This much may give us light after what sort of books were prohibited among the Greeks. The Romans also for many ages trained up only to a military roughness, resembling most the Lacedæmonian guise, knew of learning little but what their twelve tables* and the pontific college with their augurs and flamens taught them in religion and law; so unacquainted with other learning, that when Carneades and Critolaus, with the stoic Diogenes, coming ambassadors to Rome, took thereby occasion to give the city a taste of their philosophy, they were suspected for seducers by no less a man than Cato the Censor,† who moved it in the senate to dismiss them speedily, and to banish all such Attic babblers out of Italy. But Scipio and others of the noblest senators withstood him and his old Sabine austerity; honoured and admired the men; and the censor himself at last, in his old age, fell to the study of that whereof before he was so scrupulous. And yet, at the same 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 considered there also what was to be done to libellous books and authors; for Nævius was quickly cast into prison for his unbridled pen, and released by the tribunes upon his recantation: we read also that libels were burnt, and the makers punished, by Augustus.

The like severity, no doubt, was used, if piously written against their esteemed gods.

aught were imExcept in these

of the Spartan women, whom he accuses of having, during the invasion of the Thebans, caused more evil than the arms of the enemy. Like all martial nations, the Lacedæmonians, he says, were governed by their wives; and to this circumstance many imperfections of their state might be traced. (Politics, l. ii. c. 7.) The verses of Euripides referred to commence, οὐδ ̓ ἂν εἰ βούλοιτό τις. κ. τ. λ. (Androm. v. 595, sqq.)—ED.

* On the ancient laws of Rome, both regal and decemviral, see Lipsius's collection, Opera, t. iv. p. 223, sqq.-Ed.

+ This odious old savage, who sold or starved to death his worn-out slaves, might well be an enemy to Greek literature; nevertheless, in the decline of life he courted the Attic muse, and is said to have made considerable progress in the knowledge of Grecian history. (Corn. Nep. in Vita. c. 3.) In speaking of Carneades, Cicero says: "Erat etiam Metrodorus, qui cum illis unà ipsum illum Carneadem diligentius audierat, hominum omnium in dicendo, ut ferebant, acerrimum et copiosissimum.” (De Orat. i. 11.) On his visit to Rome, see De Oratore, ii. 37.-ED.

On the Roman comic writers, see the dissertation of Daniel Heinsius, prefixed to the Elzevir edition of Terence.-En.

*

two points, how the world went in books, the magistrate kept no reckoning. And therefore Lucretius, without impeachment, versifies his Epicurism to Memmius, and had the honour to be set forth the second time by Cicero, so great a father of the commonwealth; although himself disputes against that opinion in his own writings. Nor was the satirical sharpness 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 suppressed by Octavius Cæsar, of the other faction. But that Naso was by him banished in his old age, for the wanton poems of his youth, was but a mere covert of state over some secret cause; and besides, the books were neither banished nor called in. From hence we shall meet with little else but tyranny in the Roman empire, ‡ that we may not marvel, if not so often bad as good books were silenced. I shall therefore deem to have been large enough, in producing what among the ancients was punishable to write, save only which, all other arguments were free to treat on.

By this time the emperors were become Christians, whose discipline in this point I do not find to have been more severe than what was formerly in practice. The books of those whom they took to be grand heretics were examined, refuted,

* Lucretius is, perhaps, the only poet inspired by materialism. It was not likely, however, that he should be disturbed in the promulgation of Epicurianism in a country where senators hesitated not to express the same opinions before the great council of the nation, as was done by Cæsar in the debates on the Catilinarian conspiracy.-ED.

†This very curious point of ancient history has never been cleared up. We are still ignorant why Ovid was banished: but whatever may have been the cause, we cannot regret a circumstance which emancipated him from the enervating vices of Rome, and gave rise to those curious works in which he describes the manners of the barbarians among whom he lived. "The nine books of poetical epistles, which Ovid composed during the first seven years of his melancholy exile, possess beside the merit of excellence a double value. They exhibit a picture of the human mind under very singular circumstances; and they contain many curious observations, which no Roman, except Ovid, could have an opportunity of making."—(Gibbon. Hist. of Decline, &c. iii. 121, note.)-ED.

