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    June S, 1850.] W&Z ^tVfttK. 255

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    KNIGHT HUNT'S FOURTH ESTATE. The Fourth ...

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    Hero Worship Is Undoubtedly An Element O...

    King we hear so much of , but whose lodgings are not indicated—will not strike him as forthcoming or as desirable . It is not a King to govern us , we want ; but a Doctrine to be governed by ! But this question we touch upon elsewhere . Two weeks ago we noticed Lamartine ' s replyto Mr . Choker ' s article in the Quarterly , said to have been compiled with the assistance of Louis Philippe ' s journal . The reply was triumphant enough ; but a celebrated feuilletonist , Eugene Pelletan , has taken up the subject in La Presse ,

    and flagellates the reviewer in a style of exquisite wit and banter . Mr . Croker generously insinuated that Lamabtine and his colleagues abolished capital punishment to prevent , at all hazards , their being brought to the block . " Positively , " exclaims M . Pelletan , " Mr . Croker has considerable imagination . He believes that Lamartine at the Hotel de Ville was an escaped convict , who adroitly pocketed the guillotine that it might not cut off his head . ' * He characterizes the whole article in one energetic sentence , saying it is a second edition of Chenu , arrange" e a

    VAnglaise . Beyond this , and the appearance of the first volume of a new novel by Eugene Sue , called Les Enfans de VAmour , we have nothing to chronicle .

    June S, 1850.] W&Z ^Tvfttk. 255

    June S , 1850 . ] W & Z ^ tVfttK . 255

    Knight Hunt's Fourth Estate. The Fourth ...

    KNIGHT HUNT'S FOURTH ESTATE . The Fourth Estate : Contributions towards a History of Newspapers and of the Liberty of the Press . By F . Knight Hunt . In two vols . David Bogue . Only superficial criticism can treat this work as merely a gossiping book . To any one who reads it carefully , and with adequate discernment , it will be evident that the author has here successfully blended a philosophical purpose with curious information , and

    has winged the whole with light amusing anecdote . The philosophical undercurrent from which the conception of such a work originally issued , gives unity to its otherwise fragmentary details ; but we fancy that even greater stress might have been laid on this portion without injuring it even as a work of amusement . Mr . Hunt has clearly seen how inseparably united is the History of our Freedom with the History of our Free Press—how , as Sheridan startlingly said , with a Free Press he would defy all the obstacles

    to national progress : — " Give me but the liberty of the press , and I will give to the Minister a venal House of Peers—I will give him a corrupt and servile House o' Commons—I will give him the full sway of the patronage of office—I will give him the whole host of Ministerial influence—I will give him all the power that place can confer upon him , to purchase up submission , and overawe resistance—and yet , armed with the liberty of the press , I will go forth to meet him undismayed—I will attack the mighty fabric he has reared with that mightier engine—I will shake down from its height corruption , and bury it amidst the ruins of the abuses it was meant to shelter . "

    Mr . Hunt has seen this , and has indicated it in the course of his volumes , but he might have developed it at greater length and with greater minuteness without incurring the risk of tedium . It is true he modestly calls it " Contributions towards a History , " meaning thereby that he has no pretension of exhausting the subject ; and , perhaps , our objection is answered by that title . The book contains a brief history of our liberty , an ample collection of facts respecting the origin and working of newspapers from the earliest example down to the Daily News , and a variety of illustrative anecdotes . The reader is to understand that these are blended together , and not detached as we have detached them to characterize the work .

    The first newspaper appeared in 1622 : — " When the reign of James the First was drawing to a close ; when Ben Jonson was poet laureate , and the personal friends of Shakespeare were lamenting his then recent death ; when Cromwell was trading as a brewer at Huntingdon ; when Milton was a youth of sixteen , just trying his pen at Latin verse , and Hampden a quiet country gentleman in Buckinghamshire , London was first solicited to patronise its first newspaper . There is ancestor of the

    now no reason to doubt that the puny myriads of broad sheets of our time was published in the metropolis in 1622 , and that the most prominent of the ingenious speculators who offered the novelty to the world was one Nathaniel Butter . His companions in the work appear to have been Nicholas Bourne , Thomas Archer , Nathaniel Newberry , William Sheffard , Bartholomew Downcs , and Edward Allde . All these different names appear in . the imprints of the early numbers of the first newspaper—the Weekly Nerves . "

    There seems , at first , little here to arrest the meditative mind , for it is simply the printing of the Newsletter which hitherto had been written by the Newswriters . But in that simple modification there lies the germ of an immense revolution . Looked at in its results

    one may almost compare the potency of this change with the change effected by the " movable types of Johannes Faust . " What Printing was to Copying , that has the Newspaper been to Books—it has been the ready means of extending to millions the knowledge which otherwise would have been confined to a few . All honour to Nathaniel Butter ! True though it be , that had Butter not devised the plan , some one else infallibly would have devised it for him , the honour must still be his , for that reservation may be made in the cases of Faust , "Watt , Davy , Arkwright , or Fulton : all inventions , indeed , belong as much to their epoch as to the individual .

