66 tion, with the admitted mint-stamp of genius. "Content is to the mind like moss to a tree: it bindeth it up so as to stop its growth,”. Complaining is a contempt upon one's self," "An old man concludeth from his knowing mankind that they know him too, and that maketh him very wary":- these are a few of his pearls. But because we admit the literary merits of Halifax we may not close our eyes to his indecision of character. Fixed as the polar star! He, the most volatile and vain of human beings, — who was never of the same mind for six months, porary, of a man who must have been offi- |ification for a prophet is to have a good cially well informed, we have a simple memory," has passed into common circulaexplanation of the catastrophe without reference to Marlborough. It was necessary, before the expedition was resolved on, to collect information to consult and advise to examine Frenchmen, and especially French pilots, as to the coast, the bay, the state of the fortifications, the means of defence generally. From these men, as Burchet says, the French Government obtained that "early advice" which enabled them to make the whole bay "in a manner a citadel." This could not have been done in a week-no, nor in a month; and the dates and facts prove that it could not have been done in that fractional moment of time between the receipt of Marlborough's letter and the arrival of the Fleet. With what decency, then, can Marlborough be charged, as Mr. Macaulay charges him, with "murder "? : whose whole life was passed in changing sides, running from Tories to Whigs and from Whigs to Tories, from James to William and from William to James, - he, whom no event could fix, not even the Revolution! Halifax was an intellectual voluptuary, who loved In the long procession of historical char- quiet and abominated "scenes." His nerves acters which moves before the reader in the were his principles, and his policy was, love four volumes of Mr. Macaulay, there is none of ease. Nothing put him in ill humor so (after the demi-god William) to compare in easily as violence. In his celebrated "Charfinish with the picture of Halifax. This sub-acter of Charles the Second," he condemns tle writer and vacillating politician is drawn that monarch's excessive vices, not so much with infinite art. In Mr. Macaulay's hands because they were vices as because any kind his faults rise into merits-his weakness of excess is incompatible with good manners. becomes virtue. His instability of character As Halifax lived, so he died: is represented as a higher mode of constancy. "Halifax and Nottingham had long been He is compared to the polar star. Mr. Ma- friends: and Lord Eland, now Halifax's only son, caulay delights in surprises: in new read- had been affianced to the Lady Mary Finch, Notings in sudden turns. He likes to knock tingham's daughter. The day of the nuptials down old idols, and to set up new ones. In was fixed a joyous company assembled at Burthe exercise of this aggressive power he often ley on the Hill, the mansion of the bride's father, which, from one of the noblest terraces in the finds in the objects of his adoration or of island, looks down on magnificent woods of beech his contumely traits which exist only in and oak, on the rich Valley of Catmos, and on his own imagination. We, too, have a weak- the spire of Oakham. The father of the brideness for Halifax. We rank his writings groom was detained in London by indisposition, which was not supposed to be dangerous. On a brief as they are with the best things of sudden his malady took an alarming form. He their kind in the English language. For in- was told that he had but a few hours to live. stance (to quote only from memory), who He received the intimation with tranquil fortihas ever thrown profound worldly caution tude. It was proposed to send off an express to into fewer words than in this saying-"Men natured to the last, would not disturb the felicity summon his son to town. But Halifax, good must be saved in this world by their want of of the wedding day. He gave strict orders that faith"? Who has more felicitously hit off his interment should be private, prepared himthe danger which every one feels of calling self for the great change by devotions which as"a spade a spade"?" A man that should and died with the serenity of a philosopher and tonished those who had called him an atheist, call everything by its right name would of a Christian, while his friends and kindred, hardly pass the streets without being knocked not suspecting his danger, were tasting the sack down as a common enemy." How exquisite posset and drawing the curtain. His legitimate is this saying "The struggling for know- male posterity and his titles soon became extinct. No small portion, however, of his wit and eloledge hath a pleasure in it like wrestling with quence descended to his daughter's son, Philip a fine woman." His phrase "the best qual-Stanhope, fourth Earl of Chesterfield. But it is However, Between him and the licensers there was a feud The hos perhaps not generally known that some adventurers, who, without advantages of fortune or "Little as either the intellectual or the moral position, made themselves conspicuous by the mere force of ability, inherited the blood of Hali-character of Blount may seem to deserve respect, fax. He left a natural son, Henry Carey, whose it is in a great measure to him that we must atdramas once drew crowded audiences to the thea- tribute the emancipation of the English press. tres, and some of whose gay and spirited verses still live in the memory of hundreds of thousands. From Henry Carey descended that Edmund Kean who, in our own time, transformed himself so marvellously into Shylock, Iago, and Othello." A subject of deeper interest even than the character of a great writer is the rise of a Free Press in England; and this subject Mr. forth without any license, and which is entitled Macaulay has treated with his usual copious-A Just Vindication of Learning and of the LibWhoever ness and vivacity. Some extracts on this erty of the Press,' by Philopatris. point will interest all our readers. It was in reads this piece, and is not aware that Blount the year 1695,- the year in which William was one of the most unscrupulous plagiaries that ever lived, will be surprised to find, mingled with captured Namur and Russell shut up the the poor thoughts and poor words of a third-rate French fleet in Toulon, that newspapers pamphleteer, passages so elevated in sentiment (properly so called) made their appearance in and style that they would be worthy of the greatLondon. But a way had been prepared for est name in letters. The truth is, that the Just Vindication' consists chiefly of garbled them two years earlier, chiefly through the extracts from the Areopagitica of Milton. literary agency of Charles Blount, who That noble discourse had been neglected by the made it his glory to wage skilful and deadly generation to which it was addressed, had sunk war against the censor, Bohun. The account into oblivion, and was at the mercy of every pilferer. The literary workmanship of Blount reof Blount is most amusing: sembled the architectural workmanship of those barbarians who used the Coliseum and the Thea"There was then about town a man of good fam-tre of Pompey as quarries, who built hovels out ily, of some reading and of some small literary of Ionian friezes and propped cow-houses on piltalent, named Charles Blount. In politics he be- lars of lazulite. Blount concluded, as Milton longed to the extreme section of the Whig party. had done, by recommending that any book might In the days of the Exclusion Bill he had been be printed without a license, provided that the one of Shaftesbury's brisk boys, and had, under name of the author or publisher were registered. the signature of Junius Brutus, magnified the The Just Vindication was well received. The virtues and public services of Titus Oates, and blow was speedily followed up. There still reexhorted the Protestants to take signal vengeance mained in the Areopagitica many fine pason the Papists for the fire of Lon-lon and for the sages which Blount had not used in his first murder of Godfrey. As to the theological ques- pamphlet. Out of these passages he constructed tions which were in issue between Protestants a second pamphlet entitled 'Reasons for the Liband Papists, Blount was perfectly impartial. erty of Unlicensed Printing.' To these Reasons He was an infidel, and the head of a small school he appended a postscript entitled 'A Just and of infidels who were troubled with a morbid desire True Character of Edmund Bohun.' to make converts. He translated from the Latin Character was written with extreme bitterness. translation part of The Life of Appollonius of Passages were quoted from the licenser's writings Tyana,' and appended to it notes, of which the to prove that he held the doctrines of passive flippant profaneness called forth the severe cen- obedience and non-resistance. He was accused sure of an unbeliever of a very different order, of using his power systematically for the purpose the illustrious Bayle. Blount also attacked of favoring the enemies and silencing the friends Christianity in several original treatises, or of the sovereigns whose bread he ate; and it was rather in several treatises purporting to be orig- asserted that he was the friend and the pupil inal; for he was the most audacious of literary of his predecessor Sir Roger. Blount's Characthieves, and transcribed, without acknowledg-ter of Bohun could not be publicly sold; but it ment, whole pages from authors who had pre- was widely circulated. While it was passing ceded him. His delight was to worry the priests from hand to hand, and while the Whigs were by asking them how light existed before the sun everywhere exclaiming against the new censor as was made, how paradise could be bounded by a second Lestrange, he was requested to authorPison, Gihon, Hiddekel, and Euphrates, how ize the publication of an anonymous work enserpents moved before they were condemned to titled King William and Queen Mary Conerawl, and where Eve found thread to stitch her querors.' He readily, and indeed eagerly, fig-leaves. To his speculations on these subjects