most the Lacedæmonian guise, knew of learning little but what their twelve Tables, and the Pontific College with their augurs and flamins taught them in religion and law, so unacquainted with other learning, that when Carneades and Critolaus, with the Stoic Diogenes coming ambassadors to Rome,' took thereby occasion to give the city a taste of their philosophy, they were suspected for seducers by no less a man than Cato the Censor, who moved it in the Senate to dismiss them speedily, and to banish all such Attic babblers out of Italy. But Scipio and others of the noblest senators withstood him and his old Sabine austerity; honoured and admired the men; and the censor himself at last, in his old age, fell to the study of that whereof before he was so scrupulous. And yet at the same time, Nævius and Plautus the first Latin comedians had filled the city with all the borrowed scenes of Menander and Philemon. Then began to be considered there also what was to be done to libellous books and authors; for Nævius2 was quickly cast into prison for his unbridled pen, and released by the tribunes upon his recantation; we read also that libels were burnt, and the makers punished by Augustus. The like severity, no doubt, was used, if aught were impiously written against their esteemed gods. Except in these two points, how the world went in books, the magistrate kept no reckoning. And therefore Lucretius without impeachment versifies his Epicurism to Memmius, and had the honour to be set forth the second time by Cicero so great a father of the commonwealth; although himself disputes against that opinion in his own writings. Nor was the satirical sharpness or naked plainness of Lucilius, or Catullus, or Flaccus, by any order prohibited. And for matters of state, the story of Titus Livius, though it extolled that part which Pompey held, was not therefore suppressed by Octavius Cæsar of the other faction. But that Naso was by him banished in his old age, for the wanton poems of his youth, was but a mere covert of state over some secret cause: and besides, the books were neither banished nor called in. From hence 3 we shall meet with little else but tyranny in the Roman empire, that we may not marvel, if not so often bad, as good books were silenced. I shall therefore deem to have been large enough, in producing what among the ancients was punishable to write, save only which, all other arguments were free to treat on. By this time the emperors were become Christians, whose discipline in this point I do not find to have been more severe than what was formerly in practice. The books of those whom they took to be grand heretics were examined, refuted, and condemned in the general Councils; and not till then were prohibited, or burnt, by authority of the emperor. As for the writings of heathen authors, unless they were plain invectives against Christianity, as those of Porphyrius and Proclus, they met with no interdict that can be cited, till about the year 400, in a Carthaginian council, wherein bishops themselves were forbid to read the books of Gentiles, but heresies they might read: while others long before them 1 Ambassadors to Rome, B.C. 155. Carneades of Cyrene gave at Rome during his embassy two lectures on Justice, in the second of which he refuted the arguments of the first. This was Cato's ground of offence. He insisted that the Senate should dismiss a man who played with truth, making right wrong or right at pleasure. 2 Cneius Nævius, a Latin versifier, who wrote comedies and tragedies, and of whom fragments are in the "Corpus Poetarum Latinorum," served as a soldier in the first Punic war. He got into trouble, as Milton says, for his oversharpness of satire, and at last died in poverty at Utica. His chief trouble in Rome had arisen from conflict with the strong house of the Metelli, which he satirised unmercifully, and whose frequent holding of civic dignities he ascribed to a blind fate. From hence, from the reign of Augustus. on the contrary scrupled more the books of heretics, than of Gentiles. And that the primitive Councils and Bishops were wont only to declare what Books were not commendable, passing no further, but leaving it to each one's conscience to read or to lay by, till after the year 800, is observed already by Padre Paolo the great unmasker of the Trentine Council. After which time the popes of Rome, engrossing what they pleased of political rule into their own hands, extended their dominion over men's eyes, as they had before over their judgments, burning and prohibiting to be read what they fancied not; yet sparing in their censures, and the books not many which they so dealt with: till Martin V., by his bull, not only prohibited, but was the first that excommunicated the reading of heretical books; for about that time Wickliffe and Huss growing terrible, were they who first drove the the Papal Court to a stricter policy of prohibiting. Which course Leo X. and his successors followed, until the council of Trent and the Spanish Inquisition engendering