Note 103 — CALAMITIES OF AUTHORS: (continued 4)

Prynne seems to have considered being debarred from pen, ink, and books as an act more barbarous than the loss of his ears. See his curious book of “A New Discovery of the Prelate’s Tyranny;” it is a complete collection of everything relating to Prynne, Bastwick, and Burton; three political fanatics, who seem impatiently to have courted the fate of Marsyas. Prynne, in his voluminous argument, proving the illegality of the sentences he had suffered, in his ninth point thus gives way to all the feelings of Martinus Scriblerus:—“Point 9th, that the prohibiting of me pen, ink, paper, and books, is against law.” He employs an argument to prove that the abuse of any lawful thing never takes away the use of it; therefore the law does not deprive gluttons or drunkards of necessary meat and drink; this analogy he applies to his pen, ink, and books, of which they could not deprive him, though they might punish him for their abuse. He asserts that the popish prelates, in the reign of Mary, were the first who invented this new torture of depriving a scribbler of pen and ink. He quotes a long passage from Ovid’s Tristia, to prove that, though exiled to the Isle of Pontus for his wanton books of love, pen and ink were not denied him to compose new poems; that St. John, banished to the Isle of Patmos by the persecuting Domitian, still was allowed pen and ink, for there he wrote the Revelation—and he proceeds with similar facts. Prynne’s books abound with uncommon facts on common topics, for he had no discernment; and he seems to have written to convince himself, and not the public.

But to show the extraordinary perseverance of Prynne in his love of scribbling, I transcribe the following title of one of his extraordinary works. He published “Comfortable Cordial against Discomfortable Fears of Imprisonment, containing some Latin verses, sentences and texts of Scripture, written by Mr. Wm. Prynne on his chamber-walls in the Tower of London during his imprisonment there; translated by him into English verse,” 1641. Prynne literally verifies Pope’s description—

“Is there who lock’d from ink and paper, scrawls With desperate charcoal round his darken’d walls?”

We have also a catalogue of printed books written by Wm. Prynne, of Lincoln’s-Inn, Esq., in these classes—

Before}

During}his imprisonment, with the motto Jucundi acti labores. 1643.

Since}