For it is certainly not the part of a proud spirit to hide itself behind anonymity. To shirk the moral responsability of one's words is a proceeding which cannot be reconcilable with the sentiment of personal dignity. The individual is badly protected where his reputation is exposed to darts hurled by an unknown hand; neither is it comfortable to the rules of fair play that a man should be authorised to conceal himself behind an impenetrable shrub, in order to fire thence, without peril, on his enemy as he passes.
“I do not think altogether the worse of a book for having survived the author a generation or two. I have more confidence in the dead than the living.” — Hazlitt
6 March 2012
Behind an Impenetrable Shrub
Louis Blanc writing about anonymous journalism in Letters on England, Vol. II, translated by James Hutton and L. J. Trotter (London: Samson Low, Son, and Marston, 1867), p. 169: