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The Book-Lover's Library.
Edited by
Henry B. Wheatley, F.S.A.
BOOKS CONDEMNED
TO BE BURNT.
BY
JAMES ANSON FARRER,
LONDON
ELLIOT STOCK, 62, PATERNOSTER ROW
1892
PREFACE.
_When did books first come to be burnt in England by the common
hangman, and what was the last book to be so treated? This is the
sort of question that occurs to a rational curiosity, but it is
just this sort of question to which it is often most difficult to
find an answer. Historians are generally too engrossed with the
details of battles, all as drearily similar to one another as
scenes of murder and rapine must of necessity be, to spare a
glance for the far brighter and more instructive field of the
mutations or of the progress of manners. The following work is an
attempt to supply the deficiency on this particular subject._
_I am indebted to chance for having directed me to the interest
of book-burning as an episode in the history of the world's
manners, the discursive allusions to it in the old numbers of
"Notes and Queries" hinting to me the desirability of a more
systematic mode of treatment. To bibliographers and literary
historians I conceived that such a work might prove of utility
and interest, and possibly serve to others as an introduction and
incentive to a branch of our literary history that is not without
its fascination. But I must also own to a less unselfish motive,
for I imagined that not without its reward of delight would be a
temporary sojourn among the books which, for their boldness of
utterance or unconventional opinions, were not only not received
by the best literary society of their day, but were with ignominy
expelled from it. Nor was I wrong in my calculation._
_But could I impart or convey the same delight to others?
Clearly all that I could do was to invite them to enter on the
same road, myself only subserving the humble functions of a
signpost. I could avoid merely compiling for them a
bibliographical dictionary, but I could not treat at length of
each offender in my catalogue, without, in so exhausting my
subject, exhausting at the same time my reader's patience. I have
tried therefore to give something of the life of their history
and times to the authors with whom I came in contact; to cast a
little light on the idiosyncrasies or misfortunes of this one or
of that; but to do them full justice, and to enable the reader to
make their complete acquaintance, how was that possible with any
regard for the laws of literary proportion? All I could do was to
aim at something less dull than a dictionary, but something far
short of a history._
_I trust that no one will be either attracted or alarmed by any
anticipations suggested by the title of my book. Although
primarily a book for the library, it is also one of which no
drawing-room table need be the least afraid. If I have found
anything in my condemned authors which they would have done
better to have left unsaid, I have, in referring to their
fortunes, felt under no compulsion to reproduce their
indiscretions. But, in all of them put together, I doubt whether
there is as much to offend a scrupulous taste as in many a
latter-day novel, the claim of which to the distinction of
burning is often as indisputable as the certainty of its
regrettable immunity from that fiery but fitting fate._
_The custom I write about suggests some obvious reflections on
the mutability of our national manners. Was the wisdom of our
ancestors really so much greater than our own, as many profess
to believe? If so, it is strange with how much of that wisdom we
have learnt to dispense. One by one their old customs have fallen
away from us, and I fancy that if any gentleman could come back
to us from the seventeenth century, he would be less astonished
by the novel sights he would see than by the old familiar sights
he would miss. He would see no one standing in the pillory, no
one being burnt at a stake, no one being "swum" for witchcraft,
no one's veracity being tested by torture, and, above all, no
hangman burning books at Cheapside, no unfortunate authors being
flogged all the way from Fleet Street to Westminster. The absence
of these things would probably strike him more than even the
railways and the telegraph wires. Returning with his old-world
ideas, he would wonder how life and property had survived the
removal of their time-honoured props, or how, when all fear of
punishment had been removed from the press, Church and State were
still where he had left them. Reflecting on these things, he
would recognise the fact that he himself had been living in an
age of barbarism from which we, his posterity, were in process of
gradual emergence. What vistas of still further improvement would
not then be conjured up before his mind!_
_We can hardly wonder at our ancestors burning books when we
recollect their readiness to burn one another. It was not till
the year 1790 that women ceased to be liable to be burnt alive
for high or for _petit_ treason, and Blackstone found nothing to
say against it. He saw nothing unfair in burning a woman for
coining, but in only hanging a man. "The punishment of _petit_
treason," he says, "in a man is to be drawn and hanged, and in a
woman to be drawn and burned; the idea of which latter punishment
seems to have been handed down to us by the ancient Druids, which
condemned a woman to be burnt for murdering her husband, and it
is now the usual punishment for all sorts of treasons committed
by those of the female sex." Not a suspicion seems to have
crossed the great jurist's mind that the supposed barbarity of
the Druids was not altogether a conclusive justification for the
barbarity of his own contemporaries. So let us take warning from
his example, and let the history of our practice of book-burning
serve to help us to keep our minds open with regard to anomalies
which may still exist amongst us, descended from as suspicious an
origin, and as little supported by reason._
CONTENTS.
PAGE
INTRODUCTION 1
CHAPTER I. SIXTEENTH-CENTURY BOOK-FIRES 25
II. BOOK-FIRES UNDER JAMES I 48
III. CHARLES THE FIRST'S BOOK-FIRES 69
IV. BOOK-FIRES OF THE REBELLION 94
V. BOOK-FIRES OF THE RESTORATION 117
VI. BOOK-FIRES OF THE REVOLUTION 136
VII. OUR LAST BOOK-FIRES 170
APPENDIX 191
INDEX 201
BOOKS
CONDEMNED TO BE BURNT.
INTRODUCTION.
There is the sort of attraction that belongs to all forbidden
fruit in books which some public authority has condemned to the
flames. And seeing that to collect something is a large part of
the secret of human happiness, it occurred to me that a variety
of the happiness that is sought in book collecting might be found
in making a collection of books of this sort. I have, therefore,
put together the following narrative of our burnt literature as
some kind of aid to any book-lover who shall choose to take my
hint and make the peculiarity I have indicated the key-note to
the formation of his library.
But the aid I offer is confined to books so condemned in the
United Kingdom. Those who would pursue the study farther afield,
and extend their wishes beyond the four seas, will find all the
aid they need or desire in Peignot's admirable _Dictionnaire
Critique, Litteraire, et Bibliographique des principaux Livres
condamnes au feu, supprimes ou censures_: Paris, 1806. To have
extended my studies to cover this wider ground would have swollen
my book as well as my labour beyond the limits of my inclination.
I may mention that Hart's _Index Expurgatorius_ covers this wider
ground for England, as far as it goes.
Nevertheless, I may, perhaps, appropriately, by way of
introduction, refer to some episodes and illustrations of
book-burning, to show the place the custom had in the development
of civilisation, and the distinction of good or bad company and
ancient lineage enjoyed by such books as their punishment by
burning entitles to places on the shelves of our fire-library.
The custom was of pagan observance long before it passed into
Christian practice; and for its existence in Greece, and for the
first instance I know of, I would refer to the once famous or
notorious work of Protagoras, certainly one of the wisest
philosophers or sophists of ancient times. He was the first
avowed Agnostic, for he wrote a work on the gods, of which the
very first remark was that the existence of gods at all he could
not himself either affirm or deny. For this offensive sentiment
his book was publicly burnt; but Protagoras, could he have
foreseen the future, might have esteemed himself happy to have
lived before the Christian epoch, when authors came to share with
their works the purifying process of fire. The world grew less
humane as well as less sensible as it grew older, and came to
think more of orthodoxy than of any other condition of the mind.
The virtuous Romans appear to have been greater book-burners than
the Greeks, both under the Republic and under the Empire. It was
the Senate's function to condemn books to the flames, and the
praetor's to see that it was done, generally in the Forum. But for
this evil habit we might still possess many valuable works, such
as the books attributed to Numa on Pontifical law (Livy xl.), and
those eulogies of Paetus Thrasea and Helvidius, which were burnt,
and their authors put to death, under the tyranny of Domitian
(Tacitus, Agricola 2). Let these cases suffice to connect the
custom with Pagan Rome, and to prove that this particular mode
of warring with the expression of free thought boasts its
precedents in pre-Christian antiquity.
Nevertheless it is the custom as it was manifested in Christian
times that has chief interest for us, because it is only with
condemned books of this period that we have any chance of
practical acquaintance. Some of these survived the flames, whilst
none of antiquity's burning have come down to us. But on what
principle it was that the burning authorities (in France
generally the Parlement of Paris, or of the provinces), burnt
some books, whilst others were only censured, condemned, or
suppressed, I am unable to say, and I doubt whether any principle
was involved. Peignot has noticed the chief books stigmatised by
authority in all these various ways; but though undoubtedly this
wider view is more philosophical, the view is quite comprehensive
enough which confines itself to the consideration of books that
were condemned to be burnt.
Books so treated may be classified according as they offended
against (i) the religion, (ii) the morals, or (iii) the politics
of the day, those against the first being by far the most
numerous, and so admitting here of notice only of their most
conspicuous specimens.
I. Of all the books burnt for offence under the first head, the
most to be regretted, from an historical point of view, I take to
be Porphyry's _Treatise against the Christians_, which was burnt
A.D. 388 by order of Theodosius the Great. Porphyry believed that
Daniel's prophecies had been written after the events foretold in
them by some one who took the name of Daniel. It would have been
interesting to have known Porphyry's grounds for this not
improbable opinion, as well as his general charges against the
Christians; and if there is anything in the tradition of the
survival of a copy of Porphyry in one of the libraries of
Florence, the testimony of the distinguished Platonist may yet
enlighten us on the causes of the growing darkness of the age in
which he lived.
All the books of the famous Abelard were burnt by order of Pope
Innocent II.; but it was his _Treatise on the Trinity_, condemned
by the Council of Soissons about 1121, and by the Council of Sens
in 1140, which chiefly led St. Bernard to his cruel persecution
of this famous man. That great saint, using the habitual language
of ecclesiastical charity, called Abelard an infernal dragon and
the precursor of Antichrist. Among his heresies Abelard seems to
have held the opinion that the devil has no power over man; but
at all events the Church had in those days, as Abelard learnt to
his cost, though, considering that his disciple Arnauld of
Brescia was destined to be burnt alive at Rome in 1155, Abelard
might have deemed himself fortunate in only incurring
imprisonment, and not sharing the fate of his works as well as
that of his illustrious follower.
The latter calamity befell John Huss, who, having been led before
the bishop's palace to see his own condemned works burnt, was
then led on to be burnt himself, in 1415. Many of his works,
however, were republished in the following century; but the
twenty-nine errors which the Council of Constance detected in his
work on the Church would probably nowadays seem venial enough. It
was his misfortune to live in those days when the inhumanity of
the world was at its climax.
It continued at that climax for some time, though heretical
authors were not always burnt with their books. Enjedim, for
instance, the Hungarian Socinian, who died in 1596, survived the
burning in many places of his "Explanations of Difficult Passages
of the Old and New Testament, from which the Dogma of the
Trinity is usually established" (_Explicationes locorum
difficilium_, etc.). Peter d'Osma also, the Spanish theologian,
whose _Treatise on Confession_ was condemned by the Archbishop of
Toledo in the fifteenth century, might have esteemed himself
happy that only his chair shared the burning of his book.
Pomponacius, an Italian professor of philosophy, whose _Treatise
on the Immortality of the Soul_ (1516), was burnt by the
Venetians for the heretical opinion that the soul's immortality
was not believed by Aristotle, and could only be proved by
Scripture and the authority of the Church, seems to have died
peacefully in 1526, albeit with the reputation of an atheist,
which his writings do not support. Desperiers was only imprisoned
when his _Cymbalum Mundi_, censured by the Sorbonne, was
consigned to the flames by the Parlement of Paris (March 7th,
1537). And Luther, all of whose works were condemned to be burnt
by the Diet of Worms (1521), actually survived their burning
twenty-five years, though he himself had publicly burnt at
Wittenberg Leo X.'s bull, anathematising his books, as well as
the Decretals of previous Popes.
Less fortunate than these were the famous martyrs of free
thought, Dolet, Servetus, and Tyndale. All the works, which Dolet
wrote or printed, were burnt as heretical by the Parlement of
Paris (February 14th, 1543), and himself hanged and burnt three
years later (August 3rd, 1546), at the age of thirty-seven. The
reason seems chiefly to have been Dolet's unsparing exposure of
the immoralities of monks and priests, and of the plan of the
Sorbonne to put down the art of printing in France. In Peignot is
preserved a long list of the names of the works to the
publication of which he lent his aid.
The burning of Servetus, the Parisian doctor, at Geneva (October
27th, 1553), because his opinions on the Trinity did not agree
with Calvin's, is of course the greatest blot on the memory of
Calvin. All his books or manuscripts were burnt with him or
elsewhere, so that his works are among the rarest of
bibliographical treasures, and his _Christianismi Restitutio_
(1553) is said to be the rarest book in the world. But apart from
their rarity, I should hardly imagine that the works of Servetus
possessed the slightest interest, or that their loss was the
smallest loss to the literature of the world.
But if Calvin must bear the burden of the death of Servetus,
Christianity itself is responsible for the death of William
Tyndale, who, deeming it desirable that his countrymen should
possess in their own language the book on which their religion
was founded, took the infinite trouble of translating the
Scriptures into English. His New Testament was forthwith burnt in
London, and himself after some years strangled and burnt at
Antwerp (1536).
The same literary persecution continued in the next century, the
seventeenth. Bissendorf perished at the hands of the executioner
at the same time that his books, _Nodi gordii resolutio_ (on the
priestly calling), 1624, and _The Jesuits_, were burnt by the
same agent. In the case of the _De Republica Ecclesiastica_
(1617) by De Dominis, Christian savagery surpassed itself, for
not only was it burnt by sentence of the Inquisition, but also
the dead body of its author was exhumed for the purpose. Dominis
had been a Jesuit for twenty years, then a bishop, and finally
Archbishop of Spalatro. This office he gave up, and retired to
England, where he might write with greater freedom than in Italy.
There he wrote this work and a history of the Council of Trent.
His chief offence was his advocacy of the unchristian principles
of toleration; he wished to reunite and reconcile the Christian
communions. But alas for human frailty! he retracted his errors,
many of them most sensible opinions, in London, and again at
Rome, whither he returned. Pope Urban VIII., however, imprisoned
him in the Castle of St. Angelo, where he is said to have died of
poison, so that only his dead body was available to burn with his
book the same year (1625). Literary lives were tragic in those
times.
Simon Morin was burnt with all the copies of his _Pensees_ that
could be found, on the Place de Greve, at Paris, March 14th,
1663. Morin called himself the Son of Man, and such thoughts of
his as survived the fire do not lead us in his case to grudge the
flames their literary fuel. But it is curious to think that we
are only two centuries from the time when the Parlement of Paris
could pass such a sentence on such a sufferer.
The Parlement of Dijon condemned to be burnt by the executioner
Morisot's _Ahitophili Veritatis Lacrymae_ (July 4th, 1625), but
though this work was a violent satire upon the Jesuits, Morisot
survived his book thirty-six years, the Jesuits revenging
themselves with nothing worse than an epitaph, containing a bad
pun, to the effect that their enemy, after a life not spent in
wisdom, preferred to die as a fool (_Voluit mori-sot_).
In the same century Molinos, the Spanish priest, and founder of
Quietism, wrote his _Conduite Spirituelle_, which was condemned
to the flames for sixty-eight heretical propositions, whilst its
author was consigned to the prisons of the Inquisition, where he
died after eleven years of it (1696). Self-absorption of the soul
in God to the point of complete indifference to anything done to
or by the body, even to the sufferings of the latter in hell, was
the doctrine of Quietism that led ecclesiastic authority to feel
its usual alarm for consequences; and it must be admitted that
similar doctrines have at times played sad havoc with Christian
morality. But perhaps they helped Molinos the better to bear his
imprisonment.
I may next refer to seventeenth-century writers who were
fortunate enough not to share the burning of their books. (1)
Wolkelius, a friend of Socinus, the edition of whose book _De
Vera Religione_, published at Amsterdam in 1645, was there burnt
by order of the magistrates for its Socinian doctrines, appears
to have lived for many years afterwards. Schlicttingius, a
Polish follower of the same faith, escaped with expulsion from
Poland, when the Diet condemned his book, _Confessio Fidei
Christianae_, to be burnt by the executioner. Sainte Foi, or
Gerberon, whose _Miroir de la Verite Chretienne_ was condemned by
several bishops and archbishops, and burnt by order of the
Parlement of Aix (1678), lived to write other works, of probably
as little interest. La Peyrere was only imprisoned at Brussels
for his book on the _Pre-adamites_, which was burnt at Paris
(1655). And Pascal saw his famous _Lettres a un Provincial_,
which made too free with the dignity of all authorities, secular
and religious, twice burnt, once in French (1657), and once in
Latin (1660), without himself incurring a similar penalty. So did
Derodon, professor of philosophy at Nismes, outlive the
_Disputatio_ (1645), in which he made light of Cyril of
Alexandria, and which was condemned and burnt by the Parlement of
Toulouse for its opposition to some beliefs of Roman Catholicism.
Passing now to the eighteenth century, we find book-burning, then
declining in England, in full vigour on the Continent.
The most important book that so suffered was Rousseau's admirable
treatise on education, entitled _Emile_ (1762), condemned by the
Parlement of Paris to be torn and burnt at the foot of its great
staircase. It was also burnt at Geneva. Three years later the
same writer's _Lettres de la Montagne_ were sentenced by the same
tribunal to the same fate. Not all burnt books should be read,
but Rousseau's _Emile_ is one that should be.
So should the Marquis de Langle's _Voyage en Espagne_, condemned
to the flames in 1788, but translated into English, German, and
Italian. De Langle anticipated this fate for his book if it ever
passed the Pyrenees: "So much the better," said he; "the reader
loves the books they burn, so does the publisher, and the author;
it is his blue ribbon." But, considering that he wrote against
the Inquisition, and similar inhumanities or follies of
Catholicism, De Langle must have been surprised at the burning of
his book in Paris itself.
A book at whose burning we may feel less surprise is the
_Theologie Portative ou Dictionnaire abregede la Religion
Chretienne_, by the Abbe Bernier (1775), for a long time
attributed to Voltaire, but really the work of an apostate monk,
Dulaurent, who took refuge in Holland to write this and similar
works.
The number of books of a similar strong anti-Catholic tendency
that were burnt in these years before the outbreak of the
Revolution should be noticed as helping to explain that event.
Their titles in most cases may suffice to indicate their nature.
De la Mettrie's _L'homme Machine_ (1748) was written and burnt in
Holland, its author being a doctor, of whom Voltaire said that he
was a madman who only wrote when he was drunk. Of a similar kind
was the _Testament_ of Jean Meslier, published posthumously in
the _Evangile de la Raison_, and condemned to the flames about
1765. On June 11th, 1763, the Parlement of Paris ordered to be
burnt an anonymous poem, called _La Religion a l'Assemblee du
Clerge de France_, in which the writer depicted in dark colours
the morals of the French bishops of the time (1762). On January
29th, 1768, was treated in the same way the _Histoire Impartiale
des Jesuites_ of Linguet, whose _Annales Politiques_ in 1779
conducted him to the Bastille, and who ultimately died at the
hands of the Revolutionary Tribunal (1794). But the 18th of
August, 1770, is memorable for having seen all the seven
following books sentenced to burning by the Parlement of Paris:--
1. Woolston's _Discours sur les Miracles de Jesus-Christ_,
translated from the English (1727).
2. Boulanger's _Christianisme devoile_.
3. Freret's _Examen Critique des Apologistes de la Religion
Chretienne_, 1767.
4. The _Examen Impartial des Principales Religions du Monde_.
5. Baron d'Holbach's _Contagion Sacree_, or _l'Histoire Naturelle
de la Superstition_, 1768.
6. Holbach's _Systeme de la Nature ou des Lois du Monde Physique
et du Monde Moral_.
7. Voltaire's _Dieu et les Hommes; oeuvre theologique, mais
raisonnable_ (1769).
No one writer, indeed, of the eighteenth century contributed so
many books to the flames as Voltaire. Besides the above work, the
following of his works incurred the same fate:--(1) the _Lettres
Philosophiques_ (1733), (2) the _Cantique des Cantiques_ (1759),
(3) the _Dictionnaire Philosophique_ (1764), also burnt at
Geneva; (4) _L'Homme aux Quarante Ecus_ (1767), (5) _Le Diner du
Comte de Boulainvilliers_ (1767). When we add to these burnings
the fact that at least fourteen works of Voltaire were condemned,
many others suppressed or forbidden, their author himself twice
imprisoned in the Bastille, and often persecuted or obliged to
fly from France, we must admit that seldom or never had any
writer so eventful a literary career.
II. Turning now to the books that were burnt for their real or
supposed immoral tendency, I may refer briefly in chronological
order to the following as the principal offenders, though of
course there is not always a clear distinction between what was
punished as immoral and punished as irreligious. This applies to
the four volumes of the works of the Carmelite Mantuanus,
published at Antwerp in 1576, of which nearly all the copies were
burnt. This facile poet, who is said to have composed 59,000
verses, was especially severe against women and against the
ecclesiastical profession. In 1664, the _Journal de Louis Gorin
de Saint Amour_, a satirical work, was condemned, chiefly
apparently because it contained the five propositions of
Jansenius. In 1623, the Parlement of Paris condemned Theophile to
be burnt with his book, _Le Parnasse des Poetes Satyriques_, but
the author escaped with his burning in effigy, and with
imprisonment in a dungeon. I am tempted to quote Theophile's
impromptu reply to a man who asserted that all poets were
fools:--
"Oui, je l'avoue avec vous
Que tous les poetes sont fous;
Mais sachant ce que vous etes
Tous les fous ne sont pas poetes."
Helot also escaped with a burning in effigy when his _L'Ecole des
Filles_ was burnt at the foot of the gallows (1672). Lyser, who
spent his life and his property in the advocacy of polygamy, was
threatened by Christian V. with capital punishment if he appeared
in Denmark, and his _Discursus Politicus de Polygamia_ was
sentenced to public burning (1677).
In the eighteenth century (1717) Gigli's satire, the _Vocabulario
di Santa Caterina e della lingua Sanese_; Dufresnoy's _Princesses
Malabares, ou le Celibat Philosophique_ (1734); Deslandes'
_Pigmalion ou la Statue Animee_ (1741); the Jesuit Busembaum's
_Theologia Moralis_ (which defends as an act of charity the
commission to kill an excommunicated person), (1757); Toussaint's
_Les Moeurs_ (1748); and the Abbe Talbert's satirical poem,
_Langrognet aux Enfers_ (1760),--seem to complete the list of the
principal works burnt by public authority. And of these the best
is Toussaint's, who in 1764 published an apology for or
retraction of his _Moeurs_, which has far less claim upon
public attention than was obtained and merited by the original
work.
III. Books condemned for some unpopular political tendency may
likewise be arranged in the order of their centuries.
In the sixteenth, the most important are Louis d'Orleans'
_Expostulatio_ (1593), a violent attack on Henri IV., and
condemned by the Parlement of Paris; Archbishop Genebrard's _De
sacrarum electionum jure et necessitate ad Ecclesiae Gallicanae
redintegrationem_ (1593), condemned by the Parlement of Aix, and
its author exiled. He maintained the right of the clergy and
people to elect bishops against their nomination by the king. It
is curious that the Parlement of Paris thought it necessary to
burn the Jesuit Mariana's book _De Rege_ (1599) as
anti-monarchical, seeing that it appeared with the privilege of
the King of Spain. He maintained the right of killing a king for
the cause of religion, and called Jacques Clement's act of
assassination France's everlasting glory (_Galliae aeternum
decus_). But it is only fair to add that the superior of the
Order disapproved of the work as much as the Sorbonne.
In the seventeenth century, I notice first the _Ecclesiasticus_
of Scioppius, a work directed against our James I. and Casaubon
(1611). The libel having been burnt in London, and its author
hanged and beaten in effigy before the king on the stage, was
burnt in Paris by order of the Parlement, chiefly for its
calumnies on Henri IV. The author, originally a Jesuit, has been
called the Attila of writers, having been said to have known the
abusive terms of all tongues, and to have had them on the tip of
his own. He wrote 104 works, apparently of the violent sort, so
that Casaubon called him, according to the style of learned men
in those days, "the most cruel of all wild beasts," whilst the
Jesuits called him "the public pest of letters and society."
The Senate of Venice caused to be burnt the _Della Liberta
Veneta_, by a man who called himself Squitinio (1612), because it
denied the independence of the Republic, and asserted that the
Emperor had rightful claims over it; and about the same time
(1617) the Parlement of Paris consigned to the same penalty
D'Aubigne's _Histoire Universelle_ for the freedom of its satire
on Charles IX., Henri III., Henri IV., and other French royal
personages of the time. The second edition of D'Aubigne (1626) is
the poorer for being shorn of these caustic passages.
The Jesuit Keller's _Admonitio ad Ludovicum XIII._ (1625), and
the same author's Mysteria Politica, (1625), were both sentenced
to be burnt; also the Jesuit Sanctarel's _Tractatus de Haeresi_
(1625), which claimed for the Pope the right to dispose, not only
of the thrones, but also of the lives of princes. This doctrine
was approved by the General of the Jesuits, but, under threat of
being accounted guilty of treason, expressly disclaimed by the
Jesuits as a body. In resisting such pretensions, the Sorbonne
deserved well of France and of humanity. In 1665, the Chatelet
ordered to be burnt Claude Joly's _Recueil des Maximes veritables
et importantes pour l'Institution du Roi, contre la fausse et
pernicieuse politique de Cardinal pretendu surintendant de
l'education de Louis XIV._ (1652); a book which, if it had been
regarded instead of being burnt, might have altered the character
of that pernicious devastator, and therefore of history itself,
very much for the better. About the same time, Milton's _Pro
Populo Anglicano Defensio_, not to be burnt in England till the
Restoration, had a foretaste in Paris of its ultimate fate.
Eustache le Noble's satire against the Dutch, _Dialogue d'Esope
et de Mercure_, and burnt by the executioner at Amsterdam, may
complete the list of political works that paid for their
offences by fire in the seventeenth century.
The first to notice in the next century is Giannone's _Historia
Civile de Regno di Napoli_ (1723), in five volumes, burnt by the
Inquisition, which, but for his escape, would have suppressed the
author as well as his book, for his free criticism of Popes and
ecclesiastics. His escape saved the eighteenth century from the
reproach of burning a writer. Next deserves a passing allusion
the _Historia Nostri Temporis_, by the once famous writer Emmius,
whose posthumous book suffered at the hands of George Albert,
Prince of East Frisia. The Parlement of Toulouse condemned
Reboulet's _Histoire des Filles de la Congregation de l'Enfance_
(1734) for accusing Madame de Moudonville, the founder of that
convent, of publishing libels against the king. That of Paris and
Besancon condemned Boncerf's _Des Inconveniens des Droits
Feodaux_ (1770).
The number, indeed, of political works burnt during the eighth
decade of the last century is as remarkable as the number of
religious books so treated about the same period: one of the
lesser indications of the coming Revolution. During this decade
were condemned: (1) Pidanzet's _Correspondance secrete familiere
de Chancelier Maupeon avec Sorhouet_ (1771) for being
blasphemous and seditious, and calculated to rouse people against
government; a work that made sport of Maupeon and his Parlement.
(2) Beaumarchais' _Memoires_ (1774), of the literary style of
which Voltaire himself is said to have been jealous, but which
was condemned to the flames for its imputations on the powers
that were. (3) Lanjuinais' _Monarque Accompli_ (1774), whose
other title explains why it was condemned, as tending to sedition
and revolt, _Prodiges de bonte, de savoir, et de sagesse, qui
font l'eloge de Sa Majeste Imperiale Joseph II., et qui rendent
cet auguste monarque si precieux a l'humanite, discutes au
tribunal de la raison et l'equite_. Lanjuinais, principal of a
Catholic college in Switzerland, passed over to the Reformed
Religion. (4) Martin de Marivaux's _L'Ami des Lois_ (1775), a
pamphlet, in which the author protested against the words put
into the mouth of the king by Chancellor Maupeon, Sept. 7th,
1770: "We hold our Crown of God alone; the right of law-making,
without dependence or partition, belongs to us alone." The author
contended that the Crown was held only of the nation, and he
excited the vengeance of the Crown by sending a copy of his work
to each member of the Parlement. At the same time, to the same
penalty and for the same offence, was condemned to the flames _Le
Catechisme du Citoyen, ou Elemens du Droit public Francais, par
demandes et par reponses_; the episode, and the origin of the
dispute, clearly pointing to the rapidly approaching
Revolutionary whirlwind, the spirit of which these literary
productions anticipated and expressed.
The last book I find to notice is the Abbe Raynal's _Histoire
philosophique et politique des Etablissemens et du Commerce des
Europeens dans les Deux Indes_, published in 1771 at Geneva, and,
after a first attempt at suppression in 1779, finally burnt by
the order of the Parlement of Paris of May 25th, 1781, as
impious, blasphemous, seditious, and the rest. Like many another
eminent writer, Raynal had started as a Jesuit.
From the above illustrations of the practice abroad, we may turn
to a more detailed account of its history in England. Although in
France it was much more common than in England during the
eighteenth century, it appears to have come to an end in both
countries about the same time. I am not aware of any proofs that
it survived the French Revolution, and it is probable that that
event, directly or indirectly, put an end to it. In England it
seems gradually to have dwindled, and to have become extinct
before the end of the century. If the same was the case in other
countries, it would afford another instance of the fundamental
community of development which seems to govern at least our part
of the civilised world, regardless of national differences or
boundaries. The different countries of the world seem to throw
off evil habits, or to acquire new habits, with a degree of
simultaneity which is all the more remarkable for being the
result of no sort of agreement. At one time, for instance, they
throw off Jesuitism, at another the practice of torture, at
another the judicial ordeal, at another burnings for heresy, at
another trials for witchcraft, at another book-burning; and now
the turn seems approaching of war, or the trade of professional
murder. The custom here to be dealt with, therefore, holds its
place in the history of humanity, and is as deserving of study as
any other custom whose rise and decline constitute a phase in the
world's development.
CHAPTER I.
SIXTEENTH CENTURY BOOK-FIRES.
Fire, which is the destruction of so many things, and destined,
according to old Indian belief, one day to destroy the world, is
so peculiarly the enemy of books, that the worm itself is not
more fatal to them. Whole libraries have fallen a prey to the
flames, and oftener, alas! by design than accident; the warrior
always, whether Alexander at Persepolis, Antiochus at Jerusalem,
Caesar and Omar at Alexandria, or General Ulrich at Strasburg (in
1870), esteeming it among the first duties of his barbarous
calling to consign ideas and arts to destruction.
But these are the fires of indiscriminate rage, due to the
natural antagonism between civilisation and military barbarism;
it is fire, discriminately applied, that attaches a special
interest and value to books condemned to it. Whether the sentence
has come from Pope or Archbishop, Parliament or King, the book so
sentenced has a claim on our curiosity, and as often on our
respect as our disdain. Fire, indeed, has been spoken of as the
blue ribbon of literature, and many a modern author may fairly
regret that such a distinction is no longer attainable in these
days of enlightened advertisement.
To collect books that have been dishonoured--or honoured--in this
way, books that at the risk of heavy punishment have been saved
from the public fire or the common hangman, is no mean amusement
for a bibliophile. Some collect books for their bindings, some
for their rarity, a minority for their contents; but he who
collects a fire-library makes all these considerations secondary
to the associations of his books with the lives of their authors
and their place in the history of ideas. Perhaps he is thereby
the more rational collector, if reason at all need be considered
in the matter; for if my whim pleases myself, let him go hang who
disdains or disapproves of it.
All the books of such a library are not, of course, suitable for
general reading, there being not a few disgraceful ones among
them that fully deserved the stigma intended for them. But most
are innocent enough, and many of them as dull as the authors of
their condemnation; whilst others, again, are so sparkling and
well written that I wish it were possible to rescue them from the
oblivion that enshrouds them even more thickly than the dust of
centuries. The English books of this sort naturally stand apart
from their foreign rivals, and may be roughly classified
according as they deal with the affairs of State or Church. The
original flavour has gone from many of them, like the scent from
dried flowers, with the dispute or ephemeral motive that gave
rise to them; but a new flavour from that very fact has taken the
place of the old, of the same sort that attaches to the relics of
extinct religions or of bygone forms of life.
The history of our country since the days of printing is exactly
reflected in its burnt literature, and so little has the public
fire been any respecter of class or dignity, that no branch of
intellectual activity has failed to contribute some author whose
work, or works, has been consigned to the flames. Our greatest
poets, philosophers, bishops, lawyers, novelists, heads of
colleges, are all represented in my collection, forming indeed a
motley but no insipid society, wherein the gravest questions of
government and the deepest problems of speculation are handled
with freedom, and men who were most divided in their lives meet
at last in a common bond of harmony. Cowell, the friend of
prerogative, finds himself here side by side with Milton, the
republican; and Sacheverell, the high churchman, in close company
with Tindal and Defoe.
