Front matter (continued 18)

Did the severity of these decrees produce the evils they encountered, or was it the existence of the evils which provoked the issue of these edicts? Did the terrific executions eradicate the political mischief? There was no free press in Elizabeth’s reign, and yet libels abounded! The government compulsively contracted the press by their twenty stationary printers; and behold! moveable presses, whose ubiquity was astonishing as their ceaseless working. An invisible printer mysteriously scattered his publications here and there, during the contest of the Mar-prelate faction with the bishops; and the libels of the Jesuit Parsons, and others of the Roman party, were as rife against her majesty and her minister. The same occurred when the Star-chamber was guided by the genius of Laud; the altar was raised, and the sacerdotal knife struck! but the groans of the immolated victims were a shout of triumph. A clear demonstration that nothing is really gained by the temporary suppressions which power may enforce; the sealed book circulates till it is hoarded, and the author pilloried, mutilated, or hanged, obtains a popularity, which often his own genius afforded him no chance to acquire.

The secret design of all these entangling edicts was to hold the printers in passive obedience to the government, whatever that government might be; for each separate government, though acting on opposite principles, manifested a remarkable uniformity in their proceedings with the press. In the arbitrary days of Charles the Second, an extraordinary, if not an audacious, attempt was made to wrest the art of printing out of the hands of its professors, and to place the press wholly at the disposal of the sovereign. This usurping doctrine was founded on a startling plea. As our monarchs had granted privileges to the earliest printers, and, from the introduction of the art into England, had never ceased their patronage or their control, it was inferred, that our kings had never yielded the royal prerogative of printing any more than they had that of coining. The “mystery” of printing, in the style of the lawyers, was “a flower of the crown!”—the exercise of the prerogative; and therefore every printer in England must be a sworn servant of the crown. At such a period we are not surprised to find an express treatise put forth to demonstrate to his sacred majesty, that “printing belonged to him, in his public and private capacity, as supreme magistrate and as proprietor;” in reality there was to be but one printer for all England, and that printer the king! This was giving at once the most elevated and the most degraded notions of “the divine art,” which this servile assumer describes can “not only bereave the king of his good name, but of the very hearts of his people.”16

We observe the lamentations of these advocates of arbitrary power over the freedom of the press, or, as such maintained, the confusion produced “by the exorbitant and unlawful exercise of printing in modern times.” They appeal to the miseries and calamities not only recently witnessed in our own country, but in Germany, France, the Netherlands, and Switzerland. Wherever they track a footstep of the liberty of the press, they pause to discover its accompanying calamity. One of these writers, to convey an adequate notion of the spread and political influence of the press, has thrown out a very excitable remark:—“Had this art been known in the time of the grand profession of the Donatist and Arian heresy, it would have drowned the world in a second deluge of blood and confusion, to its utter destruction long time since.” A stroke of church history which might suggest a whole volume!

The interests of the printers had coincided with the designs of government, in limiting the number of presses; for the policy of their narrow confederacy was, the fewer printers the more printing! But the interests of the booksellers were quite opposite; they were for encouraging supernumerary printers, and overstocking the printing-offices with journeymen, and by this means they succeeded in bringing the printers down to their price or their purpose; and it is insinuated, on the Machiavelian principle, that the number being greater than could live honestly by the trade, one-half must be knaves, or starve. And it seems that “knaves” were in greater requisition by the publishers of “the unlawful,” or, as these were afterwards called on the establishment of a licenser of the press, “the unlicensed books,” who revelled in their seductive profits.17

Among the effusions of the political Literature of the egregious Sir Roger L’Estrange, versed in the arcana of the publishing system of his day, I discover a project which terminated in renewing the office of the Licenser of Books, in his own person; the only pitiful preferment the Restoration brought the clamorous Loyalist. Our literary knight addressed Charles the Second, to impress on his Majesty the urgency of an immediate regulation of the press; “this great business of the press being now engrossed by Oliver’s creatures, and the honest printers being impoverished by the late times.”

This project to regulate the press by L’Estrange, chiefly turned on the dexterous management of the printers. He calculated, for four thousand pounds, to buy up the presses of the poor printers, who were willing to be reimbursed, and look to better trades. The bolder project was to emancipate the printers from the tyranny of the booksellers, by which means they would no longer be necessitated to print whatever their masters ordered. The printers at this moment had menaced to separate themselves from the stationers, with a view of their own.

The printers had been gradually deprived of any shares in new publications; they had been thrown out of all copyright, and probably had grown somewhat jealous of their prosperous masters; the printers complained that they were nothing else than slaves to the booksellers. They called for an independent company of “the mystery,” and reverting to the custom of the early printers, they desired to have their own presses under their own management, and to print only the copies of which they themselves were the proprietors.

The future licenser of the press, who was throwing his net to haul in all these fish at a cast, took advantage of this project, which at once was levelled at the freedom of the trade, and the freedom of the press. Printers solely working on their own copies, would indeed check “the ungovernable ambition of the booksellers,” by diminishing their copyrights; while those “unhappy printers” would be relieved, who at present have no other work than what “the great dealers in treasonous or seditious books” furnished them. All these were but the ostensible motives, for the real object designed was that the printers should become the creatures of the patronage of government, and, by the diminution of their number, the contracted circle would be the more easily managed.

Such were the systematic struggles of our governments in the revival of the severe acts for the regulation of printing at various periods. It was long assumed that printing was not a free trade, but always to remain under regulation.

When Dr. Johnson, labouring under the pressure of his ancient notions, contending with the clear perception of his sceptical sagacity, once stood awed before the sublime effusion of Milton’s “Areopagitica,” he hazarded this opinion, for by balancing his notions it cannot be accepted as a decision: “The danger of such unbounded liberty, and the danger of bounding it, have produced a problem in the science of government which human understanding seems unable to solve.”

And whatever either the advocates or the adversaries of the freedom of the press may allege, this problem in the science of government remains as insoluble at this day as at any former period—a truth demonstrated by a circumstance which has repeatedly occurred in our own political history. The noble treatise of Milton for a free press had not the slightest influence on that very parliament whose members had long suffered from its oppression. The Catholics clamoured for a free press under Charles the Second, but the same act operating against them under James the Second, from the use of the press by the Protestant party—the liberty of the press was then condemned as exorbitant and intolerable. The advocates of a free press thus become its adversaries whenever they themselves form the ruling power. Orators for the freedom of the press suddenly send forth outcries against its abuses; but as those, whoever the party may be, who are in place, are called the government, it always happens that the opposition, whatever may be their principles, must submit to the risk of being deemed seditious libellers.

1 See a curious note of Hearne’s in his Glossary to “Peter Langtoft’s Chronicle,” p. 685. Also Herbert’s “Typog. Antiq.” p. 1435.

2 Strype’s “Memorials,” i. 344 and 218.

3 A curious and a copious catalogue of these books, “though the books themselves are almost perished,” may be seen in Strype’s “Ecclesiastical Memorials,” i. 165.

4 The book, “De Verâ Differentiâ inter Regiam Potestatem et Ecclesiasticam,” was called “The King’s Book.” It seems that the scholastic monarch gave some finishing strokes to what had probably passed through the hands of his most expert casuists.

5 “Archæologia,” vol. xxv. 104.

6 Pegge, in his “Anecdotes of the English Language,” has somewhat crudely remarked that “the term Stationers was appropriated to Booksellers in the year 1622;” but it was so long before. It is extraordinary that Mr. Todd, well read in our literary history, admits this imperfect disclosure of Pegge into the “Dictionary of the English Language.” The term Stationer and Bookseller were synonymous and in common use in the reign of Elizabeth, and may be found in Baret’s “Alvearie,” 1573.

7 The Charter may be found in Herbert’s “Typographical Antiquities,” p. 1584.

8 Strype’s “Memorials,” iii: part 2nd. p. 130.

9 In the Lansdowne Manuscripts, 43, fol. 76, will be found “an act to restrain the licentious printing of unprofitable and hurtful books,” 1580. After declaring that the art of printing is “a most happy and profitable invention,” it is pointed at those “who pen or translate in the English tongue poesies, ditties, and songs, serving for a great part of them to none other end, what titles soever they bear, but to set up an art of making lascivious and ungodly love, to the intolerable corruption of life and manners—and to the no small or sufferable waste of the treasure of this realm, which is thereby consumed in paper, a forren and chargeable commoditie.” The first paper made in England was at Dartford, in 1588, by a German, who was knighted by the queen.

10 This decree of the Star-chamber is printed in Herbert’s “Typographical Antiquities,” p. 1668.

11 The privilege of a royal grant to the author was the only protection the author had for any profits of his work. Henry the Eighth granted Palsgrave his exclusive right for the printing of his book for seven years. Bishop Cooper obtained a privilege for the sale of his “Thesaurus” for twelve years; and a translator of Tacitus, for his version, during his natural life.

12 “Archæologia,” xxv. 112.

13 Nichols on the Stationers’ Company.—“Lit. Anecdotes,” iii.

We have a list “of books yielded by the richer printers who had licenses from the queen;” but whether they were only copies bestowed in charity for the poorer “stationers,” or given up by the monopolists, I do not understand.—Herbert’s “Typographical Antiq.” p. 1672.

14 Herbert’s “Typographical Antiq.”—preface.

15 This remarkable “Decree of Starr-chamber concerning Printing” was in the possession of Thomas Hollis, and is printed in the Appendix to his curious Memoirs, p. 641.

16 “The Original and Growth of Printing, collected out of History and the Records of this Kingdom,” &c., by Richard Atkyns, Esq., 1664. In this rare tract first appeared a narrative of the introduction of printing into Oxford, before Caxton, by the printer Francis Corsellis, to prove that printing was brought into England by Henry the Sixth.

17 For “unlicensed books” the printer charged twenty-five per cent. extra, but the booksellers sold them for double and treble the cost of other books.

“Considerations and Proposals in order to the Regulation of the Press, together with diverse instances of Treasonous and Seditious Pamphlets, proving the necessity thereof,” 1663.

INDEX.

Aborigines, British, 1—5.

Addison’s “Drummer,” origin of, 419.

Adventures of the Elizabethan era, 375—378.

Alchemy, modern opinions on, 631.

Allegory, poetic, 487—501.

Allen, Cardinal, 424.

Alliteration in Spenser’s verse, 477.

Anglo-Normans, the, 59—69.

Anglo-Saxons arrive in Britain, 17; history of their career, 28—36.

Anonymous authorship, 672.

Arcadia, the, of Sir P. Sidney, 451—459.

Ariosto turned into allegory, 489.

Arnolde’s Chronicle, 240—242.

Arthur, King of Britain, 17.

Ascham, R., and his “Schoolmaster,” 359—367.

Atterbury, Bishop, vindicates the genuine character of Clarendon’s History, 731.

Audley, Lord Chancellor, enriched by church-lands, 318.

Augmentation, Court of, 318.

Babble, etymology of, 3, n.

Bacon, Francis, Lord; a believer in occult science, 646—649; his philosophy, 650, 660.

Bale, Bishop, and his satires, 358.

Barclay’s Eclogues, 287.

Baron, the, of the Middle Ages, 71.

Beowulf and his exploits, 51—58.

Bibles publicly burned in Oxford, 335; first translated into English, 369; afterwards prohibited, ib.

Bible and Key, mode of discovering thieves, 420, n.

Bibliotheque Bleue, 260.

Bodley, Sir Thos., founds his great library, 664—669; refuses to include plays in his library, 525.

Books of the people, 256—267.

Books, war against, 738—756.

Borde, Andrew, 263—265.

Brandt, S., and his “Ship of Fools,” 285—288.

Britain and its early inhabitants, 12—23.

Brutus lands in Britain, 2.

Burbage, the actor of Shakespeare’s heroes, 534.

Burleigh, Lord, his hostility to Spenser, 467—471.

Burnet, Bishop: his “History of his own time,” 735—737.

Burton and his curious pamphlets, 267.

Butler, S., criticizes Jonson and Shakespeare, 551, 552.

Cædmon, the Anglo-Saxon poet, 37—50.

Calamy, Dr., casts doubt on Clarendon’s History, 728.

Calumny, and its uses, 429.

Camoens explained by allegory, 489.

Campian, the Jesuit, 425—427.

Campion, Dr., his opinion of rhyme, 396.

Casaubon publishes Dee’s intercourse with spirits, 636.

Caxton and his works, 212—220.

Cecil, Lord, plots against Rawleigh, 602—604.

Campernoun begs an estate, 317.

Chapman and his “Homer,” 522.

Characters, books of, 676.

Charles I. a student of Shakespeare, 548.

Chaucer and his English, 136; his life and works, 158—176.

Cheke, Sir J., on the English language, 133.

Chester Whitsun-plays, 346.

Chivalry, institution of, 70.

Clarendon’s History, 724—737.

Classic authors neglected, 415.

Cobham conspiracy, the, 604.

Cockram, H., his dictionary, 139, n.

Collectors, and their useful labours, 661.

Comedy, an indefinite term originally, 502; Dante so styles his poem, ib.; the first English comedy, 507.

Commonwealth, origin of the term, 712, 713.

Corsellis, and the early Oxford press, 210.

Costar, the early printer, 209.

Cotton, Sir Robert, his famous library, 668; his melancholy death, 669.

Coxeter prepares an edition of old plays, 559.

Cromwell and his grants of church lands, 318; his opinion of his position, 699.

Cross, the enthusiasm for the sign of, 79.

Crowley, Robert, and his works, 329—332.

Cryptography practised by Dr. Dee, 640.

Cudworth, R., and his “System of the Universe,” 714—723.

Dante and his allegories, 491.

Day, John, the printer, 748.

Dee, Dr., the occult philosopher, 617; his scholastic career, 618, 619; his troubles at court, 620; his acquaintance with Princess Elizabeth, 621; fixes a lucky day for her coronation, ib.; is consulted by her privy council, 622; his library, ib.; his works, 623; his mystic studies, 624—629; his foreign travels, 630—634; his return and death, 635, 636; his connexion with spirits, 636; his political position, 640.

Descartes, a favourer of occult philosophy, 647.

Dialects, 142—150.

Dictionaries of rhyme, 403.

Digby, Sir Kenelm, his sympathetic powder, 646.

Divining Rod, account of the, 624.

Dodsley’s edition of old plays, 559, n.

Douce, Francis, and his collections, 662.

Dramas, primitive, 339—352.

Dramatic Taste in the time of Charles II., 550, 551.

Dramatists of the reign of Elizabeth, 516—528.

Drayton, proud of theatrical praise, 621; his poetical works, 581—589.

Druids, the, 1—11.

Dryden and his criticisms on Shakespeare, 554—556.

“Ecclesiastical Polity,” by Richard Hooker, 439—450.

Edward the Sixth, character of, 323.

Elizabeth, Queen, studies under Ascham, 359—363; objects to religious pictures, 366; her popular politics, 370—380; her sensitiveness to public opinion, 379; compares herself to Richard II., 380; her varied orthography, 382; fears to be thought a poetess, 672.

Elphinstone writes words as pronounced, 389.

Elyot, Sir Thomas, and his “Boke of the Governor,” 268—275.

England, derivation of the name, 25.

English priestly colleges abroad, 424.

Engraving on copper, invention of. 206.

Epigrams, books of, 676.

Essex, Earl of, introduced to Queen Elizabeth as an opponent of Rawleigh, 596; his incompetence as a general, 600; his disgrace and death, 602.

Fabulous early history of Britain, 1.

Fabyan’s Chronicle, 243—249.

Fairies disbelieved, 416.

Farmer, Dr., his annotations on Shakespeare, 567.

Finiguerra discovers the art of engraving for printing, 206.

Fish, S., and his “Supplication of Beggars,” 741.

Florence, first public library at, 663.

Fludd, the occult philosopher, 642—649.

Foreign Criticism and its value, 417.

Foxe’s Book of Martyrs popularized, 374.

Franklin contemplates spelling by sound. 388.

Freedom of the press, 756.

French words derived from Latin, 97, n.; ordered to be solely used for law, 125.

Friendship a romantic attachment in the days of Elizabeth, 451.

Fust’s first printed Bible, 204.

Gammer Gurton’s Needle long considered the first English comedy, 507—509.

Gentry, rise of, 371.

