t the Lord-Keeper "spared not for cost to purchase the
most certain intelligence, by his fee'd pensioners, of _every hour's
occurrences at court_; and was wont to say that no man could be a
statesman without a great deal of money."

We catch many glimpses of these times in another branch of the same
family. When news-books, as the first newspapers were called, did not yet
exist to appease the hungering curiosity of the country, a voluminous
correspondence was carried on between residents in the metropolis and
their country friends: these letters chiefly remain in their MS. state.[A]
Great men then employed a scribe who had a talent this way, and sometimes
a confidential friend, to convey to them the secret history of the times;
and, on the whole, they are composed by a better sort of writers; for, as
they had no other design than to inform their friends of the true state
of passing events, they were eager to correct, by subsequent accounts the
lies of the day they sometimes sent down. They have preserved some
fugitive events useful in historical researches, but their pens are
garrulous; and it requires some experience to discover the character of
the writers, to be enabled to adopt their opinions and their statements.
Little things were, however, great matters to these diurnalists; much time
was spent in learning of those at court, who had quarrelled, or were on
the point; who were seen to have bit their lips, and looked downcast; who
was budding, and whose full-blown flower was drooping: then we have the
sudden reconcilement and the anticipated fallings out, with a deal of the
_pourquoi_ of the _pourquoi_.[B]

[Footnote A: Mr. Lodge's "Illustrations of British History" is an eminent
and elegant work of the _minutiae historicae_; as are the more recent
volumes of Sir Henry Ellis's valuable collections.]

[Footnote B: Some specimens of this sort of correspondence of the idleness
of the times may amuse. The learned Mede, to his friend Sir Martin
Stuteville, chronicles a fracas:--"I am told of a great falling out
between my Lord Treasurer and my Lord Digby, insomuch that they came to
_pedlar's blood_, and _traitor's blood_. It was about some money which my
Lord Digby should have had, which my Lord Treasurer thought too much for
the charge of his employment, and said himself could go in as good a
fashion for half the sum. But my Lord Digby replies that he could not
_peddle_ so well as his lordship."

A lively genius spor