Occasionally, when a
publisher or author makes too free with the good name of an English
citizen, the restraint of a prison cell is imposed upon the audacious
libeller. Sometimes when a book offends against the public morals, and
contains the outpourings of a voluptuous imagination, its author is
condemned to lament in confinement over his indecorous pages. The world
knows that Vizetelly, the publisher, was imprisoned for translating and
publishing some of Zola's novels. _Nana_ and _L'Assommoir_ were indeed
fatal books to him, as his imprisonment and the anxiety caused by the
prosecution are said to have hastened his death. The right feeling and
sound sense of the nation has guided the Press of this country into safe
channels, and few books are fatal now on account of their unseemly
contents or immoral tendencies.
CHAPTER XI.
SOME LITERARY MARTYRS.
Leland--Strutt--Cotgrave--Henry Wharton--Robert Heron--Collins--William
Cole--Homeric victims--Joshua Barnes--An example of unrequited toil--
Borgarutius--Pays.
We have still a list far too long of literary martyrs whose works have
proved fatal to them, and yet whose names have not appeared in the
foregoing chapters. These are they who have sacrificed their lives, their
health and fortunes, for the sake of their works, and who had no sympathy
with the saying of a professional hack writer, "Till fame appears to be
worth more than money, I shall always prefer money to fame.
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