Ghosts, controversies concerning, 419.

Gibberish, derivation of the term, 651, n.

Glanvil’s treatise on witchcraft, 418, 419.

Gorboduc, the first English tragedy, 503—506.

Gower the poet, his life and works, 177—182.

Gothic romances, 81—95.

Greek a fashionable language among ladies, 360.

Greene, Robt., attack on Shakespeare, 536.

Gregory of Nazianzen, author of the earliest sacred dramas, 339.

Grey, Lady Jane, her classic attainments, 360.

Guiana, Rawleigh’s voyages to, 598—600.

Gutenberg, the early printer, 208.

Hakluyt’s collection of voyages, 377.

Hale, Sir Matthew, and his judgment on witches, 417.

Hall, John, and his work on monarchy, 709—711.

Hanmer, Sir T., his edition of Shakespeare, 562.

Hariot, Thos., the traveller, 611—613.

Harrington, Sir J., on poetry, 409; his Oceana, 692—708.

Harvey, Gabriel, introduces Spenser to Sir P. Sidney, 460; supposed to be the annotator of the Shepherd’s Calendar, 461.

Hawes, Stephen, the poet, 230—233.

Hastings, battle of, 60.

Henry the Eighth, his literary character, 250—255.

Henry the Seventh, as a patron of literature, 228—233.

Henslow, the Elizabethan manager, 520, n., 523.

Hexameter verse ridiculed by Nash, 396.

Heywood, John, and his works, 354—358.

Higden, R., and the Polychronicon, 236.

History and its sources, 234—239.

Hooker, the favourite author of James I., 679; his Ecclesiastical Polity, 439—450; the simplicity of his life, 440; his marriage, 441; his uneasy mastership of the Temple, 442; his return to the country, 444; his premature death and unconcocted manuscripts, 445—447.

Hoskyns, a critic and poet, temp. James I., 623, n.

Huarte’s Examination of Men’s Wit, 579.

Humours, and their significance, 578.

Huguenot satiric plays, 351.

Icelandic poetry, 34.

Interludes, their invention, 348.

Invention of printing, 203—213.

Jackson, Z., comments on Shakespeare, 547, n.

James I., ratifies the belief in witchcraft, 417; his literary character, 677—680; his polemical feats, 682—684.

James, Dr., first librarian to Sir Thos. Bodley, 665—667.

Jesuits in England, 423.

Johnson’s edition of Shakespeare, 563—566.

Jones, Dr., and his Phonography, 388.

Jonson, Ben, employed by Henslowe—to add to other’s plays, 523; his study of humours, 578—583; assists in Rawleigh’s History of the World, 613; his literary intercourse with James I., 680.

Joubert’s French orthoepy, 385.

Junius, J., a student of our ancient literature, 45—47.

Kelley, Edw., the alchemist, 625—633.

Kyd’s play of Jeronimo, 523.

Lambe, Chas., his specimens of the dramatic poets, 519, n., 528, n.

Languages, European, origin of, 96—110; English, its origin, 111—127; vicissitudes of, 128—141.

“Leicester’s Commonwealth,” a political libel, 427—435; its author challenged by Sir P. Sidney, 454.

L’Estrange, the book licenser, 754.

Lexicographers, the Elder, 138.

Libraries, ancient, 221—227.

Local Names, their derivation, 27.

London in the days of Shakespeare, 673.

Lydgate, the Monk of Bury, 196—202.

Mabinogion, the, 21, n.

Magic, early belief in, 413.

Magic Mirrors, 627, and note.

Malone’s edition of Shakespeare, 568.

Mandeville, the traveller, 151—157.

Manuscripts, their value in the middle ages, 221—223.

Marie de France, the poetess, 66.

Marprelate pamphlets, 747.

Martyr, Peter, opposes school logic, 334; anecdotes of, 335—337.

Masham, Lady, her neglect of her father’s works, 722.

Massinger’s plays, faulty in printed editions, 547, n.

Matthew of Paris, the monkish chronicler, 236.

Memoirs, publishers of contemporary, 724—737.

Mersenne, Père, attacks the Rosacrusians, 647.

Metres of the ancients used by the moderns, 303.

Microscope, invention of, 207.

