Two or three years
afterward he had made the _Examiner_ one of the great powers of the
political world, and was living in a palace at Turin, minister to
Sardinia. He had achieved this success in life by the sheer force of
his character; by the vigor and recklessness of his pen, and the
intensity of his invective. Commencing his editorial career,
apparently, with the theory that, in order to rise into notice, he must
spare nothing and no one, he had entered the arena of partisan politics
like a full armed gladiator; and soon the whole country resounded with
the blows which he struck. Bitter personality is a feeble phrase to
describe the animus of the writer in those days. There was something
incredibly exasperating in his comments on political opponents. He
flayed and roasted them alive. It was like thrusting a blazing torch
into the raw flesh of his victims. Nor was it simple "abuse." The
satirist was too intelligent to rely upon that. It was his scorching
wit which made opponents shrink. His scalpel divided the arteries, and
touched the vitals of the living subject. Personal peculiarities were
satirized with unfailing acumen. The readers of the _Examiner_, in
those days, will still recall the tremendous flaying which he
administered to his adversaries. It may almost be said, that when the
remorseless editor had finished with these gentlemen, there was
"nothing of them left"--what lay before him was a bleeding and mortally
wounded victim.
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