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mon, or a poem, without the previous | zette: but neither the Gazette nor any approbation of any officer; but the supplementary broadside printed by Judges were unanimously of opinion authority ever contained any intellithat this liberty did not extend to Ga- gence which it did not suit the purposes zettes, and that, by the common law of of the Court to publish. The most imEngland, no man, not authorised by the portant parliamentary debates, the most crown, had a right to publish political important state trials, recorded in our news.* While the Whig party was still history, were passed over in profound formidable, the government thought it silence.* In the capital the coffee expedient occasionally to connive at the houses supplied in some measure the violation of this rule. During the place of a journal. Thither the Longreat battle of the Exclusion Bill, many doners flocked, as the Athenians of old newspapers were suffered to appear, the flocked to the market place, to hear Protestant Intelligence, the Current whether there was any news. There Intelligence, the Domestic Intelligence, men might learn how brutally a Whig the True News, the London Mercury. had been treated the day before in None of these was published oftener Westminster Hall, what horrible acthan twice a week. None exceeded in counts the letters from Edinburgh gave size a single small leaf. The quantity of the torturing of Covenanters, how of matter which one of them contained grossly the Navy Board had cheated in a year was not more than is often the crown in the victualling of the fleet, found in two numbers of the Times. and what grave charges the Lord Privy After the defeat of the Whigs it was Seal had brought against the Treasury no longer necessary for the King to be in the matter of the hearth money. But sparing in the use of that which all his people who lived at a distance NewsJudges had pronounced to be his un- from the great theatre of poli- letters. doubted prerogative. At the close of tical contention could be kept regularly his reign no newspaper was suffered to informed of what was passing there appear without his allowance: and his only by means of newsletters. To preallowance was given exclusively to the pare such letters became a calling in London Gazette. The London Gazette London, as it now is among the natives came out only on Mondays and Thurs- of India. The newswriter rambled days. The contents generally were a from coffee room to coffee room, collectroyal proclamation, two or three Tory ing reports, squeezed himself into the addresses, notices of two or three pro- Sessions House at the Old Bailey if motions, an account of a skirmish be- there was an interesting trial, nay, tween the imperial troops and the perhaps obtained admission to the galJanissaries on the Danube, a descrip-lery of Whitehall, and noticed how the tion of a highwayman, an announcement King and Duke looked. In this way of a grand cockfight between two per- he gathered materials for weekly epissons of honour, and an advertisement tles destined to enlighten some county offering a reward for a strayed dog. The whole made up two pages of moderate size. Whatever was communicated respecting matters of the highest moment was communicated in the most meagre and formal style. Sometimes, indeed, when the government was disposed to gratify the public curiosity respecting an important transaction, a broadside was put forth giving fuller details than could be found in the Ga

• London Gazette, May 5. and 17. 1680.

There is a very curious, and, I should think, unique collection of these papers in the British Museum.

town or some bench of rustic magistrates. Such were the sources from which the inhabitants of the largest provincial cities, and the great body of the gentry and clergy, learned almost all that they knew of the history of their own time. We must suppose that at Cambridge there were as many persons curious to know what was passing in the world as at almost any place in the kingdom, out of London. Yet at

* For example, there is not a word in the Gazette about the important parliamentary proceedings of November 1685, or about the trial and acquittal of the seven Bishops.

It was not only by means of the London Gazette that the go- The Ob vernment undertook to furnish servator. political instruction to the people. That journal contained a scanty supply of news without comment. Another jour

Cambridge, during a great part of the reign of Charles the Second, the Doctors of Laws and the Masters of Arts had no regular supply of news except through the London Gazette. At length the services of one of the collectors of intelligence in the capital were em-nal, published under the patronage of ployed. That was a memorable day on which the first newsletter from London was laid on the table of the only coffee room in Cambridge.* At the seat of a man of fortune in the country the newsletter was impatiently expected. Within a week after it had arrived it had been thumbed by twenty families. It furnished the neighbouring squires with matter for talk over their October, and the neighbouring rectors with topics for sharp sermons against Whiggery or Popery. Many of these curious journals might doubtless still be detected by a diligent search in the archives of old families. Some are to be found in our public libraries; and one series, which is not the least valuable part of the literary treasures collected by Sir James Mackintosh, will be occasionally quoted in the course of this work.†

It is scarcely necessary to say that there were then no provincial newspapers. Indeed, except in the capital and at the two Universities, there was scarcely a printer in the kingdom. The only press in England north of Trent appears to have been at York.

