In Rome. mufelefs and unbookish they were, minding nought but the feats of war. There needed no licensing of books among them; for they diffiked all but their own laconic apothegms, and took a flight occafion to chafe Archilochus out of their city, perhaps for compofing in a higher ftrain than their own foldiery ballads and roundels could reach to; or, if it were for his broad verfes, they were not therein fo cautious, but they were as diffolute in their promifcuous converfing; whence Euripides affirms in Andromache, that their women were all unchafte. Thus much may give us light after what fort of books were prohibited among the Greeks. The Romans alfo, for many ages trained-up only to a military roughnefs, resembling moft the Lacedæmonian guife, knew of learning littic but what their twelve tables and the Pontific college, with their Augurs and Flamins, taught them in religion and law; so unac-. quainted with other learning, that when Carneades and Critolaus, with the Stoic Diogenes, coming Embasfadors to Rome, took thereby occafion to give the city a tafte of their Philofophy, they were suspected for seducers by no less a man than Cato the Cenfor, who moved it in the fenate to difmifs them fpeedily, and to banish all fuch Attic babblers out of Italy. But Seipio and others of the nobleft fenators withftood him and his old Sabin aufterity; honoured and admired the men ; and the Cenfor himself at laft, in his old age, fell to the ftudy of that whereof before he was fo fcrupulous, And yet at the fame time, Nævius and Plautus, the first Latin comedians, had filled the city with all the borrowed scenes of Menander and Philemon. Then began to be confidered there alfo what was to be done to libellous books and authors: for Nævius was quickly caft into prifon for his unbridled pen, and released by the tribunes upon his recantation. We read alfo that that libels were burnt, and the makers punished by Auguftus. The like severity, no doubt, was used, if aught were impiously written against their efteemed gods. Except in thefe two points, how the world went in books, the magistrate kept no reckoning. And therefore Lucretius, without impeachment,verfifies his Epicurifm to Memmius, and had the honour to be set-forth the second time by Cicero, fo great a father of the commonwealth; although himself difputes against that opinion in his own writings. Nor was the fatirical fharpness, or naked plainness, of Lucilius, or Catullus, or Flaccus, by any order prohibited, And for matters of state, the story of Titus Livius, though it extolled that part which Pompey held, was not therefore fuppreffed by Octavius Cæfar, of the other faction. But that Nafo was by him banished in his old age, for the wanton poems of his youth, was but a mere covert of ftate over fome fecret caufe; and befides, the books were neither banifhed nor called-in. From hence we fhall meet with little elfe but tyranny in the Roman empire, that we may not marvel, if not fo often bad as good books were filenced. I fhall therefore deem to have been large enough, in producing what among the ancients was fo punishable to write, fave only which, all other arguments were free to treat on. and in what was re. By this time the Emperors were become Chriftians, How far, whose discipline in this point I do not find to have manner,the publication been more fevere than what was formerly in practice, of dangerThe books of thofe whom they took to be grand Here- ous books tics, were examined, refuted, and condemned in the strained,un General Councils; and not till then were prohibited, or man Empe burnt by authority of the Emperor. As for the writ- they were ings of heathen authors, unless they were plain invec- Christians. tives against Christianity, as thofe of Porphyrius and der the Ro rors, after become Proclus, they met with no interdict that can be cited, till about the year 400, in a Carthaginian Council, wherein bishops themselves were forbid to read the books of Gentiles, but Herefies they might read; while others, long before them, on the contrary scrupled more the books of Heretics, than of Gentiles. And that the primitive Councils and Bishops were wont only to declare what books were not commendable, paffing no further, but leaving it to each one's confcience to read or to lay-by, till after the year 800, is obferved already by Padre Paolo, the great unmasker of the Trentine The Popes Council. After which time the Popes of Rome, enprohibir the groffing what they pleafed of political rule into their books that own hands, extended their dominion over men's eyes, they disliked, about as they had before over their judgments, burning, and begun to reading of the year 800. prohibiting to be read, what they fancied not; yet sparing in their cenfures, and the books not many which they fo dealt with; till Martin the Fifth, by his bull not only prohibited, but was the firft that excommunicated the readers of heretical books; for about that time Wickliffe and Huffe, growing terrible, were they who first drove the Papal Court to a ftriéter policy of prohibiting. Which courfe Leo the Tenth and his fucceffors followed; until the Council of Trent, and the Spanish Inquifition, engendering together, broughtforth, or perfected, those catalogues and expurging Indexes, that rake through the entrails of many an old good author, with a violation worse than any could be offered to his tomb. Nor did they ftay in matters heretical; but any fubject, that was not to their palate, they either condemned in a prohibition, or had it straight into the new Purgatory of an Index. To filltime of the up the measure of encroachment, their laft invention Council of was to ordain that no book, pamphlet, or paper, At last, about the fhould ordained fhould be printed, (as if St. Peter had bequeathed them Trent, they the keys of the prefs alfo as well as of Paradife) unless that no new it were approved and licensed under the hands of two be printed or three gluttonous friars. For example: book should till it had been approved by a Let the chancellor Cini be pleased to see if in this licenser. Vincent Rabbata, Vicar of Florence. I have seen this present work, and find nothing Nicolo Cini, Chancellor of Florence. Attending the precedent relation, it is allowed It may be printed, July 15. Friar Simon Mompei d' Amelia, Chancellor of Sure they have a conceit, if he of the bottomless pit had not long fince broke prison, that the quadruple exorcifm would bar him down. I fear their next defign will be to get into their cuftody the licenfing of that which they say Claudius intended*, but went not through with. Vouchfafe to fee, another of their forms, the Roman ftamp; Imprimatur, If it seem good to the Reverend Mafter * Quo veniam daret flatum crepitúmque ventris in convivio emittendi, Suetonius, in Claudio. Sometimes The Bi imitation of into Eng land. Sometimes five Imprimaturs are feen together diashops, in logue-wife in the piatza of one titlepage, complimentthe Popes, ing and ducking each to other with their shaven reveintroduced this custom rences, whether the author, who ftands-by in perplexiof Licensing ty at the foot of his epiftle, shall to the press or to the fpunge. These are the pretty refponfories,-these are the dear antiphonies,-that fo bewitched of late our Prelates and their chaplains, with the goodly echo they made; and befotted us to the gay imitation of a lordly Imprimatur, one from Lambeth-houfe, another from the Weft end of Paul's; fo apifhly romanizing, that the word of command ftill was fet-down in Latin; aş if the learned grammatical pen that wrote it would caft no ink without Latin; or perhaps, as they thought, because no vulgar tongue was worthy to express the pure conceit of an Imprimatur; but rather, as I hope, for that our English, the language of men ever famous and foremost in the achievements of liberty, will not eafily find fervile letters enow to fpell fuch a dictatory prefumption Englished. And thus ye have the inventors, and the original, of book-licenfing ripped-up, and drawn as lineally as any pedigree. We have it not, that can be heard- of, from any ancient State, or Polity, or Church, nor by any Statute left us by our anceftors, elder or later; nor from the modern cuftom of any reformed City, or Church, abroad; but from the most antichristian Council, and the most tyrannous Inquifition, that ever enquired. Till then books were ever as freely admitted into the world as any other birth; the iffue of the brain was no more stifled than the iffue of the womb; no envious Juno fat cross-legged over the nativity of any man's intellectual offspring; but,if it proved a monster, who denies but that it was juftly burnt, or funk into the fea? But that a book, in worfe con |