to stand one hour in the
pillory in State Street on two days, be confined in prison for two years
and pay the costs of the prosecution. As this case was termed "a
transaction exceeding in infamy all that has hitherto appeared in the
commerce of our country," this sentence does not seem severe.

The pillory lingered long in England. Lord Thurlow was eloquent in its
defence, calling it "the restraint against licentiousness provided by
the wisdom of past ages." In 1812 Lord Ellenborough, equally warm in his
approval and endorsement, sentenced a blasphemer to the pillory for two
hours, once each month, for eighteen months; and in 1814 he ordered Lord
Cochrane, the famous sea-fighter of Brasque Roads fame, to be set in the
pillory for spreading false news. But Sir Francis Burdett declared he
would stand on the pillory by Lord Cochrane's side, and public opinion
was more powerful than the Judge. By this time the pillory was rarely
used save in cases of perjury. As late as 1830 a man was pilloried for
that crime. In 1837 the pillory was ordered to be abandoned, by Act of
Parliament; and in 1832 it was abolished in France.

[Illustration: The Burning of Books]

V

PUNISHMENTS OF AUTHORS AND BOOKS

The punishments of authors deserve a separate chapter; for since the
days of Greece and Rome their woes have been many. The burning of
condemned books begun in those ancient states. In the days of Augustus
no less than twenty thousand volumes were consumed; among them, all the
works of Labienus, who, in despair thereat, refused food, pined and
died. His friend Cassius Severus, when he heard sentence pronounced,
cried out in a loud voice that they must burn him also if they wished
the books to perish, as he knew them all by heart.

The Bible fed the flames by order of Dioclesian. And in England the
public hangman warmed his marrow at both literary and religious flames.
Bishop Stockesly caused all the New Testament of Tindal's translation
to be openly burnt in St. Paul's churchyard. On August 27, 1659,
Milton's books were burnt by the hangman; Marlow's translations kept
company. These vicarious sufferings were as nothing in the recital of
the author's woes, for the sight of an author or a publisher with his
ear nailed to a pillory was too common to be widely noted, for anyone
who printed without permission could, by the law of the land, be thus
treated; when the author was released, if his bleeding ear was left on
the p