Chretienne_, 1767.

4. The _Examen Impartial des Principales Religions du Monde_.

5. Baron d'Holbach's _Contagion Sacree_, or _l'Histoire Naturelle
de la Superstition_, 1768.

6. Holbach's _Systeme de la Nature ou des Lois du Monde Physique
et du Monde Moral_.

7. Voltaire's _Dieu et les Hommes; oeuvre theologique, mais
raisonnable_ (1769).

No one writer, indeed, of the eighteenth century contributed so
many books to the flames as Voltaire. Besides the above work, the
following of his works incurred the same fate:--(1) the _Lettres
Philosophiques_ (1733), (2) the _Cantique des Cantiques_ (1759),
(3) the _Dictionnaire Philosophique_ (1764), also burnt at
Geneva; (4) _L'Homme aux Quarante Ecus_ (1767), (5) _Le Diner du
Comte de Boulainvilliers_ (1767). When we add to these burnings
the fact that at least fourteen works of Voltaire were condemned,
many others suppressed or forbidden, their author himself twice
imprisoned in the Bastille, and often persecuted or obliged to
fly from France, we must admit that seldom or never had any
writer so eventful a literary career.

II. Turning now to the books that were burnt for their real or
supposed immoral tendency, I may refer briefly in chronological
order to the following as the principal offenders, though of
course there is not always a clear distinction between what was
punished as immoral and punished as irreligious. This applies to
the four volumes of the works of the Carmelite Mantuanus,
published at Antwerp in 1576, of which nearly all the copies were
burnt. This facile poet, who is said to have composed 59,000
verses, was especially severe against women and against the
ecclesiastical profession. In 1664, the _Journal de Louis Gorin
de Saint Amour_, a satirical work, was condemned, chiefly
apparently because it contained the five propositions of
Jansenius. In 1623, the Parlement of Paris condemned Theophile to
be burnt with his book, _Le Parnasse des Poetes Satyriques_, but
the author escaped with his burning in effigy, and with
imprisonment in a dungeon. I am tempted to quote Theophile's
impromptu reply to a man who asserted that all poets were
fools:--

"Oui, je l'avoue avec vous
Que tous les poetes sont fous;
Mais sachant ce que vous etes
Tous les fous ne sont pas poetes."

Helot also escaped with a burning in effigy when his _L'Ecole des
Filles_ was burnt at the foot of the gallows (1672). Lyser, who
spent his life and his prope