This system has prospered to admiration, in keeping public opinion down to a certain meanness of spirit, and happily preserved stationary the childish stupidity through the nation, on which so much depended.

Nani’s History of Venice is allowed to be printed, because it contained nothing against princes.  Princes then were either immaculate or historians false.  The History of Guicciardini is still scarred with the merciless wound of the papistic censor; and a curious account of the origin and increase of papal power was long wanting in the third and fourth book of his history.  Velly’s History of France would have been an admirable work had it not been printed at Paris!

When the insertions in the Index were found of no other use than to bring the peccant volumes under the eyes of the curious, they employed the secular arm in burning them in public places.  The history of these literary conflagrations has often been traced by writers of opposite parties; for the truth is, that both used them:  zealots seem all formed of one material, whatever be their party.  They had yet to learn, that burning was not confuting, and that these public fires were an advertisement by proclamation.  The publisher of Erasmus’s Colloquies intrigued to procure the burning of his book, which raised the sale to twenty-four thousand!

A curious literary anecdote has reached us of the times of Henry VIII.  Tonstall, Bishop of London, accused at that day for his moderation in preferring the burning of books to that of authors, which was then getting into practice, to testify his abhorrence of Tindal’s principles, who had printed a translation of the New Testament, a sealed book for the multitude, thought of purchasing all the copies of Tindal’s translation, and annihilating them in the common flame.  This occurred to him when passing through Antwerp in 1529, then a place of refuge for the Tindalists.  He employed an English merchant there for this business, who happened to be a secret follower of Tindal, and acquainted him with the bishop’s intention.  Tindal was extremely glad to hear of the project, for he was desirous of printing a more correct edition of his version; the first impression still hung on his hands, and he was too poor to make a new one; he gladly furnished the English merchant with all his unsold copies, which the bishop as eagerly bought, and had them all publicly burnt in Cheapside.  The people not only declared this was a “burning of the word of God,” but it inflamed the desire of reading that volume; and the second edition was sought after at any price.  When one of the Tindalists, who was sent here to sell them, was promised by the lord chancellor, in a private examination, that he should not suffer if he would reveal who encouraged and supported his party at Antwerp, the Tindalist immediately accepted the offer, and assured the lord chancellor that the greatest encouragement they had was from Tonstall, the Bishop of London, who had bought up half the impression, and enabled them to produce a second!