For nearly 300 years the rude censorship of fire was applied to
literature in England, beginning naturally in that fierce
religious war we call the Reformation, which practically
constitutes the history of England for some two centuries. The
first grand occasion of book-burning was in response to the
Pope's sentence against Martin Luther, when Wolsey went in state
to St. Paul's, and many of Luther's publications were burned in
the churchyard during a sermon against them by Fisher, Bishop of
Rochester (1521).
But the first printed work by an Englishman that was so treated
was actually the Gospel. The story is too familiar to repeat, of
the two occasions on which Tyndale's New Testament in English was
burnt before Old St. Paul's; but in pausing to reflect that the
book which met with this fiery fate, and whose author ultimately
met with the same, is now sold in England by the million (for our
received version is substantially Tyndale's), one can only stand
aghast at the irony of the fearful contrast, which so widely
separated the labourer from his triumph. But perhaps we can
scarcely wonder that our ancestors, after centuries of mental
blindness, should have tried to burn the light they were unable
to bear, causing it thereby only to shine the brighter.
It certainly spread with remarkable celerity; for in 1546 it
became necessary to command all persons possessing them to
deliver to the bishop, or sheriff, to be openly burnt, all works
in English purporting to be written by Frith, Tyndale, Wicliff,
Joye, Basil, Bale, Barnes, Coverdale, Turner, or Tracy. The
extreme rarity and costliness of the works of these men are the
measure of the completeness with which this order was carried
out; but not of its success, for the ideas survived the books
which contained them. A list of the books is given in Foxe (v.
566), and comprises twelve by Coverdale, twenty-eight by Bale,
thirteen by Basil (_alias_ Becon), ten by Frith, nine by Tyndale,
seven by Joye, six by Turner, three by Barnes. Some of these may
still be read, but more are non-existent. A complete account of
them and their authors would almost amount to a history of the
Reformation itself; but as they were burnt indiscriminately, as
heretical books, they have not the same interest that attaches to
books specifically condemned as heretical or seditious. Such of
them, however, as a book-lover can light upon--and pay for--are,
of course, treasures of the highest order.
Great numbers of books were burnt in the reigns of Edward VI. and
Mary, but it is not till the reign of the latter that a
particular book stands forward as maltreated in this way. And,
indeed, so many men were burnt in the reign of Queen Mary, that
the burning of particular books may well have passed unnoticed,
though pyramids of Protestant volumes, as Mr. D'Israeli says,
were burnt in those few years of intolerance rampant and
triumphant. The _Historie of Italie_, by William Thomas (1549),
is sometimes said (on what authority I know not) to have been not
merely burnt, but burnt by the common hangman, at this time. If
so, it is the first that achieved a distinction which is
generally claimed for Prynne's _Histriomastix_ (1633). The fact
of the mere burning is of itself likely enough, for Thomas wrote
very freely of the clergy at Rome and of Pope Paul III.: "By
report, Rome is not without 40,000 harlots, maintained for the
most part by the clergy and their followers." "Oh! what a world
it is to see the pride and abomination that the churchmen there
maintain." Yet Thomas himself had held a Church living, and had
been clerk of the Council to Edward VI. He was among the ablest
men of his time, and wrote, among other works, a lively defence
of Henry VIII. in a work called _Peregryne_, on the title-page of
which are these lines:
"He that dieth with honour, liveth for ever,
And the defamed dead recovereth never."
And a sadly inglorious death was destined to be his own. For,
shortly after Wyatt's insurrection, he was sent to the Tower,
Wyatt at his own trial declaring that the conspiracy to
assassinate Queen Mary when out walking was Thomas's, he himself
having been opposed to it. For this cause, at all events, Thomas
was hanged and quartered in May 1554, and his head set the next
day upon London Bridge. He assured the crowd, in a speech before
his execution, that he died for his country. Wood says he was of
a hot, fiery spirit, that had sucked in damnable principles.
Possibly they were not otherwise than sensible, for if he died on
Wyatt's evidence alone, one cannot feel sure that he died
justly. But had the insurrection only succeeded, it is curious to
think what an amount of misery might have been spared to England,
and how dark a page been lacking from the history of
Christianity!
Thomas's book was republished in 1561: but the first edition,
that of 1549, is, of course, the right one to possess; though its
fate has caused it to be extremely rare.
Coming now to Queen Elizabeth's reign, the comparative rarity of
book-burning is an additional testimony to the wisdom of her
government. But (to say nothing of books that were prohibited or
got their printers or authors into trouble) certain works,
religious, political, and poetical, achieved the distinction of
being publicly burnt, and they are works that curiously
illustrate the manners of the time.
The most important under the first of these heads are the
translations of the works of Hendrick Niclas, of Leyden, Father
of the Family of Love, or House of Charity, which were thought
dangerous enough to be burnt by Royal Proclamation on October
13th, 1579; so that such works as the _Joyful Message of the
Kingdom_, _Peace upon Earth_, _the Prophecy of the Spirit of
Love_, and others, are now exceedingly rare and costly. There
are many extracts from the first of these in Knewstub's
_Confutation "of its monstrous and horrible blasphemies"_ (1579),
wherein I fail to recognise either the blasphemies or their
confutation, nor do I find anything but sense in Niclas's letter
to two daughters of Warwick, whom he seeks to dissuade from
suffering death on a matter of conformity to certain Church
ceremonies. He insists on the life or spirit of Christ as of more
importance than any ceremony. "How well would they do who do now
extol themselves before the simple, and say that they are the
preachers of Christ, if they would first learn to know Christ
before they made themselves ministers of Him!" "Whatever is
served without the Spirit of Christ, it is an abomination to
God." Nevertheless the young persons seem to have preferred death
to his very sensible advice.
Probably the Family of Love were misunderstood and
misrepresented, both as regards their doctrines and their
practices. Camden says that "under a show of singular integrity
and sanctity they insinuated themselves into the affections of
the ignorant common people"; that they regarded as reprobate all
outside their Family, and deemed it lawful to deny on oath
whatsoever they pleased. Niclas, according to Fuller, "wanted
learning in himself and hated it in others." This is a failing so
common as to be very probable, as it also is, that his disciples
allegorised the Scriptures (like the Alexandrian Fathers before
them), and counterfeited revelations. Fuller adds that they
"grieved the Comforter, charging all their sins on God's Spirit,
for not effectually assisting them against the same . . . sinning
on design that their wickedness might be a foil to God's mercy,
to set it off the brighter." But that they were Communists,
Anarchists, or Libertines, there is no evidence; and the Queen's
menial servant who wrote and presented to Parliament an apology
for the Service of Love probably complained with justice of their
being "defamed with many manner of false reports and lies." This
availed nothing, however, against public opinion; and so the
Queen commanded by proclamation "that the civil magistrate should
be assistant to the ecclesiastical, and that the books should be
publicly burnt." The sect, however, long survived the burning of
its books.
