Book Description

Excerpt from The Athenian Oracle: A Selection The race of news-writers was not extinct even in the days of Queen Anne. It is our custom at Sir Roger's, remarks Addison in one of the Spectators,1 upon the coming in of the post to sit about a pot of cohee to hear the old knight read Dyer's letter; which he does with his spectacles upon his nose, and in an audible voice, smiling very often at those little strokes of satire which are so frequent in the writings of that author. And, again, six years later, the great essayist records a conversation with the Tory fox-hunter as follows z fancy, ' said I, 'that post brings news from Scotland. I shall long to see the next Gazette.' 'sir, ' says he, 'i make it a rule never to believe any of your printed news. We never see, sir, how things go, except now and then in Dyer's letter, and I read that more for the style than the news. The man has a clever pen it must be News letters, as is the case with most old institutions, died hard. Steele, when he commenced the T atler, so far countenanced the principle upon which they were conducted as to provide for a special issue of that journal, with a blank leaf, to write Business on. But their end came at last; they could not exist for ever side by side with the printed news-sheet. Their mode of communicating news was too inadequate; and, what was worse, the news they sent to their clients was often little more than mere hearsay, being indeed at times, like some of the intelligence printed in the newspapers of today, pure invention. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.