The Troubles of a Catholic

Being at the moment in bed with influenza, I was at once incapable of intellectual effort and in need of spiritual sustenance. I had therefore been reading a little Theology. The more modern works of the kind in my possession are at once too profound in thought and too arid in phraseology, so I worked rapidly backwards. One never knows what one is going to come across, and in the beginning of A Just Discharge to Dr. Stillingfleet’s Unjust Charge of Idolatry Against the Church of Rome with a Discovery of the Vanity of his late Defense in his Pretended Answer to a Book Entitled Catholicks No Idolaters By way of Dialogue Between Eunomius, a Conformist, and Catharinus, a Nonconformist, I struck a very pathetic thing. The work was written, I believe, by the Catholic controversialist Godden, and published in 1677. At that time it was difficult for Catholics to get anything out in England, and this work was published at Paris. Hence the unhappy author’s statement about “Errata”:

“The English Press being watch’d of late, as the Orchard of the Hesperides was of old, and a necessity arising from thence of making use of a Paris Printer, who understands not a word of English, the Reader will have no cause to wonder, if he sometimes meet with ant for and, bu for but, te for the, is for it, tit for tis, wish for with, etc., and oftentimes with false Pointings, words unduly joined, and syllables un-artificially divided at the end of lines, as Ro-me, appropria-te, and the like. I can assure him, the Correction of the Press cost little less pains than the writing of the Treatise.”

In that century a great many English books were printed on the Continent, at Paris, Douai, and elsewhere; and the situation thus candidly explained must have been a common one. A collection of English books printed abroad, which would be interesting for other reasons, might also have an added interest as a repository of comic misprints. But my disease must have brought me very low that I can spend my time thinking of that.