But already it was not enough to burn books of an unpopular
tendency, cruelty against the author being plainly progressive
from this time forward to the atrocious penalties afterwards
associated with the presence of Laud in the Star Chamber. All our
histories tell of John Stubbs, of Lincoln's Inn, who, when his
right hand had been cut off for a literary work, with his left
hand waved his hat from his head and cried, "Long live the
Queen!" The punishment was out of all proportion to the offence.
Men had a right to feel anxious when Elizabeth seemed on the
point of marrying the Catholic Duke of Anjou. They remembered the
days of Mary, and feared, with reason, the return of Catholicism.
Stubbs gave expression to this fear in a work entitled the
_Discoverie of a Gaping Gulf whereinto England is like to be
swallowed by another French marriage, if the Lord forbid not the
banes by letting her Majestie see the sin and punishment thereof_
(1579). Page, the disperser of the book, suffered the same
penalty as its author.
The book made a great stir and was widely circulated, much to
the vexation of the Queen. On September 27th appeared a very
long proclamation calling it "a lewd, seditious book . . .
bolstered up with manifest lies, &c.," and commanding it, wherever
found, "to be destroyed (= burnt) in open sight of some public
officer." The book itself is written with moderation and respect,
if we make allowance for the questionable taste of writing on so
delicate a subject at all. It is true that he calls France "a den
of idolatry, a kingdom of darkness, confessing Belial and serving
Baal"; nor does he spare the personal character of the Duke
himself: he only desires that her Majesty may marry with such a
house and such a person "as had not provoked the vengeance of the
Lord." But plain speaking was needed, and it is possible that the
offensive book had something to do with saving the Queen from a
great folly and the nation from as great a danger.
Stubbs, one is glad to find, though maimed, was neither disgraced
nor disheartened by his misfortune. He learnt to write with his
left hand, and wrote so much better with that than many people
with their right, that Lord Burleigh employed him many years
afterwards (1587) to compose an answer to Cardinal Allen's work,
_A Modest Answer to English Persecutors_. After that I lose sight
of Stubbs.
The strong feeling against Episcopacy, which first meets us in
works like Fish's _Supplication of Beggars_, or Tyndale's
_Practice of Prelates_, and which found vent at last, as a
powerful contributory cause, in the Revolution of the
seventeenth century, was most clearly pronounced under Elizabeth
in the famous tracts known as those of Martin Marprelate; and
among these most bitterly in a small work that was burnt by order
of the bishops, entitled a _Dialogue wherein is plainly laide
open the tyrannical dealing of Lord Bishops against God's Church,
with certain points of doctrine, wherein they approve themselves
(according to D. Bridges his judgement) to be truely Bishops of
the Divell_ (1589). This is shown in a sprightly dialogue between
a Puritan and a Papist, a jack of both sides, and an Idol
(_i.e._, church) minister, wherein the most is made of such facts
as that the Bishop of St. David's was summoned before the High
Commission for having two wives living, and that Bishop
Culpepper, of Oxford, was fond of hawking and hunting. It is
significant that this little tract was reprinted in 1640, on the
eve of the Revolution.
I pass now to a book of great political and historical interest:
_The Conference about the Succession to the Crown of England_
(1594), attributed to Doleman, but really the handiwork of
Parsons, the Jesuit, Cardinal Allen, and others. In the first
part, a civil lawyer shows at length that lineal descent and
propinquity of blood are not of themselves sufficient title to
the Crown; whilst in the second part a temporal lawyer discusses
the titles of particular claimants to the succession of Queen
Elizabeth. Among these, that of the Earl of Essex, to whom the
book was dedicated, is discussed; the object of the book being to
baffle the title of King James to the succession, and to fix it
either on Essex or the Infanta of Spain. No wonder it gave great
offence to the Queen, for it advocated also the lawfulness of
deposing her; and it throws some light on those intrigues with
the Jesuits which at one time formed so marked an incident in the
eventful career of that unfortunate earl. Great efforts were made
to suppress it, and there is a tradition that the printer was
hanged, drawn, and quartered.
The book itself has played no small part in our history, for not
only was Milton's _Defensio_ mainly taken from it, but it formed
the chief part of Bradshaw's long speech at the condemnation of
Charles I. In 1681, when Parliament was debating the subject of
the exclusion of the Duke of York from the succession, it was
thought well to reprint it; but only two years later it was among
the books which had the honour of being condemned to the flames
by the University of Oxford, in its famous and loyal book-fire
of 1683 (see p. 194).
But if the history of the book was eventful, how much more so was
that of its chief author, the famous Robert Parsons, first of
Balliol College, and then of the Order of Jesus! Parsons was a
very prince of intrigue. To say that he actually tried to
persuade Philip II. to send a second Armada; that he tried to
persuade the Earl of Derby to raise a rebellion, and then is
suspected of having poisoned him for not consenting; that he
instigated an English Jesuit to try to assassinate the Queen;
and, among other plans, wished to get the Pope and the Kings of
France and Spain to appoint a Catholic successor to Elizabeth,
and to support their nominee by an armed confederacy, is to give
but the meagre outline of his energetic career. The blacksmith's
son certainly made no small use of his time and abilities. His
life is the history in miniature of that of his order as a body;
that same body whose enormous establishments in England at this
day are in such bold defiance of the Catholic Emancipation Act,
which makes even their residence in this kingdom illegal.
Doleman's _Conference_ was answered in a little book by Peter
Wentworth, entitled _A Pithy Exhortation to Her Majesty for
establishing her Successor to the Crown_, in which the author
advocated the claims of James I. The book was written in terms of
great humility and respect, the author not being ignorant, as he
quaintly says, "that the anger of a Prince is as the roaring of a
Lyon, and even the messenger of Death." But this he was to learn
by personal experience, for the Queen, incensed with him for
venturing to advise her, not only had his book burnt, but sent
him to the Tower, where, like so many others, he died. So at
least says a printed slip in the Grenville copy of his book.
