he takes it ill, that the poore scribblers should tell a story for their living; and after a whole week spent at Oxford, in inke and paper, to as little purpose as Maurice spent his shot and powder at Plimouth, he gets up, about Saturday, into a gingle or two, for he cannot reach to a full jest; and I am informed that the three-quarter conceits in the last leafe of his Diurnall cost him fourteen pence in aqua vitæ." Sir John never condescends formally to reply to Needham, for which he gives this singular reason:- "As for this Libeller, we are still resolved to take no notice, till we find him able to spell his own name, which to this hour Britannicus never did." In the next number of Needham, who had always written it Brittanicus, the correction was silently adopted. There was no crying down the etymology of an Oxford Malignant. I give a short narrative of the political temper of the times, in their unparalleled Gazettes. At the first breaking out of the Parliament's separation from the Royal Party, when the public mind, full of consternation in that new anarchy, shook with the infirmity of childish terrours, the most extravagant reports were as eagerly caught up as the most probable, and served much better the purposes of their inventors. They had daily discoveries of new conspiracies, which appeared in a pretended correspondence written from Spain, France, Italy, or Denmark: they had their amusing Literature, mixed with their grave politics; and a Dialogue between "a Dutch Mariner and an English Ostler," could alarm the nation as much as the last letter from their "private Correspondent." That the wildest rumours were acceptable appears from Fuller, who lived at the time. Armies were talked of, concealed under ground by the King, to cut the throats of all the Protestants in a night. He assures us, that one of the most prevailing dangers among the Londoners was, "a design laid for a mine of Powder under the Thames, to cause the River to drown the City." This desperate expedient, it seems, was discovered just in time to. escape from the execution; and the people were devout enough to have a public thanksgiving, and watched with a little more care, that the Thames might not be blown up. However, the plot was really not so much at the bottom of the Thames as at the bottom of their purses.— Whenever they wanted 100,000l. they raised a plot, they terrified the people, they appointed a thanksgiving-day, and while their Ministers addressed to God himself all the news of the week, and even reproached him, for the rumours against their cause, all ended, as is usual at such times, with the gulled multitude contributing more heavily to the adventurers who ruled them, than the legal authorities had exacted in their greatest wants. "The Diurnals" had propagated thirty nine of these "Treasons, or new Taxes," according to one of the Members of the House of Commons, who had watched their patriotic designs. These diurnals sometimes used such language as the following, from "The Weekly Accompt," January, 1643. "This day afforded no newes at all, but onely what was heavenly and spiritual," and he gives an account of the public Fast, and of the grave Divine Master Henderson's Sermon, with his texts in the morning; and in the afternoon, another of Master Strickland, with his texts-and of their spiritual effect over the whole Parliament ! Such news as the following was sometimes very agreeable : "From Oxford it is informed, that on Sunday last was fortnight in the evening, Prince Rupert, accompanied with some Lords and other Cavaliers, danced through the streets openly, with music before them, to one of the Colleges; where, after they had stayed about half an houre, they returned back again, dancing with the same music; and immediately there followed a pack of Women, or Curtizans, as it may be supposed, for they were hooded, and could not be knowne; and this the party who related affirmed he saw with his own eyes.” On this the Diurnal-maker pours out severe anathemas-and one with a Note, that "Dancing and Drabbing are inseparable companions, and follow one another close at the heels." He as sures his Readers, that the Malignants, or Royalists, only fight like sensual beasts, to maintain their dancing and drabbing!-Such was the revolutionary tone here, and such the arts of faction every where. The matter was rather peculiar to our Country, but the principle was the same as practised in France. Men of opposite characters, when acting for the same concealed end, must necessarily form parallels. |