Select prose works. With a preliminary discourse and notes
- /V fc V ' C^ T"V [/} <tK-{ /i!o-o > I <\ AREOPAGITICA. 201 our sage and serious poet, Spenser, (whom I dare be known to think a better teacher than Scotus or Aquinas,) describing true temperance under the person of" Guion, brings him in with liis palmer through the cave of INIammon, (^^) and the bower of earthly bliss, that he might see and know, and yet abstain. 24. Since therefore the knowledge and survey of vice is in this world so necessary to the consti- tuting of human virtue, and the scanning of error to the confirmation of truth, how can we more safely, and with less danger, scout into the re- gions of sin and falsity, than by reading all manner of tractates, and hearing all manner of reason ? And this is the benefit which may be had of books promiscuously read. But of the harm that may result hence, three kinds are usually reckoned. First, is feared the infection that may spread ; but then, all human learning and con- troversy in religious points must remove out of the world, yea, the Bible itself; for that ofttimes relates blasphemy not nicely, it describes the carnal sense of wicked men not unelegantly, it brings in holiest men passionately murmuring against providence through all the arguments of Epicurus; (^'') in other great disputes it answers has, by observing the conduct of others, obtained a thorough knowledge of vice and injustice, without ever suffering the slightest taint of either to appear in his own soul. — {De Repub- licd,l. iii. Opera, t vi. p. 150.) (5^) See Sir Guion's descent into the Cave of Mammon in the Faery Queen, B. ii. Canto 7- (^®) More particularly in the Book of Ecclesiastes. 202 AREOPAGITICA. dubiously and darkly to the common reader; and ask a Talmudist what ails the modesty of his marginal Keri, that Moses and all the prophets cannot persuade him to pronounce the textual Chetiv. For these causes we all know the Bible itself put by the papist into the first rank of pro- hibited books. The ancientest fathers must be next removed, as Clement of Alexandria^ and that Eusebian book of evangelic preparation, trans- mitting our ears through a hoard of heathenish obscenities to receive the gospel. Who finds not that Irenaeus, Epiphanius, Jerome, and others dis- cover more heresies than they well confute, and that oft for heresy which is the truer opinion ? 25. Nor boots it to say for these, and all the heathen writers of greatest infection, if it must be thought so, with whom is bound up the life of human learning, that they wrote in an unknown tongue, so long as we are sure those languages are known as well to the worst of men, who are both most able and most diligent to instil the poison they suck, first into the courts of princes, acquaint- ing them with the choicest delights, and criticisms of sin. As perhaps did that Petronius, whom Nero called his arbiter, the master of his revels ; and that notorious ribald of Arezzo, (") dreaded and {^'') Time has now so effectually buried his profligate writings in oblivion, that few, but bibliographers, appear to know of their existence. In fact, mankind are generally so just, and endued with so fine a feeling for whatever is excellent, that scarcely any but good works survive ; contempt and neglect at length over- whelm all others. AREOPAGITICA. 203 yet dear to the Italian courtiers. I name not him for posterity's sake, whom Henry the Eighth named in merriment his vicar of helL By which com- pendious way all the contagion that foreign books can infuse will find a passage to the people far easier and shorter than an Indian voyage, though it could be sailed either by the north of Cataio eastward, or of Canada westward, while our Spanish licensing gags the English press never so severely. 26. But on the other side, that infection which is from books of controversy in religion, is more doubtful and dangerous to the learned than to the ignorant ; and yet those books must be per- mitted untouched by the licencer. It will be hard to instance where any ignorant man hath been ever seduced by any papistical book in English, unless it were commended and expounded to him by some of that clergy ; and indeed all such trac- tates, whether false or true, are as the prophecy of Isaiah was to the eunuch, not to be " understood without a guide." But of our priests and doctors how many have been corrupted by studying the comments of Jesuits and Sorbonists, and how fast they could transfuse that corruption into the people, our experience is both late and sad. It is not forgot, since the acute and distinct Arminius was per- verted merely by the perusing of a nameless dis- course written at Delft, which at first he took in hand to confute. 27. Seeing therefore that those books, and those in great abundance which are likeliest to taint 204 AREOPAGITICA. both life and doctrine, cannot be suppressed with- out the fall of learning, and of all ability in dis- putation, and that these books of either sort are most and soonest catching to the learned, (from whom to the common people whatever is heretical or dissolute may quickly be conveyed,) and that evil manners are as perfectly learnt without books a thdti'srOTd-other ways which cannot be stopped, r" j. and evil doctrine not with books can propagate, ' except a teacher guide, which he might also do without writing, and so beyond prohibiting ; I am not unable to unfold, how this cautelous enter- prise of licensing can be exempted from the num- ber of vain and impossible attempts. And he who were pleasantly disposed, could not well avoid to i6*iip. liken it to the exploit of that gallant man, who thought to pound up the crows by shutting his park gate. J 28. Besides another inconvenience, if learned ^ men be the first receivers out of books, and dis- : spreaders both of vice and error, how shall the licencers themselves be confided in, unless we can confer upon them, or they assume to themselves above all others in the land, the grace cf infalli- bility and uncorruptedness ? And again, if it be true, that a wise man, like a good refinei-, can gather gold out of the drossiest volume, and that a fool will be a fool with the best book, yea, or without book; there is no reason that we should deprive a wise man of any advantage to his wisdom, while we seek to restrain from a fool that which being I restrained will be no hinderance to his folly. For AREOPAGITICA. 205 if there should be so much exactness always used to~keep that from him which is unfit for his read- ing, we should in the judgment of Aristotle not only, but of Solomon, and of our Saviour, not vouchsafe him good precepts, and by consequence not willingly admit him to good books ; iis being certain that a wise man will make better use of an idle pamphlet, than a fool will do of sacred Scrip- ture. 29. It is next alleged, we must not expose our- selves to temptations without necessitj'^, and next to thaJ~hot einploy ouFtime inTairi fhlngs. To both these objections one answer will serve, out of the grounds already laid, that to all men such \ books are not temptations, nor vanities; but useful -\ drugs and materials w herewith to temper and com- pose effective and strong medicines, which man's life cannot want. (^*) The rest, as children and ; childish men, who have not the art to qualify and • prepare these working minerals, well may be ex- ' horted to forbear; but hindered forcibly they can- v not be, by all the licensing that sainted inquisition could ever yet contrive; which is what I promised I to deliver next: that this order of licensing con- j duces nothing to the end for which it was framed; i and hath almost prevented me by being clear al- ready while thus much hath been explaining. See the ingenuity of truth, who, when she gets a free and willing hand, opens herself faster than the pace of method and discourse can overtake her. (^*) That is, cannot dispense with. 206 AREOPAGITICA. It was the task which I began with, to show that no nation, or well instituted state, if they valued books at all, did ever use this way of licensing ; and it might be answered, that this is a piece of prudence lately discovered. 30. To which I return, that as it was a thing slight and obvious to think on, so if it had been difficult to find out, there wanted not among them long since, who suggested such a course; which they not following, leave us a pattern of their judg- ment that it was not the not knowing, but the not approving, which was the cause of their not using it. Plato, a man of high authority indeed, but least of all for his Commonwealth, in the book of his laws, which no city ever yet received, fed his fancy with making many edicts to his airy burgo- masters, which they who otherwise admire him, wish had been rather buried and excused in the genial cups of an academic night sitting. (^^) By which laws he seems to tolerate no kind of learning, (^^) This, whether understood of the " Republic," or the " Laws," of Plato, must be taken jocularly, or as the disparaging argument of a rhetorician. For who, — though he may regard the philosopher's scheme as impracticable, and be glad that it is so, — would consent, if it depended on his will, to annihilate those extraordinary productions, teeming with original thoughts and bold speculations, which fall on the mind of the reader like fertilizing dew ? We admit, however, with Aristotle, that Plato's plan of a republic is the most remote from actual politics that has ever been imagined. No other legislator has proposed a com- munity of wives, — though something of the kind exists in India among the Nairs, — or a community of property, or common tables for the women. Phaleas of Chalcedon, — " the City of the Blind," — who flourished about 600 years B. C. was the first AREOPAGITICA. 207 but by unalterable decree, consisting most of prac- tical traditions, to the attainment whereof a library of smaller bulk than his own dialogues would be abundant. And there also enacts, that no poet should so much as read to any j^rivate man what he had written, until the judges and law keepers had seen it, and allowed it ; but that Plato meant this law peculiarly to that commonwealth which he had imagined, and to no other, is evident. 31. For if they fell upon one kind of strictness, writer who recommended the equalization of property; but Aristotle himself, together with Solon, and the Legislator of the Locrians, considered an approach to something like equality of possessions highly conducive to the happiness of civil society. — {Politics, 1. ii. c. 5.) 208 AREOPAGITICA, unless their care were equal to regulate all other . ; things of like aptness to corrupt the mind, that '**^ single endeavour they knew would be but a fond labour ; to shut and fortify one gate against cor- ruption, and be necessitated to leave others round about wide open. If we think to regulate print- ing, thereby to rectify..inaaftei»5-we.must regulate ', all recreations and pastimes, all that is delightful '^ '/to man. No music must be heard, no song be set or sung, but what is grave and doric. There must be licensing dancers, that no gesture, motion, or deportment be taught our youth, but what by their allowance shall be thought honest ; for such Plato was provided of. It will ask more than the work of twenty licencers to examine all the lutes, the violins, and the guitars in every house ; they must not be suffered to prattle as they do, but must be licensed what they may say. And who shall silence all the airs and madrigals that whisper softness in chambers ? The windows also, and the balconies, must be thought on; these are shrewd books, with dangerous frontispieces, set to sale ; who shall pro- liibit them, shall twenty licencers ? The villages also must have their visitors to inquire what lec- tures the bagpipe and the rebec reads, even to the ballatry and the gamut of every municipal fidler; for these are the countryman's Arcadias, and his Monte Mayors. 32. Next, what more national corruption, for which England hears ill abroad, than household gluttony ; who shall be the rectors of our daily rioting ? And what shall be done to inhibit the AREOPAGITICA. , 209 multitudes, that frequent those houses where drun- .^ kenness {'^°) is sold and harboured? Our garments also should be referred to the licensing of some more sober workmasters, to see them cut into a less wanton garb. Who shall regulate all the mixed conversation of our youth, male and female together, as is the fashion of this country ? Who shall still appoint what shall be discoursed, what presumed, and no further ? Lastly, who shall for- bid and separate all idle resort, all evil company P These things will be, and must be ; but how they shall be least hurtful, how least enticing, herein consists the grave and governing wisdom of a state. 33. To sequester out of the world into Atlantic and Utopian politics, which never can be drawn into use, will not mend our condition ; but_to_or- dain wisely as in this world of evil, in the midst whereof God hath placed us unavoidably. Nor is it Plato's licensing of books will do this, which necessarily pulls along with it so many other kinds of licensing, as will make us all both ridiculous and weary, and yet frustrate ; but those unwritten, or at least unconstraining laws of virtuous educa- tion, religious and civil nurture, which Plato there mentions, as the bonds and ligaments of the com- (^") Many of the evils that afflict society are indestructible, and among these must be reckoned the public resorts of drunk- enness and debauchery. Obliterated, it seems, they cannot be : but what Government has done all that might be done to reduce the evil as far as possible ? Yet the force of civil and religious instruction is in their hands. 210 AREOPAGITICA. raonwealth, the pillars and the sustainers of every written statute; these they be, which will bear chief sway in such matters as these, when all licensing will be easily eluded. Impunity and remissness for certain are the bane of a commonwealth ; but here the great art lies, to discern in what the law is to bid restraint and punishment, and in what things persuasion only is to work. If every action which is good or evil in man at ripe years were to be under pittance, prescription, and compulsion, what were virtue but a name, what praise could be then due to well doing, what gramercy to be sober, just., or continent ? 