Page:Books Condemned to be Burnt - James Anson Farrer.djvu/61

Rh be printed in the future; and that no plays should be printed without the inspection and permission of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London! But even this is nothing compared with that later attempt to subject the Press to the Church which called forth Milton's Areopagitica; there indeed soon came to be very little to choose between the Inquisition of the High Commission and the more noxious Inquisition of Rome.

Near to the burnt works of the previous writers must be placed those of that prolific writer of the same period, Samuel Rowlands. The severity of his satire, and the obviousness of the allusions, caused two of his works to be burnt, first publicly, and then in the hall kitchen of the Stationers' Company, in October 1600. These were: The Letting Humour's Blood in the Headvein, and, A Merry Meeting; or, 'tis Merry when Knaves meet; both of which subsequently reappeared under the titles respectively of Humour's Ordinarie, where a man may be verie merrie and exceeding well used for his sixpence, and the Knave of Clubs, Either work would now cost much more than sixpence, and probably fail to make the reader very merry, or even merry at all. One of the epigrams, however, of the first work may be quoted