Selections from the Observator (1681-1687) Part 1

Selections from the Observator (1681-1687).

by Roger L'Estrange.

INTRODUCTION

I fancy, _Trimmer_, that if You and I could but get leave to peep out of our Graves again a matter of a hundred and fifty year hence, we should find these Papers in Bodlies Library, among the Memorialls of State; and Celebrated for the Only Warrantable Remains concerning this Juncture of Affairs.

(_Observator_ No. 259, 16 December 1682)

When the first of 931 single, folio sheets of the _Observator_ appeared on 13 April 1681, the sixty-five-year-old Roger L'Estrange, their sole author, had been a controversial London Royalist for over twenty years.

As Crown protege, he had served intermittently as Surveyor of the Press, Chief Licenser, and Justice of the King's Peace Commission; as a writer, he had produced two newspapers, the _Intelligencer_ and the _Newes_ (1663-1666), dozens of political pamphlets, and seven translations from Spanish, Latin, and French.[1] Rightly nicknamed "bloodhound of the press," L'Estrange was notorious for his ruthless ferreting out of illegal presses and seditious publishers, as well as for his tireless warfare against the powerful Stationers' Company.[2] No less well known were his intransigent reactionary views, for we can estimate that some 64,000 copies of pamphlets bearing his name were circulating in the City during the two years preceding the _Observator_.[3] Thus the _Observator_ papers represent not only the official propaganda of the restored monarchy, but also the intellectual temper of a powerful, influential man whose London fame was sufficiently demonstrated in the winter of 1680, when he was publicly burned in effigy during that year's Pope-burning festivities.

In the muddy torrent of "Intelligences," "Mercuries," "Courants,"

"Pacquets," and sundry newssheets, the _Observator_ marks the beginnings of a new sort of journalism, one which was to shape the development of the English periodical. Although _Herac.l.i.tus Ridens_ and its opponent _Democritus Ridens_ initiated the dialogue form for the newspaper seventy-two days before the _Observator_, their relatively short run relegates these pioneers to a shadowy background, as it does the even earlier trade paper in dialogue, the _City and Country Mercury_ (1667).[4] The eighty-two issues of _Herac.l.i.tus Ridens_ and thirteen of _Democritus Ridens_ cannot be compared in quant.i.ty to the 931 issues of the _Observator_ published three or four times a week from 13 April 1681 to 9 March 1687, nor can their stiff dialogues be compared in importance to L'Estrange's much fuller exploitation of the form. Consequently, even though he did not initiate the newspaper in dialogue form, L'Estrange is unanimously given the honor of having popularized the form, or, in the words of Richmond P. Bond, of having "borrowed the dialogue and fastened it on English journalism for a generation as a factional procedure."[5]

Imitators did not wait long. Nine days after the first _Observator_, L'Estrange's arch-enemy, Harry Care, changed to dialogue the _Popish Courant_ section of his _Weekly Pacquet of Advice from Rome_, relinquis.h.i.+ng the expository format which he had followed since 1678.

Later, after the Glorious Revolution, the popularity of L'Estrange's paper is evident in the spate of imitative "Observators" that ensued: _The English Spy: Or, the Critical Observator_ (1693); _The Poetical Observator_ (1702); Tutchin's _Observator_ (1702--a Whig organ) and Leslie's _Observator_ (1704--a Tory organ); _The Comicall Observator_ (1704); _The Observator Reviv'd_ (1707), and more. As late as 1716 there was created a _Weekly Observator_. By the turn of the century, the very term "Observator" had come to signify a controversy _in dialogue_.[6]

Interestingly enough, even the typography of L'Estrange's _Observator_ may have left its mark on succeeding journals. A brief comparison of Interregnum newspapers (such as _Newes Out of Ireland_ in 1642, _The Scotch Mercury_ in 1643, _The Commonwealth Mercury_ in 1658) with John Dunton's _The Athenian Mercury_ (1693) and Charles Leslie's _Observator_ (1704) reveals a marked difference in typography. In the earlier papers the typography is generally uniform, with italics used for proper names and quotations, whereas L'Estrange's and Leslie's papers exhibit the whole range of typeface available to the seventeenth-century printer.