34. ^lany there be that complain of divine Pro- /^ vidence for suffering Adam to transgress. Foolish \ tongues ! when God gave him reason, he gave him ] freedom to choose, for reason is but choosing; (**) he had been else a mere artificial Adam, such an Adam as he is in the motions. We ourselves esteem not of that obedience, or love, or gift, which is of force ; God therefore left him free, set before him a provoking object ever almost in his eyes; herein consisted his merit, herein the right of his reward, the praise of his abstinence. Wherefore did he create jjassions within us, pleasures round about us, but that these rightly tempered are the very ingredients of virtue P They are not skilful considerers of human things, who imagine to re- (■") See, on the abstruse question here glanced at, Hobbes's Treatise on Liberty and Necessity ; the Leviathan, chap. xxi. ; Eramhall's Reply ; and Locke's profound investigation, Essay on the Human Understandins book ii. ch. 2L AREOPAGITICA. 211 move sin, by removing the matter of sin ; for, be- ? sides that it is a huge heap increasing under the very act of diminishing, though some part of it may for a time be withdrawn from some persons, it cannot from all, in such a universal thing as books are ; and when this is done, yet the sin re- mains entire. Though ye take from a covetous man all his treasure, he has yet one jewel left, ye cannot bereave him of his covetousness. 35. Suppose we could expel sin by this means; look how much we thus expel of sin, so much we expel of virtue : for the matter of them both is the same : remove that, and ye remove them both alike. This justifies the high providence of God, jwho, though he commands us temperance, justice, continence, yet pours out before us even to a pro- fuseness all desirable things, and gives us minds \j.^^-m that can wander beyond all limit and satiety. Why should we then affect a rigour contrary to the manner of God and of nature, by abridging or scanting those means, which books, freely per- mitted, are both to the trial of virtue, and the ex- ercise of truth ? 36. It would be better done, to learn that the law must needs be frivolous, which goes to restrain things, uncertainly and yet equally working to good and to evil. And were I the chooser, a dram of p 2 212 AREOPAGITICA. well-doing should be preferred before many times us much the forcible hinderance of evil doing. For God sure esteems the growth and completing of one virtuous person, more than the restraint of ten vicious. And albeit, whatever thing we hear or see, sitting, walking, travelling, or convereing, may be fitly called our book, and is of the same effect that writings are ; yet grant the thing to be prohibited were only books, it appears that this order hitherto is far insufficient to the end which it intends. Do we not see, not once or oftener, but weekly, that continued court-libel (*') against the parliament and city, printed, as the wet sheets can witness, and dispersed among us for all that licensing can do ? Yet this is the prime service a man would think wherein this order should give })roof of itself If it were executed, you will say. But certain, if execution be remiss or blindfold now, and in this particular, what will it be here- after, and in other books ? 37. If then the order shall not be vain and frus- trate, behold a new labour, lords and commons, ye must repeal and proscribe all scandalous and unlicensed books already printed and divulged; after ye have drawn them up into a list, that all {") Court-libel. No doubt he intended the " Mercurius Aulicus ;" written by Sir John Birkenhead, which was printed weekly, in one sheet, and sometimes more, in quarto ; and was chiefly calculated to raise the reputation of the king's friends and commanders, and run down and ridicule those who sided with the Parliament. They came out regularly, from the be- ginning of 1642 to the latter end of 1645, and afterwards occa- sionally.— {Biog. Brit. art. Birkenhead.) — Holt White. AREOPAGITICA. 213 may know which are condemned, and which not ; and ordain that no foreign books be delivered out of custody, till they have been read over. This office will require the whole time of not a few over- seers, and those no vulgar men. There be also books which are partly useful and excellent, partly- culpable and pernicious; this work will ask as many more officials, to make expurgations and expunctions, that the commonwealth of learning be not damnified. In fine, when the multitude of books increase upon their hands, ye must be fain to catalogue all those printers who are found fre- quently offending, and forbid the importation of their whole suspected typography. In a word, that this your order may be exact, and not defi- cient, ye must reform it perfectly according to the model of Trent and Sevil, which I know ye abhor to do. 38. Yet though ye should condescend to this, which God forbid, the order still would be but fruitless and defective to that end whereto ye meant it. If to prevent sects and schisms, who is so unread or uncatechised in story, that hath not heard of many sects refusing books as a hinderance, and preserving their doctrine unmixed for many ages, only by unwritten traditions ? The Christian faith (for that was once a schism!) is not unknown to have spread all over Asia, ere any gospel or epistle was seen in writing. If the amendment of manners be aimed at, look into Italy and Spain, whether those places be one scruple the better, the honester, the wiser, the chaster, since all the in- 214 AUEOPAGITICA. quisitional rigour that hath been executed upon books. 