Authors have often been compelled to eat their words, but the operation has seldom been performed literally. In the seventeenth century, owing to the disastrous part which Christian IV. of Denmark took in the Thirty Years' War, his kingdom was shorn of its ancient power and was overshadowed by the might of Sweden. One Theodore Reinking, lamenting the diminished glory of his race, wrote a book entitled _Dania ad exteros de perfidia Suecorum_ (1644). It was not a very excellent work, neither was its author a learned or accurate historian, but it aroused the anger of the Swedes, who cast Reinking into prison. There he remained many years, when at length he was offered his freedom on the condition that he should either lose his head or eat his book. Our author preferred the latter alternative, and with admirable cleverness devoured his book when he had converted it into a sauce. For his own sake we trust his work was not a ponderous or bulky volume. CHAPTER VII. SATIRE. Roger Rabutin de Bussy--M. Dassy--Trajan Boccalini--Pierre Billard--Pietro Aretino--Felix Hemmerlin--John Giovanni Cinelli--Nicholas Francus--Lorenzo Valla--Ferrante Pallavicino--François Gacon--Daniel Defoe--Du Rosoi--Caspar Scioppius. To "sit in the seat of the scorner" has often proved a dangerous position, as the writers of satires and lampoons have found to their cost, although their sharp weapons have often done good service in checking the onward progress of Vice and Folly. All authors have not shown the poet's wisdom who declared:-- "Satire's my weapon, but I'm too discreet To run amuck, and tilt at all I meet." Nor have all the victims of satire the calmness and self-possession of the philosopher who said: "If evil be said of thee, and it be true, correct thyself; if it be a lie, laugh at it." It would have been well for those who indulged in this style of writing, if all the victims of their pens had been of the same mind as Frederick the Great, who said that time and experience had taught him to be a good post-horse, going through his appointed daily stage, and caring nothing for the curs that barked at him along the road.