For though a Licencer should happ'n to be judicious more then ordnary, which will be a great jeopardy of the next succession, yet his very office, and his commission enjoyns him to let passe nothing but what is vulgarly receiv'd already. Nay, which is more lamentable, if the work of any deceased Author, though never so famous in his life time, and even to this day, come to their hands for licence to be printed, or reprinted, if there be found in his Book one sentence of a ventrous edge, utter'd in the height of zeal, (and who knows whether it might not be the dictat of a divine Spirit?) yet not suiting with every low decrepit humor of their own, though it were Knox himself, the Reformer of a Kingdom, that spake it, they will not pardon him their dash: the sense of that great man shall to all posterity be lost, for the fearfulnesse, or the presumptuous rashnesse of a perfunctory Licencer. And to what an Author this violence hath bin lately done, and in what Book of greatest consequence to be faithfully publisht, I could now instance, but shall forbear till a more convenient

"or false, or whether the person that made it be of good or ill "fame, is a proscription of Truth, and the provision of a sanctuary for weak and wicked men, who may be employed as "Ministers or Judges."

5 Though it were Knox himself, the Reformer of a Kingdom that spake it, they will not pardon him their dash: &c:-And to what an Author this violence hath bin lately done, and in what Book of greatest consequence to be faithfully publisht, I could now instance.] The latter part of this extract appears to be very

season.

Yet if these things be not resented se

applicable to the posthumous volumes of Coke's Institutes, and

beside, the circumstances of Parts II. III. and IV. were an Order of the Commons'

I am unacquainted with any work which will tally with the whole. first printed in 1641, pursuant to House of Parliament, made on the 12th of May in that Year. Sir Edward Coke died in 1634. The Oracle of our Law was now therefore "a deceased Authour, famous in his life-time," and who will deny, that his writings on the fundamental constitutions of English Polity and Jurisprudence were " of greatest consequence to be faithfully publisht?"

"

I have a distinct recollection to have seen it charged on the Parliamentary Party, that they tampered with Coke's Papers before they sent them to the Press. This assertion was made in some Debate in Parliament not very long after the Restoration; unfortunately I am unable to recover the place. Prynne, in the title-page to his Animadversions on the fourth part of the Institutes, corroborates this accusation in a degree; for he states these Volumes of Coke to have been "reprinted (with some disadvantage). since his death." And what Nicolson observes on these harsh strictures by Prynne favours the same opinion. "The learned Authour (says the Bishop) is more severely re"flected on than he ought to have been for a posthumous Work, "wherein we know not what injustice might be done him by the "Publishers of his orphan-labours." Eng. Hist. Library ; p. 199. fol. 1714. It is observable that MILTON refrains from entering into any particulars. Now, he would scarcely have had the forbearance to glance thus slightly had he aimed at the partizans of Charles. These facts taken in combination seem strong to identify the work alluded to.

It is material to notice further, that he tells us this was "lately "don," lest it might be objected, that the three last Books of Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity were intended; which were a posthumous Publication, and also lie under the suspicion of having been garbled by the Non-conformists while in manuscript. As they, however, first appeared in print in 1648, the date destroys the supposition.-After all, I must add, that in a

riously and timely by them who have the remedy in their power, but that such iron moulds as these shall have autority to knaw out the choicest periods of exquisitest Books, and to commit such a treacherous fraud against the orphan remainders of worthiest men after death", the more sorrow will

recent Biography of the Reformer of Scotland it is proved satisfactorily, that this first sentence from the text admits of a particular application to a mutilated republication at London of Knox's History in this very year. This circumstance perhaps renders it uncertain, whether the whole drift of this passage should not be confined to the same fact? The reader will judge. "In "1644, David Buchanan published his edition of Knox's History "at London, in Folio, which was reprinted the same year at

"

Edinburgh in Quarto. The editor prefixed a Preface concern"ing the antiquity of the Scots, and a Life of Knox, both of "which were written by himself. He modernized the language "of the History; but not satisfied with this, he also altered the "narrative, by excluding some parts of it, and by making nume"rous interpolations." &c.-Life of John Knox; by Thos. M'Crie, D. D. II. 356. sec. edit.

MILTON'S serio comic Sonnet on the ill reception of his Tetrachordon shows, that he held in disesteem the Scottish Ministers then in London.

