THE FREEDOM OF THE PRESS
By William M. Clyde
Dr. Clyde chose for his Ph.D. thesis a subject of great interest and wide implications. -But, unfortunately, his book, The Struggle for the Freedom- of the Press from Caxton to Crom- well (Milford, 10s. 6d.), remains ton obviously. an academic thesis. The author has studied his period conscientiously and thoroughly, and there can be no doubt of the amount of painstaking research that has gone to the compilation of this work. But for the possibilities- of the subject to be realized
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adequately, it is impossible to confine the matter between two dates, as Dr. Clyde does. He is too much afraid of coming _forward, in his own person," and making his own implications, for his work to be much more than a well-documented thesis. No attempt is made to relate the facts of literary censorship in the seventeenth century to contemporary problems. It is this relevance of its theme to modem affairs that makes the book interesting. We hear of the bitter complaint of the Presbyterians against Laud's harshness, and their equal intolerance, when they came to power. The true advocates of freedom, such as John Lilburne, were persecuted by Laud, the Presbyterians and Cromwell, alike. It is easy to think of modern parallels, and to wonder whether the present oppressed minorities would be any more tolerant, in authority. It seems that the person who tries to be unbiased has always had, and will have, a bad time. The book suffers from an air of dis- jointedness; each chapter is divided into numerous sub- sections, which often have very little immediate connexion with each other. Dr. Clyde, too, shares the . great fault of research students—that of directing attention to a document, mainly because it is unknown, and passing over more 1-n- portant and better-known. matters. The Martin Marprelate controversy and " Areopagitica " have, of course, both already been dealt with frequently, but it is surely inadvisable, in a work of this nature, to pass them over as rapidly as Dr. Clyde has done. Yet the book remains interesting, and the mass of information in it is useful.
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