Thus we find grasses most important to man and beast, and, though humble in name, distinguished in beauty and grace, varying but slightly in general characteristics, and therefore easy to study, changing little by time, and so easy to preserve. Dear public, deign to look upon modest worth; take a little pains and trouble, and let our Grasses have a fair share of attention.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ADVERTISING.
If I were the proprietor of a prosperous newspaper, I could never look upon my own publication without a sense that I was an impostor and a humbug. I could read the leaders and the foreign intelligence without blushing. Supposing there were errors—and in any well-regulated paper there always will be errors—I don’t know that I should feel much troubled. If my grave political contributor did state that Timbuctoo was an island in the South Pacific, and my smart slashing littérateur happened to ascribe “To be, or not to be?” to Macbeth instead of to the Prince of Denmark, I should bear the discovery with philosophical equanimity. Very few persons would ever observe the mistake; and of the few who did, fewer still would trouble themselves about it. Of course, some ill-natured critic, who had plenty of time and bile to spare, would write to express his astonishment at the astounding ignorance of a paper which professed to represent public opinion; but experience would have made me callous to this class of censure, and I should throw the communication into the waste-paper basket without attention. And even, if subsequent reflection led me to believe that I had, through my paper, supported the wrong men, or the wrong measures, I could still find comfort in the thought that perhaps, after all, things would have gone on very much the same, even if the series of crushing articles which so electrified the public mind had never appeared in print. All this I could recall with equanimity, but I am certain I could not look unblushingly at the advertisements. In the small hours of the night, when people wake up and begin at once to speculate unpleasantly on their sins, I should think of those columns upon columns, and feel weighed, as it were, to the ground with a nightmare of letter-press.
For, if I must make the confession, I should know that I had been taking money under false pretences. If ever you talk, concerning his pursuits, to a sporting prophet, he will tell you forthwith about the fortunes he has made for others; you will hear how—thanks to his information—Lord Handicap has redeemed the mortgages off the Winnington estates; how Captain Steeplefield has purchased his commission; and how Shortodds, the butcher, now drives his mail phaeton like a gentleman; but you never hear a word of the thousands who have lost their money, and, in the expressive Yankee phrase, “gone under.” So in the same way, supposing I represented a great advertising medium, I should talk glibly of the men who had made fortunes by advertisements. I should point proudly to the mansion of the famous chiropodist, whose world-known motto of “Crop your corns early” you must all remember. I should dilate fondly on the entertainments of the illustrious vendor of the anti-sudiferous shirtfront. I should glory in the triumphs of the spirited proprietor of the Patagonian pills, and I should say with self-conscious satisfaction, I am the maker of these men’s fortunes. But to myself I should have to own with shame, that, for one I had made, I had ruined ten. The real, plain, unvarnished truth is, that advertising is a lottery, and that for one who draws a prize, there are scores and hundreds who draw blanks. Just let anybody who doubts the truth of my assertion, cast his eyes over the advertising pages of the “Times,” or the “Daily Telegraph,” or any great provincial paper, and ask himself how many of the advertisers can possibly get anything in return for their money?
The intelligent observer will soon perceive that advertisements come under two heads. The first class informs, the second suggests. To the former belongs the genuine old-fashioned advertisement. If you have a horse to sell, or a house to let, there is no way of calling the attention of purchasers or hirers to your article more legitimate than that of advertising. In fact, there is no other way by which the vendor and the buyer can be so well or so cheaply brought together. This was the class of announcements which filled the scanty columns of the press in the days of our fathers. But now, a very small portion of modern advertisements can be classed under this section. The advertisement pure and simple has been driven out of the field by the puff genus. This class has before it a far higher ideal than that of supplying wants: it aims to create wants, to call consumers into being. The French have baptised it with the name of the “réclame,” and Balzac describes its birth, growth, and development in the history of “Gaudissart,” the illustrious. To any one whose mind is too ingenuous to grasp at once the character of this conception, it will be explained by the following remark which I once heard made to a young author by a very successful publisher: “My dear sir, nobody ever wants to buy books. We have to seduce them, by advertising, into fancying they want to do so.”
And in this profound remark the whole philosophy of the modern art is contained. You fish for purchasers as you do for trout. You bait your hook so as to suit their fancy, and the most successful advertiser is he who baits his hook most cunningly. The fish can find plenty of food in the waters, but the artificial fly tickles their fancy, and they are seduced into biting. So it is with the human prey who is angled for, fished for, and advertised at. Happily, by the law of compensation, advertisers lose their money, just as anglers lose their time. The process of puffing does not create new consumers, or supply them with any additional cash to spend. It simply offers them a bait more tempting than those already at their disposal. One vendor succeeds by driving another out of public favour. Advertising always reminds me of a roulette-table. I stake my money on the odd numbers, and my neighbour on the even. If I win he loses, if I lose he wins; but, in either