complied. For in truth there was between the he gave the lofty name of the Oracles of Rea-doctrines which he had long professed, and the doctrines which were propounded in this treatise, son." This a coincidence so exact that many suspected him ship. Discussion ensued; and the Bill was of being the author; nor was this suspicion only passed for two years. At the end of weakened by a passage in which a compliment that time it ceased, and newspapers appeared. was paid to his political writings. But the real author was that very Blount who was, at that As Mr. Macaulay says: "While the Licensing Act was in force there was no newspaper in England except the London Gazette, which was edited by a clerk in the office of the Secretary of State, and which contained nothing but what the Secretary of State wished the nation to know. There were indeed many periodical papers: but none of those papers could be called a newspaper. Welwood, a zealous Whig, published a journal called the Observator: but his Observator, like the Observator which Les trange had formerly edited, contained not the news, but merely dissertations on politics. A crazy bookseller, named John Dunton, published the Athenian Mercury; but the Athenian Mercury merely discussed questions of natural philosophy, or casuistry, and of gallantry. A Fellow of the Royal Society, named John Houghton, published what he called a Collection for the Improvement of Industry and Trade. But his Collection contained little more than the prices of stocks, explanations of the modes of doing business in the City, puffs of new projects, and advertisements of books, quack medicines, chocolate, spa water, civet cats, surgeons wanting ships, valets wanting masters, and ladies wanting husbands. If ever he printed any political news, he transcribed it from the Gazette. The Gazette was so partial and so meagre a chronicle of events that, though it had no competitors, it had but a small circulation. Only eight thousand copies were printed, much less than one to each parish in the kingdom. In truth, a person who had studied the history of his own time only in the Gazette would have been ignorant of many events of the highest importance. He would, for example, have known nothing about the Court Martial on Torrington, the Lancashire Trials, the burning of the Bishop of Salisbury's Pastoral Letter, or the impeachment of the Duke of Leeds. But the deficiencies of the Gazette were to a cer tain extent supplied in London by the coffeehouses, and in the country by the newsletters." confinement." But a change was near: had subjected the press to a censorship expired "On the 3rd of May, 1695, the law which Within a fortnight, a staunch old Whig, named Harris, who had, in the days of the Exclusion Bill, attempted to set up a newspaper entitled Intelligence Domestic and Foreign, and who had been speedily forced to relinquish that design, announced that the Intelligence Domestic tyranny, would again appear. Ten days after and Foreign, suppressed fourteen years by and Foreign was printed the first number of the the first number of the Intelligence Domestic English Courant. Then came the Packet Boat from Holland and Flanders, the Pegasus, the London Newsletter, the London Post, the Flying Post, the Old Postmaster, the Postboy, This dramatic incident killed the censor- and the Postman. The history of the newspa pers of England from that time to the present by the most submissive apologies. During a day is a most interesting and instructive part of considerable time the unofficial gazettes, though the history of the country. At first they were much more garrulous and amusing than the small and mean-looking. Even the Postboy and official gazette, were scarcely less courtly. Whothe Postman, which seem to have been the best ever examines them will find that the King is conducted and the most prosperous, were wretch-always mentioned with profound respect. About edly printed on scraps of dingy paper such as the debates and divisions of the two Houses a would not now be thought good enough for street reverential silence is preserved. There is much ballads. Only two numbers came out in a week; invective: but it is almost all directed against and a number contained little more matter than the Jacobites and the French. It seems certain may be found in a single column of a daily paper that the government of William gained not a of our time. What is now called a leading article little by the substitution of these printed newsseldom appeared except when there was a scarcity papers, composed under constant dread of the of intelligence, when the Dutch mails were detain- Attorney General, for the old newsletters which ed by the west wind, when the Rapparees were were written with unbounded license. The quiet in the Bog of Allen, when no stage-coach pamphleteers were under less restraint than the had been stopped by highwaymen, when no non- journalists; yet no person who has studied with juring congregation had been dispersed by consta-attention the political controversies of that time bles, when no ambassador had made his entry with a long train of coaches