Ben Jonson, however, was but anticipating the nouvellistes who during the wars of Louis XIV organized crude forerunners ofnews-collecting agencies in the bureaux et pelotons formed that each news-gatherer might report specially in regard to a particu lar city and then share his news with his associates.3 It seems, however, to have been Edward Cave who, about 1725, began the exchange of news between the country newspapers and
the London press, selling the country news for a guinea a week . He held the office of inspector of the franks and thus had facili ties for securing intelligence from provincial towns and country newspapers. This was in embryo the news-collecting organiza tion of to -day as operated for gain by private agencies . idea to the exchange of literary intelligence that Cave had used in the exchange of political news. He seems to have originated the idea of getting free notices of themagazines into the London and provincial newspapers through publishing in them " a regular train of quotation at the beginning of each month .” As he finds, so he writes to Blackwood , that “ some of the London gentlemen of the press are most willing to quote clever papers from your
work , ” but are unwilling to spoil their magazines to get the ex tracts, he begs Blackwood to obviate " this weighty difficulty "
by sending him a “ parcel of waste sheets every month .” This scheme, Watts argues, would enable him " to organize a plan by which you can be very extensively quoted .” He writes insistently to Blackwood of the advantage it would be to his magazine to have these extracts appearing in the twenty papers he has in training and the ten others he is sure would voluntarily copy from these, and he urges him to have in the magazine " something perfect in itself of a reasonable length for quotation .” But the publisher seems not to have yielded to Watts' repeated solicitations, as he also rejected a somewhat
similar plan urged on him fifteen years later by A . Mallalieu.“ But Watts was indefatigable as well as versatile and he was 3 F . Funck-Brentano, Les Nouvellistes, pp. 83– 102. ' The correspondence on this subject is interesting as showing the sharp contrast in the business methods of newspapers and magazines about 1820
and those of to -day. It is given in Mrs. Oliphant, Annals of a Publishing House: William Blackwood and His Sons, I, 495 - 510 ; II, 201 - 202.