together brought forth, or perfected those Catalogues, and expurging indexes, that rake through the entrails of many an old good author, with a violation worse than any could be offered to his tomb. Nor did they stay in matters heretical, but any subject that was not to their palate, they either condemned in a Prohibition, or had it straight into the new Purgatory of an Index. To fill up the measure of encroachment, their last invention was to ordain that no book, pamphlet, or paper, should be printed (as if St. Peter had bequeathed them the keys of the Press also out of Paradise) unless it were approved and licensed under the hands of two or three glutton Friars. For example: 6 Let the Chancellor Cini be pleased to see if in this present Padre Paolo. Pietro Paolo Sarpi, commonly called Fra Paolo, or Paul of Venice, had received in his youth a most liberal education and earned a reputation among the learned throughout Italy. At the age of 27 he became Provincial of his religious Order, that of the Servites, and in the questions between Pope Paul V. and the Republic of Venice, Fra Paolo was counsellor and theologian for the Venetians, so warmly defending their civil independence of Papal control that in 1606 he was excommunicated. He died in 1623, aged 71. Among his numerous works the most important was the " History of the Council of Trent," published in London, in Italian, in 1619, and in Latin in 1620. Its opinions were such as could not be published in Italy, for the author's learning was not greater than his love of intellectual liberty. The first and last meetings of the Council of Trent were ou December 13th, 1545, and December 4th, 1563. 5 Condemned in a Prohibition ... new Purgatory of an Inder. Prohibition: the Index Librorum Prohibitorum. Purgatory: the Index Expurgatorius, containing the books which were not utterly condemned, but sent for the purgation of offending matter by obliteration of certain pages or lines. Censorship of the press began with the Church soon after the invention of printing. Ecclesiastical superintendence, introduced in 1479 and 1496, was more completely estab lished by the Bull of Leo X. in 1515. Bishops and inquisitors were required by that Bull to examine all books before they were printed, and suppress heretical opinions. The Index of Prohibited Books was begun by the Council of Trent in 1546. It contained all books which might not be read by any member of the Church without a special license from his Bishop. Other books, which required only expurga tions, were put in the Expurgatory Index, and might be read only after the offending passages had been blotted out by the authorities. These lists still appear under the superintendence of a special con gregation of cardinals called the Congregation of the Index. Milton here looked among his books for one printed in Italy, which would well illustrate his meaning, and took down a book on the Schism of the English Church, "Scisma d' Inghilterra, &c." by Bernardo Davanzati Bostischi, which had been published at Florence in 1638, when Milton was in Italy, and, no doubt, considering its subject, was among the many books then bought by him. In the original book the date of Vincent Rabbatta's first duck towards Chancellor Cini is June 12, 1636; the date of Nicolo Cini's duck in reply a July 2, 1636. I have seen this present work, and find nothing athwart Nicolo Cini, Chancellor of Florence. It may be Printed, July 15. Sure they have a conceit, if he of the bottomless pit had not long since broke prison, that this quadruple exorcism would bar him down. I fear their next design will be to get into their custody the licensing of that1 which they say Claudius intended, but went not through with. Vouchsafe to see another of their forms, the Roman stamp: Imprimatur, If it seem good to the reverend master of the holy Palace, Belcastro, Vicegerent. Imprimatur, 2 Friar Nicolo Rodolphi, Master of the holy Palace. Sometimes five Imprimaturs are seen together dialogue wise in the piazza of one title page, complimenting and ducking each to other with their shaven reverences, whether the author, who stands by in perplexity at the foot of his epistle, shall to the press or to the spunge. These are the pretty responsories, these are the dear antiphonies, that so bewitched of late our Prelates, and their Chaplains, with the goodly echo they made; and besotted us to the gay imitation of a lordly Imprimatur, one from Lambeth-house, another from the west end of Paul's; so apishly romanizing, that the word of command still was set down in Latin; as if the learned grammatical pen that wrote it would cast no ink without Latin; or perhaps, as they thought, because no vulgar tongue was worthy to express the pure conceit of an Imprimatur; but rather, as I hope, for that our English, the language of men ever famous and foremost in the achievements of liberty, will not easily find servile letters enow to spell such a dictatory presumption English.3 And thus ye have the inventors and the original of