The new editor and
conductor was then only twenty-seven years of age. He had been
trained to the manual work of a printer "at case," and passed
through nearly every department in the office, literary and
mechanical. But in the first place, he had received a very
liberal education, first at Merchant Taylors' School, and
afterwards at Trinity College, Oxford, where he pursued his
classical studies with much success. He was thus a man of
well-cultured mind; he had been thoroughly disciplined to work;
he was, moreover, a man of tact and energy, full of expedients,
and possessed by a passion for business. His father, urged by
the young man's entreaties, at length consented, although not
without misgivings, to resign into his hands the entire future
control of The Times.
Young Walter proceeded forthwith to remodel the establishment,
and to introduce improvements into every department, as far as
the scanty capital at his command would admit. Before he assumed
the direction, The Times did not seek to guide opinion or to
exercise political influence. It was a scanty newspaper--nothing
more, Any political matters referred to were usually introduced
in "Letters to the Editor," in the form in which Junius's Letters
first appeared in the Public Advertiser. The comments on
political affairs by the Editor were meagre and brief, and
confined to a mere statement of supposed facts.
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