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DONNE'S VERSES TO HIS WIFE.

of those who throw away their wit upon false conceits,' may here be given by way of curiosity. Well might Johnson say that these poets 'broke their image into fragments, and left not only reason, but fancy behind them.'

DONNE'S VERSES TO HIS WIFE:

Our two souls therefore which are one,

Though I must go endure not yet

A breach, but an expansion,

Like gold to airy thinness bent.

If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two;
Thy soul, the fixt foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if t'other do:
And though it in the centre fit,

Yet when the other far doth rome,

It leans and hearkens after it,

And grows erect, as that comes home.
Such wilt thou be to me, who must
Like t'other foot obliquely run :

Thy firmness makes my circle just

And makes me end where I begun.'

CHAPTER VIII.

ORIGIN OF NEWSPAPERS.-THE VARIOUS PLACES OF RESORT FOR NEWSMONGERS IN THE DAYS OF THE STUARTS.-WHITEHALL, CHELSEA, PAUL'S CROSS, THE EXCHANGE, WESTMINSTER HALL.-NATHANIEL BUTTER; HIS OFFICE.-BEN JONSON'S 'STAPLE OF NEWS.'-NEWSLETTERS; HOW TRANSMITTED.-'PARLOUR WINDOW MISCELLANIES.'-SIR THOMAS OVERBURY'S' CHARACTERS.'-HIS LIFE. -THE STORY OF HIS POISONING.-HIS DEATH.-EXTRACTS FROM HIS WORKS.

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NEWSPAPERS, which owed their origin to the reign of Elizabeth, assumed a new and amusing character in that of James the First. It was at the time of the Spanish invasion, when the dreaded armada was approaching the shores of England, that the first number of The English Mercurie' appeared. It was in substance like the 'London Gazette.' Seldom does a touch of humour irradiate its pages; but we are indebted to James the First for one smile, as we pore over its musty folds. The young King,' so states the English Mercury' of July, 1588,' said to the English minister that all the favour he expected from the Spaniards was the courtesy of Polyphemus to Ulysses, that he should be devoured the last.'

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Whilst Cowley was in his infancy, and when James the First was still on the throne, the first newspaper for the people at large was published. It was the speculation of one Nicholas Butter, who, joining with other enterprising men, put into type what had long been written and disseminated in manuscript. In 1622 the Weekly Newes' made its appearance.

This commencement of periodical literature is one of the most important events of the century. Had it occurred at an earlier period, and had the liberty of the press been allowed, the Spanish match would never, perhaps, have been broken off; neither would Ralegh have perished.

A foreigner, visiting our courts of law in the time of Lord

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THE FIRST NEWSPAPER.

Mansfield, expressed to that great judge his surprise that so few of the public were to be seen in those courts. 'No matter, sir,' was the reply; 'we sit every day in the newspapers.

Before the production of the newspaper, 'that daily and sleepless watchman,' as it has been termed, 'that reports to you every danger that menaces the institutions of your country,' the people were, in general, profoundly ignorant of all that mainly concerned their best interests. Even during the present century, before railroads existed, there was, in rural districts where no newspaper penetrated, the profoundest slumber of the agrarian intellect. Be the old gentleman dead, sir, as was believed, and his son king now ?' was the question put to a clergyman in one of the remote villages of the midland counties, long after the old gentleman' (George the Third) and his son and successor had slept with their fathers in the royal vaults of Windsor.

One hundred and fifty years had elapsed after the discovery of printing, before the first newspaper was put into type. Let it not be, therefore, supposed that what has been well termed the love of biography, incident to human nature, or to speak in plainer words, a desire of knowing the affairs of others, had in the interim passed wholly ungratified, in the large cities of England. At all events, in the metropolis there were central points where every one could hear comfortably some ill of one's neighbours' misfortunes. There was the court,-and what a resource that must have been, from the days of ruffs, and steeple-crowned hats, in King James's time, to those of love locks, and Vandyck collars, in that of the Cavaliers !

How delicious, at noon-tide, to barge it away, from Whitehall down to Chelsea; mimicking all the way King James's Scotch accent, abusing his puns, and remarking on the queen's 'being a little over come yesternight' (poor Queen Anne; it was her only failing). How dangerously interesting

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