[The Battle of Navarino; Rumours from Paris]

First published Edinburgh Saturday Post, 1 December 1827, p. 236. Never reprinted. This leading article is tied to the previous week’s leader (see above, pp. 138–41) by its recollection of ‘The general tendency of our opinion [which] we expressed last week’. And it seems to be tied to the following week’s leader, in ‘reserv[ing] our final decision until the … next [official] despatches’. The.following week’s leader, on the same subject (see below, pp. 154–8), begins with the words, ‘News has at length reached us from the quarter to which we were … looking’, followed by further strictures (much like the present article) on the difference ‘between rumours and authentic intelligence’. In a much later article of April 1828, De Quincey could claim that, ‘Since the battle of Navarino … – that is, for nearly five months – we have held one uniform language’ on the subject, in ‘[s]pite of the daily assurances’ of other newspapers (see below, p. 309). (It is relevant that the Post’s editor, Peterkin, expressed extremely different views about Navarino; see above, p. 138) Despite some signs of haste, this leading article has a number of signs pointing to De Quincey, which appear to corrobate its links with other recent leaders. Also of note are ‘between’ (which occurs five times), the sentence beginning with ‘But’, and the use of italics and dashes for conversational effect.