t time,
they could not bear to hear a writer talk of excommunicating him, tho
they themselves afterward cut his head off. Prynne was summoned to
appear before the Star Chamber; his wonderful book, from which Father
Lebrun stole his, was sentenced to be burned by the common hangman,
and himself to lose his ears.[45] His trial is now extant.

[Footnote 45: William Prynne, lawyer, pamphleteer, and statesman, was
born in 1600, and died in 1669. Prynne in 1648 was released from
imprisonment by the Long Parliament and obtained a seat in the House
of Commons where he took up the cause of the king. Later, in the
Cromwellian period, he was arrested and again imprisoned, but was
released in 1652, and, after the accession of Charles II, was made
keeper of the records in the Tower.]

The Italians are far from attempting to cast a blemish on the opera,
or to excommunicate Signor Senesino or Signora Cuzzoni. With regard to
myself, I could presume to wish that the magistrates would suppress I
know not what contemptible pieces written against the stage. For when
the English and Italians hear that we brand with the greatest mark of
infamy an art in which we excel; that we excommunicate persons who
receive salaries from the king; that we condemn as impious a spectacle
exhibited in convents and monasteries; that we dishonor sports in
which Louis XIV and Louis XV performed as actors; that we give the
title of the devil's works to pieces which are received by magistrates
of the most severe character, and represented before a virtuous queen;
when, I say, foreigners are told of this insolent conduct, this
contempt for the royal authority, and this Gothic rusticity which some
presume to call Christian severity, what idea must they entertain of
our nation? And how will it be possible for them to conceive, either
that our laws give a sanction to an art which is declared infamous, or
that some persons dare to stamp with infamy an art which receives a
sanction from the laws, is rewarded by kings, cultivated and
encouraged by the greatest men, and admired by whole nations? And that
Father Lebrun's impertinent libel against the stage is seen in a
bookseller's shop, standing the very next to the immortal labors of
Racine, of Corneille, of Moliere, etc.?

JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU

Born in Geneva in 1712, died near Paris in 1778; his father
a mender of watches and teacher of dancing; lived from hand
to mouth until he was thirty-e