Quintus Slide is the name of the influential young journalist in Anthony Trollope’s peerless series of six parliamentary novels that goes by the common name of The Pallisers. And in his astonishing combination of raw ambition, self-righteous rage, self-congratulatory populism, and raw calculation, he bears no little relation to the Beagle Blogger who has poisoned the public wells with his repellent innuendos about Sarah Palin

“He wrote good English with great rapidity,” Trollope says of Slide by way of introduction in the novel Phineas Finn, ” and was possessed of that special sort of political fervor which shows itself in a man’s work rather than in his conduct….It has never occurred to him as yet that he ought to care for anything else than the fight–than the advantage of having a good subject on which to write slashing articles. Mr. Slide was an energetic but not a thoughtful man….The excellent old arrangement that had gone on since demagogues were first invented was in full vigor.”

In The Prime Minister, Trollope has the same Phineas Finn dealing with yet another in the endless series of scurrilous attacks by Slide against him:

There was ample room for an action of libel against the newspaper on the part of Phineas Finn….But it was equally apparent that Mr Quintus Slide must have been well aware of this when he wrote the article. Such an action, even if successful, may bring with it to the man punished more of good than evil. Any pecuniary penalty might be more than recouped by the largeness of advertisement which such an action would produce. Mr. Slide no doubt calculated that he would carry with him a great body of public feeling by the mere fact that he had attacked a Prime Miinister…

If [Slide] could only get all the publicans in London to take his paper because of his patriotic and bold conduct the fortune of the paper would be made. There is no better trade than that of martyrdom, if the would be martyr knows how far he may judiciously go, and in what direction. All this Mr Quintus Slide was supposed to have considered very well.

And Mr Phineas Fin knew that his enemy had also considered the nature of the matters which he would have been able to drag into court if there should bea trial. Allusions, very strong allusions, had been made to former periods of Mr. Finn’s life. And though there was but little, if anything, in the past circumstances of which he was ashamed—but little, if anything, which he thought would subject him personally to the odium of good men, could they be made accurately known in all their details—it would, he was well aware, be impossible that such accuracy should be achieved. And the story if told inaccurately would not suit him.

Thus have scurrilous attacks always found their target. What is different this time, with the Beagle Blogger, is that he has involved a teenage girl and a newborn baby in his libel. Even Trollope, who understood more about human weakness than just about any other novelist, might have had difficulty fathoming that.

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This entry was posted on Monday, September 1st, 2008 at 7:38 AM and is filed under Contentions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.