s "Mercurius Aulicus"--how he corrects his own lies--Specimens
of the Newspapers on the side of the Commonwealth.

Among these battles of logomachy, in which so much ink has been spilt,
and so many pens have lost their edge--at a very solemn period in our
history, when all around was distress and sorrow, stood forwards the
facetious ancestors of that numerous progeny who still flourish among
us, and who, without a suspicion of their descent, still bear the
features of their progenitors, and inherit so many of the family
humours. These were the MERCURIES and DIURNALS--the newspapers of our
Civil Wars.

The distinguished heroes of these Paper-Wars, Sir John Birkenhead,
Marchmont Needham, and Sir Roger L'Estrange, I have elsewhere
portrayed.[329] We have had of late correct lists of these works; but
no one seems as yet to have given any clear notion of their spirit and
their manner.

The London Journals in the service of the Parliament were usually the
_Diurnals_. These politicians practised an artifice which cannot be
placed among "the lost inventions." As these were hawked about the
metropolis to spur curiosity, often languid from over-exercise, or to
wheedle an idle spectator into a reader, every paper bore on its front
the inviting heads of its intelligence. Men placed in the same
circumstances will act in the same manner, without any notion of
imitation; and the passions of mankind are now addressed by the same
means which our ancestors employed, by those who do not suspect they
are copying them.

These _Diurnals_ have been blasted by the lightnings of Butler and
Cleveland. Hudibras is made happy at the idea that he may be

Register'd by fame eternal,
In deathless pages of DIURNAL.

But Cleveland has left us two remarkable effusions of his satiric and
vindictive powers, in his curious character of "A Diurnal Maker," and
"A London Diurnal." He writes in the peculiar vein of the wit of those
times, with an originality of images, whose combinations excite
surprise, and whose abundance fatigues our weaker delicacy.

"A Diurnal-Maker is the Sub-Almoner of History; Queen Mab's Register;
one whom, by the same figure that a North-country pedler is a
merchantman, you may style an author. The silly countryman who, seeing
an ape in a scarlet coat, blessed his young worship, and gave his
landlord joy of the hopes of his house, did not slander his compliment
with worse application than he that names this shred an