Elizabeth Christine Cook

“ These limitations in the colonial point of view, however, had several striking effects on the early journalism between 1704 and 1750, or thereabouts. The reader who examines the small, ill-printed, half illegible news sheets is surprised to find them more varied in many ways, and more distinctly literary than modern journalism aims to be. The simple fact of the matter is that the dearth of news at length forced the editorial mind to become inventive and even, in some instances, creative. ”

“ It was literally a “storehouse,” being applied to literature as a “collection”; almost any assemblage of writings, especially if published serially, could be referred to as a “magazine.” Even the regular London magazines of the period were made up largely of excerpts from weekly reviews and periodicals, along with a summary of the news of the month. A department called “Poetical Essays” was usually more original, but on the whole both The Gentleman’s Magazine and The London Magazine could be described fairly enough as collections of material from various sources. ”

“ The Gazette soon became Franklin’s characteristic organ, which he freely used for satire, for the play of his wit, even for sheer excess of mischief or of fun.
From the first he had a way of adapting his models to his own uses. The series of essays called The Busy-Body, which he wrote for Bradford’s American Mercury in 1729, followed the general Addisonian form, modified already to suit homelier conditions. The thrifty Patience, in her busy little shop, complaining of the useless visitors who waste her valuable time, is related to the ladies who address Mr. Spectator. ”

“ The essays, with very few exceptions, were not only written in the colonies but were often well adapted to the problems of the day, the war on the border, the Indians, the public policies of the government. The pride in “this young country” is everywhere evident, combined with perfect loyalty to Great Britain. In this year 1758 the successor of The American Magazine, called The New American Magazine, continued the same general policy, without securing the same originality. William Smith had been called to England, and the new venture lacked his power. ”

“ The famous Letters of a Farmer in Pennysylvania by John Dickinson belong to the colonial press in a very special way, since not only did they first appear in The Pennysylvania Chronicle, The Pennysylvania Journal, and The Pennsylvania Gazette almost simultaneously in the winter of 1767–1768, but they were reprinted in nearly every newspaper on the continent, from Nova Scotia to Georgia. ”

“ Franklin’s influence in journalism was not confined to Pennsylvania. He often assisted young journeymen in the establishment of newspapers in distant towns. Thomas Whitemarsh, for instance, went to Charleston, South Carolina, in 1731, as Franklin’s partner in a new enterprise, which soon included a new paper, The South Carolina Gazette. Naturally, Whitemarsh filled his front page with essays, sometimes reprinted from The Spectator, but often original, with a facetious quality suggesting Franklin. ”

“ Newspapers are easily enough distinguished in general by the attempt to give items of current news. Outside the regular news sheets, there is a strange assortment of colonial productions usually classed as magazines, but in many cases hardly recognizable as such. For instance, William Livingston’s Independent Reflector, or Weekly Essays and also Andrew Oliver’s Censor, are nothing more than single essays published serially. ”

“ The Pennsylvania Magazine; The Royal American Magazine. With the next magazines we are again on the eve of the revolution. “The town has met,” and we read instructions, articles, orations, odes, and satires on the situation, sometimes reprinted from the newspapers, sometimes written for the magazine, but always inflammatory, since the two noteworthy periodicals of this period, The Pennsylvania Magazine and The Royal American Magazine, were edited respectively by the two firebrands, Thomas Paine and Isaiah Thomas. ”

“ The Beaux-Stratagem, which had been played in Williamsburg three weeks before, is mentioned as delightful enough to make one of the ladies commit the indiscretion of giggling. The Monitor represents a kind of light social satire unusual in the colonies.
Satire of a heavier sort when attempted by newspaper writers was never long sustained above mere invective, though it sometimes began with tolerable Hudibrastic or Popean couplets. The Dunciad and Hudibras were well known and often quoted in such bitter controversies as the famous Whitefield warfare in Charleston between 1740 and 1745. ”

“ The General Magazine and Historical Chronicle. There were a few magazines of this standard English type in America before the Revolution. Franklin, as usual, led the way, though it happened that his rival Andrew Bradford actually published the first magazine in the colonies. Franklin’s soon followed, and these two little periodicals brought out the same month in Philadelphia, 1741, clearly indicate the attempt to transplant the English type, with some adaptations, for colonial readers. ”

“ This instruction in all arts and sciences consisted of weekly extracts from Chambers’s Universal Dictionary, actually commencing with A, and going steadily on towards Z, followed by instalments of Defoe’s Religious Courtship, called by the editor “a scarce and delightful piece of History.” Franklin quickly did away with all this when he took over the Instructor, and made it The Pennsylvania Gazette. ”

“ Strictly moral essays, of which even The Spectator has its full share, soon follow the more creative touches, and we find the ordinary eighteenth-century treatment of merit, covetousness, idleness, the vapours, and so on. Such essays came to be the accepted ‘filling” for the first page of many newspapers up to 1740 and sometimes after that date. Jeremy Gridley’s Rehearsal (1743–6) , for instance, has a series of speculations rather above the common order, yet requiring no especial notice for their originality or their importance except as a type.
§ 4. Franklin as Journalist. ”

“ Reports of French interest in America inclined the colonists still more to the French philosophy of government. As a matter of fact, from the time of the Stamp Act, political essays of every description filled the newspapers, and what one paper published was soon reprinted in others. ”

“ The fourteen little essays from Silence Dogood to the editor are among the most readable and charming of Franklin’s early imitations, clearly following The Spectator, yet at rather long environment. Silence rambles considerable adaptation to the New England environment. Silence rambles on amiably enough except for occasional slurs on the New England clergy, in regard to whom the Courant was always bitter, and often scurrilous. For the Hell-Fire Club never grasped the inner secret of Mr. ”

“ The Christian History. Kneeland and Green. Boston, 1743–1744. Published weekly for two years. A.A.S. B.P.L. (Edited by Thomas Prince, Jr. Devoted to the Great Awakening of religion in New England, with many enthusiastic articles on Whitefield.) The American Magazine and Historical Chronicle. Rogers and Fowle. Boston, 1743–1746. A.A.S. B.P.L. M.H.S. N.Y.P.L. (Edited by Jeremy Gridley, and published monthly for three years. A close imitation of The London Magazine.) The Independent Reflector; or, Weekly Essays on Sundry Important Subjects; more particularly adapted to the Province of New York. ”