An author occupies a critical situation, for, while he is presenting
the world with the result of his profound studies and his honest
inquiries, it may prove pernicious to himself. By it he may incur the
risk of offending the higher powers, and witnessing his own days
embittered. Liable, by his moderation or his discoveries, by his
scruples or his assertions, by his adherence to truth, or by the
curiosity of his speculations, to be persecuted by two opposite
parties, even when the accusations of the one necessarily nullify the
other; such an author will be fortunate to be permitted to retire out
of the circle of the bad passions; but he crushes in silence and
voluntary obscurity all future efforts--and thus the nation loses a
valued author.
This case is exemplified by the history of Dr. COWEL'S curious work
"The Interpreter." The book itself is a treasure of our antiquities,
illustrating our national manners. The author was devoted to his
studies, and the merits of his work recommended him to the Archbishop
of Canterbury; in the Ecclesiastical Court he practised as a civilian,
and became there eminent as a judge.[130]
Cowel gave his work with all the modesty of true learning; for who
knows his deficiencies so well in the subject on which he has written
as that author who knows most? It is delightful to listen to the
simplicity and force with which an author in the reign of our first
James opens himself without reserve.
"My true end is the advancement of knowledge; and therefore have I
published this poor work, not only to impart the good thereof to those
young ones that want it, but also to draw from the learned the supply
of my defects. Whosoever will charge these my travels [labours] with
many oversights, he shall need no solemn pains to prove them. And upon
the view taken of this book sithence the impression, I dare assure
them that shall observe most faults therein, that I, by gleaning after
him, will gather as many omitted by him, as he shall show committed by
me. What a man saith well is not, however, to be rejected because he
hath some errors; reprehend who will, in God's name, that is, with
sweetness and without reproach. So shall he reap hearty thanks at my
hands, and thus more soundly help in a few months, than I, by tossing
and tumbling my books at home, could possibly have done in many
years."
This extract discovers Cowel's amiable character as an author. But he
was not fated to receive "sweetness without reproach."
Cowel encountered an unrelenting enemy in Sir Edward Coke, the famous
Attorney-General of James I., the commentator of Littleton. As a man,
his name ought to arouse our indignation, for his licentious tongue,
his fierce brutality, and his cold and tasteless genius. He whose
vileness could even ruffle the great spirit of Rawleigh, was the
shameless persecutor of the learned Cowel.
Coke was the oracle of the common law, and Cowel of the civil; but
Cowel practised at Westminster Hall as well as at Doctors' Commons.
Coke turned away with hatred from an advocate who, with the skill of a
great lawyer, exerted all the courage. The Attorney-General sought
every occasion to degrade him, and, with puerile derision, attempted
to fasten on Dr. Cowel the nickname of _Dr. Cowheel_. Coke, after
having written in his "Reports" whatever he could against our author,
with no effect, started a new project. Coke well knew his master's
jealousy on the question of his prerogative; and he touched the King
on that nerve. The Attorney-General suggested to James that Cowel had
discussed "too nicely the mysteries of his monarchy, in some points
derogatory to the supreme power of his crown; asserting that the royal
prerogative was in some cases limited." So subtly the serpent
whispered to the feminine ear of a monarch, whom this vanity of
royalty startled with all the fears of a woman. This suggestion had
nearly occasioned the ruin of Cowel--it verged on treason; and if the
conspiracy of Coke now failed, it was through the mediation of the
archbishop, who influenced the King; but it succeeded in alienating
the royal favour from Cowel.
When Coke found he could not hang Cowel for treason, it was only a
small disappointment, for he had hopes to secure his prey by involving
him in felony. As physicians in desperate cases sometimes reverse
their mode of treatment, so Coke now operated on an opposite
principle. He procured a party in the Commons to declare that Cowel
was a betrayer of the rights and liberties of the people; that he had
asserted the King was independent of Parliament, and that it was a
favour to admit the consent of his subjects in giving of subsidies,
&c.; and, in a word, that he drew his arguments from the Roman
Imperial Code, and would make the laws and customs of Rome and
Constantinople those of London and York. Passages were wrested to
Coke's design. The prefacer of Cowel's book very happily expresses
himself when he says, "When a suspected book is brought to the
torture, it often confesseth all, and more than it knows."
The Commons proceeded criminally against Cowel; and it is said his
life was required, had not the king interposed. The author was
imprisoned, and the book was burnt.
On this occasion was issued "a proclamation touching Dr. Cowel's book
called 'The Interpreter.'" It may be classed among the most curious
documents of our literary history. I do not hesitate to consider this
proclamation as the composition of James I.
