Caleb Whitefoord came up with ‘A New and Humourous Method of Reading the News-Papers’ (1766), a satire on the frequently heard complaint that there is ‘Nothing at all in the papers’. His method involved ignoring column breaks while reading newspapers in order to produce humorous results. Such juxtapositions include: ‘This day his Majesty will go in state to
fifteen notorious common prostitutes’, ‘Yesterday Lord Mayor was sworn in
afterwards tossed and gored several persons’ and about 50 other such knee-slappers.
Whitefoord’s ‘Method’ ‘greatly amused the usually critical Horace Walpole and also found favour with Oliver Goldsmith and Samuel Johnson’ (ODNB), starting as a letter to the editor of the General Evening Post to the Printer in the Public Advertiser on either 10 Nov. or 10 Dec. 1766. It was reprinted in London Magazine (35: 639-40); and in the Virginia Gazette (2 April 1767). Johnson ‘thought Mr. Caleb Whitefoord singularly happy in hitting on the signature of Papyrius Cursor, to his ingenious and diverting cross-readings of the newspapers ’ (Boswell, Life of Johnson, pp. 1313-14).
This is reprinted in The New Foundling Hospital for Wit, part 1 (1768): 127-32, just published in facsimile by Pickering & Chatto.
Cheers, Don Nichol
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