Dissenter Dunton's _Athenian Mercury_, on the other hand, shows much less eccentricity in its typography, limiting itself to generous use of italics only, while Defoe's _Review_ goes back to the earlier restraint and presents a neat, uniform page. Whether these typographical differences are attributable to particular political views or merely to "schools" of printing is difficult to say.

In addition to this obvious sort of superficial imitation, there are many indications that L'Estrange's _Observator_ had a more permanent influence on posterity. It has been suggested that the periodical specializing in query and answer between reader and editor, which was initiated by John Dunton's _Athenian Mercury_ and which we still have today, may have been inspired by the _Observator's_ habitual retorts to opponents.[7] James Sutherland isolates in Defoe certain qualities of prose style which he attributes to Defoe's extensive reading of L'Estrange; and he sees L'Estrange's natural colloquial manner as setting a pattern for journalists who followed him.[8] Far-fetched as it may seem at first glance, even Addison's _Spectator_ shows a certain similarity to the _Observator_. Although the manner, tone, language, and political views of the two are ant.i.thetical, the _Spectator's_ peculiar blend of moralizing and diversion is reminiscent of L'Estrange's work.

In both papers we notice a serious didactic purpose tempered by literary techniques and imaginative handling of material. Decades before Addison's famous credo--"to make their Instruction Agreeable, and their Diversion useful ... to enliven Morality with Wit, and to temper Wit with Morality"[9]--L'Estrange had formulated a similar theory:

_Obs._: Where there has been Any thing of That which you call Raillery, or Farce; It has amounted to no more then a Speaking to the Common People in their Own Way....

He that Talks Dry Reason to them, does as good as treat 'em in an Unknown Tongue; and there's no Other way of Conveying the True Sense, & Notion of Things, either to their Affections, or to their Understandings, then by the Palate....

(II, No. 15)

And as a link between L'Estrange and Addison we have Defoe's a.n.a.logous promise in "the Introduction" to the _Review_: "After our Serious Matters are over, we shall at the end of every Paper, Present you with a little Diversion, as any thing occurs to make the World Merry."[10]

These notions rest, of course, on the ancient _dulce et utile_, though modified in various ways in each of the three papers to suit the temperaments of their writers, the tastes of their ma.s.s-audiences, and different times. It is perhaps not irresponsible, then, to say that the synonymous t.i.tles of Addison's and L'Estrange's periodicals symbolize an affinity of purpose and technique. Indeed, the _Observator_ can, in many ways, be considered a rather crude and primitive ancestor of the _Spectator_.[11]

The purpose of the _Observator_ and its main targets are clearly formulated in _Observator_ No. 1, as well as in the prefatory "To the Reader," which was written in 1683 for the publication of Volume 1 of the collected papers. The "faction" which L'Estrange proposes to reprove consists at first (1681-1682) of Shaftesbury's republican-minded followers and of the perpetrators of the Popish Plot. In his evaluation of the Plot, L'Estrange agrees with some modern historians,[12] for he never doubted that it was a Whig fabrication, an invented cause around which the party members could rally and which neatly veiled the parliamentary power-struggle behind the scenes. t.i.tus Oates is consequently the _Observator's_ _bete noire_, and Andrew Marvell's pamphlet, _The Growth of Popery_, is for L'Estrange the odious origin of the Plot:

_Obs._: I do not know Any man throughout the whole Tract of the Controversy that has held a Candle to the Devil with a Better Grace then the Author of that Pamphlet ...

that Furnishes so Clear a Light toward the Opening of the Roots, Springs, and Causes of our Late Miserable Disorders, and Confusions.... Prethee let Otes'es Popish Plot, Stand, or Fall, to it's Own Master; provided that Marvels may be Allow'd to be the Elder Brother....

(II, No. 16)