6 By them who have.] So, in Eixovoxλdorys: " the question "hath bin all this while between them two." p. 61. first edit. This heretofore was not considered as ungrammatical: "That "either of them two."-Lord Herbert's Life of Henry VIII. p. 159. fol. 1682. We still write he himself, instead of he his self; and they themselves, not their selves.

To knaw out the choicest periods of exquisitest Books, and to commit such a treacherous fraud against the orphan remainders of worthiest men after death.] Toland informs us, that the Licenser of Paradise Lost "would needs suppress the whole poem for "imaginary treason in the following lines:

belong to that haples race of men, whose misfortune it is to have understanding. Henceforth let

"As when the Sun new ris'n

"Looks through the horizontal misty air

"Shorn of his beams, or from behind the Moon

"In dim eclipse, disastrous twilight sheds

"On half the nations, and with fear of change
Perplexes monarchs."

Life of MILTON, p. 121. Hollis's edit.

We should felicitate ourselves, that for England's glory, this now our eternal possession was not lost to mankind. How ill the immortal Bard could brook any regulator of his text, we may easily conceive. He must have put some restraint on his native independence of spirit, not to have given way to the impulse he could not but have felt to " ding" the Printer's Copy a "coit's "distance from him" into the flames, when returned to him scored with objections, and a whole Simile excepted to by an Archbishop's Chaplain.

The apprehension of a like indignity must have deterred numbers from all commerce with the Press. Through the morbid sensibility so common among Authours, we have all witnessed with what hesitation and reluctance many bring themselves to submit their thoughts even to critical censure. The fear that his Manuscripts might be garbled, perhaps interpolated, in a posthumous publication, prompted Sir Matthew Hale to the resolve that "none of his Writings should be at the mercy of Licensers." Burnet's Life of Hale; p. 111. 12mo.

Let me add a striking instance of the suppression of a choice period in an exquisite Book. Xenophon had put into the mouth of Cyrus, when making a hortatory speech to his Grecian auxiliaries, that they should be assured he would prefer Liberty before all things he possessed, with the addition of many others. Εν γαρ ιστε οτι την ελευθερίαν ελοίμην αν αντι ων εχω παντων και άλλων πολλαπλασίων. Where Spelman observes, "whether "D'Ablancourt found any difficulty in this sentence, or whe"ther he was afraid of offending the tender ears of his Monarch "with the harshness of it, I know not; but so it is, that he has

no man care to learn, or care to be more then worldly wise; for certainly in higher matters to be ignorant and slothfull, to be a common stedfast dunce will be the only pleasant life, and only in request.

" left out every syllable of this period."-See Spelman's Translation of the Anabasis, I. 75. 8vo. This was under Louis XIV. We may be fully confident that he would never have harangued his Swiss Mercenaries in the same strain, that the Historian records this eastern Despot to have addressed the Ten Thousand ; and perhaps a testimony so favourable to popular Governments would have been objected to by the Syndic; so that D'Ablancourt's version could not have appeared avec Approbation et Privelége du Roi, without this mutilation. But where is the extenuation for the respectable Biographer of Sir William Jones, who took on him to strike the following paragraph out of a Letter written by that excellent Man to Dr. Price?

• "Chrishna-nagur, Sep. 14, 1790. "When I think of the late glorious Revolution in France, I "cannot help applying to my poor infatuated Country, the "words which Tully formerly applied to Gaul, ex omnibus ter"ris Britannia sola communi non ardet incendio."-See Memoirs of Sir William Jones; by Lord Teignmouth; p. 341. 4to, that this sentence is there omitted.

8 A common sted fast dunce.] i. e. "a fixed or confirmed "Dunce." We meet with this Adjective in the same signification in Spenser: F. 2. b. 2. c. 2. st. 8.

"Transform'd her to a stone from stedfast Virgin's state." Again in the same book. c. 7. st. 1. a fixed star is called " a stedfast star." It bears a kindred sense in il Penseroso; v. 31. "Come, pensive Nun, devout and pure,

"Sober, stedfast, and demure."

And it may be added, that our Poet might have caught these rhymes and this peculiar combination from an antient Ballad quoted by Sir J. Hawkins (Hist. of Music: III. 29.):

--"She is proper and pure "Full stedfast, stabill and demure."