not actually deny, that the publications in question were forgeries. In an article in the Penny Cyclopædia no one can fail to discern at least a leaning to the belief that the seven copies of the so-called English Mercurie were genuine,-both those which are printed and those which are in manuscript. A writer in Partington's Cyclopædia goes still farther than the Penny Cyclopædia. He assumes it to be a fact that the numbers in question of the English Mercurie are genuine. We cannot help wondering how any one who has read the article on newspapers by the elder Disraeli in the latest edition of his "Curiosities of Literature," or some of the many articles in the Quarterly Review on the subject, could have entertained a doubt as to their being spurious.

But apart from the irrefragable evidence which the elder Disraeli, the Quarterly Review, and other authors and reviewers, have brought forward to prove that the English Mercurie publications were forgeries, there is one fact which of itself ought to have prevented the success of the imposition. Those who have consulted the seven copies in the British Museum cannot fail to have observed that each number contains advertisements; whereas at the period in question none of the newspapers published contained any advertisements, beyond those of a few books. Nor did the newspapers, so far as I have discovered, in any part of the sixteenth century open their columns to the insertion of advertisements. That practice did not begin until after the commencement of the second

half of the seventeenth century. I have not seen this obvious argument made use of by any writer, as proving that the seven alleged Elizabethan journals were forgeries; but to my mind the argument is conclusive on the point.

In this case, we have an interesting and instructive illustration of how important historical inaccuracies often occur. The origin of this error may be told in a few words. Mr. George Chalmers, a Scotchman of considerable literary reputation wrote, towards the close of the last century, a biography of Mr. Thomas Ruddiman, who lived about the middle of the century, and who possessed a very high classical reputation, combined with a knowledge of typography and a taste for the art, which rendered him, in these latter respects, the most eminent man of his day. Mr. Ruddiman had also been for nearly half a century the keeper of the Library of Advocates in Edinburgh. In this work Chalmers gave an account of his personal inspection in the British Museum of the seven copies of the alleged English Mercurie, of the date of 1588, never for a moment doubting their genuineness. His account was transferred to the pages of the Gentleman's Magazine in the year 1794. Afterwards it found its way into several other works relative to the early history of newspapers; and in the course of time into various Encyclopædias. Amongst these latter may be mentioned the Encyclopædia Londinensis, the Encyclopædia Metropolitana, and the Encyclopædia Britannica. These latter publications implicitly fol

lowed each other, without quoting Chalmers as their authority for their statements. Thus the story obtained universal credence. Disraeli himself, as before remarked, received it as trustworthy, and gave it, in the earlier editions of his "Curiosities of Literature," as historically correct. Afterwards, however, Disraeli ascertained that the thing was a deliberate forgery; and desirous of giving to the fact the most compléte exposure in his power, he published the following in the preface to the twelfth edition of his work: “I witnessed, fifty years ago, that laborious researcher (Chalmers) busied among the long dusty shelves of an hundred papers which then reposed in the antechamber of the British Museum. To the industry which I had witnessed I confided, and such positive and precise evidence could not fail to be accepted by all. In the British Museum, indeed, George Chalmers found the printed English Mercurie; but there also, it now appears, he might have seen the original, with all its corrections, before it was sent to the press, written on paper of modern date." Mr. Disraeli adds: "The fact is, the whole is a modern forgery; for which Birch, preserving it among his papers, has not assigned either the occasion or the motive. I am inclined," continues the author of the "Curiosities," "to think it was a jeu d'esprit of historical antiquarians, concocted by himself and his friends the Yorkes." If Mr. Disraeli's theory of the forgery of the papers in question is correct, no language can stigmatize in sufficiently strong terms the conduct of

Dr. Birch. He succeeded in practising a grave imposture on the world for considerably over half a century; and but for the fortunate circumstanceaccident, it might in a sense be called-of the late Mr. Watts, of the British Museum, having detected and exposed the iniquitous forgery, an important historical mis-statement might have been everywhere, and by everybody, implicitly believed till the end of time. The detection of historical errors like this has a very painful and injurious effect when reading the annals of any age or country. It has a tendency to inspire us with more or less of distrust as to the truth of that which we most earnestly desire to believe. And this is a most unpleasant frame of mind in which to peruse the pages of any work in which we feel a special interest.

Some writers on early newspaper history who lived in the latter part of the last century, have got together various facts—at least they regarded them as such— to establish an origin for one English newspaper, much further back than the Weekly News of 1622, which I hold to have been the first. This newspaper was called the Gallo-Belgicus. The editor of Dodsley's "Old Plays," confidently asserts that Gallo-Belgicus was the "name of the first newspaper published in England." But, as Chalmers remarks, "he maintains his position from ancient plays, and draws his proofs from obsolete poetry." Dodsley quotes, for instance, from a comedy first acted in 1629, entitled "The Heir," and written by a Mr. May, who, in the

early part of the seventeenth century, possessed some reputation as a dramatic writer, although almost entirely forgotten in the present day. The comedy in question opens thus:

POLYMETES. Hast thou divulged the "news,"

That my son died at Athens?

Roscid makes answer in the following terms:

Yes, my lord,

With every circumstance, the time, the place,
And manner of his death; that 'tis believed

And told for "news," with as much confidence

As if 'twere writ in Gallo-Belgicus.

Some publication or other entitled Gallo-Belgicus is mentioned by Beaumont and Fletcher in "The Fair Maid of the Inn," but nothing can be inferred from what they say as to its character. The eccentric Dr. Donne, too, mentions the Gallo-Belgicus in a work of his published in 1611. It is also mentioned in a work entitled "Carew's Survey of Cornwall," which was originally published in 1602. But in neither of these cases is any definite idea of the nature of the publication given. Feeling a curiosity to know the real facts, Chalmers tells us that he went to the British Museum, where he says, he saw and handled Gallo-Belgicus, and found that instead of being a newspaper it was a work consisting of many volumes, the first of which was published in Latin, in 1588, and might have been entitled "The State of the Empire; or, the Annual Register," but most certainly it was not a newspaper. We are there