and censorious, and gives them not only an itch, but a kind of
colorable right and license.... A gazette is none of the worst ways
of address to the genius and humor of the common people, whose
affections are much more capable of being turned and wrought upon
by convenient hints and touches in the shape and air of a pamphlet
than by the strongest reason and best notions imaginable under any
other and more sober form whatsoever.... So that upon the main I
perceive the thing requisite (for aught I can see yet). Once a week
may do the business, for I intend to utter my news by weight, not
by measure. Yet if I shall find, when my hand is in, and after the
planting and securing of my correspondents, that the matter will
fairly furnish more, without either uncertainty, repetition, or
impertinence, I shall keep myself free to double at pleasure. One
book a week may be expected, however, to be published every
Thursday, and finished upon the Tuesday night, leaving Wednesday
entire for the printing of it.'

The Newspaper was evidently developing itself--correspondents were a new
feature--but still it was very tardy and very far from being free. Fancy
a newspaper in the present day with no news more recent than that of the
day before yesterday! In 1663 the title of _Public Intelligencer_ was
exchanged for that of _The Oxford Gazette_, so called because the court
had gone to Oxford on account of the plague. After the court's return to
the metropolis, _London_ was substituted, in 1666, for _Oxford_, and
from that date to the present this, the first official or semi-official
organ, has gone by the name of _The London Gazette_. The king caused an
edition of it to be published in French, for the convenience, probably,
of his accommodating banker, Louis the Fourteenth, and this edition
continued to appear for about twenty years.