500
HISTORY OF PRINTING.
such as, — Think before you leap — We naut all die — Compel them to enter. Some of our pious authors appear to hare been aware that they were burlesquing religion.
One Massieu having written a moral explan- ation of the solemn anthems sung in Advent, which begin with the letter , publidied his work under the punning title of La Douce Moelle, et la tatute friande des os tavoureux de VAvent.
If a title be obscure, it raises a prejudice against the author ; we are apt to suppose that an ambiguous title is the effect of an intricate or confined mind. The false idea which a title conveys is alike prejudicial to the author and the reader. Titles are generally too prodigal of their promises, auid their anthoisare contemned ; but the works of modest authors, though they present more than they promise, may fail of at- tracting notice by their extreme simplicity. In either case, a collector of books is prejudiced; he is induced to collect what merits no attention, or he passes over those valuable works whose titles may not happen to be interesting. After all, many authors are really neither so vain, nor so honest, as they appear ; for magnificent, or rimple titles, have onen been given from the difficulty of forming any others.
1447. One of the scarcest books in the world is entitled Prieret et Meditations, par Antoine Godeau.* Paris. It was printed in a particular form for the use of Anne of Austria, queen of France, and the royal family; and only six copies were struck on.
1647, Sept. 30. An ordinance of parliament passed the house of lords on this day, that no person shall make, write, print, sell, publish, or utter, or cause to be made, &c., any book, pam- phlet, treatise, ballad, libel, sheet, or sheets of news whatsoever (except the same be licensed by both or either house of parliament,) under the penalty of 40i. and an imprisonment not exceed- ing forty days, if he can not pay it : if a printer, he is to pay a fine of onlv HO*., or suffer twenty days' imprisonment, ana likewise to have his press and implements of printing broken in pieces. The bookseller, or stationer, to pay 10*., or suffer ten days' imprisonment, — and, lastly, the hawker, pedlar, or baJlad-singer, to forfeit all his printed papers exposed to sale, and to be whipt as a common rogue in the parish where he shall be apprehended. Early in the follow- ing year, the committee of estates in Scotland passed an act prohibiting the printing, under the pain of death, anv book, declaration, or writing, until these were first submitted to their revisiJ. Upon the restoration, the prohibition was renewed against printing without license firom the king, the parliament, or privy council ; and those who
« M. Anthoor Godeao, bishop of Vlnce, in Ftuee, wm
• voliinioloiu author both in latwe and verse. He pnblisbed
• French New Tetlament, In which he inserted explanatory tenns, printed at Paris, Ifits, two vols. Svo. and again in K7S, two vols. lamo. He la said to have been the lint person who (ave a Cluireh Hittorf in the French language. It wasa saringorQodean,thatto compose was an author's heaven, to eoneet his worlu an author's purgatory, but to correct the prenan author's bell. He died April, 1671.
presumed to publish seditious books, or hadtlmD m their possession, were punished with the ut- most rigour.
One of the consequences of these persecutions was the raising up of a new class of publishers those who became noted for what was called " unlawful and unlicensed books." Spaxkes, the publisher of Piynne's Histrionuutix, was of this class.* The presbvterian party in parlia- ment, who thus found the press closed on them, vehemently cried out for its freedom; and it was imagined, that when they ascended into power, the odious office of a licenser of the press would have been abolished ; but these pretended friends of freedom, on the contrary, discovered them- selves as tenderly alive to the office as the old government, and maintained it with the ex- tremest vigour.
Both in England and Scotland, during the civil wars, the party in power endeavoured to crush by every means the freedom of the press; but it has been well remarked, that the liberty of the press is the most powerful instmmcnt which a people possess for the safegnaid of their liberties and of the administration of justice. It creates, establishes, and directs the public opinion ; it bestows on and deprives kings and governments of that moral force without which no power can subsist. Despots and tyrants who seek to perpetuate the government of privileges and of abuses on the ruins of the liberties of the people, have always waged the most violent war- lare against the right of expressing thought, that birthright of nature and the spring and principle of all society. They hate it, slander it, invent captious objections as arms against it, and mis- lead the understanding of many who are thus perhaps rendered adverse to the exercise of the most sacred of the rights of men. But the great bugbear, the war-horse which is constantly mounted against the liberty of the press, is the abuse which has been made of it where the people are but little civilized, the passions which It stirs up, the discords to which it gives birth; and indeed the effects which are thus produced seem to favour the rancour which is displayed against the fairest and most valuable of human institutions; never reflecting that the most just and sacred of things are subject to abuses which may prevent their ends, and which make them seem vicious instead of appearing beneficial.
1647. Died, Edward Brewsteb, who had been eight years treasurer to the stationers* company. In the following year his widow pre- sented to the company a large bowl of silver, weighing nineteen ounces. Edward Brewster, their son, was master of the company in 1689 and 16U2.
1647. The following work was printed in the island of Malta : Delia descrittione di Malta itola nel mare Sicilitmo ; and the same work it adduced by Haym, in his Biblioteca ItaHana, where the author, O. Abela, as well as the printer, Bonacota, are expressly named. -«5aJI
- See Calamilia ttfAutkort, voL 11. p. Iia.
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