SOME FATAL BOOKS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 6120, 5 March 1898, Page 2

SOME FATAL BOOKS.

[By Eev P. 11. Ditchfield, M.A.] (Gentleman's Magazine.) Books relating to alchemy and magic liave caused much, trouble. Edward Kelly, the j companion of Dr Dee, had his ears cut oft" at Manchester, and his friend and patron, whose works were edited by Casauhon, was obliged to fly from England, and seek shelter at the court of the Emperor Rudolf. The impostor, Joseph Francis Bom, an Italian chemist and charlatan, who claimed, after the fashion of alchemists, to have discovered the philosopher's 'stone, wrote a book entitled "The Key of the Cabinet of Borri," and was imprisoned for life in the Castle of St Angelo. Urban Grandier, an amiable cleric of France, offended Eichelieu in his book, "La Cordonniere de Loudun," and, consequently, when a strange frenzy broke out among the nuns of the convent of which he was Director, he was accused of witchcraft and condemned to be burnt. When he ascended the funeral pile a fly was observed to buzz around his head, and a monk standing near declared that as Beelzebub was the God of Flies, the devil was with Grandier in his dying hour, and wished to bear away his soul to the infernal regions. Among scientific writers, one Roger Bacon was imprisoned on account of his books, and everyone knows the treatment T7hich Galileo received at the hands of the Inqxiisition. Jordano Bruno, an Italian, who was a friend of Sir Philip Sydney, on account of his book, " The Expulsion of the Triumphing Beast/' was burnt at Eome in 1595. With a courage worthy of a philosopher, he exclaimed to his merciless judges, "You pronounce sentence upon me with greater fear than I receive it." Lucilio Vanini was an Italian philosopher of much learning, who, after the fashion of the scholars of his age, roamed from country to country, like the knight-errants of THE DATS OF CHIVALRY, seeking for glory and honour, not by the sword, but by learning. This Yahim was a somewhat vain and ,Ti,difi'ul»us person. He assumed tha high-sounding cognomen of Julius Caesar, and soon wrote a book which caused him to be accused of Atheism. He was burnt at Toulouse in 1619. i * * * * # I met with a copy in. a catalogue of old books of Boccalini's "Ragguagli di Parnasso" (1612). This was a fatal book. It represents Apollo as judge of Parnassus, citing before him kings, authors, warriors, statesmen, and other mighty personages, minutely examining their faults and crimes and passing judgment upon them. Inasmuch as these people whom Apollo condemned were the author's contemporaries, it may be imagined that the book created no small stir, and aroused the anger of the victims of his satire. The poor author fled to Venice, where he imagined himself safe ; but assassins were not hard to find in the seventeenth century, and one day four strong ruffians seized the obnoxious author, cast him upon a couch, and beat him to death with bags filled with sand. One example of French satirical writing may be mentioned. Count Eoger Eabutin de Bussy exercised his keen, wife on the ceurt intrigues and lawless loves of the grand monarch. His first book, " Les Amours du Palais Eoyal," excited the wrath of Louis XIV. This was followed by his " Histoire Amoureuse des Gaules," wherein he described the lax manners of the court, the intrigue of Louis with La Valli&re, and lashed all the fair court dames with hiß satire, amongst them Mesdames d'Olonne and de Chatillon. Unhappily he had the indiscretion to show the book when it was yet in MS. to his intimate friend, the Marchioness de Beaume. But the best of friends sometimes quarrel, and unfortunately the Count and the good lady quarrelled while yet the MS. was in her possession. A GRAND OPPORTUNITY FOR REVENGE presented itself. She showed the ladies of the Court the severe verses winch the Count had written. So enraged were they that they carried their complaints to the King, already smarting under De Bussy's satire, and the poor author was immediately

sent to the Bastille, and then doomed to perpetual banishment. Everyone has heard of the fate of Daniel Defoe, the illustrious author of " Robinson Crusoe," who was condemned to prison and the pillory for his " Shortest Way with the ! Dissenters." A parody-of Young's " Night -j Thoughts," entitled 'Los Jours d'Ariste," sent Durosoy to the Bastille, and a scandalous poem carried by a gust of wind through an open "window condemned Pierre Petit to the state. It would be an easy task to multiply instances of literary martyrdom, and to add to our long list of unhappy authors. One writer lost his life on account of a single couplet of verses. This was Caspar Weiser, Professor of Lund, in Sweden. When the city was captured by the Danes, in 1676, Weiser greeted the conqueror with the following couplet :— Ferge, trinmphator, reliqnas submittero terras Sic redit a d Dotninam, quod fuit ante^«uum. This was fatal to him. The Swedish monarch recovered his lost territory, and the poor poet lost his head. The same hard fate befell John Williams in 1619, who was hanged, drawn and quartered, on account of two poems, " Balaam's Ass " and " Speculum Regis," the MSS. of which he foolishly sent secretly in a box to James I. The monarch always feared assassination, and as one of the poems foretold his .speedy decease, the prophet incurred the king's wrath, and SUFFERED DEATH FOB HIS PAINS. We have often heard of authors being compelled to " eat their words," but the operation has seldom been performed literally. One instance of this, however, we can mention. When the Danes lost much of their power during the Thirty Years' War, and were overshadowed by the might of Sweden, one Theodore Reinking, lamenting the diminished glory of his nation, wrote a work upon the history of his country and the guiles of the Swedes. It was n«t a very excellent work, neither was its author a learned nor accurate historian, but it aroused the anger of the Swedes, who cast Reinking into prison. There he remained many years, when at length he wa3 offered his freedom on condition that either he should lose his head or eat his book. The author preferred the latter alternative, and with admirable cleverness devoured his, book when ho had converted it into a kind of sauce. For his own sake, we trust that his work was not a ponderous or bulky volume. The pains and penalties of authorship have, indeed, been great, and no other pursuit has had more unhappy victims. The i present race of writers may congratulate themselves that they live in peaceable and enlightened times, and need have no fear of being compelled either to eat their books or lose their heads.