Thomas a Kempis contained some slender rivulets of truth silently
stealing away into light from that interdicted fountain. This belief (so
at least I read the case) led to the prodigious multiplication of the
book, of which not merely the reimpressions, but the separate
translations, are past all counting; though bibliographers _have_
undertaken to count them. The book came forward as an answer to the
sighing of Christian Europe for light from heaven. I speak of Thomas a
Kempis as the author; but his claim was disputed. Gerson was adopted by
France as the author; and other local saints by other nations.

[2] At the same time it must not be denied, that, if you lose by a
journal in the way here described, you also gain by it. The journal gives
you the benefit of its own separate audience, that might else never have
heard your name. On the other hand, in such a case, the journal secures
to you the special enmity of its own peculiar antagonists. These papers,
for instance, of mine, not being political, were read possibly in a
friendly temper by the regular supporters of the journal that published
them. But some of my own political friends regarded me with displeasure
for connecting myself at all with a reforming journal. And far more, who
would have been liberal enough to disregard that objection, naturally
lost sight of me when under occultation to _them_ in a journal which they
never saw.

[3] The crime of Josephus in relation to Christianity is the same, in
fact, as that of Lauder in respect to Milton. It was easy enough to
detect plagiarisms in the "Paradise Lost" from Latin passages fathered
upon imaginary writers, when these passages had previously been forged by
Lauder himself for the purpose of sustaining such a charge.

[4] It is a significant fact, that Dr. Strauss, whose sceptical spirit,