But now, lest ye thinke me to use excesse, Their pen to metres, let them not spare * With many other that excellent are, The printer should 'Pourge chaff from corne, to avoyde offence, Excellent good advice! The conclusion is 'Let writers not covet the bottom or dale, And thus every day, before we drinke, Let us pray God to save our Queene.' The motto at the head of this piece is perhaps the best utterance of the whole ballad literature of that generation, and will make a fitting close: 'When we have doen al that ever we can, Let us never seke prayse at the mouth of man.' ARUNDELL ESDAILE. * The only contemporary in the list, one of two dramatists of that name. † Alexander Barclay, priest, translator of 'The Ship of Fools,' etc. John Bale, Bishop of Ossory, cataloguer of English writers, and author of violent Reformation plays and pamphlets. Art. 5.-THE POSTAGE STAMP AND ITS HISTORY. 1. Catalogue des timbres-poste créés dans les divers états du globe. [By Alfred Potiquet.] Paris: Lacroix, 1862. 2. A Hand-Catalogue of Postage Stamps. By John Edward Gray, Ph.D., F.R.S., of the British Museum. London: Hardwicke, 1862. 3. Histoire de la poste aux lettres et du timbre-poste. Par Arthur de Rothschild. Fifth edition. Paris: Calmann Lévy, 1880. 4. The Postage and Telegraph Stamps of Great Britain. By Frederick A. Philbrick and William A. S. Westoby. London: Sampson Low, 1881. 5. The Origin of Postage Stamps. By Pearson Hill. Second edition. London: Morrison, 1888. 6. Catalogue officiel de la Société française de Timbrologie: Timbres-poste et Télégraphe. Troisième édition. Paris: Bernichon, 1908. 7. Catalogue of the Philatelic Library of the Earl of Crawford, K.T. By E. D. Bacon. London: The Philatelic Literature Society, 1911. And other works. 'WHO invented the postage stamp?' If we use the words in their wider sense, as including stamped envelopes, wrappers and the like, the answer is that the first postage stamp of which we have any record was issued in Paris in 1653. In July of that year Louis XIV issued letters patent giving to the Comte de Nogent and the Sieur de Villayer, Masters of Requests, a forty years' monopoly for the establishment, in our good city of Paris' and other cities, of a local post. The way in which this post was to be worked was indicated in some detail, and one of the conditions prescribed the setting up of a good number of boxes' in different places in the various quarters of the town; from these boxes the letters were to be collected at least twice a day and brought to a central shop or office in the Cour du Palais for distribution. The post began working in the following month; and a printed Instruction' to the public stated that every communication transmitted by it was to have a billet, costing one sol and inscribed Port payé, fastened to, wrapped round, or slipped inside it, so that the postal official might see it and remove it easily. We are therefore in the presence of the introduction of three postal reforms, which combined to make the use of postage stamps not merely desirable but necessary. The first reform was the compulsory prepayment of correspondence, instituted on the grounds of economy of time (otherwise the messengers who deliver letters at houses will be obliged to wait for payment of the postage'), of justice (as letters usually concern the sender's own business rather than that of other people, it is fairer for the sender than the addressee to pay the postage'), and of uniformity (since some letters must be prepaid out of consideration for the recipient, as when citizens write to their workpeople to have news of their tasks,' etc.). The other reforms were a uniform charge for postage, irrespective of distance, and the establishment of the pillar-boxes, which Loret, in his contemporary - rhyming-chronicle, described as 'De boëtes nombreuses & druës A des Marchands, à des Marchandes, Bref, à toutes sortes de gens.' No specimens of the billets de port payé of 1653 have rewarded the diligent searches of the curious; and probably all were destroyed when the postal clerks detached them from the letters. Pellisson, however, made use of the petite poste, and tells us that Villayer's 'printed notes were marked with a special device of his own and the * Paul Pellisson-Fontanier. The quotations are from what are said to be his мs. notes on the margin of the copy of his letter to Mlle de Scudéry ('Quarterly Review,' vol. 64, p. 553). words "Port payé le . . . . jour de . . . . L'an mil six cens cinquante, etc."' The day and month being filled