Book-licensing ripped up and drawn as lineally as any pedigree. We have it not, that can be heard of, from any ancient state, or polity, or church, nor by any statute left us by our ancestors elder or later; nor from the modern custom of any reformed city or church abroad; but from the most antichristian council, and the most tyrannous inquisition, that ever inquired. Till then Books were ever as freely admitted into the world as any other birth; the issue of the brain was no more stifled than the issue of the womb: no envious Juno sat crosslegged over the nativity of any man's intellectual offspring; but if it proved a monster, who denies, but that it was justly burnt, or sunk into the sea. But that a Book in worse condition than a peccant soul, should be to stand before a jury ere it be born to the world, and undergo yet in darkness the judgment of Radamanth and his colleagues, ere it can pass the ferry backward into light, was never heard before, till that mysterious iniquity provoked 4 1 Breaking wind in company. From Lambeth House from the West End of Paul's. When Henry VIII. threw off the jurisdiction of the Pope in England, he took upon himself the settling of the faith of Englishmen, and the machinery for licensing of books was transferred from Rome to London; the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London, by themselves or by their chaplains, then became licensers for the English Church. 3 To spell... English. To spell Englishwise. English is used adverbially. Rhadamanthus, Eacus, and Minos were the fabled judges of the under world. 6 and troubled at the first entrance of Reformation, sought out new limbos and new hells wherein they might include our books also 5 within the number of their damned. And this was the rare morsel so officiously snatched up, and so illfavouredly imitated by our inquisiturient bishops, and the attendant minorities their chaplains. That ye like not now these most certain authors of this licensing order, and that all sinister intention was far distant from your thoughts, when ye were importuned the passing it, all men who know the integrity of your actions, and how ye honour Truth, will clear ye readily. 7 But some will say, What though the Inventors were bad, the thing for all that may be good? It may so; yet if that thing be no such deep invention, but obvious, and easy for any man to light on, and yet best and wisest commonwealths through all ages, and occasions have forborne to use it, and falsest seducers, and oppressors of men were the first who took it up, and to no other purpose but to obstruct and hinder the first approach of Reformation; I am of those who believe, it will be a harder alchymy than Lullius ever knew, to sublimate any good use out of such an invention. Yet this only is what I request to gain from this reason, that it may be held a dangerous and suspicious fruit, as certainly it deserves, for the tree that bore it, until I can dissect one by one the properties it has. But I have first to finish, as was propounded, what is to be thought in general of reading Books, whatever sort they be, and whether be more the benefit, or the harm that thence proceeds? Not to insist upon the examples of Moses, Daniel, and Paul, who were skilful in all the learning of the Egyptians, Chaldeans, and Greeks, which could not probably be without reading their Books of all sorts, in Paul especially, who thought it no defilement to insert into holy Scripture the sentences of three Greek poets, and one of them a tragedian,s the question was notwithstanding sometimes controverted among the primitive doctors, but with great odds on that side which affirmed it both lawful and profitable, as was then evidently perceived, when Julian the Apostate, and subtlest enemy to our faith, made a decree forbidding Christians the study of heathen learning: for, said he, they wound us with our own weapons, and with our own arts and sciences they overcome us. And indeed the Christians were put so to their shifts by this crafty means, and so much in danger to decline into all ignorance, that the two Apollinarii were fain as a 9 5 New limbos and new hells wherein they might include our books also. Within Italy, as within the pale of the Christian Church, there was a natural jurisdiction. The sinner born in Christendom had his heaven and hell to choose between. But the Church once puzzled itself with questioning, What became of the patriarchs of old who had not known Christ and therefore could not believe on him and be saved? What became of Socrates and Plato; what of new-born children who died before baptism? To meet these questions, new and milder hells were invented, and-from "limbus," a border-were called limbos. There was then a limbo for the Fathers, a limbo for infants, &c. So the books of foreigners, which could not be seized or destroyed, were put in one of the two limbos, Prohibitory or Expurgatory, of the Index. 7 Here begins Section II. of the Proof. Section I. had prepared the minds that Milton hoped to influence by setting forth a fact which, although not proof in itself, might be expected to excite among those whom he addressed a predisposition to accept his subsequent arguments. He proceeds now to show that the reading of all books ought to be free. 8 Acts xvii. 28; 1 Cor. xv. 33 (ascribed to Euripides); Titus i. 12, The two Apollinarii. Apollinarius the elder and his son Bishop of Alexandria. When Julian excluded Christians from the study of the old Greek literature, these men produced a sacred history in twentyfour books, after the manner of Homer, and Christian imitations of Euripides and other poets. man may say, to coin all the seven liberal sciences out of the Bible, reducing it into divers forms of orations, poems, dialogues, even to the calculating of a new Christian grammar. But, saith the historian Socrates, the providence of God provided better than the industry of Apollinarius and his son, by taking away that illiterate law with the life of him who devised it. So great an injury they then held it to be deprived of Hellenic learning; and thought it a persecution more undermining, and secretly decaying the church, than the open cruelty of Decius or Diocletian. And perhaps it was the same politic drift that the devil whipped St. Jerome in a lenten dream, for reading Cicero; or else it was a phantasm bred by the fever which had then seized him. For had an angel been his discipliner, unless it were for dwelling too much upon Ciceronianisms, and had chastised the reading, not the vanity, it had been plainly partial; first to correct him for grave Cicero, and not for scurril Plautus whom he confesses to have been reading not long before; next to correct him only, and let so many more ancient fathers wax old in those pleasant and florid studies without the lash of such a tutoring apparition; insomuch that Basil teaches how some good use may be made of Margites, a sportful poem, not now extant, writ by Homer; and why not then of Morgante, an Italian romance much to the same purpose. But if it be agreed we shall be tried by visions, there is a vision recorded by Eusebius,& far ancienter than this tale of Jerome to the nun Eustochium, and besides, has nothing of a fever in it. Dionysius Alexandrinus was about the year 240, a person of great name in the Church for piety and learning, who had wont to avail himself much against heretics by being conversant in their books; until a certain presbyter laid it scrupulously to his conscience, how he durst venture himself among those defiling volumes. The worthy man loth to give offence, fell into a new debate with himself what was to be thought; when suddenly a vision sent from God (it is his own epistle that so avers it) confirmed him in these words: Read any books whatever come to thy hands, for thou art sufficient both to judge aright, and to examine each matter. To this revelation he assented the sooner, as he confesses, because it was answerable to that of the Apostle to the Thessalonians, Prove all things, hold fast that which is good. And he might have added another remarkable saying of the same author: To the pure, all things are pure; not only meats and drinks, but all kind of knowledge whether of good or evil; the knowledge cannot defile, nor consequently the books, if the will and conscience be not defiled. For books are as meats and viands are; some of good, some of evil substance; and yet God in that unapocryphal vision, said without exception, Rise, Peter, kill and eat, leaving the choice to each man's discretion. Wholesome 1 The historian Socrates, named Scholasticus, wrote an Ecclesiastical History, in seven books, of events from A.D. 306 to A.D. 439. Julian died A.D. 363. 2 Jerome speaks of his illusion as arising in the middle of Lent, when he was seriously reduced by fever. The story is in a letter to a nun, Eustochium, upon Virginity, written by him A.D. 384. He ascribed the dream to the Devil, though it made him seem to be condemned in heaven to be whipped by angels for being a Ciceronian rather than a Christian. 3 Eusebius, Bishop of Cæsarea, died A.D. 338. He wrote an Ecclesiastical History in ten books, which is the earliest and best of its kind. There was a translation into English of "the Ancient Ecclesiastical Histories of the First Six Hundred Years after Christ written in the Greek Tongue by three learned Historiographers, Eusebius, Socrates, and Evagrius," published in 1585 by Dr. Meredith Hanmer, which Milton might have possessed. It was a well-read book, and reached its sixth edition in 1663. The seventh book of Eusebius contains many letters of Dionysius, including the one here quoted by Milton. meats to a vitiated stomach differ little or nothing from unwholesome; and best books to a naughty mind are not unappliable to occasions of evil. Bad meats will scarce breed good nourishment in the healthiest concoction; but herein the difference is of bad books, that they to a discreet and judicious reader serve in many respects to discover, to confute, to forewarn, and to illustrate. Whereof what