appearance. They were at first occasional, and afterwards weekly. “_Nathaniel Butter_, at the Pyde-Bull, St. Augustin’s gate,” established a weekly newspaper, in August 1622, entitled “The certain news of the present week.” How long he continued his hebdomadal intelligences does not appear. He is said to have laid little before his readers, which could enlarge knowledge, or excite risibility; though his battles may have surprised and elevated, and his sieges may have alternately agitated the hopes and fears of his countrymen. He had, however, competitors and imitators. In February 1635–6 was first published a fresh paper of Weekly Newes. The foreign intelligence of May 22, was conveyed in number 13. This too was a small quarto of 14 pages; and it was printed in London, for Mercurius Britannicus; which proves sufficiently that that well known title had a more early origin than has been generally supposed. Similar papers were continued, though they assumed different names. Butter, who appears to have been the most active and enterprising newsmonger of his time, was influenced by his interest to tell— “News, old news, and such news as you never heard of.” He was thus induced to convert his Weekly News into _half-yearly news_, (two of which making a kind of _annual register_) which shews that he was a person of no common enterprize. In order to insure success to so novel an undertaking, an able compiler seemed absolutely necessary; and Butter very judiciously fixed upon Watts for that department. He accordingly complied with the projector’s proposal, and so became the precursor of _Johnson_, _Burke_, _Kippis_, _Southey_, and the rest of our distinguished literary characters, who have been since employed in similar departments. How long he continued thus employed we have not been able to discover; but it is probably it might be till near the commencement of the civil wars: and as he was likely to have distinguished himself, in the mean time, as a warm, and perhaps violent advocate for the measures of the court, it may in some measure account for the hardship and severity which he and his family afterwards experienced from the opposite party, by the hands of the sequestrators. Be that as it might, William Watts was certainly a person so distinguished in his day, as to deserve to have his name preserved among the most eminent characters that sprung up here during the period we are now reviewing.