or the falsehood of it, except for commercial purposes?
His immortality indeed, and whether it shall last half a
lifetime, or a lifetime and half; is not that a very considerable
thing? As mortality, was to the runaway, whom Great Fritz bullied
back into the battle with a: ‘_R—, wollt ihr ewig leben_,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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