better witness can ye expect I should produce, than one of your own now sitting in Parliament, the chief of learned men reputed in this land, Mr. Selden; whose volume of natural and national laws proves, not only by great authorities brought together, but by exquisite reasons and theoreins almost mathematically demonstrative, that all opinions, yea errors, known, read, and collated, are of main service and assistance toward the speedy attainment of what is truest. I conceive therefore, that when God did enlarge the universal diet of man's body, saving ever the rules of temperance, He then also, as before, left arbitrary the dieting and repasting of our minds; as wherein every mature man might have to exercise his own leading capacity. How great a virtue is temperance, how much of moment through the whole life of man? Yet God commits the managing so great a trust, without particular law or prescription, wholly to the demeanour of every grown man. And therefore when He Himself tabled the Jews from heaven, that omer, which was every man's daily portion of manna, is computed to have been more than might have well sufficed the heartiest feeder thrice as many meals. For those actions which enter into a man, rather than issue out of him, and therefore defile not, God uses not to captivate under a perpetual childhood of prescription, but trusts him with the gift of reason to be his own chooser; there were but little work left for preaching, if law and compulsion should grow so fast upon those things which heretofore were governed only by exhortation. Solomon informs us, that much reading is a weariness to the flesh; but neither he, nor other inspired author tells us that such, or such reading is unlawful: yet certainly had God thought good to limit us herein, it had been much more expedient to have told us what was unlawful, Selden, "De Jure Naturali et Gentium juxta Disciplinam Ebræorum" (1640). than what was wearisome. As for the burning of those Ephesian books by St. Paul's converts;, 'tis replied the books were magic, the Syriac so renders them. It was a private act, a voluntary act, and leaves us to a voluntary imitation: the men in remorse burnt those books which were their own; the magistrate by this example is not appointed: these men practised the books, another might perhaps have read them in some sort usefully. Good and evil we know in the field of this World grow up together almost inseparably; and the knowledge of good is so involved and interwoven with the knowledge of evil, and in so many cunning resemblances hardly to be discerned, that those confused seeds which were imposed upon Psyche as an incessant labour to cull out, and sort asunder, were not more intermixed.' It was from out the rind of one apple tasted, that the knowledge of good and evil, as two twins cleaving together, leaped forth into the world. And perhaps this is that doom which Adam fell into of knowing good and evil, that is to say of knowing good by evil. As therefore the state of man now is; what wisdom can there be to choose, what continuance to forbear without the knowledge of evil? He that can apprehend and consider vice with all her baits and seeming pleasures, and yet abstain, and yet distinguish, and yet prefer that which is truly better, he is the true wayfaring Christian. I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race, where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat. Assuredly we bring not innocence into the world, we bring impurity much rather; that which purifies us is trial, and trial is by what is contrary. That virtue therefore which is but a youngling in the contemplation of evil, and know not the utmost that vice promises to her followers, and rejects it, is but a blank virtue, not a pure; her whiteness is but an excremental whiteness; which was the reason why our sage and serious poet Spenser, whom I dare be known to think a better teacher than Scotus or Aquinas,3 describing true temperance under the person of Guion, brings him in with his palmer through the cave of Mammon, and the bower of earthly bliss that he might see and know, and yet abstain. Since therefore the knowledge and survey of vice is in this 1 The reference is to an incident in the beautiful story of Cupid and Psyche-an incidental tale represented in the "Golden Ass" of Apuleius, as told by an old woman in the thieves' den to a gentlewoman whom the thieves had stolen. Venus, in the tale, among other persecutions of Psyche for having won her son Cupid, "took her by the hair and dashed her head upon the ground. Then she took a great quantity of wheat, of barley, poppyseed, peasen, lentiles, and beans, and mingled them all into a heap," bidding her separate and sort them all before her return in the evening. Psyche sat in mute despair over her task, "then the little pismire, the emmet, taking pity of her great difficulty and labour, cursing the cruelness of the daughter of Jupiter, and of so evil a mother, ran about hither and thither, and called to all her friends, 'Ye quick sons of the Ground, the mother of all things, take mercy on this poor maid, espouse to Cupid, who is in great danger of her person, I pray you help her with all diligence.' Incontinently one came after another, dissevering and dividing the grain, and after that they had put each kind of corn in order, they ran away again in all haste." I quote from a translation of "The XI. Bookes of the Golden Asse," by William Adlington, published in 1639, four or five years before Milton wrote his "Areopagitica." 