472
HISTORY OF PRINTING.
pamphlets. These were most printed heyond the seas. Only one I remember, which was The Supplication of Beggars, wrote against the begging friers by one Fish.
" But in the days of queen Mary they began to fly about in the city of London ; as several ballads and other songs and poems, as a ballad of the queen's being with child.
" And these, I say, were the forerunners of the newspapers. In the days of queen Elizabeth we had^veral papers printed, relating to the affairs in France, Spain, and Holland, about the time of the civil wars in Fiance. And these were, for the most part, translations from the Dutch and French, and were books, or pamphlets rather, which, I take, if I mistake not, the word signifieth to be held in the hands and quickly read. We must come down to the reign of king James I. and that towards the latter end, when news began to be in fashion ; and then, if I mistake not, began the use of Mercury-women ; and they it was that dispersed them to the hawker, which word hath another signification. Look more in the Bellman of London"
The business of these Mercuries and hawkers at first was to disperse proclamations, orders of council, and acts of parliament, &c. The Har- leian numutcripu proceed to give what is there stvled a list of early-printed newspapers; but which was so extremely incomplete, that Mr. Nichols* took some trouble to improve it, from the entries at stationers' hall, and from the royal collection in the British Museum, before he was aware that Mr. Chalmersf had encountered a similar labour. The Rev. Samuel Ayscough added more than one hundred articles te the list of Mr. Nichols, which had escaped the no- tice of Mr. Chalmers ; and from a collection of newspapers in his own possession, besides being continued to a later period, Mr. Nichols was enabled to form his list tolerably complete.^
1536. iVn<;ei§ out q/'HrU; a dialogue between Charon and Zebul, a devil. London, printed by John Byddell. 8vo.
1576. Paiquin in a trance. A chrittian and learned dialogue, conteyning newes out of heaven.
- Literary Anecdote*, vol. 4, &c.
t Life of Thomas Ruddiman, the printer,
t For the list of newspapers, the compiler has heCD much indebted to the labours of Chalmers and Nichols ; but many articles are her« Inserted that escaped the inde- fMlgable research of those two ^ntlemen.
I The original orthography was newett and in the singular. Johnson has, however, decided, that the word nevn is a substantive without a singular, unless it be con- sidered as singular. The word new, accordingto Wachter, Is of very andent use, and is common to many nations. The Britons, and the Anglo-Saxons, had the word, though not the thing. It was first printed by Caxton, in the modern sense. In the Siege of RhodeSt which was tran- slated by John Kay, the poet laureate, and printed by Caxton, about the year Mpb. In the ilssemfr/jr of Foulis, which was printed by William Copland In 1S30, there is the following exclamation —
Newes 1 Newes I Newes r have ye ony Newes I" In the translation of the Vtopia, by Raphe Robinson, dtlzien and goldsmythe, which was imprinted by Abra- ham Nele, in 1551, we are told. ** As for monsters, be- cause they be no newee, of them we were nothynge in- quysltlTe." — Such la the rise, and such the progress of the word iKiM, which even, In 1551, was still printed newen I"
purgatory, and hell, ditcotering the crafty eontt- mienees of antichrist. London : printed by Wil- liam Seres. 4to.
1 578. Joy full netvesfrom the newfound worii, of things used in physick, brought from the Wea Indies. London : printed by William Norton. 4to. with cuts. Again in 1580.
1579. Newe Newes, contayning a thort re- hersall of Stukeley and Morice's rebellion.
1579. Newes from the North ; or a conferenet between Simon Certain and Pierce Plowman. 4to. A copy sold at the Roxburghe sale for £12 12t.
1583, Feb. 1. Wonderful and strange Newi$ out of Suffolke and Essex, where it rayned Wheat the space of six or seven miles. 12mo.
1588. English Mercurie.*
1588. Mercurij Gallo-Belgici.f
1593. Newes from Spain and Holland. 8to.
1600. Newes out of Cheshire of the new found well, with a frontispiece.
1604. Newes from Gravesend. 4to.
1608. Newes from Lough-Foyle in Irelattd, of the rebellion of sir Carey Dougherty and Filly-me Reah Mac Dary. 4to.
1611. Newes from Spain. For Nathaoiel Butter, 4to. 12 pages.
1612. Woful Newes from the west parts of England of the lamentable burning of TeverUtn. 4to. with frontispiece.
1612. Newes out of Germany. 4to.
1614. Good Newes from Florence. 4to.
1615. Newes from Gulick and Cleve. 4to.
1618. Newes from Perin (Penrith) in Corn- wall, of a murther committed by a father on Ais owne sontie (lately returned from the Indyes). 4to, Black letter. From this pamphlet Mr. George Lillo, author of George Barnwell, took his tragedy of the Faial Curiosity.
i6lS. Newes from Italtf. 4to'. 1620. Vox Populi, or Newes from Spain, 4to. with plates.
1620. Good Newes to Christendome sent to a Venetian in Legome, from a merchant in Alex- andria. 4to. with \mod cut.
1621. Couranl, or Weekly Newesfrom Foreign Parts ; a half sheet in black letter. 4to. out of high Dutoh, printed for Nath. Butter.
1621, Oct. 23. In the stationers' books. Newt* from Poland, wherein is truelie enlarged the oc- casion, progression, and interception of the Turks formidable threatening of Europe, was entered by William Lee.
1621 , Oct. 29. The certain and true Newtfrom all parts of Germany and Poland, to the present time. 4to.
Burton, in his Anatomy of Melancholy, pub- lished in this year, says, " that if any read now a-days it is a play-book, or a pamphlet of newest
1622, April 13. Strange Newes out of diverse
- See page 399, ante.
1 See page 428 and 445, ante.
t There is not a porch or a market-place In wbidi Uie newg-monger does not take his stand for a whale 4ajr together, tiring his invention and amosing his beams with an everlasting series of Actions and forgerlet.— Theophrastus. B. C. 305.
