Note 390 — JOURNAL TO STELLA (continued 9)

Dyer’s News Letter, the favourite reading of Sir Roger de Coverley (Spectator, No. 127), was the work of John Dyer, a Jacobite journalist. In the Tatler (No. 18) Addison says that Dyer was “justly looked upon by all the fox-hunters in the nation as the greatest statesman our country has produced.” Lord Chief-Justice Holt referred to the News Letter as “a little scandalous paper of a scandalous author” (Howell’s State Trials, xiv. 1150).