Samuel Buckley was printer of the London Gazette, Daily Courant, and Spectator. He died in 1741.
Drawcansir, in "The Rehearsal," is described by another character as "a great hero, who frights his mistress, snubs up kings, baffles armies, and does what he will, without regard to number, good sense, or justice."
John Dyer was a Jacobite journalist who issued a news-letter to country subscribers, among whom was Sir Roger de Coverley (Spectator, No. 127), by whom he was held in high esteem. Defoe (Review, vi. 132) says that Dyer "did not so much write what his readers should believe, as what they would believe." Vellum, in Addison's "The Drummer" (act ii. sc. i), cannot but believe his master is living, "because the news of his death was first published in Dyer's Letter." See also Spectator, Nos. 43 and 457. At the trial of John Tutchin for seditious libel (Howell's "State Trials," xiv. 1150), on complaint being made by counsel that Dyer had charged him with broaching seditious principles, Lord Chief Justice Holt said, "Dyer is very familiar with me too sometimes; but you need not fear such a little scandalous paper of such a scandalous author."
Ichabod Dawks was another "epistolary historian" (see Spectator, No. 457, and Tatler, No. 178). Dawks and Dyer are both introduced by Edmund Smith, author of "Phædra and Hippolitus," in his poem, "Charlettus Percivallo suo":
"Scribe securus, quid agit Senatus,
Quid caput stertit grave Lambethanum,
Quid comes Guilford, quid habent novorum.
"Dawksque Dyerque."
The Daily Courant, our first daily newspaper, was begun in 1702.