the indignation of his
countrymen--accused at once of contradictory crimes, he could not be
a betrayer of the rights of the people, and at the same time limit the
sovereign power. Cowel retreated to his college, and, like a wise man,
abstained from the press; he pursued his private studies, while his
inoffensive life was a comment on Coke's inhumanity more honourable to
Cowel than any of Coke's on Littleton.

Thus Cowel saw, in his own life, its richest labour thrown aside; and
when the author and his adversary were no more, it became a treasure
valued by posterity! It was printed in the reign of Charles I., under
the administration of Cromwell, and again after the Restoration. It
received the honour of a foreign edition. Its value is still
permanent. Such is the history of a book, which occasioned the
disgrace of its author, and embittered his life.

A similar calamity was the fate of honest STOWE, the Chronicler. After
a long life of labour, and having exhausted his patrimony in the study
of English antiquities, from a reverential love to his country, poor
Stowe was ridiculed, calumniated, neglected, and persecuted. One
cannot read without indignation and pity what Howes, his continuator,
tells us in his dedication. Howes had observed that--

"No man would lend a helping hand to the late aged painful Chronicler,
nor, after his death, prosecute his work. He applied himself to
several persons of dignity and learning, whose names had got forth
among the public as likely to be the continuators of Stowe; but every
one persisted in denying this, and some imagined that their secret
enemies had mentioned their names with a view of injuring them, by
incurring the displeasure of their superiors and risking their own
quiet. One said, 'I will _not flatter_, to scandalise my posterity;'
another, 'I cannot see how a man should spend his labour and money
worse than in that which acquires no regard nor reward except
_backbiting_ and _detraction_.' One swore a great oath and said, 'I
thank God that I am not yet so mad to waste my time, spend two hundred
pounds a-year, trouble myself and all my friends, only to give
assurance of endless reproach, loss of liberty, and bring all my days
in question.'"

Unhappy authors! are such then the terrors which silence eloquence,
and such the dangers which environ truth? Posterity has many
discoveries to make, or many deceptions to endure! But we are treading
on hot embers.

Such too was th