greatest discouragement and
affront that can be offered to learning and learned men." The evil of
the system of Rome was, in his opinion, double, for, as he wrote in his
immortal _Areopagitica_, "The Council of Trent and the Spanish
Inquisition engendering together brought forth and perfected those
catalogues and expurging indexes that rake through the entrails of many
an old good author with a violation worse than any that could be
offered to his tomb." When we remember that the greatest works of
literature, such as the _Divine Comedy_, were tampered with, and that,
in the Spanish Expurgatorial Index of 1640 the list of passages to be
deleted or to be altered in Erasmus's works takes 59 double-columned,
closely printed folio pages, we can easily see the point of Milton's
indignant protest. But, to his mind, it was still worse to subject a
book to the examination of unfit men before it could secure its
_imprimatur_. Not without reason has liberty of the press been made
one of the cornerstones of the temple of freedom.

Various writers have labored to demonstrate the blighting effect that
the censorship was supposed to have on literature. But it is
surprising how few examples they can bring. Lea, who ought to know the
Spanish field exhaustively, can only point to a few professors of
theology who were persecuted and silenced for expressing unconventional
views on biblical criticism. He conjectures that others must have
{424} remained mute through fear. But, as the golden age of Spanish
literature came after the law made the printing of unlicensed books
punishable by death, [Sidenote: 1558] it is hard to see wherein
literature can have suffered. The Roman Inquisition did not prevent
the appearance of Galileo's work, though it made him recant afterwards.
The strict English law that playwrights should not "meddle with matters
of divinity or state" made Shakespeare careful not to express his
religious and political views, but it is hard to see in what way it
hampered his genius.

And yet the influence of the various press laws was incalculably great
and was just what it was intended to be. It affected science less than
one would think, and literature hardly at all, but it moulded the
opinions of the masses like putty in their rulers' hands. That the
rank and file of Spaniards and Italians remained Catholic, and the vast
majority of Britons Protestant, was due more to the bondage of the
press than to any other one