state, into the world, without licence or a
publisher's name. Thus impeded, and finally crushed, the howl of
persecution followed his name; and subsequent writers servilely traced
his character from their partial predecessors.

But Brooke, though denied the fair freedom of the press, and a victim
to the powerful connexions of Camden, calmly pursued his silent labour
with great magnanimity. He wrote his "Second Discovery of Errors," an
enlargement of the first. This he carefully finished for the press,
but could never get published. The secret history of the controversy
may be found there.[396]

Brooke had been loudly accused of indulging a personal rancour against
Camden, and the motive of his work was attributed to envy of his great
reputation; a charge constantly repeated.

Yet this does not appear, for when Brooke first began his "Discovery
of Errors," he did not design its publication; for he liberally offered
Camden his Observations and Collections. They were fastidiously, perhaps
haughtily, rejected; on this pernicious and false principle, that to
correct his errors in genealogy might discredit the whole work. On
which absurdity Brooke shrewdly remarks--"As if healing the sores would
have maimed the body." He speaks with more humility on this occasion
than an insulted, yet a skilful writer, was likely to do, who had his
labours considered, as he says, "worthy neither of thanks nor
acceptance."

"The rat is not so contemptible but he may help the lion, at a pinch,
out of those nets wherein his strength is hampered; and the words of
an inferior may often carry matter in them to admonish his superior of
some important consideration; and surely, of what account soever I
might have seemed to this learned man, yet, in respect to my
profession and courteous offer, (I being an officer-of-arms, and he
then but a schoolmaster), might well have vouchsafed the perusal of my
notes."

When he published, our herald stated the reasons of writing against
Camden with good-humour, and rallies him on his "incongruity in his
principles of heraldry--for which I challenge him!--for depriving some
nobles of issue to succeed them, who had issue, of whom are descended
many worthy families: denying barons and earls that were, and making
barons and earls of others that were not; mistaking the son for the
father, and the father for the son; affirming legitimate children to
be illegitimate, and illegitimate to be legitimate; and framing