* Roger North's Life of Dr. John North. On the subject of newsletters, see the Examen,

133.

† I take this opportunity of expressing my warm gratitude to the family of my dear and honoured friend Sir James Mackintosh for confiding to me the materials collected by him to that which I have undertaken. I have never seen, and I do not believe that there anywhere exists, within the same compass, so noble a collection of extracts from public and private archives. The judgment with which Sir James, in great masses of the rudest ore of history, selected what was valuable, and rejected what was worthless, can be fully ap

at a time when he meditated a work similar

preciated only by one who has toiled after him

in the same mine.

Life of Thomas Gent. A complete list of all printing houses in 1724 will be found in

Nichols's Literary Anecdotes of the eighteenth century. There had then been a great increase within a few years in the number of presses; and yet there were thirty-four coun

ties in which there was no printer, one of those counties being Lancashire.

the court, consisted of comment without news. This paper, called the Observator, was edited by an old Tory pamphleteer named Roger Lestrange. Lestrange was by no means deficient in readiness and shrewdness; and his diction, though coarse, and disfigured by a mean and flippant jargon which then passed for wit in the green room and the tavern, was not without keenness and vigour. But his nature, at once ferocious and ignoble, showed itself in every line that he penned. When the first Observators appeared there was some excuse for his acrimony. For the Whigs were then powerful; and he had to contend against numerous adversaries, whose unscrupulous violence might seem to justify unsparing retaliation. But in 1685 all opposition had been crushed. A generous spirit would have disdained to insult a party which could not reply, and to aggravate the misery of prisoners, of exiles, of bereaved families: but from the malice of Lestrange the grave was no hiding place, and the house of mourning no sanctuary. In the last month of the reign of Charles the Second, William Jenkyn, an aged dissenting pastor of great note, who had been cruelly persecuted for no crime but that of worshipping God according to the fashion generally followed throughout Protestant Europe, died of hardships and privations in Newgate. The outbreak of popular sympathy could not be repressed. The corpse was followed to the grave by a train of a hundred and fifty coaches. Even courtiers looked sad. Even the unthinking King showed some signs of concern. Lestrange alone set up a howl of savage exultation, laughed at the weak compassion of the Trimmers, proclaimed that the blasphemous old impostor had met with a most righteous punishment, and vowed to wage war, not only to the death, but after death, with all the mock saints

*

and martyrs. Such was the spirit of the paper which was at this time the oracle of the Tory party, and especially of the parochial clergy.

of books

they lost little by living in rural seclusion. For, even in the highest ranks, and in those situations which afforded the greatest facilities for mental imLiterature which could be carried by provement, the English women of that Scarcity the post bag then formed the generation were decidedly worse eduin country greater part of the intellectual cated than they have been at any other places. nutriment ruminated by the time since the revival of learning. At country divines and country justices. an earlier period they had studied the The difficulty and expense of convey-masterpieces of ancient genius. In the ing large packets from place to place present day they seldom bestow much was so great, that an extensive work attention on the dead languages; but was longer in making its way from they are familiar with the tongue of Paternoster Row to Devonshire or Pascal and Moliere, with the tongue of Lancashire than it now is in reaching Dante and Tasso, with the tongue of Kentucky. How scantily a rural Goethe and Schiller; nor is there any parsonage was then furnished, even purer or more graceful English than with books the most necessary to a that which accomplished women now theologian, has already been remarked. speak and write. But, during the latter The houses of the gentry were not more part of the seventeenth century, the plentifully supplied. Few knights of culture of the female mind seems to the shire had libraries so good as may have been almost entirely neglected. now perpetually be found in a servants' If a damsel had the least smattering of hall, or in the back parlour of a small literature she was regarded as a prodigy. shopkeeper. An esquire passed among Ladies highly born, highly bred, and his neighbours for a great scholar, if naturally quick witted, were unable to Hudibras and Baker's Chronicle, Tarl-write a line in their mother tongue ton's Jests and the Seven Champions of without solecisms and faults of spelling Christendom, lay in his hall window such as a charity girl would now be among the fishing rods and fowling ashamed to commit.* pieces. No circulating library, no book society, then existed even in the capital: but in the capital those students who could not afford to purchase largely had a resource. The shops of the great booksellers, near Saint Paul's Churchyard, were crowded every day and all day long with readers; and a known customer was often permitted to carry a volume home. In the country there was no such accommodation; and every man was under the necessity of buying whatever he wished to read.†

female

As to the lady of the manor and her daughters, their literary stores education. generally consisted of a prayer book and a receipt book. But in truth