I will preserve some passages from this proclamation, not merely for
their majestic composition, which may still be admired, and the
singularity of the ideas, which may still be applied--but for the
literary event to which it gave birth in the appointment of a royal
licenser for the press. Proclamations and burning of books are the
strong efforts of a weak government, exciting rather than suppressing
public attention.
"This later age and times of the world wherein we are fallen is so
much given to verbal profession, as well of religion as of all
commendable royal virtues, but wanting the actions and deeds agreeable
to so specious a profession; as it hath bred such an unsatiable
curiosity in many men's spirits, and such an itching in the tongues
and pens of most men, as nothing is left unsearched to the bottom both
in talking and writing. For from the very highest mysteries in the
Godhead and the most inscrutable counsels in the Trinity, to the very
lowest pit of hell and the confused actions of the devils there, there
is nothing now unsearched into by the curiosity of men's brains. Men,
not being contented with the knowledge of so much of the will of God
as it hath pleased him to reveal, but they will needs sit with him in
his most private closet, and become privy of his most inscrutable
counsels. And, therefore, it is no wonder that men in these our days
do not spare to wade in all the deepest mysteries that belong to the
persons or state of kings and princes, that are gods upon earth; since
we see (as we have already said) that they spare not God himself. And
this licence, which every talker or writer now assumeth to himself, is
come to this abuse; that many Phormios will give counsel to Hannibal,
and many men that never went of the compass of cloysters or colleges,
will freely wade, by their writings, in the deepest mysteries of
monarchy and politick government. Whereupon it cannot otherwise fall
out but that when men go out of their element and meddle with things
above their capacity, themselves shall not only go astray and stumble
in darkness, but will mislead also divers others with themselves into
many mistakings and errors; the proof whereof we have lately had by a
book written by Dr. Cowel, called 'The Interpreter.'"
The royal reviewer then in a summary way shows how Cowel had, "by
meddling in matters beyond his reach, fallen into many things to
mistake and deceive himself." The book is therefore "prohibited; the
buying, uttering, or reading it;" and those "who have any copies are
to deliver the same presently upon this publication to the Mayor of
London," &c., and the proclamation concludes with instituting
licensers of the press:--
"Because that there shall be better oversight of books of all sorts
before they come to the press, we have resolved to make choice of
commissioners, that shall look more narrowly into the nature of all
those things that shall be put to the press, and from whom a more
strict account shall be yielded unto us, than hath been used
heretofore."
What were the feelings of our injured author, whose integrity was so
firm, and whose love of study was so warm, when he reaped for his
reward the displeasure of his sovereign, and the indignation of his
countrymen--accused at once of contradictory crimes, he could not be
a betrayer of the rights of the people, and at the same time limit the
sovereign power. Cowel retreated to his college, and, like a wise man,
abstained from the press; he pursued his private studies, while his
inoffensive life was a comment on Coke's inhumanity more honourable to
Cowel than any of Coke's on Littleton.
Thus Cowel saw, in his own life, its richest labour thrown aside; and
when the author and his adversary were no more, it became a treasure
valued by posterity! It was printed in the reign of Charles I., under
the administration of Cromwell, and again after the Restoration. It
received the honour of a foreign edition. Its value is still
permanent. Such is the history of a book, which occasioned the
disgrace of its author, and embittered his life.
A similar calamity was the fate of honest STOWE, the Chronicler. After
a long life of labour, and having exhausted his patrimony in the study
of English antiquities, from a reverential love to his country, poor
Stowe was ridiculed, calumniated, neglected, and persecuted. One
cannot read without indignation and pity what Howes, his continuator,
tells us in his dedication. Howes had observed that--
"No man would lend a helping hand to the late aged painful Chronicler,
nor, after his death, prosecute his work. He applied himself to
several persons of dignity and learning, whose names had got forth
among the public as likely to be the continuators of Stowe; but every
one persisted in denying this, and some imagined that their secret
enemies had mentioned their names with a view of injuring them, by
incurring the displeasure of their superiors and risking their own
quiet. One said, 'I will _not flatter_, to scandalise my posterity;'
another, 'I cannot see how a man should spend his labour and money
worse than in that which acquires no regard nor reward except
_backbiting_ and _detraction_.' One swore a great oath and said, 'I
thank God that I am not yet so mad to waste my time, spend two hundred
pounds a-year, trouble myself and all my friends, only to give
assurance of endless reproach, loss of liberty, and bring all my days
in question.'"
