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Typo: A Monthly Newspaper and Literary Review, Volume 5
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The New Review for February contains a posthumous article on « The Individualistic Ideal, » by Charles Bradlaugh. Bellamism is dealt with by the sturdy writer in his most trenchant style. « The scores of thousands of owners of single houses, and of small plots of ground acquired in land and building societies through years of careful thrft; the hundreds of thousands of storers-up of small economies in the various savings-banks; the numerous array of small investors in the co-operative societies, will form some reliant resistant quantity to the threatened confiscation by coercion. I should like to see even the Fabian lecturer who would have calm confidence enough to ask a crowded audience gathered in any one of the numerous co-operative halls of the Midlands, or of the North, to abandon for ever all hopes of 'divvy,' and to graciously surrender to a new Socialistic government the corpus of their hardly-acquired shares. I am not concerned here to discuss Socialism in art, when a Millais is to be spurred by a grandmotherly executive into effort of genius by award of the like subsistence that will be accorded to the chimneysweep; nor have I to examine Socialism in literature, where a Buckle or a Ruskin is to be gladdened by the sustenance paternally doled out in equal measure to the navvy or the sewer-cleaner. »
The Review of Reviews for December is a wonderful example of the energy and ability of Mr Stead, the editor, and its amazing circulation of 200,000 copies testifies to its unexampled success—a success, we imagine, very much at the expense of the contemporary periodical literature that it lays under contribution. Mr Stead may wonder that Punch refuses to allow him to copy the cartoons and other special features of the paper—we do not! The opening article on the Were-Wolf is powerfully-written, in the editor's most characteristic style, and has been widely copied. Typographically, the magazine bears signs of « rush » on every page. It is not up to the New Zealand average of printing, which is saying a good deal. The cuts are all « process » —a few are good; the rest answer their purpose, which is all that can be said of them; for some both in execution and printing are dismally bad. A new and very useful feature is the reproduction of the political cartoons of foreign comic papers. Not more than one in a million of the British public have any opportunity of seeing the originals; and as indicating the sentiment for the time being of the great body of the people in other lands, they are of historic value. Unfortunately, the continental humorist does not always discriminate between what is comic and what is foul; so that it is impossible to reproduce the most characteristic and forcible cartoons. Some in the present number go a little too far; but they are not more brutal, while they are far better drawn, than what we have seen in the Pall Mall Gazette under Mr Stead's own management. There is no need to wish the new review prosperity—it is one of the greatest financial successes of the day.