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SENSATION
LEADERS.
" Follow my Leader.'—Old Game.
SENSATION* writing is the key to literary success, now-a-days. No
novel would have a chance unless the hero garotted his grandmother,
or did something equally outrageous. " No colonial "newspaper
can hope for wide-spread publicity without pitching into
somebody, getting peppered 111 a libel action, appealing to a higher
tribunal, and thus artfully spreading the knowledge of its existence.
Of course, thej legal expenses are considerable, but what is that to
the increased notoriety. Now, we don't much care about increasing
our circulation until we get the new twenty-feeder steam press for
which we have been long waiting, or we might try the effect of a
sensation attack—lay about us with fisli-fag' abuse of somebody,
and get well in for legal proceedings. Then we shall be able to
call the plaintiff and cross-question him into a brain-fever. We
shall be in a position to compel him to state to the jury, upon his
oath, whether he had not a hole in his stocking on the first of April
last; or else we shall force him to resort to the miserable subterfage
of declining to answer the question. Not impossible is it that
we shall be enabled to lay bare his moral infirmities to the eyes of a
censorious _ community, by showing how he haggled over a small
account \Vith his washerwoman—a deserving widow, now in the
sere and yellow leaf of vidual existence, and the sole support of sixteen
small children. It is by no means beyond the pale of imaginative
speculation*that, after all, we shall have to pay damages, and
be in a position to courteously request the triumphant plaintiff to
give change for a halfpenny. Or, on the other hand, the liberty
of the press may be splendidly vindicated by a verdict for
ourselves—an announcement which will be received in court by a
paroxysmal burst of approbation, which the Judge will vainly endeavour
to subdue. But, in any case, the event is bound to be commercially
successful. There may be a thousand or two to pay to the
lawyers, and we might have to give a fifty-pound note for telegrams
to anxious sympathisers in adjoining colonies during the progress of
the trial; but the popularity accruing to the publication will far
outweigh the expense.
Sensation writing is the true channel to literary fame ; and if Mr.
PUNCH does not forthwith come out with some startling attacks and
Bcandalous revelations, and provoke a consequent libel action, he will
be set down as far behind the Age in point of business intelligence.
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