were printed while the Spanish fleet was in the English
Channel during the year 1588. It was a wise policy to prevent, during a
moment of general anxiety, the danger of false reports, by publishing
real information. The earliest newspaper is entitled "The English
Mercurie," which by _authority_ was "imprinted at London by her
highness's printer, 1588." These were, however, but extraordinary
gazettes, not regularly published. In this obscure origin they were
skilfully directed by the policy of that great statesman Burleigh, who,
to inflame the national feeling, gives an extract of a letter from
Madrid which speaks of putting the queen to death, and the instruments
of torture on board the Spanish fleet.

George Chalmers first exultingly took down these patriarchal newspapers,
covered with the dust of two centuries.

The first newspaper in the collection of the British Museum is marked
No. 50, and is in Roman, not in black letter. It contains the usual
articles of news, like the London Gazette of the present day. In that
curious paper, there are news dated from Whitehall, on the 23rd July,
1588. Under the date of July 26, there is the following
notice:--"Yesterday the Scots ambassador, being introduced to Sir
Francis Walsingham, had a private audience of her majesty, to whom he
delivered a letter from the king his master; containing the most cordial
assurances of his resolution to adhere to her majesty's interests, and
to those of the Protestant religion. And it may not here be improper to
take notice of a wise and spiritual saying of this young prince (he was
twenty-two) to the queen's minister at his court, viz.--That all the
favour he did expect from the Spaniards was the courtesy of Polypheme to
Ulysses, _to be the last devoured_." The gazetteer of the present day
would hardly give a more decorous account of the introduction of a
foreign minister. The aptness of King James's classical saying carried
it from the newspaper into history. I must add, that in respect to his
_wit_ no man has been more injured than this monarch. More pointed
sentences are recorded of James I. than perhaps of any prince; and yet,
such is the delusion of that medium by which the popular eye sees things
in this world, that he is usually considered as a mere royal pedant. I
have entered more largely on this subject, in an "Inquiry of the
Literary and Political Character of James I."[51]

Periodical papers seem first to have been more generally