and six, when no lord or poet had been buried in the Abbey, and when consequently it was difficult to fill up four scanty pages. Yet the leading articles, though inserted, as it should seem, only in the absence of more attractive matter, are by no means contemptibly written." can have failed to perceive that the libels on William's person and government were decidedly less coarse and rancorous during the latter half of his reign than during the earlier half. And the reason evidently is that the press, which had been fettered during the earlier half of his reign, was free during the latter half. While the censorship existed, no tract blaming, even in the most temperate and decorous language, the conThe establishment of regular newspapers duct of any public department, was likely to be produced none of the results expected by printed with the approbation of the licenser. To timid statesmen; and "the liberty of un-print such a tract without the approbation of the licensed Printing," so nobly fought for in the of Milton, when it was allowed, prose soon justified the prophecies of that great writer. Mr. Macaulay shall tell us, in brief, the story of the Free Press: noblest licenser was illegal. In general, therefore, the respectable and moderate opponents of the Court, not being able to publish in the manner prescribed by law, and not thinking it right or safe to publish in a manner prohibited by law, held their peace, and left the business of criticizing the administration to two classes of men, fanati"It is a remarkable fact that the infant news-cal non-jurors who sincerely thought the Prince papers were all on the side of King William and of Orange entitled to as little charity or courtesy the Revolution. This fact may be partly ex-as the Prince of Darkness, and Grub Street hacks, plained by the circumstance that the editors coarse-minded, bad-hearted, and foul-mouthed. were, at first, on their good behavior. It was Thus there was scarcely a single man of judgby no means clear that their trade was not in ment, temper, and integrity among the many who itself illegal. The printing of newspapers was were in the habit of writing against the governcertainly not prohibited by any statute. But, ment. Indeed, the habit of writing against the towards the close of the reign of Charles the government had, of itself, an unfavorable effect Second, the judges had pronounced that it was a on the character. For whoever was in the habit misdemeanor at common law to publish political of writing against the government was in the intelligence without the King's license. It is habit of breaking the law; and the habit of breaktrue that the judges who laid down this doctrine ing even an unreasonable law tends to make men were removable at the royal pleasure and were altogether lawless. However absurd a tariff may eager on all occasions to exalt the royal preroga-be, a smuggler is but too likely to be a knave tive. How the question, if it were again raised, would be decided by Holt and Treby was doubtful; and the effect of the doubt was to make the ministers of the Crown indulgent and to make the journalists cautious. On neither side was there a wish to bring the question of right to issue. The government therefore connived at the publication of the newspapers; and the conductors of the newspapers carefully abstained from publishing anything that could provoke or alarm the government. It is true that, in one of the earliest numbers of one of the new journals, a paragraph appeared which seemed to be intended to convey an insinuation that the Princess Anne did not sincerely rejoice at the fall of Namur. But the printer made haste to atone for his fault and a ruffian. However oppressive a game law may be, the transition is but too easy from a poacher to a murderer. And so, though little indeed can be said in favor of the statutes which imposed restraints on literature, there was much risk that a man who was constantly violating those statutes would not be a man of high honor and rigid uprightness. An author who was determined to print, and could not obtain the sanction of the licenser, must employ the services of needy and desperate outcasts, who, hunted by the peace officers, and forced to assume every week new aliases and new disguises, hid their paper and their types in those dens of vice which are the pest and the shame of great capitals. Such wretches as these he must bribe to keep his secret and to run the chance of having their backs flayed and their ears clipped in his stead. A man stooping to such companions and to such expedients could hardly retain unimpaired the delicacy of his sense of what was right and becoming. the government and the legislature to put down so monstrous a nuisance. Yet still, bounded on the west by the great school of English jurisprudence, and on the east by the great mart of English trade, stood this labyrinth of squalid, tottering houses, closely packed, every one, "The emancipation of the press produced a from cellar to cockloft, with outcasts, whose life great and salutary change. The best and wisest was one long war with society. The