EDITORIAL ASSISTANT
Roberta Medford, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library
[Note: For full text go to [Page 9]]
INTRODUCTION
I fancy, Trimmer, that if You and I could but
get leave to peep out of our Graves again a matter
of a hundred and fifty year hence, we should find
these Papers in Bodlies Library, among the Memorialls
of State; and Celebrated for the Only Warrantable
Remains concerning this Juncture of Affairs.
(Observator No. 259, 16 December 1682)
When the first of 931 single, folio sheets of the Observator appeared on 13 April 1681, the sixty-five-year-old Roger L'Estrange, their sole author, had been a controversial London Royalist for over twenty years. As Crown protégé, he had served intermittently as Surveyor of the Press, Chief Licenser, and Justice of the King's Peace Commission; as a writer, he had produced two newspapers, the Intelligencer and the Newes (1663-1666), dozens of political pamphlets, and seven translations from Spanish, Latin, and French.[1] Rightly nicknamed "bloodhound of the press," L'Estrange was notorious for his ruthless ferreting out of illegal presses and seditious publishers, as well as for his tireless warfare against the powerful Stationers' Company.[2] No less well known were his intransigent reactionary views, for we can estimate that some 64,000 copies of pamphlets bearing his name were circulating in the City during the two years preceding the Observator.[3] Thus the Observator papers represent not only the official propaganda of the restored monarchy, but also the intellectual temper of a powerful, influential man whose London fame was sufficiently demonstrated in the winter of 1680, when he was publicly burned in effigy during that year's Pope-burning festivities.
In the muddy torrent of "Intelligences," "Mercuries," "Courants," "Pacquets," and sundry newssheets, the Observator marks the beginnings of a new sort of journalism, one which was to shape the development of the English periodical. Although Heraclitus Ridens and its opponent Democritus Ridens initiated the dialogue form for the newspaper seventy-two days before the Observator, their relatively short run relegates these pioneers to a shadowy background, as it does the even earlier trade paper in dialogue, the City and Country Mercury (1667).[4] The eighty-two issues of Heraclitus Ridens and thirteen of Democritus Ridens cannot be compared in quantity to the 931 issues of the Observator published three or four times a week from 13 April 1681 to 9 March 1687, nor can their stiff dialogues be compared in importance to L'Estrange's much fuller exploitation of the form. Consequently, even though he did not initiate the newspaper in dialogue form, L'Estrange is unanimously given the honor of having popularized the form, or, in the words of Richmond P. Bond, of having "borrowed the dialogue and fastened it on English journalism for a generation as a factional procedure."[5]
Imitators did not wait long. Nine days after the first Observator, L'Estrange's arch-enemy, Harry Care, changed to dialogue the Popish Courant section of his Weekly Pacquet of Advice from Rome, relinquishing the expository format which he had followed since 1678. Later, after the Glorious Revolution, the popularity of L'Estrange's paper is evident in the spate of imitative "Observators" that ensued: The English Spy: Or, the Critical Observator (1693); The Poetical Observator (1702); Tutchin's Observator (1702—a Whig organ) and Leslie's Observator (1704—a Tory organ); The Comicall Observator (1704); The Observator Reviv'd (1707), and more. As late as 1716 there was created a Weekly Observator. By the turn of the century, the very term "Observator" had come to signify a controversy in dialogue.[6] Interestingly enough, even the typography of L'Estrange's Observator may have left its mark on succeeding journals. A brief comparison of Interregnum newspapers (such as Newes Out of Ireland in 1642, The Scotch Mercury in 1643, The Commonwealth Mercury in 1658) with John Dunton's The Athenian Mercury (1693) and Charles Leslie's Observator (1704) reveals a marked difference in typography. In the earlier papers the typography is generally uniform, with italics used for proper names and quotations, whereas L'Estrange's and Leslie's papers exhibit the whole range of typeface available to the seventeenth-century printer. Dissenter Dunton's Athenian Mercury, on the other hand, shows much less eccentricity in its typography, limiting itself to generous use of italics only, while Defoe's Review goes back to the earlier restraint and presents a neat, uniform page. Whether these typographical differences are attributable to particular political views or merely to "schools" of printing is difficult to say.
In addition to this obvious sort of superficial imitation, there are many indications that L'Estrange's Observator had a more permanent influence on posterity. It has been suggested that the periodical specializing in query and answer between reader and editor, which was initiated by John Dunton's Athenian Mercury and which we still have today, may have been inspired by the Observator's habitual retorts to opponents.[7] James Sutherland isolates in Defoe certain qualities of prose style which he attributes to Defoe's extensive reading of L'Estrange; and he sees L'Estrange's natural colloquial manner as setting a pattern for journalists who followed him.[8] Far-fetched as it may seem at first glance, even Addison's Spectator shows a certain similarity to the Observator. Although the manner, tone, language, and political views of the two are antithetical, the Spectator's peculiar blend of moralizing and diversion is reminiscent of L'Estrange's work. In both papers we notice a serious didactic purpose tempered by literary techniques and imaginative handling of material. Decades before Addison's famous credo—"to make their Instruction Agreeable, and their Diversion useful ... to enliven Morality with Wit, and to temper Wit with Morality"[9]—L'Estrange had formulated a similar theory: