striking instance which my far from exhaustive researches
afford, sprang from the fact, perhaps not very generally known, that
the natural function of eating, which nowadays may be discussed
intrepidly anywhere, was once regarded by the Philistines, of at all
events the Shephelah and the deme of Novogath, as being
unmentionable. This ancient tenet of theirs, indeed, is with such
clearness emphasized in a luckily preserved fragment from the Dirghic,
or pre-Ciceronian Latin, of Saevius Nicanor that the readiest way to
illustrate the chameleon-like traits of literary indecency appears to
be to record, as hereinafter is recorded, what of this legend
survives.

Buelg and Vanderhoffen, be it said here, are agreed that it is to this
legend Milton has referred in his _Areopagitica_, in a passage
sufficiently quaint-seeming to us (for whom a more advanced
civilization has secured the right of free speech) to warrant an
abridged citation:--

"What advantage is it to be a man, over it is to be a boy at school,
if serious and elaborate writings, as if they were no more than the
theme of a grammar lad under his pedagogue, must not be uttered
without the cursory eyes of a temporizing and extemporizing licenser?
whenas all the writer teaches, all he delivers, is but under the
tuition, under the correction of his patriarchal licenser, to blot or
alter what precisely accords not with the hide-bound humor which he
calls his judgment? What is it but a servitude like that imposed by
the Philistines?"

THE LEGEND

_Fit ex his consuetudo, inde natura_

"I love little pussy,
Her fur is so warm."

I--How Horvendile Met Fate and Custom

Now, at about the time that the Tyrant Pedagogos fell into disfavor
with his people, avers old Nicanor (as the curious may verify by
comparing Lib. X, Chap. 28 of his _Mulberry Grove_), passed through
Philistia a clerk whom some called Horvendile, travelling by
compulsion from he did not know where toward a goal which he could not
divine. So this Horvendile said, "I will make a book of this
journeying, for it seems to me a rather queer journeying."

They answered him: "Very well, but if you have had dinner or supper by
the way, do you make no mention of it in your book. For it is a law
among us, for the protection of our youth, that eating[2] must never
be spoken of in any of our writing."

[Footnote 2: Such at least is the generally received rendering.
Ackermann, following