best part men in the ranks of the opposition now assumed of the population consisted of debtors who were an office which had hitherto been abandoned to in fear of bailiffs. The rest were attorneys the unprincipled or the hot-headed. Tracts struck off the roll, witnesses who carried straw against the government were written in a style in their shoes as a sign to inform the public not misbecoming statesmen and gentlemen: and where a false oath might be procured for half-aeven the compositions of the lower and fiercer crown, sharpers, receivers of stolen goods, class of malcontents became somewhat less clippers of coin, forgers of bank notes, and brutal and less ribald than in the days of the tawdry women, blooming with paint and brandy, licensers. Some weak men had imagined that who, in their anger, made free use of their nails religion and morality stood in need of the pro-and their scissors, yet whose anger was less to tection of the licenser. The event signally be dreaded than their kindness. With these proved that they were in error. In truth, the wretches the narrow alleys of the sanctuary censorship had scarcely put any restraint on swarmed. The rattling of dice, the call for licentiousness or profaneness. The Paradise more punch and more wine, and the noise of Lost' had narrowly escaped mutilation; for the blasphemy and ribald song never ceased during 'Paradise Lost' was the work of a man whose the whole night. The benchers of the Inner politics were hateful to the ruling powers. But Temple could bear the scandal and the annoyEtherge's 'She Would If She Could,' Wycher-ance no longer. They ordered the gate leading ley's Country Wife,' Dryden's Translations into Whitefriars to be bricked up. The Alsatians from the Fourth Book of Lucretius,' obtained mustered in great force, attacked the workmen, the Imprimatur without difficulty; for Dryden, killed one of them, pulled down the wall, Etherege, and Wycherley were courtiers. From knocked down the Sheriff who came to keep the the day on which the emancipation of our liter-peace, and carried off his gold chain, which, no ature was accomplished, the purification of our literature began. That purification was effected, not by the intervention of senates or magistrates, but by the opinion of the great body of educated Englishmen, before whom good and evil were set, and who were left free to make their choice. During a hundred and sixty years the liberty of our press has been constantly becoming more and more entire ; and during those hundred and sixty years the restraint imposed on writers by the general feeling of readers has been constantly becoming more and more strict. At length even that class of works in which it was formerly thought that a voluptuous imagination was privileged to disport itself, love songs, comedies, novels, have become more decorous than the sermons of the seventeenth century. At this day, foreigners, who dare not print a word reflecting on the government under which they live, are at a loss to understand how it happens that the freest press in Europe is the most prudish." The story of the newspaper draws us in imagination to Alsatia and the Savoy-in which regions a great part of the newspaper enterprise of the present day finds its home. The picture of these places 160 years ago is very striking. Here is Alsatia : "The ancient immunities enjoyed by some districts of the capital, of which the largest and the most infamous was Whitefriars, had produced abuses which could no longer be endured. The Templars on one side of Alsatia, and the citizens on the other, had long been calling on doubt, was soon in the melting-pot. The riot was not suppressed till a company of the Foot Guards arrived. This outrage excited general indignation. The City, indignant at the outrage offered to the Sheriff, cried loudly for justice. Yet, so difficult was it to execute any process in the dens of Whitefriars, that near two years elapsed before a single ringleader was apprehended." The Savoy corresponded with its neighbor beyond the Temple : kind, smaller indeed, and less renowned, but "The Savoy was another place of the same inhabited by a not less lawless population. An unfortunate tailor, who ventured to go thither debt, was set upon by the whole mob of cheats, for the purpose of demanding payment of a full discharge to his debtor and a treat to the He offered to give a rabble, but in vain. He had violated their franchises; and this crime was not to be pardoned. He was knocked down, stripped, tarred, feathered. A rope was tied round his waist. He was dragged naked up and down the streets amidst yells of A bailiff! A bailiff! Finally he was compelled to kneel down and to curse his father and mother. Having performed this ceremony he was permitted, and the permission was blamed by many of the Savoyards, to limp home without a rag upon him. The Bog of Allen, the passes of the Grampians, were not more unsafe than this small knot of lanes, surrounded by the mansions of the greatest nobles of a flourishing and enlightened kingdom. At length, in 1697, a bill for abolishing the fran ruffians, and courtesans. |