    But a question arises : was this of Nathaniel Butter ' s really the first newspaper ? Before answering we must adopt Mr . Hunt ' s definition of the newspaper , as given in this excellent passage : — * ' What a news-writer did in England in 1622 on his own responsibility was effected ten years afterwards in France under the patronage of Louis the Fourteenth by a medical man , Theophrastus Renaudot , who issued the first number of the first French newspaper , the Gazette de France , in 1632 . It is said that other nations , had anticipated both England and France in the establishment of newspapers , and this point must be discussed when we come to the subject of journalism abroad ; but

    here we may state that any country claiming to have preceded us in the production of newspapers , must show in proof of priority a publication appearing at stated intervals and numbered regularly . Unless such proof be given , and unless that definition and test of what a newspaper is be adopted , we may go back to the Greeks and to the Romans , and to the early Venetians , and finding small sheets of paper describing some event , call them newspapers . Without the definition , we must go floundering about in the mists of an obscure antiquity to decide that which is sufficiently clear and certain , when we understand precisely what it is we seek to know the

    date of . For want of definition of what a newspaper is , Mr . Chalmers talks of the Acta Diurna , and the "Venetian MS . Gazettes , as though they were the earliest newspapers ; and , following him , the writers in the various cyclopaedias do the same . Murphy in his edition of Tacitus seizes a passage , and asserts that the Romans were the inventors of this mode of spreading intelligence , whilst others have regarded and described various pamphlets as the first newspapers , because they had the word News as a heading , or were called Mercuries . All these publications were the forerunners of newspapers , and not newspapers themselves . "

    Having this plain and luminous definition to guide us , the question of origin becomes simplified . Mr . Hunt remarks : — ' We shall see how the example of Butter was followed , years later , by the reappparance of a regular weekly journal ; but , having claimed for his publication the merit of being the first newspaper , it is requisite to refer to the very different date heretofore given as that of the commencement of public journalism . Until recently , it was always stated that the first newspaper appeared in England in 1558 . Those who had occasion to describe the origin of such publications all went to one source for their information , and , finding an error there ,

    the misstatement was repeated again and again with curious pertinacity . The original author of this oftenreiterated mistake was Mr . Chalmers , who , having undertaken to write the life of Mr . Ruddiman , one of the first proprietors of a Scottish journal , enlarged his work by giving the result of some researches he made into the origin of newspapers . His investigations seem to have been chiefly carried on at the library of the British Museum , and finding in that collection a printed paper entitled the English Mercuric , and dated 1588 , he received it without question of its authenticity , and at once declared that England owed ' to the sagacity of Elizabeth and the wisdom of Burleigh the invention of

    newspapers , ' and that such prints were first issued when the armada was threatening our shores . " It would seem that the delight of Chalmers in establishing , as he thought , the claim of priority in this invention for England and the Virgin Queen , had blinded him to the imperfection of the evidence on which this claim rested . A calm examination of the paper , of the type , of the corrections of this so-called English Mercuric , must have satisfied the most unwilling antiquary that what he wished to find a real antique was nothing but a clumsy and impudent forgery . This counterfeit was , however , accepted as genuine , and so described in the Life of Rurldiman , from whence the tale was copied bv the writers in the various cyclopscdias , and from them

    into numerous other books . Amongst those who thus took for granted the truth of the story was Mr . Disraeli , who , in the earlier editions of the Curiosities of Literature , tells the false tale of Chalmers and his followers . This historical error was exposed and corrected by Mr . Watt , an officer of the Museum where this sham English Mercurie is preserved . He drew attention to the subject , and those who , at his suggestion , examined for themselves , saw as he did , and at once , that the so-called Elizabethan newspaper was a cheat . Those who are curious about such literary frauds may test the English Mercurie for themselves , at the library of the British Museum , for it is amongst the Sloane MSS ., and forms part of the Birch Collection . "

    The Revolution , as Mr . Hunt says , laid the foundation of the liberty of the press in England ; before that period the press was under the censorship of the Clergy and the King . During Elizabeth ' s reign there were many martyrs to freedom ; many bold men who braved the censorship . But , after all |

