Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 2.djvu/298

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [12 a. n. OCT. 7, 1916.

THE FIRST ENGLISH PROVINCIAL NEWSPAPER.

(12 S. ii. 81, 155, 216.) ~

IT is rather odd that so much should be known about Andrew Brice, and so little about his master, Bliss. If all that is 'told of him is accurate, Joseph Bliss must have been a Whig, and, probably, a Dissenter. No one seems to have remembered that he kept a coffee-house, and I think that the only record of this is to be found at the end of the copy of his periodical in the British Museum. But Dr. Tanner's letter points unmistakably to the fact that some one, whose name and periodical are yet to be discovered, preceded Bliss.

The point I am anxious to lay stress upon is that the solitary copy in the British Museum of Jos. Bliss's Exeter Post-Boy proves conclusively that The Protestant Mercury ; or, Exeter Post-Boy, of 1715, stated, by .Dr. Oliver, to have " commenced " in September of that year, was nothing more than the continuation of the same periodical of 1707, with a prefix to the original " catchword " in the shape of Protestant Mercury.

The foundation of Dr. Brushfield's paper on Andrew Brice and the early Exeter press appears to have been the biography of Andrew Brice, to be found in Trewmaris Exeter Flying Post for Jan. 4, 1849. This was " No. 7 " of a series of articles written anonymously by the Rev. Dr. Oliver, under the general" heading of ' Biographies of Exonians.' I take the following extract from it :

" In his ' Itinerarium Curiosum ' [published in 1724] Dr. [William] Stukely mentions with com- mendation the many booksellers' shops in Exeter. Our readers may have met with Walter Dight in 1684, Mr. Osborne, near the Bear Inn, 1693, Samuel Farley, 1701, Charles Yeo, 1701, Philip Bishop, Joseph Bliss, Edward Score, James Lipscombe, Nathaniel Thorne, John March, John Giles : and, at a later period, the names of Thomas Brice, Andrews, Trewman, Dyer, and Upham are familiar to us. But to confine ourselves at present to Andrew Brice. He was born at Exeter in 1690, and was intended by his parents for a dissenting minister; but on preferring the trade of a printer was apprenticed to Joseph Bliss, the editor of The Protestant Mercury; or, Exeter Pout-Boy. This weekly journal commenced here in September, 1715, and at first was published on the Friday, but shortly after on the Tuesday also. It was introduced in opposition to Farley's Exeter Her- civry," &c.

The truth appears to have been that the prefixing to the " catchword " of the term Protestant Mercury was the only thing introduced by Bliss in 1715. One of the illustrations to Dr. Bmshfield's paper shows, it is true, " Number IV." of The Protestant Mercury ; or, Exeter Post-Boy, in 1715, but this may only be a renumbering (and in Roman numerals), and may not even involve a break in the issue of the periodical begun in 1707.

In the same series of articles by Dr. Oliver, " No. 13," published in Trewman' s Exeter Flying, Post for Feb. 15, 1849, the biography of Samuel Farley was given. And in the number of this paper published on June 28, 1913, the editor wrote :

" Last Saturday we recorded Dr. Oliver's state- ment that Joseph Bliss started The Protestant Mercury ; or, Exeter Post-Boy, in September, 1715, in opposition to Farley's Exeter Mercury. There is evidently something wrong about this assertion, as the copy of Bliss's journal in the British Museum is dated Slay 4th, 1711."

J. B. WILLIAMS.

FOREIGN GRAVES OF BRITISH AUTHORS (12 S. ii. 172, 254). Thomas Coryate died at Surat in December, 1617, " and was buried . . . .under a little Monument, like one of those are usually made in our Church yards " (Edward Terry^ ' A Voyage to East India,' 1655, quoted on p. xi of the ' Publishers' Note ' to the reprint of ' Coryat's Crudities,' Glasgow, MacLehose, 1905).

" A humble tumulus marking the place of his burial was shown half a century afterwards. It is described in Sir Thomas Herbert's ' Travels ' (1634)." Life of Thomas Coryate in the ' D.N.B.'

Sir John Suckling died in Paris in 1642, and " was buryed in the Protestants church- yard " (Aubrey's ' Brief Lives,' vol. ii., 1898, p. 242).

Sir George Etherege died in Paris in 1691, and was presumably buried there.

A more important writer than any of these, William Tindale, was strangled and his body burnt at Vilvorde in September, 1536.

EDWARD BENSLY.

Besides J. A. Symonds, buried in Rome, another Bristol writer " of great renown and greater promise," to quote his epitaph by Lord Houghton, was buried abroad. This was Frederick John Fargus ("Hugh Con- way "), whose grave is at Nice. He died in 1885. CHARLES WELLS.

Mrs. Browning is entombed at Florence. E. A. Freeman died at Alicante, and lies buried there. W. C. J. errs in placing him at Mentone. ST. SWITHTST.