ity, and who appear to have
brought the same servility of mind to the examination of works of
genius. There is something, which, on the principle of incongruity and
contrast, becomes exquisitely ludicrous, in observing the works of men
of genius allowed to be printed, and even commended, by certain persons
who have never printed their names but to their licenses. One of these
gentlemen suppressed a work, because it contained principles of
government which appeared to him not conformable to the laws of Moses.
Another said to a geometrician--"I cannot permit the publication of your
book: you dare to say, that, between two given points, the shortest line
is the straight line. Do you think me such an idiot as not to perceive
your allusion? If your work appeared, I should make enemies of all those
who find, by crooked ways, an easier admittance into court, than by a
straight line. Consider their number!" This seems, however, to be an
excellent joke. At this moment the censors in Austria appear singularly
inept; for, not long ago, they condemned as heretical, two books; one of
which, entitled "_Principes de la Trigonometrie_," the censor would not
allow to be printed, because the _Trinity_, which he imagined to be
included in trigonometry, was not permitted to be discussed: and the
other, on the "Destruction of Insects," he insisted had a covert
allusion to the _Jesuits_, who, he conceived, were thus malignantly
designated.

A curious literary anecdote has been recorded of the learned Richard
Simon. Compelled to insert in one of his works the qualifying opinions
of the censor of the Sorbonne, he inserted them within crotchets. But a
strange misfortune attended this contrivance. The printer, who was not
let into the secret, printed the work without these essential marks: by
which means the enraged author saw his own peculiar opinions overturned
in the very work written to maintain them!

These appear trifling minutiae; and yet, like a hair in a watch, which
utterly destroys its progress, these little ineptiae obliged writers to
have recourse to foreign presses; compelled a Montesquieu to write with
concealed ambiguity, and many to sign a recantation of principles which
they could never change. The recantation of Selden, extorted from his
hand on his suppressed "Historie of Tithes," humiliated a great mind;
but it could not remove a particle from the masses of his learning, nor
darken the luminous conviction of his reasonings;