“The Press” In 1866

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31232, 2 December 1966, Page 12

“The Press” In 1866

December 3 Involuntary homage is always more touching than the most courtly finished compliment; but how much more grateful when it comes from the pen of a foe. Our respected contemporary, the Lyttelton Times, was pleased on Saturday morning to apologise for its inability to “compliment the Press upon its present style of writing;” assigning as the reason, that “a bilious tendancy in the direction of coarse abuse has lately developed itself, and has taken the place once occupied by a decent, if caustic wit” We gratefully accept this graceful and delicate withdrawal of many an adjective in our friend’s columns, which we used to think a little

unkind. We will for ever forget that the “decent, if caustic wit,” was generally characterised the morning after its publication, as “scurrilous vituperation,” or by some equally complimentary epithets. Jokes are not usually supposed to improve by age; but it appears that the wit of the Press mellows, like good wine, under the genial influence of time. May we, without too much presumption, hope that “the bilious tendancy in the direction of coarse abuse,” which is, at the first taste, so unpalatable to our friends in Cathedral square, may, some year or two hence, recur to their recollection, —as our past little attentions to them appear to have done —as nothing more than “decent, if caustic wit”