in by the sender, after that you had only to twist this note round the one you wrote to your friend and have them thrown together into the box.' How long the petite poste lasted we do not know, but its life was a short one; and Pellisson wrote that 'the memory of M. de Vélayer's boxes will probably be forgotten in a few years.' The story goes that 'the popula tion cast such unlucky influences on them that no letter reached its address; and on the opening of these boxes the only thing to be found was mice that malicious people had put there'; and Belloc adds the particular instance of a poor devil of a harpsichord teacher, named Coutel, [who] wishing to give a concert, put all his letters of invitation into the petite poste, for he, too, had no laquais; not one arrived. Mice thrown in by some evil-disposed persons had eaten all.' Probably Nogent was a mere figurehead, as his name occurs only in the letters patent; and there is little doubt that the invention of the postage stamp must be ascribed to the academician, Jean-Jacques Renouard, Sieur and afterwards Comte de Villayer. Indeed, we learn from Saint-Simon that Villayer was a fellow full of singular inventions, and had plenty of cleverness.' He was also the inventor of those flying chairs that move by means of counterweights up and down between two walls to the floor required, simply by the weight of the person who sits therein'-in other words, of the modern lift. The first mention of the adhesive postage stamp is to be found in Sir Rowland Hill's evidence given before the Commissioners of Post Office Inquiry on February 13, 1837. A point was raised as to the inconvenience of employing envelopes in certain cases; and the witness suggested that perhaps this difficulty might be obviated by using a bit of paper just large enough to bear the stamp [impression], and covered at the back with a glutinous wash, which the bringer might, by the application of a little moisture, attach to the back of the letter, so as to avoid the necessity for re-directing it.' Sir Rowland may or may not have been the first to conceive the idea of the * 'Les Postes françaises,' by Alexis Belloc, p. 92 (Paris, 1886). adhesive postage stamp-certainly he never made the claim for himself; but, all evidence of earlier publication having failed, the credit of the invention remains with him. The only other claims that demand a moment's examination are those put forward in a stream of pamphlets issued from twenty to thirty years ago by the late Mr Patrick Chalmers on behalf of his deceased father, James Chalmers, a bookseller of Dundee. These pamphlets were not only circulated in Great Britain, but were also translated and spread throughout the world, with results that may still be traced in English and foreign works of reference. The Chalmers' pretensions, advanced with an excess of filial zeal, were not only examined and condemned by the late Judge Philbrick, K.C., with the unanimous concurrence of the Royal Philatelic Society, but were finally disposed of in a pamphlet, 'The Origin of Postage Stamps,' issued by Sir Rowland's son, the late Mr Pearson Hill, of the General Post Office, in 1888. The fact that James Chalmers himself, writing in 1839 to Sir Rowland Hill, claimed priority in the suggestion of slips [adhesive stamps],' having first made it public and submitted it in a communication to Mr Wallace, M.P.,' and in another document gave the precise date of this communication, (viz. November 1837), is sufficient to destroy the Chalmers' theory at its foundation; but it may be added that, in a later letter (May 18, 1840) to Sir Rowland, James Chalmers himself fully and candidly acknowledged that he had been deceived in his belief that he was first in the field' as regards his 'claim for the "postage adhesive stamp." Although uniform penny postage came into operation on January 10, 1840, the Lords of the Treasury, so late as the end of December 1839, had got no further than deciding in principle on the issue of stamped covers, stamped envelopes, and adhesive stamps, or stamps on small pieces of paper with a glutinous wash on the back, which may be attached to letters either before or after they are written.' The provision of these stamps, of which a million a day would be required, was a novel problem, of which they left the solution nominally to the Inland Revenue in conjunction with the Postmaster-General, but in reality to Sir Rowland Hill, assisted by Sir Henry Cole and advised by Sir Francis Baring. If Rowland Hill was Vol. 218.-No. 435. 2 E |