* Observator, Jan. 29. and 31. 1685; Calamy's Life of Baxter; Nonconformist Memorial.

† Cotton seems, from his Angler, to have found room for his whole library in his hall window; and Cotton was a man of letters. Even when Franklin first visited London in 1724, circulating libraries were unknown there. The crowd at the booksellers' shops in Little Britain is mentioned by Roger North in his Life of his brother John.

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The explanation may easily be found. Extravagant licentiousness, the natural effect of extravagant austerity, was now the mode: and licentiousness had produced its ordinary effect, the moral and intellectual degradation of women. To their personal beauty, it was the fashion to pay rude and impudent homage. But the admiration and desire which they inspired were seldom mingled with respect, with affection, or with any chivalrous sentiment. The qualities which fit them to be companions, advisers, confidential friends, rather repelled than attracted the libertines of Whitehall. In that court, a maid of honour who dressed in such a manner

*One instance will suffice. Queen Mary, the daughter of James, had excellent natural abilities, had been educated by a Bishop, was fond of history and poetry, and was regarded by very eminent men as a superior woman. There is, in the library at the Hague, a superb English Bible which was delivered to her when she was crowned in Westminster Abbey. In the title page are these words in her own hand, " This book was given the King and I, at our crownation. Marie R."

as to do full justice to a white bosom, of Phalaris, that great college, then who ogled significantly, who danced considered as the first seat of philology voluptuously, who excelled in pert in the kingdom, could not muster such repartee, who was not ashamed to romp a stock of Attic learning as is now with Lords of the Bedchamber and possessed by several youths at every Captains of the Guards, to sing sly great public school. It may easily be verses with sly expression, or to put on supposed that a dead language, nea page's dress for a frolic, was more glected at the Universities, was not likely to be followed and admired, much studied by men of the world. In more likely to be honoured with royal a former age the poetry and eloquence attentions, more likely to win a rich of Greece had been the delight of and noble husband than Jane Grey or Raleigh and Falkland. In a later age Lucy Hutchinson would have been. In the poetry and eloquence of Greece such circumstances the standard of were the delight of Pitt and Fox, of female attainments was necessarily low; | Windham and Grenville. But during and it was more dangerous to be above that standard than to be beneath it. Extreme ignorance and frivolity were thought less unbecoming in a lady than the slightest tincture of pedantry. Of the too celebrated women whose faces we still admire on the walls of Hampton Court, few indeed were in the habit of reading anything more valuable than acrostics, lampoons, and translations of the Clelia and the Grand Cyrus.

Literary attainments of gentle

men.

the latter part of the seventeenth century there was in Eugland scarcely one eminent statesman who could read with enjoyment a page of Sophocles or Plato.

Good Latin scholars were numerous. The language of Rome, indeed, had not altogether lost its imperial prerogatives, and was still, in many parts of Europe, almost indispensable to a traveller or a negotiator. To speak it well was therefore a much more common accomplishment than in our time; and neither Oxford nor Cambridge wanted poets who, on a great occasion, could lay at the foot of the throne happy imitations of the verses in which Virgil and Ovid had celebrated the greatness of Augustus.

litera

The literary acquirements, even of the accomplished gentlemen of that generation, seem to have been somewhat less solid and profound than at an earlier or a later period. Greek learning, at least, did not flourish among us in the days Yet even the Latin was giving way of Charles the Second, as it had flourish- to a younger rival. France Influence ed before the civil war, or as it again united at that time almost of French flourished long after the Revolution. every species of ascendency. ture. There were undoubtedly scholars to Her military glory was at the height. whom the whole Greek literature, from She had vanquished mighty coalitions. Homer to Photius, was familiar: but She had dictated treaties. She had such scholars were to be found almost subjugated great cities and provinces. exclusively among the clergy resident She had forced the Castilian pride to at the Universities, and even at the yield her the precedence. She had Universities were few, and were not summoned Italian princes to prostrate fully appreciated. At Cambridge it themselves at her footstool. Her auwas not thought by any means neces-thority was supreme in all matters of sary that a divine should be able to read the Gospels in the original.* Nor was the standard at Oxford higher. When, in the reign of William the Third, Christ Church rose up as one man to defend the genuineness of the Epistles