Milton resembles Cædmon, 40—50; his principles of orthography, 392; his account of Charles I. studying Shakespeare, 548, 9.

Minstrels of the Middle Ages, 75.

Monasteries, spoliation of, 316—321.

Monopolies in the reign of Elizabeth, 594; of printing, 748.

Monkery popular with the people, 372.

Montague, Mrs., defends Shakespeare, 572.

Moralities, or moral plays, 347.

More, Sir T., his psychological character, 289—302.

Mulcaster attempts orthographical reform, 385; his praise of the English language, 386.

Mysteries, or Scriptural plays, 344—348.

Nobility, the, decline in grandeur in the time of Henry VII., 371; decay of great households, 372; restrained in their marriages by Elizabeth, 374.

Occasionalists, 423.

Occleve, the scholar of Chaucer, 191—195.

Oceana, the, of Sir J. Harrington, 692—705.

Oldmixon denies the genuine character of Clarendon’s history, 728—732.

Orthoepy as a means of correcting orthography, 382—392.

Orthography in the days of Elizabeth, 382—387.

Painter’s “Palace of Pleasure,” 518.

Pamphlets, their history and value, 685—691.

Parsons the Jesuit, 424—427.

Pastime of Pleasure, by Hawes, 230—233.

Partnership in dramatic authorship, 523—524.

Philosophers of the 16th century, 651—653.

Piers Plowman, his vision, 183—190.

Pinkerton and his “improved language,” 388.

Polemics in the time of James I., 381—384.

Political pamphlets, remarkable history of a curious collection, 687—691.

Polyolbion, by Drayton, analysed, 584—589.

Pope’s edition of Shakespeare, 558—590, n.

Possessioners, 331.

Preaching, when introduced, 326.

Predecessors of Shakespeare, 514.

Press, the, dreaded by early writers, 670—673.

Printing, invention of, 203—213; first introduced to England, 214—220.

Psychological history of Rawleigh, 590.

Public Libraries first founded, 661.

Public Opinion, rise of, 368—380.

Puritans in the time of James I., 681.

Puttenham’s Arte of English Poesie, 405—412.

Ralph Roister Doister, the first English comedy, 509.

Ramus opposes Aristotle, 652.

Rawleigh, Sir W., his character, 590; his early career, 591; voyages undertaken at his suggestion, 593; his favour at court, 595; his reverse of fortune, 597; his affected romance of love to Elizabeth, ib.; his first voyage, 598; his restoration to the queen’s favour, 601; the Cobham conspiracy, 604; unpopularity with James I., ib.; last voyage, 605; death, 606; his ability as a historiographer, 607; his great general knowledge, 608; his long imprisonment, 610; his philosophical theology, 612.

Reed’s edition of Shakespeare, 568.

Reformation, the, 324.

Retainers of the old Nobility, 370.

Reynard the Fox, 260.

Rhyme in Italy and France, 393, 394; origin of, 399—402.

Rhyming Dictionaries, 403.

Romances, Anglo-Norman, 65; Gothic, 81—95.

Romans, the, in Britain, 13—16.

Roper’s Life of More, 291, n.

Rosacrusian confraternity, 642.

Rota, the, a political club, 699.

Rowe’s edition of Shakespeare, 557.

Roy, W., satirizes Wolsey, 280.

Rymer, and his Shakespearian Criticism, 553—556.

Sackville, Earl of Dorset, the author of the first English tragedy, 504.

Sacrament of Rome ridiculed, 334.

Satires, Ancient, 257.

Satirists, early, 675.

Saxon Chronicle, the, 68.

Scogin the Jester, 263, n.

Scot, Reginald, his “Discoverie of Witchcraft,” 413—422.

Selden, John, notes Drayton’s poem, the “Polyolbion,” 586.

Servant’s Song, 511, n.

Shadwell’s Lancashire Witches, 420; founds his dramatic style on Jonson, 582.

