them uninteresting,—"they want that sprightly Humour and diffuse Kind of Narration, which embellish the Compositions of our modern Diurnal Historians. The Roman Gazetters are defective in several material Ornaments of Style. They never end an Article with the mystical Hint, this occasions great Speculation. They seem to have been ignorant of such engaging Introductions, as we hear it strongly reported; and of that ingenious, but threadbare, Excuse for a downright Lie, it wants confirmation.—It is also very observable, that the Praetor's Daughter is married without our being told, that she was a Lady of great Beauty, Merit and Fortune."
Later readers have pardoned their lack of inherent interest, but have found them spurious.[1] The acceptance of their genuineness, however, long persisted and recent writers have found it necessary to say with decision, as does Jebb, "we have no genuine fragments of the Roman gazettes."[2] From this verdict there can be no appeal.
A claimant for the honor of being "the earliest newspaper known" was made by George Chalmers[3] on behalf of The English Mercurie, dated 1588. He directed attention to its supposed priority of publication over all other newspapers in existence and says that he was filled with patriotic joy that the first newspaper published was, as he supposed, British in every respect.
- ↑ Le Clerc shows that the first seven articles were printed in Pighius who gives his source as a manuscript found among the papers of Louis Vives. Lipsius, in his notes on Tacitus, had already cited some lines in 1581, and Mark Welser, in 1596, had spoken of them as vouched for, not by himself, but by Ortelius or Vives. Welser thought them forged; Lipsius thought them genuine.—Dodwell, in the appendix to his Praelectiones Camdenianae, added to the seven days already given three days of the Roman year 691 and one of the year 698, from a copy of Adrian Beverland's, of a copy of Isaac Vossius', made from a copy belonging to Paul Petau who was not a critical collector. Dodwell followed Pighius in calling them diarium, Urbis diurna, commented on them at great length in his appendix, and in his treatise De Veteribus Cyclis persisted in regarding them as authentic.Le Clerc gives the text of the journals, after Pighius and Dodwell, and a French translation, following it with an analysis proving them forgeries, from internal and other evidence. The material, he shows, was taken from Livy and he believes the forgery dates from the sixteenth century.—J. V. Le Clerc, Des Journaux chez les Romains, Part II, "Discussion sur de faux journaux romains," pp. 261-341.
- ↑ R. C. Jebb, "Ancient Organs of Public Opinion," Essays and Addresses, p. 160.
- ↑ Life of Thomas Ruddiman, pp. 106–108.
