Roman News Letters.—English serials and periodicals, from the very time of their origin, display, in a remarkable manner, the progress both of English literature and of English history, and form the most striking illustration that the literature interprets the history. In using the caption, "journalism," we include all forms of periodical literature—reviews, magazines, weekly and daily papers. The word journalism is, in respect to many of them, a misnomer, etymologically considered: it is a French corruption of diurnal, which, from the Latin dies, should mean a daily paper; but it is now generally used to include all periodicals. The origin of newspapers is quite curious, and antedates the invention of printing. The acta diurna, or journals of public events, were the daily manuscript reports of the Roman Government during the later commonwealth. In these, among other matters of public interest, every birth, marriage, and divorce was entered. As an illustration of the character of these brief entries, we have the satire of Petronius, which he puts in the mouth of the freed man Trimalchio: "The seventh of the Kalends of Sextilis, on the estate at Cumæ, were born thirty boys, twenty girls; were carried from the floor to the barn, 500,000 bushels of wheat; were broke 500 oxen. The same day the slave Mithridates was crucified for blasphemy against the Emperor's genius; the same day was placed in the chest the sum of ten millions sesterces, which could not be put out to use." Similar in character were the Acta Urbana, or city register, the Acta Publica, and the Acta Senatus, whose names indicate their contents. They were brief, almost tabular, and not infrequently sensational.
The Gazette.—After the downfall of Rome, and during the Dark Ages, there are few traces of journalism. When Venice was still in her palmy days, in 1563, during a war with the Turks, printed bulletins were issued from time to time, the price for reading which was a coin of about three farthings' value called a gazetta; and so the paper soon came to be called a gazette. Old files, to the amount of thirty volumes, of great historical value, may be found in the Magliabecchian Library at Florence.
Next in order, we find in France Affiches, or placards, which were soon succeeded by regular sheets of advertisement, exhibited at certain offices.
As early as the time of the intended invasion of England by the Spanish Armada, about the year 1588, we find an account of its defeat and dispersion in the Mercurie, issued by Queen Elizabeth's own printer. In another number is the news of a plot for killing the queen, and a statement that instruments of torture were on board the vessels, to set up the Inquisition in London. Whether true or not, the newspaper said it; and the English people believed it implicitly.
About 1600, with the awakening spirit of the people, there began to appear periodical papers containing specifically news from Germany, from Italy, &c. And during the Thirty Years' War there was issued a weekly paper called The Certain News of the Present Week. Although the word news is significant enough, many persons considered it as made up of the initial letters representing the cardinal points of the compass, N.E.W.S., from which the curious people looked for satisfying intelligence.
The Civil War.—The progress of English journalism received a great additional impetus when the civil war broke out between Charles I. and his Parliament, in 1642. To meet the demands of both parties for intelligence, numbers of small sheets were issued: Truths from York told of the rising in the king's favor there. There were: Tidings from Ireland, News from Hull, telling of the siege of that place in 1643; The Dutch Spy; The Parliament Kite; The Secret Owl; The Scot's Dove, with the olive-branch. Then flourished the Weekly Discoverer, and The Weekly Discoverer Stripped Naked. But these were only bare and partial statements, which excited rancor without conveying intelligence. "Had there been better vehicles for the expression of public opinion," says the author of the Student's history of England, "the Stuarts might have been saved from some of those schemes which proved so fatal to themselves."
In the session of Parliament held in 1695, there occurred a revolution of great moment. There had been an act, enforced for a limited time, to restrain unlicensed printing, and under it censors had been appointed; but, in this year, the Parliament refused to re-enact or continue it, and thus the press found itself comparatively free.
We have already referred to the powerful influence of the essayists in The Tatler, Spectator, Guardian, and Rambler, which may be called the real origin of the present English press.
Later Divisions.—Coming down to the close of the eighteenth century, we find the following division of English periodical literature: Quarterlies, usually called Reviews; Monthlies, generally entitled Magazines; Weeklies, containing digests of news; and Dailies, in which are found the intelligence and facts of the present moment; and in this order, too, were the intellectual strength and learning of the time at first employed. The Quarterlies contained the articles of the great men—the acknowledged critics in politics, literature, and art; the Magazines, a current literature of poetry and fiction; the Weeklies and Dailies, reporters' facts and statistics; the latter requiring activity rather than cleverness, and beginning to be a vehicle for extensive advertisements.
This general division has been since maintained; but if the order has not been reversed, there can be no doubt that the great dailies have steadily risen; on most questions of popular interest in all departments, long and carefully written articles in the dailies, from distinguished pens, anticipate the quarterlies, or force them to seek new grounds and forms of presentation after forestalling their critical opinions. Not many years ago, the quarterlies subsidized the best talent; now the men of that class write for The Times, Standard, Telegraph, &c.