    The affairs of the country and the people were unknown to printed discussion ; points of faith had been debated , but questions of political condition were forbidden ; no one dare canvass them , for the censorship was strictly exercised . Differences , however , arose as to the licensing of books amongst those who claimed to exercise that privilege . Bishops at times opposed bishops , and archbishops occasionally ran counter to kings ; as we shall presently see in the case of Charles the ^ First and his episcopal bench . Meanwhile the pear beheld

    was ripening , and , when the Civil Wars King and Parliament contending to the death for supremacy , the press was called in by both sides . Its aid was invoked by each , and to each it became a powerful instrument for discussing the vital points in dispute . In this debate amid the clang of arms , with a whole excited nation for audience and actors , the trammels of its youth , fell from the press . It stood up a great power , unshackled—free ; and though royalists and puritans alike , during the struggle , and afterwards , attempted to reimpose its bonds , the first exercise of its freedom made so real an impression upon the mind of England , that no power has since succeeded in reducing it to the bondage from which it was released by the revolution tnat destroyed Charles the First . "

    In this chapter Mr . Hunt ' s democratic feelings have led him into a slight error . He says : — " This passage will illustrate the slavish tone adopted by Butter—the price paid probably for impunity in printing news at all : —* You are not ignorant , ' says this anonymous counsellor with the pecuniary initials , ' * that kings are the image of the living God , that their wills and commandments are laws to be specially observed , and that no man can dispense therewith without being guilty of high treason both divine and human . —Pans , 28 Mar . 1619 . '"

    The " slavish " tone assuredly was not the " price paid for impunity , " for it was the tone of almost all the writers of that day ; it was the tone which the doctrine of the Divine Right of Kings ( so incomprehensible to modern minds , yet so incontestably the docrine once so ' Universally believed in ) gave to all the political writing of that era . Nor does it appear that Butter published anything which forced him to purchase ** impunity " : —

    " Our national library , " says Mr . Hunt , " is rich , in printed memorials of this important period of our history . In the basement story ( not to call it the cellar ) of the British Museum , the visitor who has the good fortune to gain admission to the place finds our English national collection of political journals . Certainly more than a thousand yards of shelving are there stored with volumes of newspapers . The earliest in date are small , meagre-looking octavos ani quartos ; and as the eye ranges in the half-obscured light along the laden shelves , from the corner where these primitive sheets of the time of James the First and Charles the First now stand , the volumes are seen

    growing in size and number as their dates rise , until the journals of one county in our time are found exceeding in bulk and completeness the whole newspaper literature of the kingdom during an entire century of its earlier existence . These files of old papers excite a strange feeling . Few things are sought with more eagerness , and few things are sooner cast aside as worthless , than a newspaper ; yet still fewer are more interestins ; than a file of such old prints . Look into them . You see the aspects , and hear ( as some one says ) the very hum of a past life . In history we have the experience of a generation told in its results , its events ; the individuals are lost in the consideration of their epoch ; but in an old

    volume of newspapers you have the past generation telling their own gtory ; breathing , as it were , their every-day life into print—confessing to the future the deeds of their own hour . In these Museum vaults the papers least imposing in outward aspect are perhaps the most important . Some of those , so small and so poorly printed that they become contemptible in appearance when compared with the broad sheets of our day , have nevertheless a deep interest from matter they contain . In one we have the death of Hampden told , others describe the executions of men whose names are now so prominent in history , and as we go on in the search , we find , one by one , cotemporary notices of all the great events of the great civil war . "

    The reign of Anne forms , after the Revolution , the great era of newspapers : — " The many circumstances , however , which had stimulated the production of journals had not , up to this period , induced the appearance of a daily puper . That was a step in advance reserved for the reign when the victories of Marlborough and Rooke , the political contests of Godolphin and Bolingbroke , and the writings of Addison , Pope , Prior , Congreve , Steele , and Swift created a mental activity in the nation which could not

    wait from week to week for its news . Hence the appearance of a morning paper , in 1709 , under the title of the Daily Courant . When this was offered to the English Seople there were eighteen other papers published in . ondon , and among their titles we find a British Apollo , a Postman , an Evening Post , a General Postscript , and a City Intelligencer . The editor of the Evening Post , of September G , 1709 , reminds the public that ? there must be three or four pounds a-year paid for written news , ' & c , —that is to say , for the news-letters which thus seem to have been still competing with public prints—whilst the Evening Post might be had for a much more

    moderate sum . " Not only in frequency of appearance did the newspapers of Queen Anne ' s day surpass their predecessors : they began to assume a loftier political position , and to take on a better outward ehape— -though still poor enough

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), June 8, 1850, page 15, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_08061850/page/15/