*Roger North tells us that his brother John, who was Greek professor at Cambridge, com

plained bitterly of the general neglect of the Greek tongue among the academical clergy.

good breeding, from a duel to a minuet. She determined how a gentleman's coat must be cut, how long his peruke must be, whether his heels must be high or low, and whether the lace on his hat must be broad or narrow. In literature she gave law to the world. The fame of her great writers filled Europe. No other country could produce a tragic poet equal to Racine, a comic poet

precept and of French example. Great masters of our language, in their most dignified compositions, affected to use French words, when English words, quite as expressive and sonorous, were at hand*: and from France was imported the tragedy in rhyme, an exotic which, in our soil, drooped, and speedily died.

rality of

equal to Moliere, a trifler so agreeable as La Fontaine, a rhetorician so skilful as Bossuet. The literary glory of Italy and of Spain had set; that of Germany had not yet dawned. The genius, therefore, of the eminent men who adorned Paris shone forth with a splendour which was set off to full advantage by contrast. France, indeed, had at that time an empire over manIt would have been well if our writers kind, such as even the Roman Republic had also copied the decorum Immonever attained. For, when Rome was which their great French con- the polite politically dominant, she was in arts temporaries, with few excep- literature and letters the humble pupil of Greece. tions, preserved; for the pro- land. France had, over the surrounding coun- fligacy of the English plays, satires, tries, at once the ascendency which songs, and novels of that age is a deep Rome had over Greece, and the ascen- blot on our national fame. The evil deney which Greece had over Rome. may easily be traced to its source. The French was fast becoming the universal wits and the Puritans had never been language, the language of fashionable on friendly terms. There was no symsociety, the language of diplomacy. At pathy between the two classes. They several courts princes and nobles spoke looked on the whole system of human it more accurately and politely than life from different points and in differtheir mother tongue. In our island ent lights. The earnest of each was there was less of this servility than on the jest of the other. The pleasures of the Continent. Neither our good nor each were the torments of the other. our bad qualities were those of imita- To the stern precisian even the innotors. Yet even here homage was paid, cent sport of the fancy seemed a crime. awkwardly indeed and sullenly, to the To light and festive natures the solemliterary supremacy of our neighbours. nity of the zealous brethren furnished The melodious Tuscan, so familiar to copious matter of ridicule. From the Rethe gallants and ladies of the court of formation to the civil war, almost every Elizabeth, sank into contempt. A writer, gifted with a fine sense of the gentleman who quoted Horace or ludicrous, had taken some opportunity Terence was considered in good com- of assailing the straighthaired, snuffling, pany as a pompous pedant. But to whining saints, who christened their garnish his conversation with scraps of children out of the Book of Nehemiah, French was the best proof which he who groaned in spirit at the sight of could give of his parts and attainments.* Jack in the Green, and who thought New canons of criticism, new models it impious to taste plum porridge on of style came into fashion. The quaint Christmas day. At length a time came ingenuity which had deformed the when the laughers began to look grave verses of Donne, and had been a blemish in their turn. The rigid, ungainly on those of Cowley, disappeared from zealots, after having furnished much our poetry. Our prose became less good sport during two generations, rose majestic, less artfully involved, less up in arms, conquered, ruled, and, variously musical than that of an earlier age, but more lucid, more easy, and better fitted for controversy and narrative. In these changes it is impossible not to recognise the influence of French

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grimly smiling, trod down under their feet the whole crowd of mockers. The wounds inflicted by gay and petulant malice were retaliated with the gloomy

*The most offensive instance which I reCharles the Second by Dryden, who certainly member is in a poem on the coronation of could not plead poverty as an excuse for bor. rowing words from any foreign tongue :

"Hither in summer evenings you repair
To taste the fraicheur of the cooler air."

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