Alike in the annals of forgery—State forgery of “real” evidence—and in the annals of the British drama, “The Golden Rump” has a history very well known. It was a farce, the representation of which was made the excuse for the passing of the Act whereunder the licensing of theatrical performances was established. At the same time it was a farce which those in power had directly induced its author to compose. That there was no one to imagine or tolerate a play sufficiently rampant to justify the proposal to fetter, which Party Government imagined it well to execute—that this was believed, becomes a testimony to the potency of customary self-regulation. Now conversely, and carrying the analogy to all branches of literature, it may be asserted that the suppression of books by authors themselves is likely to be comparatively frequent just in those countries in which the State does not much concern itself with suppression by its authority. If this analogy have force it must, to Englishmen, be peculiarly gratifying—though the elements of restraint have prevailed in our history to an extent far beyond general belief—at a time when Dr. Reusch’s excellent Index of books prohibited by the authority of Pope, Archbishop, or Continental University is extracting from the competent critics of all countries the homage which untiring assiduity, monumental learning, and rich moderation compel.
However, into the measurement of this comparative frequency, _causes_ essentially enter. These, in England, as in other realms, have abounded. Now, of all the motives which have led authors to consign their compositions to the flames, one of the most frequent, if one of the least seductive, has been the ridicule and elaborate discouragement with which parents have received the knowledge of their offspring’s first essays. The feeling which prompts this is not one to be altogether blamed: it has its partial justification even in the distaste with which the recipient children lay open their treasure-house to those who in days of feebleness have guarded them. For there is, as Tom Tulliver felt, a “family repulsion which spoils the most sacred relations of our lives,” and which is only broken down by some community of art levelling with the sense of a universality wherein all distinction of discipleship is lost, or else by dire circumstance shattering into shapelessness beyond disguise. This, perhaps, rather than quicker sensitiveness, is why it is that young Mozart met response, but the little Burney girl did not. Only to Susanna, her sister, would Fanny breathe her secret, and anxious was she because her mother gained sufficient inkling to induce her periodically to tell the evils of a scribbling turn of mind. But, as with Petrarch centuries before, some time in her fifteenth year the promptings of obedience gained the day. “She resolved,” says Charlotte, her niece and editor, “to make an auto da fé of all her manuscripts, and, if possible, to throw away her pen. Seizing, therefore, an opportunity when Dr. and Mrs. Burney were from home, she made over to a bonfire in a paved play-court the whole stock of her compositions, while faithful Susanna stood by, weeping at the conflagration. Among the works thus immolated was one tale of considerable length, the ‘History of Caroline Evelyn,’ the mother of ‘Evelina.’”