publication, the five preceding numbers being marked by “signatures” only—A to E. Each number consists of a single sheet (eight pages) in small quarto, and is divided into two parts—the first simply entitled Gazette, the second Nouvelles ordinaires de divers endroits. For this division the author assigns two reasons—(1) that two persons may thus read his journal at the same time, and (2) that it facilitates a division of the subject-matter, the Nouvelles containing usually intelligence from the northern and western countries, the Gazette from the southern and eastern. He commonly begins with foreign and ends with home news, a method which was long and generally followed, and which still obtains. Once a month he published a supplement, under the title of Relation des nouvelles du monde, reçues dans tout le mois. In October 1631 Renaudot obtained letters patent to himself and his heirs, conferring the exclusive privilege of printing and selling, where and how they might please, “the gazettes, news and narratives of all that has passed or may pass within and without the kingdom.” His assailants were numerous, but he steadily pursued his course, and at his death in October 1653 left the Gazette to his sons in flourishing circumstances. In 1752 the title Gazette de France was first used. Under this designation it continued to appear until the 24th August 1848. During the five days which followed that date it was suspended; on the 30th it was resumed as Le Peuple français, journal de l’appel à la nation, and again modified on the 14th September to L’Étoile de la France, journal des droits de tous. On the 25th October it became Gazette de France, journal de l’appel à la nation; and under this title it continued.
Jean Loret’s rhymed Gazette (1650 to March 1665) will always have interest in the eyes of students who care less for the “dignity” of history than for the fidelity of its local colouring and the animation of its backgrounds. It were vain to look there for any deep appreciation of the events of those stormy times; but it abounds in vivid portraits of the men and manners of the day. It paints rudely, yet to the life, the Paris of the Fronde, with all its effervescence and depression, its versatility and fickleness, its cowardice and its courage.
Of the Mercure galant, established by Donneau de Vizé in
1672, with Thomas Corneille for its sub-editor, it may be said
that it sought to combine the qualities of the Gazettes,
both grave and gay. Like the Gazette de France, it
contained the permitted state news and court circulars
of the day. Like Loret’s Gazette, it amused its readers
Mercure
de France.
with satirical verses, and with sketches of men and manners,
which, if not always true, were at least well invented. Reviews
and sermons, law pleas and street airs, the last reception at the
Academy and the last new fashion of the milliners, all found
their place. De Vizé carried on his enterprise for more than
thirty years, and at his death (1710) it was continued by Rivière
du Fresny. The next editor, Lefèvre de Fontenay, altered
the title to Nouveau Mercure, which in 1728 was altered to
Mercure de France, a designation retained, with slight modification,
until 1853. The Mercure passed through many hands
before it came into those of Panckoucke, at the eve of the Revolution.
Amongst its more conspicuous writers, immediately before
this change, had been Raynal and Marmontel. The latter,
indeed, had for many years been its principal editor, and in his
Mémoires has left us a very interesting record of the views and
aims which governed him in the performance of an arduous
task. He there narrates the curious fact that it was Madame
de Pompadour who contrived the plan of giving pensions to
eminent men of letters out of the profits of the Mercure. To
one of Marmontel’s predecessors the “privilege,” or patent,
had been worth more than £1000 sterling annually. This
revenue was now to be shared amongst several, and to become
a means of extending royal “patronage” of literature at a
cheap rate. It is to this pension scheme, too, that we owe the
Contes Moraux. Marmontel, who had long before lost his
“patent” by an act of high-minded generosity, continued to
share in the composition of the literary articles with Chamfort
and La Harpe, whilst Mallet du Pan, a far abler writer than
either, became the most prominent of the political writers in
the Mercure. In 1789 he contributed a series of remarkable
articles on the well-known book of de Lolme; and in the same
year he penned some comments on the “Declaration of the
Rights of Man,” very distasteful to violent men of all parties,
but which forcibly illustrate the pregnant truth they begin
with: “The gospel has given the simplest, the shortest and
the most comprehensive ‘Declaration of the Rights of Man,’
in saying, ‘Do unto others as you would that they should do
unto you.’ All politics hinge upon this.”
In 1790 the sale of the Mercure rose very rapidly. It attained for a time a circulation of 13,000 copies. Mirabeau styled it in debate “the most able of the newspapers.” Great pains were taken in the collection of statistics and state papers, the absence of which from the French newspaper press had helped to depress its credit as compared with the political journalism of England and to some extent of Germany. But, as the Revolution marched on towards a destructive democracy, Mallet du Pan evinced more and more unmistakably his rooted attachment to a constitutional monarchy. And, like so many of his compatriots, he soon found the tide too strong for him. The political part of the Mercure (in 1791 its title was altered to Mercure français) changed hands, and after the 10th August 1792 its publication was suspended.
All this time the Moniteur (Gazette nationale, ou le moniteur universel), founded in 1789, was under the same general management. The first idea, indeed, of this famous official Journal appears to have been Panckoucke’s, but it did not firmly establish itself until he had purchased the Journal de l’assemblée nationale, and so secured the Moniteur universel. best report of the debates. The Moniteur, however, kept step with the majority of the assembly, the Mercure with the minority. So marked a contrast between two journals, with one proprietor, gave too favourable a leverage to the republican wits not to be turned to good account. Camille Desmoulins depicted him as Janus—one face radiant at the blessings of coming liberty, the other plunged in grief for the epoch that was rapidly disappearing.
When resumed, after a very brief interval, the Mercure français became again Mercure de France—its political importance diminished, whilst its literary worth was enhanced. During the later days of the Revolution, and under the imperial rule, its roll of contributors included the names of Geoffroy, Ginguené, Morellet, Lacretelle, Fontanes and Chateaubriand. The statesman last named brought upon the Mercure another temporary suppression in June 1807 (at which date he was its sole proprietor), by words in true unison with the noblest deed of his chequered career—his retirement, namely, from the imperial service on the day that the news of the execution of the duke of Enghien reached him, being the day after he had been appointed by Napoleon a minister plenipotentiary.
Thus it chanced that alike under the brilliant despotism of Napoleon and under the crapulous malversation of Louis XV. the management of the Mercure was revolutionized for protests which conferred honour upon the journal no less than upon the individual writers who made them. Resumed by other hands, the Mercure continued to appear until January 1820, when it was again suspended. In the following year it reappeared as Le Mercure de France, au dix-neuvième siècle, and in February 1853 it finally ceased.
The only other newspaper of a date anterior to the Revolution which needs to be noticed here is the first French daily, the Journal de Paris, which was started on New Year’s Day of 1777. It had but a feeble infancy, yet lived till 1819. Its tameness, however, did not save it from sharing in the “suspensions” of its predecessors. After, the Journal de Paris. Revolution such men as Garat, Condorcet and Regnaud de St Jean d’Angély appear amongst its contributors, but those of earlier date were obscure. Its period of highest prosperity may be dated about 1792, when its circulation is said to have exceeded 20,000.
The police adventures of the writers of the MS. news-letters, or Nouvelles à la main, were still more numerous, and, if we
