public place to answer all objections; but when I consider a whimsical family, my surprise is the less. Judge Burnet has promised under his hand, on the backside of every title of the second volume of his father's History of his Life and Times, to put in the originals into some public library; but quando is the case. I purchased the MS. of a gentleman who corrected the press, when that book was printed, and among his papers I have all the castrations, many of which, I believe, he communicated to Dr. Beach's sons, whom T. Burnet had abused in a life of his father, at the end of the second volume." Here, then, the world possessed sufficient evidence at the time of their early appearance, that these histories had suffered variations and omissions by the heirs of their authors, and the imperfect executors of their solemn and testamentary will.

I cannot quit the present subject without a remark on these great party Histories of Clarendon and Burnet. Both have passed through the fiery ordeal of national opinion, - and both, with some of their pages singed,

remain unconsumed: the one criticised for its solemn eloquence, the other ridiculed for its homely simplicity; the one depreciated for its partiality, the other for its inaccuracy; both alike, as we have seen, by their opposite parties, once considered as works utterly rejected, from the historical shelf.

But posterity reverences genius, for posterity only can decide on its true worth. Time, potent over criticism, has avenged our two great writers of the history of their own days The awful genius of Clarendon is still paramount, and the vehement spirit of Burnet has often its secret revelations confirmed. Such shall ever be the fate of those precious writings, which, though they have to contend with the passions of their own age, yet, originating in the personal intercourse of the writers with the subjects of their narra* Rawlinson's Bodleian MSS., vol. ii., lett. 38.

tives, possess an endearing charm which no criticism can dissolve, a reality which outlasts fiction, and a truth which diffuses its vitality over pages which cannot die.*

I refer the reader to Curiosities of Literature, art. "Of Suppressors and Dilapidators of Manuscripts ;" he will there find that in the case of the Marquis of Halifax's Diary, of which to secure its preservation the writer had left two copies, both were silently destroyed by two opposite partisans, the one startled at some mean deceptions of the Revolutionists of 1688, and the other at the catholic intrigues of the court.

439

THE WAR AGAINST BOOKS.

THE history of our literature, at the early era of printing, till the first indications appear of what is termed "copyright," forms a chapter in the history of our civilization which has not been opened to us.

This history includes two important incidents in our literary annals; the one, an exposition of the complicate arts practised by an alarmed government to possess an absolute control over the printers, which annihilated the freedom of the press; and the other, the contests of those printers and booksellers who had grants and licenses, and other privileges of a monopoly, with the rest of the brotherhood who maintained an equal right of publication, and contended for the freedom of the trade.

Although Caxton, our first printer, bore the title of Regius Impressor, printed books were still so rare in this country under Richard the Third, that an act of Parliament in 1483 contains a proviso in favor of aliens to encourage the importation of books. During a period of forty years, books were supplied by foreign printers, some of whom appear to have accompanied their merchandise, and to have settled themselves here It became necessary to repeal this privilege conceded to foreign presses, when under Henry the Eighth the art of printing was skilfully exercised by the king's natural subjects, and to protect the English printers lest their art should decline from a failure of encourage

ment.

Our earliest printers were the venders and the binders of their own books, and their domicil on their title. pages directed the curious to their abodes. Few in number, their limited editions, it is conjectured did not

The com

exceed from two to four hundred copies. The first printers were generally men of competent wealth; and every book was the sole property of its single printer. The separate departments of author, bookseller, and bookbinder, were not yet required, for as yet there was no "reading public." Some of our ancient printers combined all these characters in themselves. merce of literature had not yet opened in the speculative venders of books, and that race of writers who have been designated in the modern phrase as "authors by profession." The very nature of literary property could only originate in a more advanced and intellectual state of society, when unsettled opinions and contending principles would create a growing demand for books which no one yet contemplated, and a property of a novel and peculiar nature, in the very thoughts and words of a writer.

The art of printing, confined within a few hands, was usually practised under the patronage of the king, or the archbishop, or some nobleman. There existed not the remotest suspicion that the simple machinery of the printer's press could ever be converted into an engine of torture to try the strength or the truth of the church and the state. Sedition, or any allusion to public affairs, never entered the brains of the ingenious mechanics solely occupied in lowering the prices of the text-writers in the manuscript market, by their own novel and wondrous transcript. Their first wares had consisted of romances which were consulted as authentic histories; "dictes, or sayings," of ancient sages which no one cared to contradict; and homilies and allegories whose voluminousness had no tediousness. Neither did the higher powers ever imagine that any control seemed needful over the printer's press. They only lent the sanction of their names, or the shelter of their abode, at the Abbey of Westminster or the monastery of St. Albans, to encourage the manufacture of a novel

curiosity, for its beautiful toy, a printed book and the press at first was at once free and innocent.

But the day of portents was not slow in its approach -a stirring age passed on, an age for books. Under Henry the Eighth, books became the organs of the passions of mankind, and were not only printed, but spread about; for if the presses of England dared not disclose the hazardous secrets of the writers, the people were surreptitiously furnished with English books from foreign presses. It was then that the jealousy of the state opened its hundred eyes on the awful track of the strange omnipotence of the press. Then first began that WAR AGAINST BOOKS which has not ceased in our time.

Perhaps he who first, with a statesman's prescient view, had contemplated on this novel and unknown power, and, as we shall see, had detected its insidious steps stealing into the cabinet of the sovereign, was the great minister of this great monarch. It has been surmised that the cardinal aimed to crush the head of the serpent, by stopping the printing press in the monastery at St. Albans, of which he was the abbot; for that press remained silent for half a century. In a convocation the cardinal expressed his hostility against printing; assuring the simple clergy that, if they did not in time suppress printing, printing would suppress them.* This great statesman, at this early period, had taken into view its remote consequences. Lord Herbert has curiously assigned to the cardinal his ideas as addressed to the pope: "This new invention of printing has produced various effects of which your holiness cannot be ignorant. If it has restored books and learning, it has also been the occasion of those sects and schisms which daily appear. Men begin to call in question the present faith and tenets of the

* See a curious note of Hearne's in his Glossary to "Peter Langtoft's Chronicle," p. 685. Also Herbert's "Typog. Antiq." p. 1435.