From the State Papers we hear of other families and places said to have been visited by Campion at this period:  the Prices, of Huntingdon; Mr. William Griffith, of Uxbridge; Mr. Edwin East, of Bledlow, Bucks; Lady Babington, at Twyford, Bucks; Mr. Dormer, at Wynge, and Mrs. Pollard.[12]

In spite of alarms, dangers, and interruptions, the work of printing was concluded without mishap.  The method of publication was singular.  Hartley took the bulk of the copies to Oxford, where the chief academical display of the year, the Act, as it was called, was taking place in St. Mary’s, on several successive days.  Hartley, coming in at the end of the first day, waited for every one to go out, then slipped his little books under the papers left on the seats, and was gone.  Next morning he entered with the rest, and soon saw that his plan had been perfectly successful.  The public disputation began, but the attention of the audience was elsewhere.  There was whispering and comparing notes, and passing about of little books, and as soon as the seance was over, open discussion of Campion’s “Reasons.”  Hartley did not wait for more, but rode back to Stonor with the news that the book had surely hit its mark.

At Oxford, as Father Persons says, many remembered and loved the man, or at least knew of his gentle character, and of the career he had abandoned to become a Catholic missionary.  The book recalled all this; and to those who were able to enter into its spirit it preached with a strange penetrating force.  By all the lovers of classical Latin, and there were many such at that day, it was read greedily.  The Catholics and lovers of the old Faith received it with enthusiasm, but a still more valid testimony to its power was given by the Protestant Government, which gave orders to its placemen that they should elaborate replies.  These replies drew forth answers from the Catholics, and the controversy lasted for several years.  Mr. Simpson has included an outline of this controversy in his Life of Campion, and to it I may refer my readers, having nothing substantial to add to his account.

6.  CRITICISM.

It would not be necessary for me to say more about its success, except that to us nowadays, the Rationes will not seem at all so remarkable as it did to our ancestors.  Religious controversy, in itself, does not much interest us moderns; and those who will read Latin merely to enjoy the style are very few.  But in the sixteenth century, as Sir Arthur Helps truly says, men found in the thrill of controversy the interest they now take in novels.  At that time, too, of all literary charms, that of good Latin prose was by far the most popular, and the language was still the “lingua franca” of the learned all the world over.  Once we get so far as to appreciate that both subject and style were in its favour, the popularity of the volume will seem natural enough, for it is bright, pointed, strong, full of matter, bold, eloquent, convincing.