THE "CENSURE"
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the volumes that were issued up to the year 1848, Henceforth the book appeared simultaneously in German and
Bohemian. When Palack^, towards the end of his life, re-wrote his great work, the earlier parts also appeared in Bohemian. The first volume, dealing with a period when the history of Bohemia is more than half mythical, was treated very leniently by the censors, who considered the fables of Premysl and Libussa very harmless. In the. Austria of the earlier part of this century the words "Securus licet JEmeam. Rutulumque ferocem committas . . ." were as true as in the Rome of the emperors. Difficulties, however, began when Palack;^ had reached the period of Hus. The masterly account of the life and death of the great Bohemian, no doubt the most brilliant part of Palack^'s work, greatly displeased the censors to whom it was submitted. The ecclesiastical censor suggested a very plain course, namely, that Palack^'s work should be entirely suppressed. Prince Metternich, who was consulted, proposed that Palacky should omit all "objectionable reasoning," but should be allowed to state facts.
The correspondence between Palacky and the censors —published by the former after the suppression of that detestable institution — is irresistiblyjcomic. The censors had not only, as is generally supposed, the power of striking out passages in an author's work that displeased them, they were also entitled to insert passages in a book that were often in direct contradiction with the writer's views. Palack^'s description of the corruption of the Roman clergy in the fifteenth century was suppressed, and he was ordered to attribute the rise of the Hussite movement to the "stubbornness, inflexible ob of Hus. Palack;^ patiently stinacy, and dogmaticalness
