PRESS PERSONALITIES.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1248, 30 January 1896, Page 12

PRESS PERSONALITIES.

One of the most entertaining of Mr Holyoako's chapters in his book on "Public Orators and Public Speaking" is that in which he condemns "personalities." Tn the days of Mr Holyoake's youth both speakers and writery were addicted to great personal abuse. The Times, for instance, which then had not adopted the rule of excluding poetry, once published some verses on O'Connell, beginning— Slirne condensed of Irish bog, Liar, traitor, demagogue. The oracle of Printing-house Square also sooke of its neighbour, the old MorningChronicle, as "that squirt of filthy water," and the Morning Chronicle referred to the Morning Po?t as that "slop-pail of corruption." The alliterative propensities of the Morning Advertiser seem to be of somewhat ancient date, as in the good old days of which we speak it was fond of describing the proprietor of the Times as "that bully of Berkshire." The Morning Herald called the Courier "that spavined old hack," and the Standard addressed the Globe as " our blubberhead contemporary." Here is another tit-bit from the Times of that period. After referring to two of its contemporaries as "Liberal liars," it went on to observe, "The community must be shocked to know that there are such beings as these scribblers out of the treadmill, and because every exposure of the ragamuffius gives to foreigners an additional proof that there have crept into the press of this country a number of scoundrels, who not only are unfit for the society of gentlemen, but who would be a disgrace to the vilest coteries of Europe." The Standard the day after remarked, "It can scarcely be doubted that the habits of writing down to the ignorance and below the brutality of the rabble, which the Times has acquired by long experience, acting, of course, upon original ignorance and intuitive brutality, have rendered this journal a more powerful organ of excitement than a whole workshop of railers." The habit of bandying compliments of this kind was indulged in not only by the press, but also on the platform ami at the bar. The practice was foolish, because it defeated its own ends. Any blockhead can hurl abuse.