ABSTRACT
The art of pamphleteering throve mightily in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Essentially it had little in common with the classical dignity and magnificence that characterized nobler forms of writing: it was perhaps the reverse side of the tapestry. In the eighteenth century the pamphlet supplemented the newspaper; arguments, that is, that were too long for the single folio sheets or half-sheets that then constituted newspapers, dilated in independent publications of moderate size. The newspaper itself took on life after 1695 when the Licensing Act lapsed.1 Not that the lapsing of this act made journalism a safe profession: it long remained an anonymous and furtive employment. Immediately in 1695 the Tories founded an “organ,” The Post-Boy (1695-1735), edited at first by Abel Roper; and the Whigs countered with their Flying-Post (1695-1731), long presided over by George Ridpath. The Post-Man (1695-1730) was also Whig in bias. Few newspapers of the day lived as long as these; journals were born to argue over a crisis, and they ceased when new topics came into play. The first successful daily, The Daily Courant (1702-35), published by Samuel Buckley, was during its early and prosperous existence a commercial sheet of Whig tendencies that grew violent later.