39. Another reason, whereby to make it plain that this order will miss the end it seeks, consider by the quality which ought to be in every licenser. It cannot be denied, but that he who is made judge to sit upon the birth or death of books, whether they may be wafted into this world or not, had need to be a man above the common measure, both studious, learned, and judicious; there may be else no mean mistakes in the censure of what is passable or not; which is also no mean injury. If he be of such worth as behoves him, there cannot be a more tedious and unpleasing journeywork, a greater loss of time levied upon his head, than to be made the perpetual reader of unchosen books and pamphlets, oft-times huge volumes. There is no book that is acceptable, unless at certain sea- sons ; but to be enjoined the reading of that at all times, and in a hand scarce legible, whereof three pages would not down at any time in the fairest print, is an imposition which I cannot believe how he that values time, and his own studies, or is but of a sensible nostril, should be able to endure. In this one thing I crave leave of the present licensers to be pardoned for so thinking; who doubtless took this office up, looking on it through their obedience to the parliament, whose command per- haps made all things seem easy and unlaborious to them; but that this short trial hath wearied them out already, their own expressions and excuses to them, who make so many journeys to solicit AREOPAGITICA. 2\o their licence, are testimony enough. Seeing^ there- fore those, who now possess the employment, by all evident signs wish themselves well rid of it, and that no man of worth, none that is not a plain un- thrift of his own hours, is ever likely to succeed them, except he mean to put himself to the salary of a press coi'rector, we may easily foresee what kind of licensers we are to expect hereafter, either ignorant, imperious, and remiss, or basely pecuni- ary. This is what I had to show, wherein this order cannot conduce to that end, whereof it bears the intention. -y 40. I lastly proceed from the no good it can dOy, to the manifest hurt it causes, in being first the greatest discouragement and affront that can be offered to learning, and to learned men. It was. the complaint and lamentation of prelates, upon every least breath of a motion to remove pluralities, and distribute more equally church revenues, that then all learning would be for ever dashed and dis- couraged. But as for that opinion, I never found cause to think that the tenth part of learning stood or fell with the clergy : nor could I ever but hold it for a sordid and unworthy speech of any churchman, who had a competency left him. (*^) If therefore ye be loath to dishearten utterly and discontent, not the mercenary crew of false pre- tenders to learning, but the free and ingenuous (*^) He had already, in his Animadversions on the Remon- strant's Defence, inveighed with great vehemence against the supposition that the riches of the church were the support of learning. 216 AREOPAGITICA. sort of such as evidently were born to study and love learning for itself, not for lucre, or any other end, but the service of God and of truth, and per- haps that lasting fame and perpetuity of praise, which God and good men have consented shall be the reward of those whose published labours ad- vance the good of mankind : then know, that so far to distrust the judgment and the honesty of one who hath but a common repute in learning, and never yet offended, as not to count him fit to print his mind without a tutor and examiner, lest he should drop a schism, or something of corrup- tion, is the greatest displeasure and indignity to a free and knowing spirit, that can be put upon him. 41. What advantage is it to be a man, over it is to be a boy at school, if we have only escaped the ferula, to come under the fescue of an Imprimatur ? If serious and elaborate writings, as if they were no more than the theme of a grammar-lad under his pedagogue, must not be uttered without the cursory eyes of a temporizing and extemporizing licenser ? He who is not trusted wilh his own actions, his drift not being known to be evil, and standing to the hazard of law and penalty, has no great argument to think himself reputed in the commonwealth wherein he was born for other than a fool or a foreigner. When a man writes to the world, he summons up all his reason and delibera- tion to assist him ; he searches, meditates, is in- dustrious, and likely consults and confers with his judicious friends; after all which done, he takes AREOPAGITJCA. 