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Chap. Lxxxi

CURIOSITIES OF LITERATURE.-(Continued.) Origin of the Word "News" - Origin of Newspapers-Instances of New Studies in Old Age-Literary Shoemakers-Imprison mext of the Learned-Singular Customs annually observed by the Company of Stationers-Book of Sports-Origin of Card:--Explanation of all the Letters on a Guinea.

ORIGIN OF THE WOPD "NEws." -The four cardinal points of the compass, marked with the letters N. E. W. S. standing for North, East, West, and South, form the word News, which coming from all parts of the world, gave derivation to the word.

ORIGIN OF NEWSPAPERS. - We are indebted to the Italians for the idea of Newspapers. The title of the Gazettas, was perhaps derived from Gazzera, a magpie or chatterer; or more probably from a farthing coin, peculiar to the city of Venice, called Gazetta, which was the common price of the newspapers. Another learned etymologist is for deriving it from the Latin Gaza, which would colloquially lengthen into Gazetta, and signify a little treasury of news. The Spanish derive it indeed from the Latin Gaza; and likewise their Gazatero, and our Gazetteer, for a writer of the Gazette; and, what is peculiar to themselves, Gazetista, for a lover of the Gazette.

Newspapers then took their birth in that principal land of modern politicians, Italy, and under the government of that aristocratical republic, Venice. The first paper was a Venetian one, and only monthly: but it was the newspaper of the government only. Other governments afterwards adopted the Venetian name for it; and from one solitary government Gazette, we see what an inundation of newspapers has burst out upon us in this country.

Mr. Chalmers gives, in his life of Ruddiman, a curious particular of these Venetian Gazettes. "A jealous government did not allow a printed newspaper; and the Venetian Gazetta continued long after the invention of printing to the close of the sixteenth century, and even to our own days, to be distributed in manuscript." In the Magliabechian library at Florence are thirty volumes of Venetian Gazettas, all in manuscript.

Those who first wrote newspapers, were called by the Italians Menanti, because, says Vossius, they intended commonly by