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Essays
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General SummaryThe essays which Joseph Addison wrote for the Spectator, a journal to which he and his friend Richard Steele were the principal contributors, have always since their publication been considered to be models of a pure English style. Their place in literature is secure. Historically, also, they have much value as a picture of English life and manners in the opening years of the eighteenth century, before the industrial, commercial, and political revolutions of that century had begun to make over the modern world. The essays here reproduced were all published between 1711#8211;1712.
78. Newsmongers1
There is no humor in my countrymen which I am more inclined
to wonder at, than their general thirst after news. There are
about half a dozen ingenious men who live very plentifully upon
this curiosity of their fellow-subjects. They all of them receive
the same advices from abroad, and very often in the same words;
but their way of cooking it is so different that there is no citizen,
who has an eye to the public good, that can leave the coffeehouse
with peace of mind, before he has given every one of them
a reading. These several dishes of news are so very agreeable
to the palate of my countrymen, that they are not only pleased
with them when served up hot, but when they are again set cold
before them by those penetrating politicians who oblige the
public with their reflections and observations upon every piece
of intelligence that is sent us from abroad. The text is given
us by one set of writers, and the comment by another.
But notwithstanding we have the same tale told us in so many
different papers, and if occasion requires in so many articles of
the same paper; notwithstanding in a scarcity of foreign posts
we hear the same story repeated by different advices from Paris,
Brussels, The Hague, and from every great town in Europe;
notwithstanding the multitude of annotations, explanations,
reflections, and various readings which it passes through, our
time lies heavy on our hands till the arrival of fresh mail: we
long to receive further particulars, to hear what will be the next
step, or what will be the consequences of that which has been
lately taken. A westerly wind keeps the whole town in suspense
and puts a stop to conversation.
This general curiosity has been raised and inflamed by our
late wars, and, if rightly directed, might be of good use to a
person who has such a thirst awakened in him. Why should
not a man who takes delight in reading everything that is new,
apply himself to history, travels, and other writings of the same
kind, where he will find perpetual fuel for his curiosity, and meet
with much more pleasure and improvement than in these papers
of the week? An honest tradesman, who languishes a whole
summer in expectation of battle, and perhaps is balked at last,
may here meet with half a dozen in a day. He may read the
news of a whole campaign in less time than he now bestows
upon the products of any single post. Fights, conquests, and
revolutions lie thick together. The reader’s curiosity is raised
and satisfied every moment, and his passions disappointed or
gratified, without being detained in a state of uncertainty from
day to day, or lying at the mercy of sea and wind. In short,
the mind is not here kept in a perpetual gape after knowledge,
nor punished with that eternal thirst, which is the portion of
all our modern newsmongers and coffee-house politicians.
1 Addison, , vol. ii, pp. 213#8211;215.
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Chicago: "Newsmongers," Essays in Readings in Modern European History, ed. Webster, Hutton (Boston: D.C. Heath, 1926), 168. Original Sources, accessed May 13, 2025, http://www.originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=CKMBLCIKZPG7Q6D.
MLA: . "Newsmongers." Essays, Vol. ii, in Readings in Modern European History, edited by Webster, Hutton, Boston, D.C. Heath, 1926, page 168. Original Sources. 13 May. 2025. http://www.originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=CKMBLCIKZPG7Q6D.
Harvard: , 'Newsmongers' in Essays. cited in 1926, Readings in Modern European History, ed. , D.C. Heath, Boston, pp.168. Original Sources, retrieved 13 May 2025, from http://www.originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=CKMBLCIKZPG7Q6D.
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