"Mr. Prynne came to him to license a treatise concerning stage-plays;
but he would not allow of the same;"--and adds, "So this man did
deliver this book when it was young and tender, and would have had it
then printed; but it is since grown seven times bigger, and seven
times worse."
Prynne not being able to procure these licensers, had recourse to
another, Buckner, chaplain to the Archbishop of Canterbury. It was
usual for the licenser to examine the MS. before it went to the press;
but Prynne either tampered with Buckner, or so confused his intellects
by keeping his multifarious volume in the press for four years; and
sometimes, I suspect, by numbering folios for pages, as appears in the
work, that the examination of the licenser gradually relaxed; and he
declares in his defence that he had only licensed part of it. The
bookseller, Sparks, was indeed a noted publisher of what was then
called "Unlawful and unlicensed books;" and he had declared that it
was "an excellent book, which would be called in, and then sell well."
He confesses the book had been more than three years in the press, and
had cost him three hundred pounds.
The speech of Noy, the Attorney-General, conveys some notion of the
work itself; sufficiently curious as giving the feelings of those
times against the Puritans.
"Who he means by his _modern innovators_ in the church, and by
_cringing and ducking_ to altars, a fit term to bestow on the church;
he learned it of the _canters_, being used among them. The musick in
the church, the charitable term he giveth it, is not to be a noise of
men, but rather a _bleating of brute beasts_; choristers _bellow_ the
tenor, as it were oxen; _bark_ a counterpoint as a kennel of dogs;
_roar_ out a treble like a sort of bulls; _grunt_ out a bass, as it
were a number of hogs. Bishops he calls the _silk and satin divines_;
says Christ was a Puritan, in his Index. He falleth on those things
that have not relation to stage-plays, musick in the church, dancing,
new-years' gifts, &c.,--then upon altars, images, hair of men and
women, bishops and bonfires. Cards and tables do offend him, and
perukes do fall within the compass of his theme. His end is to
persuade the people that we are returning back again to paganism, and
to persuade them to go and serve God in another country, as many are
gone already, and set up new laws and fancies among themselves.
Consider what may come of it!"
The decision of the Lords of the Star Chamber was dictated by passion
as much as justice. Its severity exceeded the crime of having produced
an unreadable volume of indigested erudition; and the learned
scribbler was too hardly used, scarcely escaping with life. Lord
Cottington, amazed at the mighty volume, too bluntly affirmed that
Prynne did not write this book alone; "he either assisted the devil,
or was assisted by the devil." But secretary Cooke delivered a
sensible and temperate speech; remarking on all its false erudition
that,
"By this vast book of Mr. Prynne's, it appeareth that he hath read
more than he hath studied, and studied more than he hath considered.
He calleth his book 'Histriomastix;' but therein he showeth himself
like unto Ajax Anthropomastix, as the Grecians called him, the scourge
of all mankind, that is, the whipper and the whip."
Such is the history of a man whose greatness of character was clouded
over and lost in a fatal passion for scribbling; such is the history
of a voluminous author whose genius was such that he could write a
folio much easier than a page; and "seldom dined" that he might quote
"squadrons of authorities."[109]