Toward the end of 1682, when the Whigs had ceased being an imminent threat to the government and all but one of the Whig newspapers had been silenced, L'Estrange turned his attack against the more moderate Trimmers, as ill.u.s.trated in _Observator_ III, No. 88. But whether the offensive is against Whigs or Trimmers, Dissenters and advocates of toleration are always in the line of L'Estrange's fire as chief subverters of absolute monarchy and of the Church of England, as is evident in the satire of _Observator_ Nos. 13 and 110. On the eve of the Glorious Revolution, this rigid stand lost him the support of both the Anglican clergy and the universities, support of which he was so proud in his "To the Reader." Finally, _Observator_ No. 1 singles out the Whig press as one of its chief targets. The "Smith" referred to in that first number is Anabaptist Francis "Elephant" Smith, publisher of the outrageous _Mirabilis Annus_ books, the inflammatory pamphlet _Vox Populi_, and the offensive paper _Smith's Protestant Intelligence_; "Harris" is Benjamin Harris, publisher of the Whig paper, _Domestic Intelligence_. These, together with Harry Care (_Weekly Pacquet of Advice from Rome_ and _Popish Courant_), Richard Janeway (_Impartial Protestant Mercury_), Langley Curtis (_The Protestant Mercury_), and hordes of anti-Royalist authors or publications are habitually quoted or referred to in L'Estrange's counterpropaganda. His untiring countering of Whig publications earned him Nahum Tate's hyperbolic praise in _The Second Part of Absalom and Achitophel_:

Than _Sheva_, none more loyal Zeal have shown, Wakefull, as _Judah's_ Lion for the Crown, Who for that Cause still combats in his Age, For which his Youth with danger did engage.

In vain our factious Priests the Cant revive, In vain seditious Scribes with Libels strive T'enflame the Crow'd, while He with watchfull Eye Observes, and shoots their Treasons as they fly.

Their weekly Frauds his keen Replies detect, He undeceives more fast than they infect.

So _Moses_ when the Pest on _Legions_ prey'd, Advanc'd his Signal and the Plague was stay'd.[13]

Parochial as these concerns seem today, the _Observator_ in its totality goes far beyond the Harry Cares and "Elephant" Smiths in its exhortation to greater rationality in areas ancillary to but transcending politics proper. Its a.s.siduous ridicule of Enthusiasm, following in the steps of Meric Casaubon and Henry More,[14] its a.n.a.lyses of political manipulation of the naive populace, its explanations of psychological appeals, its Orwellian warnings against the snares of loaded diction and the dangers of affective political rhetoric--all these efforts evident in the few _Observators_ represented here are an important step in the direction of a less superst.i.tious, less hysterical century.

Paradoxically, L'Estrange mobilized progressive ideas in the service of an archaic political and religious administration, thereby familiarizing the man on the street with notions and att.i.tudes commonly known as Enlightened.

The sugar coating in the _Observator_ is, however, as significant as the pill, and distinguishes L'Estrange's journalism from his predecessors'.

Apart from the traditional satiric blend of verbal banter and polemic, which has received ample commentary,[15] his use of established literary modes further enhances the colloquies, making them especially diverting for his audience and interesting for us. As dialogues, the papers belong to a genre whose popularity has remained constant from Plato onward. The appeal of the form lies in its pleasurable verisimilitude, immediacy, adaptability to differing points of view, and, especially after the Restoration, in its potentiality for humorous repartee.[16] As _satiric_ dialogues, L'Estrange's sheets satisfy what seems to be a universal love of ridicule, an innate trait of the human mind, although there is no agreement among students of satire as to its exact psychological operations. In addition to adopting this form, which belongs to imaginative literature rather than to journalism, L'Estrange spices his _Observator_ with a number of other devices designed to provide variety, change in speed, and amus.e.m.e.nt for his reader, who is in turn bullied, joshed, castigated, reasoned, or laughed into accepting L'Estrange's views.

Frequently, for example, the dialogue gives way to a pointed anecdote (old or current, invented or factual), such as the story of Jack of Leyden in _Observator_ No. 1, or the following from a later dialogue, humorously satirizing the dour William Prynne and the Puritans' strange concepts of sin:

_Trimmer_: A Gentleman that had Cut-off his own hair on the Sat.u.r.day, came the next day to Church in his first Perriwig.

The Parson (that was already Enter'd into his Sermon) turn'd his Discourse presently, from his Text in the Holy Bible, to the Subject of Prynnes _Unloveliness of Lovelocks_; and Thrash'd for a matter of a Quarter of an hour, upon the Mortal Sin of Wearing False Hair. The Gentleman, finding that he would never give him over, 'till he had Preach'd him into a Flat State of Reprobation, fairly took off his Perriwig, and Clapt it upon One of the b.u.t.tons at the Corner of the Pew. The Poor Man had not One word more to say to the Perriwig; and was run so far from his Text, that he could not for his heart find the way home again: So that to make short on't; He gave the People his Blessing, and Dismiss'd the Congregation.