Unhappy authors! are such then the terrors which silence eloquence,
and such the dangers which environ truth? Posterity has many
discoveries to make, or many deceptions to endure! But we are treading
on hot embers.
Such too was the fate of REGINALD SCOT, who, in an elaborate and
curious volume,[131] if he could not stop the torrent of the popular
superstitions of witchcraft, was the first, at least, to break and
scatter the waves. It is a work which forms an epoch in the history of
the human mind in our country; but the author had anticipated a very
remote period of its enlargement. Scot, the apostle of humanity, and
the legislator of reason, lived in retirement, yet persecuted by
religious credulity and legal cruelty.
SELDEN, perhaps the most learned of our antiquaries, was often led, in
his curious investigations, to disturb his own peace, by giving the
result of his inquiries. James I. and the Court party were willing
enough to extol his profound authorities and reasonings on topics
which did not interfere with their system of arbitrary power; but they
harassed and persecuted the author whom they would at other times
eagerly quote as their advocate. Selden, in his "History of Tithes,"
had alarmed the clergy by the intricacy of his inquiries. He pretends,
however, to have only collected the opposite opinions of others,
without delivering his own. The book was not only suppressed, but the
great author was further disgraced by subscribing a gross recantation
of all his learned investigations--and was compelled to receive in
silence the insults of Courtly scholars, who had the hardihood to
accuse him of plagiarism, and other literary treasons, which more
sensibly hurt Selden than the recantation extorted from his hand by
"the Lords of the High Commission Court." James I. would not suffer
him to reply to them. When the king desired Selden to show the right
of the British Crown to the dominion of the sea, this learned author
having made proper collections, Selden, angried at an imprisonment he
had undergone, refused to publish the work. A great author like Selden
degrades himself when any personal feeling, in literary disputes,
places him on an equality with any king; the duty was to his
country.--But Selden, alive to the call of rival genius, when Grotius
published, in Holland, his _Mare liberum_, gave the world his _Mare
clausum_; when Selden had to encounter Grotius, and to proclaim to the
universe "the Sovereignty of the Seas," how contemptible to him
appeared the mean persecutions of a crowned head, and how little his
own meaner resentment!
To this subject the fate of Dr. HAWKESWORTH is somewhat allied. It is
well known that this author, having distinguished himself by his
pleasing compositions in the "Adventurer," was chosen to draw up the
narrative of Cook's discoveries in the South Seas. The pictures of a
new world, the description of new manners in an original state of
society, and the incidents arising from an adventure which could find
no parallel in the annals of mankind, but under the solitary genius of
Columbus--all these were conceived to offer a history, to which the
moral and contemplative powers of Hawkesworth only were equal. Our
author's fate, and that of his work, are known: he incurred all the
danger of giving the result of his inquiries; he indulged his
imagination till it burst into pruriency, and discussed moral theorems
till he ceased to be moral. The shock it gave to the feelings of our
author was fatal; and the error of a mind, intent on inquiries which,
perhaps, he thought innocent, and which the world condemned as
criminal, terminated in death itself. Hawkesworth was a vain man, and
proud of having raised himself by his literary talents from his native
obscurity: of no learning, he drew all his science from the
Cyclopaedia; and, I have heard, could not always have construed the
Latin mottos of his own paper, which were furnished by Johnson; but
his sensibility was abundant--and ere his work was given to the world,
he felt those tremblings and those doubts which anticipated his fate.
That he was in a state of mental agony respecting the reception of his
opinions, and some other parts of his work, will, I think, be
discovered in the following letter, hitherto unpublished. It was
addressed, with his MSS., to a peer, to be examined before they were
sent to the press--an occupation probably rather too serious for the
noble critic:--
"_London, March 2, 1761._
"I think myself happy to be permitted to put _my MSS. into your
Lordship's hands_, because, though it increases my anxiety and my
fears, yet it will at least secure me from what I should think _a
far greater misfortune_ than any other that can attend my
performance, _the danger of addressing to the King any sentiment,
allusion, or opinion_, that could make such an address _improper_.
I have now the honour to submit the _work_ to your Lordship, with
the dedication; from which the duty I owe to his Majesty, and, if
I may be permitted to add anything to that, the duty I owe to
myself, have concurred to exclude the servile, extravagant, and
indiscriminate adulation which has so often disgraced alike those
by whom it has been given and received.
"I remain, &c. &c."
This elegant epistle justly describes that delicacy in style which has
been so rarely practised by an indiscriminate dedicator; and it not
less feelingly touches on that "far greater misfortune than any
other," which finally overwhelmed the fortitude and intellect of this
unhappy author!