But Wentworth is better and more deservedly remembered for his
speeches than for his book--his famous speeches in 1575, and
again in 1587, in Parliament in defence of the Commons' Right of
Free Speech, for both of which he was temporarily committed to
the Tower. Rumours of what would please or displease the Queen,
or messages from the Queen, like that prohibiting the House to
interfere in matters of religion, in those days reduced the voice
of the House to a nullity. Wentworth's chief question was,
"Whether this Council be not a place for any member of the same
here assembled, freely and without control of any person or
danger of laws, by bill or speech to utter any of the griefs of
this Commonwealth whatsoever, touching the service of God, the
safety of the prince and this noble realm." Yet so servile was
the House of that period, that on both occasions it disclaimed
and condemned its advocate--on the first occasion actually not
allowing him to finish his speech. Yet, fortunately, both his
speeches live, well reported in the Parliamentary Debates.
To pass from politics to poetry; little as Archbishop Whitgift's
proceedings in the High Commission endear his name to posterity,
I am inclined to think he may be forgiven for cleansing
Stationers' Hall by fire, in 1599, of certain works purporting to
be poetical; such works, namely, as Marlowe's _Elegies of Ovid_,
which appeared in company with Davies's _Epigrammes_, Marston's
_Metamorphosis of Pigmalion's Image_, Hall's _Satires_, and
Cutwode's _Caltha Poetarum; or, The Bumble Bee_. The latter is a
fantastic poem of 187 stanzas about a bee and a marigold, and
deserved the fire rather for its insipidity than for the reasons
which justified the cleansing process applied to the others, the
youthful productions of men who were destined to attain
celebrity in very different directions of life.
Marlowe, like Shakespeare, from an actor became a writer of
plays; but though Ben Jonson extolled his "mighty muse," I doubt
whether his _Edward II._, _Dr. Faustus_, or _Jew of Malta_, are
now widely popular. Anthony Wood has left a very disagreeable
picture of Marlowe's character, which one would fain hope is
overdrawn; but the dramatist's early death in a low quarrel
prevented him from ever redeeming his early offences, as a kinder
fortune permitted to his companions in the Stationers' bonfire.
Marston came to be more distinguished for his _Satires_ than for
his plays, his _Scourge of Villainie_ being his chief title to
fame. Of his _Pigmalion_ all that can be said is, that it is not
quite so bad as Marlowe's _Elegies_. Warton justly says, with
pompous euphemism: "His stream of poetry, if sometimes bright and
unpolluted, almost always betrays a muddy bottom." But this muddy
bottom is discernible, not in Marston alone, but also in Hall's
_Virgidemiarum_, or Satires, of which Warton did all he could to
revive the popularity. Hall was Marston's rival at Cambridge, but
Hall claims to be the first English satirist. He took Juvenal for
his model, but the Latin of Juvenal seems to me far less obscure
than the English of Hall. I quote two lines to show what this
Cambridge student thought of the great Elizabethan period in
which he lived. Referring to some remote golden age, he says:--
"Then men were men; but now the greater part
Beasts are in life, and women are in heart."
But strange are the evolutions of men. The author of the burnt
satires rose from dignity to dignity in the Church. He became
successively Bishop of Exeter and Bishop of Norwich, and to this
day his devotional works are read by thousands who have never
heard of his satires. He was sent as a deputy to the famous Synod
of Dort, and was faithful to his Church and king through the
Civil War. For this in his old age he suffered sequestration and
imprisonment, and he lived to see his cathedral turned into a
barrack, and his palace into an ale-house, dying shortly before
the Restoration, in 1656, at the age of 82. Bayle thought him
worthy of a place in his Dictionary, but he is still worthier of
a place in our memories as one of those great English bishops
who, like Burnet, Butler, or Tillotson, never put their Church
before their humanity, but showed (what needed showing) that the
Christianity of the clergy was not of necessity synonymous with
the absolute negation of charity.
Davies, too, Marlowe's early friend, rose to fame both as a poet
and a statesman. But he began badly. He was disbarred from the
Middle Temple for breaking a club over the head of another law
student in the very dining-hall. After that he became member for
Corfe Castle, and then successively Solicitor-General and
Attorney-General for Ireland. He was knighted in 1607. One of the
best books on that unhappy country is his _Discovery of the true
causes why Ireland was never entirely subdued, nor brought under
obedience of the Crown of England until the beginning of Her
Majesty's happy reign_ (1611), dedicated to James I. His chief
poems are his _Nosce Teipsum_ and _The Orchestra_. In 1614 he was
elected for Newcastle-under-Lyme, and he died in 1626, aged only
57. Yet in that time he had travelled a long way from the days of
his early literary companionship with Christopher Marlowe.
The Church at the end of the sixteenth century assuredly aimed
high. At the time the above books were burnt, it was decreed that
no satires or epigrams should be printed in the future; and that
no plays should be printed without the inspection and permission
of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London! But
even this is nothing compared with that later attempt to subject
the Press to the Church which called forth Milton's
_Areopagitica_; there indeed soon came to be very little to
choose between the Inquisition of the High Commission and the
more noxious Inquisition of Rome.
Near to the burnt works of the previous writers must be placed
those of that prolific writer of the same period, Samuel
Rowlands. The severity of his satire, and the obviousness of the
allusions, caused two of his works to be burnt, first publicly,
and then in the hall kitchen of the Stationers' Company, in
October 1600. These were: _The Letting Humour's Blood in the
Headvein_, and, _A Merry Meeting; or, 'tis Merry when Knaves
meet_; both of which subsequently reappeared under the titles
respectively of _Humour's Ordinarie, where a man may be verie
merrie and exceeding well used for his sixpence_, and the _Knave
of Clubs_. Either work would now cost much more than sixpence,
and probably fail to make the reader very merry, or even merry at
all. One of the epigrams, however, of the first work may be
quoted as of more than ephemeral truth and interest:--
"Who seeks to please all men each way,
And not himself offend,
He may begin his work to-day,
But God knows when he'll end."
Little appears to be known of Rowlands, but, like Bishop Hall, he
could turn his pen to various purposes with great facility; for
the prayers which he is thought to have composed, and which are
published with the rest of his works in the admirable edition of
1870, are of as high an order of merit as the religious works of
his more famous contemporary.
The only wonder is that the Archbishop did not enforce the
burning of much more of the literature of the Elizabethan period,
whilst he was engaged on such a crusade. He may well, however,
have shrunk appalled from the magnitude of the task, and have
thought it better to touch the margin than do nothing at all.
And, after all, in those days a poet was lucky if they only burnt
his poems, and not himself as well. In 1619 John Williams,
barrister, was actually hanged, drawn, and quartered, for two
poems which were not even printed, but which exist in manuscript
at Cambridge to this day. These were _Balaam's Ass_ and the
_Speculum Regale_. Williams was indiscreet enough to predict the
King's death in 1621, and to send the poems secretly to his
Majesty in a box. The odd thing is that he thought himself justly
punished for his foolish freak, so very peculiar were men's
notions of justice in those far-off barbarous days.