(II, No. 21)

Frequently, also, L'Estrange satirizes by means of parody or ludicrous examples of his enemies' rhetoric or behavior, as in the case of the "Dissenting Academies" in _Observator_ No. 110. But most important of the techniques for entertaining are his creation of carefully delineated speaker-_personae_ and his "Characters," again both borrowed from the literary tradition.

After the first twenty-nine _Observators_, which are experimental in that "Q" and "A" have s.h.i.+fting personalities (as in Nos. 1 and 13), L'Estrange manipulates "Whig" and "Tory" for 171 papers, changes to "Whig" and "Observator" for 33 papers, briefly (six papers) s.h.i.+fts to "Whig" and "Courantier," and finally settles down to "Trimmer" and "Observator" for the remaining 692 papers. In all these, the Tory satirist (whether he be "Tory" or "Observator") is presented as the conventional "snarling dog" described by Robert C. Elliott,[17] with appropriate outbursts of polemic, invective, bitter irony, and railing humor. Even the traditional crudity is there, although compared to, say, the _Popish Courant_, L'Estrange manifests a Victorian restraint.

"Whig," on the other hand, is presented as a naive, credulous, not-too-bright individual whose main fault is not so much that he is a Whig but that he is a Whig because he has no mental capacity for discrimination. The "A" speaker of No. 13 (apparently a humorous thrust at John Eachard, author of _Grounds and Occasions of the Contempt of the Clergy_) with his preference for Prynne, Baxter, and Smith over Tacitus, Livy, and Caesar, is typical of the later "Whig" _persona_. Humorless, misguided, and chronically given to believing even the most outrageous gossip, "Whig" cuts a foolish and therefore amusing figure when pitted against the sophisticated, trenchant-minded "Tory." "Trimmer" is quite different. L'Estrange here creates a much more intelligent opponent, one who is given the liberty of satirizing "Observator" himself and even patronizing him with the nickname "n.o.bs." Instead of naivete and obvious stupidity, "Trimmer" has the guile and surface morality of the perfect hypocrite, a "pretending friend" as "Observator" notes in _Observator_ III, Nos. 88 and 202. The humor in these later dialogues does not emerge from the "Trimmer" personality but from the frequent self-satire and criticism on the part of L'Estrange. "Trimmer," for example, is allowed to mock the prose style, figures of speech, stubbornness and repet.i.tiveness of "Observator," as "Trimmer's" chiding tone in _Observator_ III, No. 88 suggests. To borrow a term from Robert C.

Elliott, the entertainment of these later colloquies resides primarily in the technique of the "satirist satirized."[18] L'Estrange, in short, creates both _adversariuses_ as _dramatis personae_ rather than as simple straw men, a departure from the run-of-the-mill Restoration dialogue evident in the following interruption of his artfully built illusion:

_Obs._: For Varieties sake then, we'le to work another way.

Do You keep up your Part of Trimmer still: Do Just as you use to do; and be sure to maintain your Character; Leave the Whig and the Tory to Me.

_Trimmer_: For the Dialogue sake it shall be done.

_Obs._: But then you must Consider that there are Severall sort of Trimmers: as your State-Trimmer, Your Law-Trimmer....

_Trimmer_: And You shall Suppose Mee to be a Statesman.

_Obs._: But of what Magnitude? A Lord? A Knight?...

_Trimmer_: Why truly n.o.bs, if they be all of a Price, I don't care if I be a Lord.

_Obs._: We are over that Point then; And so I am your Lords.h.i.+ps most Humble Servant.

But this role playing within role playing is discarded at the end of the paper, the role of Lord being apparently too c.u.mbersome:

_Trimmer_: No more of your Lords.h.i.+ps, as you love me, n.o.bs; for I am e'en as weary as a Dog of my Dignity.

(No. 242)

The "Character," however, is not only L'Estrange's favorite satiric tool but perhaps the literary form most frequently used in the _Observator_.

L'Estrange himself attests to his partiality in his parting comment at the close of the _Observator_:

_Obs._: For my Fancy lyes more to Character, then to Dialogue; and whoever will be so Kind as to Furnish me with Spitefull Materials, shall get his Own again with Interest, in an Essay upon Humane Nature.

