Curiosities of Civilization

It is our purpose to draw out, as a thread might be drawn from some woven fabric, a continuous line of advertisements from the newspaper press of this country, since its establishment to the present time; and, by so doing, to show how distinctly, from its dye, the pattern of the age through which it ran is represented. If we follow up to its source any public institution, fashion, or amusement, which has flourished during a long period of time, we can gain some idea of our national progress and development; but it strikes us that in no manner can we so well obtain at a rapid glance a view of the salient points of generations that have passed, as by consulting those small voices that have cried from age to age from the pages of the press, declaring the wants, the losses, the amusements, and the money-making eagerness of the people.

As we read in the old musty files of papers those naïve announcements, the very hum of bygone generations seems to rise to the ear. The chapman exhibits his quaint wares; the mountebank capers again upon his stage; we have the living portrait of the highwayman flying from justice; we see the old china auctions thronged with ladies of quality with their attendant negro boys, or those "by inch of candlelight" forming many a Schalken-like picture of light and shade; or, later still, we have Hogarthian sketches of the young bloods who swelled of old along the Pall-Mall. We trace the moving panorama of men and manners up to our own less demonstrative but more earnest times; and all these cabinet pictures are the very daguerreotypes cast by the age which they exhibit, not done for effect, but faithful reflections of those insignificant items of life and things, too small, it would seem, for the generalizing eye of the historian, however necessary to clothe and fill in the dry bones of his history.

The English Mercurie of 1588, which professes to have been published during those momentous days when the Spanish Armada was hovering and waiting to pounce upon our southern shores, contains, among its items of news, three or four book advertisements, and these would undoubtedly have been the first put forth in England were that newspaper genuine. Mr. Watts, of the British Museum, has, however, proved that the several numbers of this journal to be found in our national library are gross forgeries, and, indeed, the most inexperienced eye in such matters can easily see that neither their type, paper, spelling, nor composition are much more than one, instead of upwards of two centuries and a half old. Newspapers, in the strict sense of the word--that is, publications of news appearing at stated intervals, and regularly paged on--did not make their appearance until the latter end of the reign of James I. The Weekely Newes, published in London in 1622, was the first publication which answered to this description; it contained, however, only a few scraps of foreign intelligence, and was quite destitute of advertisements. The terrible contest of the succeeding reign was the hotbed which forced the press of this country into sudden life and extraordinary vigour. Those who have wandered in the vaults of the British Museum and contemplated the vast collection of political pamphlets and the countless Mercuries which sprang full armed, on either side of the quarrel, from the strong and earnest brains which wrought in that great political trouble, will not hesitate to discover, amidst the hubbub of the Rebellion, the first throes of the press of England as a political power. At such a time, when Marchmort Needham fell foul with his types of Sir John Birkenhead and the court party which he supported, with as heavy a hand and as dauntless a will as Cromwell hurled his Ironsides at the Cavaliers at Naseby, it is not likely that we should find the press the vehicle to make known the goods of tradesmen, or to offer a reward for stolen horses. The shopkeepers themselves, as well as the nobility, were too hard at it, to avail themselves of this new mode of extending their trade: they had to keep guard over the malignants, to cover the five members with the shield of their arms, to overawe Whitehall, to march to the relief of Gloucester,--objects quite sufficient to account for the fact that the train-bands were not advertisers. After the king's death, however, when the Commonwealth had time to breathe, the people seem to have discovered the use of the press as a means of making known their wants and of giving publicity to their wares. The very first advertisement we have met with, after an active search among the earliest newspapers, relates to a book which is entitled--

Irenodia Gratulatoria, an Heroick Poem; being a congratulatory panegyrick for my Lord General's late return, summing up his successes in an exquisite manner.

To be sold by John Holden, in the New Exchange, London. Printed by Tho. Newcourt, 1652.

This appeared in the January number of the Parliamentary paper Mercurius Politicus. It is evidently a piece of flattery to Cromwell upon his victories in Ireland, and might have been inserted at the instigation of the great Commonwealth leader himself. Booksellers appear to have been the first to take advantage of this new medium of publicity, and for the obvious reason that their goods were calculated for the readers of the public journals, who at that time must have consisted almost exclusively of the higher orders. From this date to the Restoration the quaintest titles of works on the political and religious views, such as were then in the ascendant, are to be found in the Mercurius Politicus: thus, we have "Gospel Marrow;" "A few Sighs from Hell, or the Groans of a Damned Soul;" "Michael opposing the Dragon, or a Fiery Dart struck through the Kingdom of the Serpent." And in the number for September, 1659, we find an advertisement which seems to bring us face to face with one of the brightest names in the roll of English poets:--