217 himself to be informed in what he writes, as well as any that wrote before him ; if in this the most consummate act of his fidelity and ripeness, no years, no industry, no former proof of his abilities can bring- him to that state of maturity, as not to be still mistrusted and suspected, unless he carry all his considerate diligence, all his midnight watch- ings, and expense of Palladian oil, to the hasty view of an unleisured licenser, perhaps much his younger, perhaps far his inferior in judgment, per- haps one who never knew the labour of bookwrit- ing; and if he be not repulsed, or slighted, must appear in print like a puny with his guardian, and his censor's hand on the back of his title to be his bail and surety, that he is no idiot or seducer; it. cannot be but a dishonour and derogation to the author, to the book, to the privilege and dignity of learning. 42. And what if the author shall be one so copious of fancy, as to have many things well worth the adding, come into his mind after licens- ing, while the book is yet under the press, which not seldom happens to the best and diligentest writers; and that perhaps a dozen times in one book. The printer dares not go beyond his licensed copy ; so often then must the author trudge to his leave-giver, that those his new insertions may be viewed ; and many a jaunt will be made, ere that licenser, for it must be the same man, can either be found, or found at leisure; meanwhile either the press must stand still, which is no small dam- age, or the author lose his accuratest thoughts, and 218 AREOPAGITICA, send the book forth worse than he had made it, which to a diligent writer is the greatest melan- choly and vexation that can befal. 43. And how can a man teach with authority, which is the life of teaching ; how can he be a doctor in his book, as he ought to be, or else had better be silent, whenas all he teaches, all he de- livers, is but under the tuition, under the correc- tion of his patriarchal licenser, to blot or alter what precisely accords not with the hide-bound humour which he calls his judgment? When every acute reader upon the first sight of a pedantic licence, will be ready with these like words to ding the book a quoit's distance from him — I hate a pupil teacher, I endure not an instructor that comes to me under the wardship of an overseeing fist. I know nothing of the licenser, but that I have his own hand here for his arrogance ; who shall war- rant me his judgment! The state, sir, replies the stationer: but has a quick return, — The state shall be my governors, but not my critics ; they may be mistaken in the choice of a licenser, as easily as this licenser may be mistaken in an author. This is some common stuff"; and he might add from Sir Francis Bacon, that " such authorized books are but the language of the times." For though a licenser should happen to be judicious more than ordinary, which will be a great jeopardy of the next succession, yet his very office and his com- mission enjoins him to let pass nothing but what is vulgarly received already. 44. Nay, which is more lamentable, if the work ARF.OPAGITICA. 219 of any deceased author, though never so famous in his lifetime, and even to this day, comes to their hands for licence to be printed, or reprinted, if there be found in his book one sentence of a ven- turous edge, uttered in the height of zeal, (and who knows whether it might not be the dictate of a divine spirit?) yet not suiting with every low decrepit humour of their own, though it were Knox himself, the reformer of a kingdom, that spake it, they will not pardon him their dash ; the sense of that great man shall to all posterity be lost, for the fear fulness, or the presumptuous rash- / ness of a perfunctory licenser. And to what an author this violence hath been lately done, and in what book (''*) of greatest consequence to be faith- •>£:_ .. fully published, I could now instance, but shall. forbear till a more convenient season. Yet if these ^*^ things be not resented seriously and timely, by*^^^*^^ them who have the remedy in their power, but iA'^ that such iron-moulds as these shall have authority to gnaw out the choicest periods of exquisitest books, and to commit such a treacherous fraud against the orphan remainders of worthiest men after death, the more sorrow will belong to that hapless race of men, whose misfortune it is to have understanding. Henceforth let no man care to learn, or care to be more than worldly wise ; for certainly in higher matters to be ignorant and ('•'') Holt White conjectures that the work here alluded to was the posthumous portion of Coke's Institutes, first printed in 1641. 220 AREOPAGITICA. slothful, to be a common steadfast dunce, will be the only pleasant life, and only in request. 