Shakespeare, patronized by James I., 679; indebted to Sidney’s Arcadia for some poetic passages,452; his early dramas, 518—523; his predecessors and contemporaries, 514—528; vicissitudes of his fame, 529; his use of the plots, &c., of predecessors, 530—532; incidents of his early life, 533, 534; his dramatic career, 534—538; his poems, 539—540; his treatment by contemporaries, 541; popularity with the public, 542; careless of his own fame, 543; first edition of his works, 545; editions by Rowe, 557; Pope, 558; Theobald, 559; Sir T. Hanmer, 561; Warburton, 563; Johnson, ib.; the Variorum edition, 567; annotations by Rymer, 553; Farmer, 567; Reed, Steevens, Malone, 568; Warton, 569; Voltaire, 566.

Ship, the, of Fools, 285—288.

Sidney, Sir P., and his Arcadia, 451—453; his chivalric manners, 454; his appreciation of the female character, 455; his great work published by his sister, 458; the general regret at his death, 459; critical injustice to Sidney from Horace Walpole, 451—458.

Skelton the poet, 276—284.

Skulls as drinking cups, 32, n.

Smith, Sir T., attempts to correct orthography, 383.

Songs, Ancient, 256—259.

Sorcery, and its believers, 414.

Spanish Dramatic History, 526.

Spelling, and its difficulties, 389—391.

Spenser, incidents of his life little known, 460; his introduction to Sir P. Sidney, ib.; his Shepherd’s Calendar, 461; his mode of Life, 462; his Irish adventures, 464—467; his death, 473; his Faery Queen, 475—486; its allegorical character, 492.

Spiritual visions of Dr. Dee, 628—636.

Spoliation of the monasteries, 316—321.

Star Chamber decrees against books, 751.

Stationers, their origin, 744.

Steevens, edition of Shakespeare, 568.

Still, Bishop, the Author of an Early Comedy, 508.

Stonehenge, 10, n.

Surrey, the poetical Earl of, 303—315.

Sympathetic Powder, for magical cures, 616.

Tales, popular, their origin, 261.

Tarlton’s jest against Sir W. Rawleigh, 595.

Tasso, explains the “Gierusalemme Liberata,” by allegory, 490.

Technical terms of Rhetoric, 408.

Telescope, invention of, 207.

Theatres, ancient, in London, 515, 516.

Theobald’s edition of Shakespeare, 559, 560.

Thomason’s remarkable collection of political phamphlets, 687—691.

Thorkelin, the Danish Scholar, 57.

Tindal’s Testament, curious narrative concerning, 743.

Toland dishonestly inserts a political libel in Harrington’s works, 708.

Tower of London, scientific men imprisoned in, 610.

Tragedy, the first English, 503—506.

Travellers satirized by Bishop Hall, 378.

Travers, and his controversy with Hooker, 442, 443.

Triads, Welsh, 22, 23, n.

Troynovant founded, 2.

Tyrwhit, editor of Chaucer, 175.

Udall, N., author of the first English comedy, 513.

Universe, Cudworth’s system of the, 714—723.

Upton’s edition of Spenser, 495—500.

Utopia, Sir T. More’s, 299.

Variorum Edition of Shakespeare, 567.

Venice, its government extolled, 693; fallacy of such praise, 702.

Ventriloquism practised by Magicians, 626.

Vernacular dialects of Europe, 96—110; of England, 124.

Verse, Anglo-Saxon, 32.

Vicissitudes of the English language, 128—141; of the French, 130; of the Latin, 131.

Virginia, named by Queen Elizabeth, 593.

Voltaire criticises Shakespeare, 570—572.

War against books, 738—756.

Warburton’s edition of Shakespeare, 562, 563.

Warton, T., comments on Shakespeare, 569.

Weapon-salve, for magical cures, 646.

Webster, J., his elaborate treatise on witchcraft, 418.

Welsh memorials of early Britain, 20.

Wickliffe’s translation of the Bible, 123.

William of Malmesbury, the Monkish historian, 237.

William I. invades England, 59.

Wilson, Thos., endangered at Rome for his writings on rhetoric, 106; his translation of Demosthenes, 374.

Witchcraft, early belief in, 413.

Witch-finders, 417.

Wolsey’s war against the press, 740.

Women, satires on, 265.

Wyatt, Sir T., the poet, 312—315.

Yarrington and his tragedies, 518, n.

BRADBURY, AGNEW, & CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.