The fiercely persecuting spirit of the emperors soon taught the Romans the difference between a free and a tyrannical government. Tacitus abounds with examples, none of which, perhaps, are more striking than that of Cremutius Cordus.-ED.

and condemned in the general councils; and not till then were prohibited, or burnt, by authority of the emperor. As for the writings of heathen authors, unless they were plain invectives against Christianity, as those of Porphyrius and 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 heresies 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, passing no further, but leaving it to each one's conscience to read or to lay by, till after the year 800, is observed already by Padre Paolo, the great unmasker of the Trentine council. After which time the popes of Rome, engrossing what they pleased of political rule into their own hands, extended their dominion over men's eyes, as they had before over their judgments, burning and prohibiting to be read what they fancied not; yet sparing in their censures, and the books not many which they so dealt with; till Martin the Fifth, by his bull, not only prohibited, but was the first that excommunicated the reading of heretical books; for about that time Wickliffe and Husse growing terrible, were they who first drove the papal court to a stricter policy of prohibiting. Which course Leo the Tenth and his successors followed, until the council of Trent and the Spanish inquisition, engendering together, brought forth 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 stay in matters heretical, but any subject that was not to their palate, they either condemned in a prohibition, or had it straight into the new purgatory of an index. To fill up the measure of encroachment, their last invention was to ordain that no book, pamphlet, or paper should be printed (as if St. Peter had bequeathed them the keys of the press also as well as of Paradise) unless it were approved and licensed under the hands of two or three gluttonous friars. For example::

"Let the chancellor Cini be pleased to see if in this present work be contained aught that may withstand the printing.

"Vincent Rabbata Vicar of Florence."

"I have seen this present work, and find nothing athwart the catholic faith and good manners: in witness whereof I have given, &c. "Nicolo Cini, Chancellor of Florence."

"Attending the precedent relation, it is allowed that this present work of Davanzati may be printed. "Vincent Rabbata," &c.

"It may be printed, July 15.

"Friar Simon Mompei d'Amelia, Chancellor of the Holy Office in Florence."

Sure they have a conceit, if he of the bottomless pit had not long since broke prison, that this quadruple exorcism would bar him down. I fear their next design will be to get into their custody the licensing of that which they say Claudius intended, but went not through with. Vouchsafe to see another of their forms, the Roman stamp:

"Imprimatur, If it seem good to the reverend master of the Holy Palace. "Belcastro, Vicegerent." « Imprimatur, "Friar Nicholo Rodolphi, Master of the Holy Palace." Sometimes five imprimaturs are seen together, dialogue wise, in the piazza of one titlepage, complimenting and ducking each to other with their shaven reverences, whether the author, who stands by in perplexity at the foot of his epistle, shall to the press or to the spunge. These are the pretty responsories, these are the dear antiphonies, that so bewitched of late our prelates and their chaplains, with the goodly echo they made; and besotted us to the gay imitation of a lordly imprimatur, one from Lambeth-house, another from the west end of Paul's; so apishly romanizing, that the word of command still was set down in Latin; as if the learned grammatical pen that wrote it would cast 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 easily find servile letters enow to spell such a dictatory presumption Englished.

And thus ye have the inventors and the original of book licensing 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 ances

* "Quo veniam daret flatum crepitumque ventris in convivio emittendi.” Sueton. in Claudio.)-MILTON.

tors elder or later; nor from the modern custom of any reformed city or church abroad; but from the most antichristian council, and the most tyrannous inquisition that ever inquired. Till then books were ever as freely admitted into the world as any other birth; the issue of the brain was no more stifled than the issue of the womb: no envious Juno sat cross-legged over the nativity of any man's intellectual offspring; but if it proved a monster, who denies but that it was justly burnt, or sunk into the sea? But that a book, in worse condition than a peccant soul, should be to stand before a jury ere it be born to the world, and undergo yet in darkness the judgment of Radamanth and his colleagues, ere it can pass the ferry backward into light, was never heard before, till that mysterious iniquity, provoked and troubled at the first entrance of reformation, sought out new limboes and new hells wherein they might include our books also within the number of their damned. And this was the rare morsel so officiously snatched up, and so illfavouredly imitated by our inquisiturient bishops, and the attendant minorites, their chaplains. That ye like not now these most certain authors of this licensing order, and that all sinister intention was far distant from your thoughts, when ye were importuned the passing it, all men who know the integrity of your actions, and how ye honour truth, will clear ye readily.

But some will say, what though the inventors were bad, the thing for all that may be good. It may so; yet if that thing be no such deep invention, but obvious and easy for any man to light on, and yet best and wisest commonwealths through all ages and occasions have forborne to use it, and falsest seducers and oppressors of men were the first who took it up, and to no other purpose but to obstruct and hinder the first approach of reformation; I am of those who believe, it will be a harder alchymy than Lullius * ever

* Raymond Lully was born at Palma, capital of the island of Majorca, about the year 1235. His system, known under the name of Ars Lulliana, was very celebrated in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries. Some authors, as Bouelles, say he died at Tunis, in 1314: others contend that, having been wounded on the coast of Africa, whither he had gone to convert the Mohammedans, he sailed for Majorca, and died in sight of land, in 1315, aged eighty years. Vernon relates that he visited England for the purpose of inciting king Edward to make war against the Turks: but this is altogether erroneous. His works are exceedingly numerous.-ED.