Notes.
JOHN GOODWIN'S SIX BOOKSELLERS' PROCTOR NONSUITED.
The London booksellers of the present day (good harmless men!) are satisfied with endeavouring to put down heresies as to discounts. Their predecessors, in the year 1655, set to work in good earnest, associated to purify the faith by denouncing in an Index expurgatorius, under the alarming titles of A Beacon set on Fire, and A Second Beacon set on Fire, all publications of a blasphemous, heretical, or improper kind. Six booksellers, viz. Luke Fawne, Samuel Gellibrand, Joshua Kirton, John Rothwell, Thomas Underhill, and Nathaniel Webb, took the lead on the occasion; and the battle waxed hot and fierce between them and the apologists of the books condemned. Amongst the latter was the famous John Goodwin, whose part in the controversy Mr. Jackson, in his elaborate Life of him, has adverted to, and has noticed his pamphlet entitled The High Presbyterian Spirit, written in answer to the Second Beacon Fired. John Goodwin, however, published a second pamphlet in the same controversy, neither noticed by Mr. Jackson, nor any one else that I am aware of, in which he finishes up his first charge upon the unfortunate booksellers, and lays on them with a vigour and determination that it does one good to see so well bestowed, scattering their arguments and quotations to the winds, and sending them back to their proper occupation of printing and publishing, instead of clipping and suppressing. The title of this very rare pamphlet, which is to be found in vol. xviii. of a collection of tracts (between 1640 and 1660) in ninety-six vols. 4to., made by President Bradshaw, and containing many of his MS. notes and observations now in my possession, is as follows:
"Six Booksellers' Proctor Nonsuited, wherein the gross Falsifications and Untruths, together with the inconsiderate and weak Passages found in the Apologie for the said Booksellers, are briefly noted and evicted. And the said Booksellers proved so unworthy both in their Second Beacon Fired, and likewise in their Epistle written in Defence of it, that they are out of the Protection of any Christian or reasonable Apologie for either. By J. G., a Minister of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. London printed for H. Cripps and L. Lloyd, 1655, 4to., pages 23."
I might give an extract or two from this very interesting tract, but do not wish to trespass too much upon your space. Perhaps, next to Milton, there is no writer of the time of the Commonwealth equal to John Goodwin, in power and elevation of composition; and I am glad therefore to be able to add one more to the series of his pamphlets which his biographer has with so much industry and research enumerated at the close of the Life.
Jas. Crossley.
MR. COLLIER'S FOLIO SHAKSPEARE: A PASSAGE IN "AS YOU LIKE IT."
It appears to me so obvious that the degree of authority to be conceded to each particular correction or emendation in Mr. Collier's folio Shakspeare must depend in a great measure on the general character of the proposed alterations throughout the work, that I cannot help thinking it would be desirable to reserve all controversy on such points until after the appearance of the promised volume. Such a resolution I made for myself, and to it I shall religiously adhere. This much only I shall say, that, of the specimens given by Mr. Collier in the Athenæum,—sufficient at once to excite interest and to gratify curiosity,—some of the corrections appear to be of that nature that no conjecture could have supplied, while all are good enough to command a deferential consideration.
Your correspondent A. E. B. has attempted a defence of the original reading of two passages amended in Mr. Collier's folio. For the reason above given I shall neither answer your correspondent, nor even say whether I think him right or wrong; but it will not be overstepping the bounds I have prescribed myself, if I take up a collateral point he has raised in reference to one of these passages. To strengthen the case for the reading of the passage in Cymbeline, Act III. Sc. 4., "Whose mother was her painting," he cites a passage from As You Like It, Act III. Sc. 5., in which he says, "mother is directly used as a sort of warranty of female beauty!" Here is the passage: