THE DARK AGES.
(Being reflections on the pre-press period.)
[In The Times of December 2nd Lord Northcliffe traces the history of the English Press from the appearance of the first newspaper uttered in English—"A Corrant out of Germany," imprinted at Amsterdam, December 2nd, 1620—and finds some difficulty in understanding how civilisation got on as well as it did through all those preceding centuries.]
To-day (December 2) we keep, with cheers,
The Tercentenary of the Press!
Probing the darkness of the previous years
I try, but try in vain, to guess
How anybody lived before the birth