NEWSPAPERS. Some persons are of opinion that the origin of newspapers may be traced to the ' Acta Diurna ' of the lloniane. [Acre Diense.] However this may be, it was not till the ]6th century that anything at all approaching to the nature of the Acta Diuma ' existed in modern times. The war which the republic of Venice waged against the Turks in Dalmatia gave rise, in 1563. to the custom in Venice of communicating military and commercial news by written sheets, which were read in a particular place to those desirous to hear them, and who paid for this privilege in a coin no longer in use, called ga:zetea, a name which, by degrees, was transferred to the newspaper itself in Italy and France, and passed over into England. The Venetian government eventually gave these announcements in a regular manner once a month ; but they were too jealous to allow them to be printed. Only a few written copies were transmitted to various places, and read to those who paid to hear. Many volumes of these manuscript newspapers exist in the Magliabecchian library at Florence.
For some time it was supposed that English newspapers were first established in the reign of Elizabeth, founded on the existence of three papers, numbered 50, 51, and 54, preserved in Dr. Birch's' Historical Collections' in the British 31useurn, and imagined to belong to a series. But they were suspected not to be genuine. The suspicion was well founded. In 1839 31r.. Thomas Watts, one of time librarians of the British Museum, published a ' Letter to Antonio Panizzi, Esq.; in which he proved incontrovertibly that they were forgeries, and that the forgery was perpetrated about 1766. The three numbers, which are marked as 50, 51, and 54, purporting them to be part of a series, contain seven articles, three of which are in print and four in manu script. The type is of the date of 1766, but an old style of spelling is affected, while in the manuscript the spelling is modern, with a number of corrections in a different hand-writing; and the namnacript is written on a paper with the water-mark of the royal arms and initials of "G.11."
In 1850 Mr. Watts made public the result of his further investigations, which showed that the manuscript was in the hand-writing of Philip Yorke, the second earl of Ilardwicke, and a few of the corrections in that of Dr. Birch. Mr. Watts also proved that the claims of France for the earliest newspaper, the ' Gazette of ' in 1631, are alto unfounded, and that the earliest specimen of this branch of literature belongs " to Daly or to Germany." The claim of Germany is strongest: at Augsburg and Vienna printed sheets containing news were published as early as 1524.
In the reign of James I., packets of news were published in time shape of email quarto pamphlets occasionally. The earliest we have met with, preserved in time second volume of the aeries of newspapers purchased with 1)r. Burney's library (also in the British Museum), is entitled ' News out of Hollende published in 1619 for N. Newbery, followed by other papers of news from different countries in 1620, 1621, and 1622. There can be uo doubt of the genuineness of these. In 1622, when the Thirty Years' War and the exploits of Gubtavus Adolphus excited curiosity, these occasional pamphlets were converted into a regular weekly publication, entitled' The News of the Present Week,' edited by Nathaniel Butler. This seems to have been the first weekly newspaper in England.* About this period newspapers began also to be established on the Continent. Their originator at Paris is said to have been one Renaudot, a physician, who had feund that it was conducive to success in his pit fession to be able to tell his patients the news. Seasons were not always sickly, but his taste for collecting news was always the same, and he began to think that there might be some advantage in printing his intelligence periodically. His scheme succeeded, and he obtained a privilege for publishing news in 1632. It would appear that not long after this time there were more newspapers than one in England.