The story of the establishment of the liberty of the Press in England is full of interest, and tells the history of several books which involved their authors and publishers in many difficulties. The censors of books did not always occupy an enviable post, and were the objects of many attacks. "Catalogue" Fraser lost his office for daring to license Walker's book on the Eikon Basilike, which asserted that Gauden and not Charles I. was the author. His successor Bohun was deprived of his orffice as licenser and sent to prison for allowing a pamphlet to be printed entitled King William and Queen Mary, Conquerors. The Jacobite printers suffered severely when they were caught, which was not very frequent. In obscure lanes and garrets they plied their secret trade, and deluged the land with seditious books and papers. One William Anderton was tracked to a house near St. James's Street, where he was known as a jeweller. Behind the bed in his room was discovered a door which led to a dark closet, and there were the types and a press, and heaps of Jacobite literature. Anderton was found guilty of treason, and paid the penalty of death for his crime. In 1695 the Press was emancipated from its thraldom, and the office of licenser ceased to exist. Henceforward popular judgment and the general good sense and right feeling of the community constituted the only licensing authority of the Press of England. Occasionally, when a publisher or author makes too free with the good name of an English citizen, the restraint of a prison cell is imposed upon the audacious libeller. Sometimes when a book offends against the public morals, and contains the outpourings of a voluptuous imagination, its author is condemned to lament in confinement over his indecorous pages. The world knows that Vizetelly, the publisher, was imprisoned for translating and publishing some of Zola's novels. Nana and L'Assommoir were indeed fatal books to him, as his imprisonment and the anxiety caused by the prosecution are said to have hastened his death. The right feeling and sound sense of the nation has guided the Press of this country into safe channels, and few books are fatal now on account of their unseemly contents or immoral tendencies.
CHAPTER XI. SOME LITERARY MARTYRS.
Leland—Strutt—Cotgrave—Henry Wharton—Robert Heron—Collins—William Cole—Homeric victims—Joshua Barnes—An example of unrequited toil—Borgarutius—Pays.
We have still a list far too long of literary martyrs whose works have proved fatal to them, and yet whose names have not appeared in the foregoing chapters. These are they who have sacrificed their lives, their health and fortunes, for the sake of their works, and who had no sympathy with the saying of a professional hack writer, "Till fame appears to be worth more than money, I shall always prefer money to fame." For the labours of their lives they have received no compensation at all. Health, eyesight, and even life itself have been devoted to the service of mankind, who have shown themselves somewhat ungrateful recipients of their bounty.
Some of the more illustrious scholars indeed enjoy a posthumous fame,—their names are still honoured; their works are still read and studied by the learned,—but what countless multitudes are those who have sacrificed their all, and yet slumber in nameless graves, the ocean of oblivion having long since washed out the footprints they hoped to leave upon the shifting sands of Time! Of these we have no record; let us enumerate a few of the scholars of an elder age whose books proved fatal to them, and whose sorrows and early deaths were brought on by their devotion to literature.
What antiquary has not been grateful to Leland, the father of English archaeology! He possessed that ardent love for the records of the past which must inspire the heart and the pen of every true antiquary; that accurate learning and indefatigable spirit of research without which the historian, however zealous, must inevitably err; and that sturdy patriotism which led him to prefer the study of the past glories of his own to those of any other people or land. His Cygnea Cantio will live as long as the silvery Thames, whose glories he loved to sing, pursues its beauteous way through the loveliest vales of England. While his royal patron, Henry VIII., lived, all went well; after the death of that monarch his anxieties and troubles began. His pension became smaller, and at length ceased. No one seemed to appreciate his toil. He became melancholy and morose, and the effect of nightly vigils and years of toil began to tell upon his constitution. At length his mind gave way, ere yet the middle stage of life was passed; and although many other famous antiquaries have followed his steps and profited by his writings and his example, English scholars will ever mourn the sad and painful end of unhappy Leland.
Another antiquary was scarcely more fortunate. Strutt, the author of English Sports and Pastimes, whose works every student of the manners and customs of our forefathers has read and delighted in, passed his days in poverty and obscurity, and often received no recompense for the works which are now so valuable. At least he had his early wish gratified,—"I will strive to leave my name behind me in the world, if not in the splendour that some have, at least with some marks of assiduity and study which shall never be wanting in me."
Randle Cotgrave, the compiler of one of the most valuable dictionaries of early English words, lost his eyesight through laboriously studying ancient MSS. in his pursuit of knowledge. The sixteen volumes of MS. preserved in the Lambeth Library of English literature killed their author, Henry Wharton, before he reached his thirtieth year. By the indiscreet exertion of his mind, in protracted and incessant literary labours, poor Robert Heron destroyed his health, and after years of toil spent in producing volumes so numerous and so varied as to stagger one to contemplate, ended his days in Newgate. In his pathetic appeal for help to the Literary Fund, wherein he enumerates the labours of his life, he wrote, "I shudder at the thought of perishing in gaol." And yet that was the fate of Heron, a man of amazing industry and vast learning and ability, a martyr to literature.