(III, No. 246)

The Character was, of course, still highly popular in the latter half of the century, as Chester Noyes Greenough's listings show,[19] so that in indulging his own taste, L'Estrange was also catering to the tastes of his public. Of whatever other value the _Observator_ may be to the modern student, it is invaluable as a fine example of the state-of-the-Character toward the end of the century. Practically every type of Character a.n.a.lyzed by Benjamin Boyce in his two studies can be found repeatedly in L'Estrange's dialogues:[20] the earlier imitations of Theophrastan Characters, with their parallelisms and ant.i.theses; the Overburian Character, with its extravagant metaphors; the externally dramatized; the subjective; the sprung. There are Characters of ideologies, of political parties, of virtues, of vices, of Whigs and Dissenters (vices), of Tories and Anglicans (virtues). There are several "Credo-Characters" (confessions or manifestoes), and finally there is the habitually dramatized self-exposing Character which becomes indistinguishable from the _dramatis persona_, as is the Character of the Modern Whig in Nos. 13 and 110. Among the _Observators_ included here, the definition of "Dissenter" in No. 1 is based on Character techniques, as is the conceit of the Protestant as "Adjective Noun-Substantive" in the same number. So is also the lengthy exposure of "Leaders" in III, No. 202, beginning with "They Talk, to the Ears, and to the Pa.s.sions of their Hearers."

A final comment about L'Estrange's prose, which has been variously labeled "colloquial," "idiomatic," "vulgar," "coa.r.s.e"--all vaguely descriptive terms suggesting value judgment, and none precise enough to give an intelligible account of what L'Estrange actually does. In addition to the obvious device of choppy syntax and deliberately careless constructions simulating extemporaneous speech, L'Estrange's figures and proverbial material demonstrate his meticulous shaping of an "applied prose"[21] particularly suitable for the audience whose opinions he tried to sway. His metaphors and a.n.a.logies tend to rely on commonly known objects or experiences, and because of rhetorical necessity they are almost always unpleasantly graphic. A random sampling yielded the following results: about twenty-five percent of the figures in the _Observator_ deal with some specific part of the human body (nails, spleen, mouth, eyes, ears, knees, heels, flesh, guts, belly) or physiological processes (ulcerating, itching, chewing, digesting, spitting, reeking, seeing, crouching, sweating, gobbling). There is no euphemistic delicacy in these figures; L'Estrange carefully selects the most earthy, common vehicles, thus achieving what James Sutherland has termed "racy" and "vigorous" prose.[22] Another twenty-four percent of the figures are based on common occupations, daily activities, or objects familiar to the simpler citizen of London. These figures ordinarily pivot on barter or trade (horse traders, hagglers, fishwives, car men); on activities such as cooking, gambling, or gla.s.s-making; and on such objects as clothing, bagpipes, paper-pellets, bonnets, and chamber-pots. The rest derive from the animal kingdom, the Scriptures, street-entertainment (jugglers, puppets, high-rope walkers) and folk medicine (glysters and plasters). It is obvious that these figures--their concreteness, sensuousness, and closeness to the daily experience of the ordinary reader--are a main ingredient in the richly colloquial texture of L'Estrange's prose, as is the proverbial material which he incorporates unsparingly.

In L'Estrange's language the law of the land cannot be misunderstood, for it calls _a spade a spade_ (No. 106; T-S699).[23] The factions win their objectives _by hook or crook_ (No. 100; T-H588) even though they are as _mad as March Hares_ (No. 15; T-H148) and _as Blind as Beetles_ (No. 15; T-B219). Certain things are _as clear as the Day_ (No. 25; T-D56) or _as plain as the nose o'my face_ (No. 40; T-N215), whereas others are so confused that one can _make neither Head nor tayl on't_ (No. 35; T-H258). When _noses are put out of joint_ (No. 38; T-N219) and Tories are given a _bone to pick_ (No. 55; T-B522), there will obviously be _no love lost betwixt_ Whigs and Tories (No. 97; T-L544).

Thus L'Estrange's Characters, together with the fanciful anecdotes, self-satire, parodies, and _personae_, provide the satire and humor in the _Observator_, the whole being couched in familiar, pungent language.

As L'Estrange counters the faction, propagandizes, and exhorts to rational behavior, he also amuses and delights, always hoping that the laughter provoked by his satiric treatment will cure what he saw as follies of his age, always appealing to the common reader whose sense of humor, he believed, was probably more developed than his sense.