October, 1902.] 



KNOWLEDGE 



219 



by ])rofessional gossips, and circulated in the provinces, 

 as these letters were the expansion and regularisation 

 of family and coterie letters that had been circulated 

 beyond their first destination. It was also an incorporation 

 of the jjhicards from which ]ieople all over Europe 

 derived their knowledge of trade, coniinen!e, aninsenients. 

 anil the odds and ends of life. These soon acquired (at 

 least in France) a vehicle of their own — a printed sheet 

 that was circulated gratis or among subscribers, as merely 

 advertising journals, like the North BrUish Adriill^cr 

 were circulated forty years ago. In course of time the 

 two were amalgamated, and together they formed the ad- 

 vertising and literary halves of the modern joirnal. 



The solitary journal produced by antiquity had a similar 

 genesis, yet not quite the same. The circular letter was 

 rather its midwife than its parent, and the ]ioster from 

 which it really descended was not the poinilar but the oilicial 

 placard. The part that placards or inscriptions played in 

 the old Roman world is well known. They were the chief 

 organ of publicity. There the emjierors inscribed tlieir 

 rescripts, the Senate its laws, and the magistrates their 

 decrees ; on them the citizens witnessed their piety towards 

 the gods, their devotion to their sovereigns, and their 

 gratitude to their benefactors ; religious corporations thus 

 recordeil their fulfilment of their vows, and ]irivate in- 

 dividuals registered their contracts. They were graven 

 on brass, marble, or stone, according to their dignity 

 or importance. Over 120,000 of them have been dis- 

 covered, and by their means historians have revived 

 the life and reconstructed the constitution, the laws, 

 and the religious of the empire. On walls whitened 

 with chalk more perishable memorials of the daily life 

 of the people were traced. It should seem that, in 

 order to create the Roman journal, some enterprising 

 Renaudot (as happened in France) had but to copy and 

 collect the posters of the day. No such evolution took 

 place. Not till n.c. 59, when Julius Caesar, who had just 

 been elected consul, directed that the minutes of the 

 meetings of the Senate and of the assemblies of the people 

 should l)e daily placarded, do we find any evidence of the 

 existence of a journal. The Roman Gazette was this 

 poster reduced to writing. Educated slaves or freed men 

 many of them Greeks — the ancestors of our reporters — 

 went everywhere in quest of the news eagerly sought for 

 by officials and citizens absent in the provinces. These, it 

 is ])resumed, were the copyists of the official jdacards 

 ])osted daily in the Forum by order of the first and greatest 

 of the Caisars. By means of the Imperial post the rolls 

 were spread over the vast surface of the Roman world. 

 They were greedily read, and were copiously used by 

 naturalists and historians like Pliny and Tacitus. From 

 fragments of it scattered through Latin writers, Hiibner 

 and Boissier have put together that oldest of newspapers, 

 as a naturalist builds up an extinct species. Now mark 

 its evolution. At first solely a report of proceedings in 

 the aristocratic and popular branches of the Roman 

 legislature, as we may call them, it next included the 

 letters and speeches of the emperors and the decrees of 

 the magistrates. A semi-oflBcial portion, resembling our 

 Ciiurt Circular, and mentioning such facts as Caesar's 

 refusal of a crown and the Imperial receptions on the 

 Palatine, was speedily ad-ded. It wns soon swelled by 

 accounts of such portents and incidents as a shower of 

 bricks in the Forum, the fidelity of a dog to its master, 

 the suicide of a charioteer, public benefactions, births, 

 deaths, marriages, and divorces — the last at the rate of 

 one per diem. Meanwhile, the original raison d'rtre. of 

 the journal had disappeared. The assemblies of the 

 people ceasing to be held, of them there could be no 

 report. Then Augustus forbade the minutes of the Senate 



to l>e published. Thvis the accessory portion of the 

 journal Ix'came its sole constituent, and the original design 

 of the Dictator was both defeated and transformed. Out 

 of a bald record of jiroceedings had grown a fair similitude 

 of the modern newspaper. The name changed with the 

 thing. At first. Tin' Artu of the Senate and the People, 

 it became The Dalli/ Adx of the Roman People, and was 

 currently referred to as the DaHy—diurna or journal. 

 It lasted as long as the empire flouiished, but it was an 

 example of ari-ested development, and it died without 

 leaving offspring. 



4. — Literary criticism is still a stronghold of the special- 

 creation theory. So instructed a critic as F. Brunetiere 

 alleges that, at a determinable period, and, as it were, at a 

 given signal, the sense of art entered into French literary 

 productions and transmuted them. People wrote prose 

 without art, like Comynes and Margaret ; then, all of a 

 sudden, they wrote it with art. like Rabelais. They com- 

 ])Osed verse naively, like Marot and Saint-Gelais ; all of a 

 sudden, like Ronsard, they C07n])0sed it consciously and 

 like artists. An accomplished dillettante. Th. de Wyzewa, 

 presumably after Mr. Gosse, makes Lodge out to be the 

 " inventor " of five distinct literary species. Similarly, 

 the romance of real life is commonly believed to have 

 sprung suddenly into existence with Defoe. There are 

 sports in literature as among plants and animals, but the 

 modern novel is a species with a long pedigree, which has 

 been traced by a profound student of the English Renais- 

 sance — J. J. Jusserand. Its remote sources are the heroic 

 romance and the tale, and it issued from the fusion of the 

 two. In Malory's famous work there is all that we now 

 look for in the novel except living characters and psycho- 

 logical analysis. Yet of the latter there is a glimmering 

 in a dissection of the passion to which the novel owes its 

 existence — the first (says Jusserand) to be found in the 

 prose romance. With Lyly we leave behind us the 

 romance of chivalry and a])proach the romance of contem- 

 porary manners. In "Euphues" the characters have some 

 resemblance to real beings. The tone of conversation is 

 not unsuccessfully imitated. Lyly's opinions on men and 

 life and his analyses of the feelings are ill-fused with the 

 narrative and exhibit the awkwardness of a first attempt, 

 but they are there. The hero of the story is the direct 

 ancestor of Sir Charles Grandison and his numerous 

 lineage ; and he anticipates, on nobility, love, and the 

 education of children, the ideas that Richardson lends to 

 his characters. Lastly, "Euphues " is the earliest example 

 of that literature of the drawing-room and the parlour to 

 which the contemporary novel is the chief contributor. 

 Lodge and Greene continue the development. In Sydney's 

 "Arcadia" dramatic power for the first time quits the 

 stage and enters the romance. Gynecia is perhaps the 

 first genuine creation in English prose literature. There 

 is constant penetrating analysis of passion, or, at least, 

 of the primary jiassion. From this story Richardson 

 borrows the name of Pamela and a romantic situation in 

 which she figures. 



If Richardson is the lineal descendant of Lyly 

 and Sydney, Thomas Nash is the direct ancestor of 

 Fielding. He, first in England, narrated the history of 

 the picaresque hero, who was born in medieval Germany 

 as Master Reynard, grew up in Spain as Lazarillo and 

 Guzman, came to perfection in France as Gil Bias, and 

 passed over to England as Tom Jones and Roderick 

 Random. With his imaginary characters Nash (like 

 Thackeray) mingles historical figures, and he describes 

 real places and scenes. He paints two or three portraits 

 worthy of Callot or Teniers. Keen observation of humours 

 and oddities makes him an ancestor of Dickens ; like 

 Dickens, too, he has the capacity of being moved as he 