45. And as it is a particular disesteem of every knowing person alive, and most injurious to the written labours and monumentsof the dead, so to me it seems an undervaluing and vilifying of the whole nation. I cannot set so light by all the in- vention, the art, the wit, the grave and solid judg- ment which is in England, (^^) as that it can be comprehended in any twenty capacities how good soever ; much less that it should not pass except their superintendence be over it, except it be sifted and strained with their strainers, that it should be ^ . ;,iincurrent without their manual stamp. Truth (\^^ alid understanding are not such wares as to be monopolized and traded in by tickets, and statutes, and standards. We must not think to make a staple commodity of all the knowledge in the land, to mark and license it like our broad-cloth and our (''5) In his Reason of Church Government, (b. i. ch. 7,) he speaks with becoming respect of the intellectual powers and moral character of his countrymen. " The Englishman, of many other nations, is least atheistical, and bears a natural dispo- sition of much reverence and awe towards the Deity." And " if he get the benefit once of a wise and well rectified nurture, which must first come in general from the godly vigilance of the church, I suppose that wherever mention is made of countries, manners, or men, the English people, among the first that shall be praised, may deserve to be accounted a right pious, right honest, and right hardy nation." In the commencement of the third book of the " History of England," he, indeed, denies the English the possession of civil wisdom ; but he had then been disgusted, as well he might, by the inconceivable follies of the Restoration. AREOPAGITICA. 221 woolpacks. What is it but a servitude like that imposed by the Philistines, not to be allowed the sharpening" of our own axes and coulters, but we must repair from all quarters to twenty licensing forges ? 46. Had any one written and divulged erroneous things and scandalous to honest life, misusing and forfeiting the esteem had of his reason among men, if after conviction this only censure were adjudged him, that he should never henceforth write, but what were first examined by an appointed officer, whose hand should be annexed to pass his credit for him, that now he might be safely read ; it could not be apprehended less than a disgraceful punish- ment. Whence to include the whole nation, and those that never yet thus offended, under such a diffident and suspectful prohibition, may plainly be understood what a disparagement it is. So much the more whenas debtors and delinquents may walk abroad without a keeper, but unoffen- sive books must not stir forth without a visible jailor in their title. Nor is it to the common people less than a rejiroach ; for if we be so jealous over them, as that we dare not trust them with an Eng- lish pamphlet, what do we but censure them for a giddy, vicious, and ungrounded people ; in such a sick and weak state of faith and discretion, as to be able to take nothing down but through the pipe of a licenser ? That this is care or love of them, we cannot pretend, whenas in those popish places, where the laity are most hated and despised, the same strictness is used over them. Wisdom we >a.-v-v^-,/< 223.5 ^/'''-^-'«'^i"*fe]^(#AGITICA. cannot call it, because it stops but one breach of licence, nor that neither : whenas those corrup- tions, which it seeks to prevent, break in faster at other doors, which cannot be shut. 47. And in conclusion it reflects to the disre- pute of our ministers also, of whose labours we should hope better, and of their proficiency which their flock reaps by them, than that after all this light of the gospel which is, and is to be, and all this continual preaching, they should be still fre- quented with such an uprincipled, unedified, and laic rabble, as that the whift" of every new pam- phlet should stagger them out of their catechism "and Christian walking. This may have much rea- son to discourage the ministers, when such a low conceit is had of all their exhortations, and the benefiting of their hearers, as that they are not thought fit to be turned loose to three sheets of paper without a licenser ; that all the sermons, all the lectures preached, printed, vended in such numbers, and such volumes, as have now well- nigh made all other books unsaleable, should not be armour enough against one single Enchiiidion, without the castle of St. Angelo of an Imprimatur. 48. And lest some should persuade ye, lords and commons, that these arguments of learned men's discouragement at this your order are mere flou- rishes, and not real, I could recount what I have seen and heard in other countries, where this kind of inquisition tj'rannizes ; when I have sat among their learned men, (for that honour I had,) and been counted happy to be born in such a place of AREOPAGITICA. 223 philosophic freedom, as they supposed England was, while themselves did nothing but bemoan the servile condition into which learning amongst them was brought; that this was it which had damped the glory of Italian wits ; that nothing had been there written now these many years but flattery and fustian. There it was that I found and visited the famous Galileo, (^^) grown old, a prisoner to the inquisition, for thinking in astronomy otherwise than the franciscan and dominican licensers thought. And though I knew tliat England then was groaning loudest under the prelatical yoke, nevertheless I took it as a pledge of future happi- ness, that other nations were so persuaded of her liberty. 49. Yet was it beyond my hope, that those wor- thies were then breathing in her air, who should be her leaders to such a deliverance, as shall never be forgotten by any revolution of time that this world hath to finish. When that was once begun, it was as little in my fear, that what words of com- plaint I heard among learned men of other parts uttered against the inquisition, the same I should hear, by as learned men at home, uttered in time of parliament against an order of licensing ; and that so generally, that when I had disclosed my- self a companion of their discontent, I might say, (*^) This passage might have been expected to decide the question whether Galileo was in prison when Milton visited him ; but, unfortunately, it throws not sufficient light upon the subject, though the construction of the sentence seems to favour the idea that he was still, when the poet saw him, a captive. 224 AREOPAGJTICA. if without envy, that he whom an honest quaes- torship had endeared to the Sicilians, was not more by them importuned against Verres, than the favourable opinion which I had among many who honour ye, and are known and respected by ye, loaded me with entreaties and persuasions, that I would not despair to lay together that which just reason should bring into my mind, toward the removal of an undeserved thraldom upon learning. 50. That this is not therefore the disburdening of a particular fancy, but the common grievance of all those who had prepared their minds and studies above the vulgar pitch, to advance truth in others, and from others to entertain it, thus much may satisfy. And in their name I shall for neither friend nor foe conceal what the general murmur is ; that if it come to inquisitioning again, and licensing, and that we are so timorous of our- selves, and suspicious of all men, as to fear each book, and the shaking of each leaf, before we know what the contents are ; if some who but of late were little better than silenced from preaching, shall come now to silence us from reading, except what they please, it cannot be guessed what is intended by some but a second tyranny over learning : and will soon put it out of controversy, that bishops and presbyters are the same to us, both name and thing, 51. That those evils of prelaty which before, from five or six and twenty sees were distributively charged upon the whole people, will now light AREOPAGITICA. 225 wholly upon learning, is not obscure to us : when- as now the pastor of a small unlearned parish, on the sudden shall be exalted archbishop over a large diocess of books, and yet not remove, but keep his other cure too, a mystical pluralist. He who but of late cried down the sole ordination of every novice bachelor of art, and denied sole ju- risdiction over the simplest parishioner, shall now, at home in his private chair, assume both these over worthiest and excellentest books, and ablest authors that write them. This is not the cove- nants and protestations that we have made! This is not to put down prelacy ; this is but to chop an episcopacy; this is but to translate the palace metropolitan from one kind of dominion into an- other ; this is but an old canonical sleight of com- muting our penance. To startle thus betimes at a mere unlicensed pamphlet, will, after a while, be afraid of every conventicle, and a while after will make a conventicle of every Christian meeting. 52. But I am certain, that a state governed by the rules of justice and fortitude, or a church built and founded upon the rock of faith and true know- ledge, cannot be so pusillanimous. While things are yet not constituted in religion, that freedom of writing should be restrained by a discipline imi- tated from the prelates, and learned by them from the inquisition to shut us up all again into the breast of a licenser, must needs give cause of doubt and discouragement to all learned and re- ligious men : who cannot but discern the fineness of this politic drift, and who are the contrivers; Q 226 AREOPAGITICA. that while bishops were to be baited down, then all presses might be open ; it was the people's birjthright and privilege in time of parliament, it V^as the breaking forth of light. 53. But now tlie bishops abrogated and voided out of the church, as if our reformation sought no more, but to make room for others into their seats under another name; the episcopal arts begin to bud again; the cruise of truth must run no more oil ; liberty of printing must be enthralled again, under a prelatical commission of tw enty ; the pri- vilege of the people nullified ; and, which is worse, the freedom of learning must groan again, and to her old fetters : all this the parliament yet sitting. 