Another difficulty was the vexatious censorship exercised by Town Councillors, whose views of literature were parochial. Even Agrippa d’Aubigné, with all his fame and merit, was pursued by their suspicions both during his lifetime and after his death. The printer of one of his works was imprisoned and fined for issuing from his press a book alleged to contain ‘much impious and blasphemous matter which scandalizes well-conducted persons’; while, after his decease, his papers were sent for, to be inspected by public officials. ‘Anything composed by the defunct,’ it was decided, ‘during his residence in this State must be suppressed, but anything composed on other territory may be restored to his heirs.’ Literary decorum may have been insured by such measures; but they were not calculated to encourage originality, and it is not surprising that we search Genevan annals in vain for distinguished literary names. [Illustration: THE STATUE OF JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU ON THE ISLAND IN THE RHONE, GENEVA, FROM HOTEL DES BERGUES] The name of which the Genevans are proudest is probably that of Rousseau, who has sometimes been spoken of as ‘the austere citizen of Geneva.’ But ‘austere’ is a strange epithet to apply to the philosopher who endowed the Foundling Hospital with five illegitimate children; and Geneva cannot claim a great share in a citizen who ran away from the town in his boyhood to avoid being thrashed for stealing apples. It was, indeed, at Geneva that Jean Jacques received from his aunt the disciplinary chastisement of which he gives such an exciting account in his ‘Confessions’; and he once returned to the city and received the Holy Communion there in later life. But that is all. Jean Jacques was not educated at Geneva, but in Savoy--at Annecy, at Turin, and at Chambéry; his books were not printed at Geneva, though one of them was publicly burnt there, but in Paris and Amsterdam; it is not to Genevan but to French literature that he belongs. And when Jean Jacques has been named, there remains no other Genevan citizen of letters worthy to be mentioned in the same paragraph. So that branch of the subject may be left. CHAPTER XVII SONGS AND SQUIBS Perhaps it is in song and satire that Geneva has done best. ‘Roulez, tambours,’ is not the only Genevan song that has passed the Genevan frontier; and Geneva, in fact, has always been ready to burst into song, whether serious or sarcastic, in connection with the topics of the day. The Reformation itself was heralded by satirical verses. A species of burlesque entitled a ‘sottie’ was, in those days, a favourite form of entertainment. The general character of these compositions may be gathered from the following scrap of dialogue, contained in one of them, between the _Physician_ and the _World_: