ower, acknowledges the
absolute necessity of this order in a great government. The
preservers of our literature and our morals they ought to be,
and many have been. When the political reformers ejected the
bishops out of the house, what did they gain? a more vulgar
prating race, but even more lordly! Selden says--"The bishops
being put out of the house, whom will they lay the fault upon
now? When the dog is beat out of the room, where will they lay
the stink?"

[404] The freedom of the press hardly subsisted in Elizabeth's
reign; and yet libels abounded! A clear demonstration that
nothing is really gained by those violent suppressions and
expurgatory indexes which power in its usurpation may
enforce. At a time when they did not dare even to publish
the titles of such libels, yet were they spread about, and
even hoarded. The most ancient catalogue of our vernacular
literature is that by Andrew Maunsell, published in 1595.
It consists of Divinity, Mathematics, Medicine, &c.; but
the third part which he promised, and which to us would
have been the most interesting, of "Rhetoric, History,
Poetry, and Policy," never appeared. In the Preface, such was
the temper of the times, and of Elizabeth, we discover that
he has deprived us of a catalogue of the works alluded to in
our text, for he thus distinctly points at them:--"The books
written by the _fugitive papistes_, as also those that are
_written against the present government_ (meaning those of
the Puritans), I doe not think meete for me to meddle
withall." In one part of his catalogue, however, he contrived
to insert the following passage; the burden of the song seems
to have been chorused by the ear of our cautious Maunsell.
He is noticing a Pierce Plowman in prose. "I did not see the
beginning of this booke, but it ended thus:--

"God save the king, and speed the plough
And send the _prelats_ care inough,
Inough, inough, inough."--p. 80.

Few of our native productions are so rare as the _Martin
Mar-Prelate_ publications. I have not found them in the public
repositories of our national literature. There they have been
probably rejected with indignity, though their a