But the number of copies that could be carried across the frontier remained necessarily very small and in such countries as Italy and Spain and Portugal, where the Index was actually enforced until a short time ago, the results of this policy of repression became very noticeable.
If such nations gradually dropped behind in the race for progress, the reason was not difficult to find. Not only were the students in their universities deprived of all foreign text-books, but they were forced to use a domestic product of very inferior quality.
And worst of all, the Index discouraged people from occupying themselves seriously with literature or science. For no man in his senses would undertake to write a book when he ran the risk of seeing his work “corrected” to pieces by an incompetent censor or emendated beyond recognition by the inconsequential secretary of an Inquisitorial Board of Investigators.
Instead, he went fishing or wasted his time playing dominoes in a wine-shop.
Or he sat down and in sheer despair of himself and his people, he wrote the story of Don Quixote.
CHAPTER X
CONCERNING THE WRITING OF HISTORY IN GENERAL AND THIS BOOK IN PARTICULAR
In the correspondence of Erasmus, which I recommend most eagerly to those who are tired of modern fiction, there occurs a stereotype sort of warning in many of the letters sent unto the learned Desiderius by his more timid friends.
“I hear that you are thinking of a pamphlet upon the Lutheran controversy,” writes Magister X. “Please be very careful how you handle it, because you might easily offend the Pope, who wishes you well.”
Or again: “Some one who has just returned from Cambridge tells me that you are about to publish a book of short essays. For Heaven’s sake, do not incur the displeasure of the Emperor, who might be in a position to do you great harm.”