2 Wayfaring Christian. In a copy of the " Areopagitica" which belonged to a Mr. Thomason, and was inscribed by him as the gift of the author, the "y" in "wayfaring" is struck out with a pen, and "r" written at the side, perhaps by Milton. The book is now in the British Museum. 3 Spenser. Dryden, at the close of his life, wrote in the Preface to his Fables, "Milton was the poetical son of Spenser, Milton has confessed to me that Spenser is his original." This was Dryden's impression from words of conversation strongly expressing such opinion of Spenser as is here recorded. And Spenser was, in many senses, an Elizabethan Milton. world so necessary to the constituting 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 regions 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 controversy 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 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.4 For these causes we all know the Bible itself put by the Papist into the first rank of prohibited books. The ancientest fathers must be next removed, as Clement of Alexandria, and that Eusebian book of Evangelic preparation, transmitting our ears through a hoard of heathenish obscenities to receive the Gospel. Who finds not that Irenæus, Epiphanius, Jerome, and others discover more heresies than they well confute, and that oft for heresy which is the truer opinion? 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 writ 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, acquainting them with the choicest delights, and criticisms of sin. perhaps did that Petronius whom Nero called his Arbiter, the master of his revels; and the notorious ribald of Arezzo, dreaded and yet dear to the Italian courtiers. I name not him for posterity's sake, whom Henry VIII. named in merriment his Vicar of hell. By which compendious 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. 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 permitted As 4 Marginal Keri textual Chetiv. Keri meant that which is read; Chetiv that which is written. Where various readings occur, the reading to be avoided was written in the text, and the true reading, or keri, in the margin. The corrections, about one thousand in number, have been ascribed to Ezra. Among them were corrections, which Milton had in his mind, made according to a rule of the Talmud, "That all words which in the Law are written obscenely, must be changed to more civil words." For which in another place Milton calls the scholiasts, "Fools who would teach men to read more decently than God thought good to write." 5 Ribald of Arezzo. Pietro Aretino, born at Arezzo in 1492, who said of his youth, "I had no more learning than was just enough to teach me how to cross myself," fastened upon the best writers of his own country, and became the great satirist of his time in Italy. He died at the age of sixty-five, by falling back upon his head when over-balancing his chair in a fit of laughter. 6 The Vicar of Hell. If this be a play on the office of John Skelton as Rector of Diss, making Diss stand for Dis, and so represent the god of the under world, Milton misunderstood John Skelton, and therein fell behind Spenser, who took from a poem of Skelton's his poetic name of Colin Clout, and knew him as he was, a bold denouncer of the pride of prelacy, who dared attack, in a strain of humour that came home to the people whose voice it expressed, the worldly pomp of Wolsey, when he risked his life in doing so. untouched by the licenser. It will be hard to instance where any ignorant man hath been ever seduced by papistical book in English, unless it were commended and expounded to him by some of that clergy: and indeed all such tractates 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 perverted merely by the perusing of a nameless discourse written at Delft, which at first he took in hand to confute. Seeing therefore that those books, and those in great abundance which are likeliest to taint both life and doctrine, cannot be suppressed without the fall of learning, and of all ability in disputation, 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 thousand other ways which cannot be stopped, 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 enterprise of licensing can be exempted from the number of vain and impossible attempts. And he who were pleasantly disposed, could not well avoid to liken it to the exploit of that gallant man who thought to pound up the crows by shutting his park gate. Besides another inconvenience, if learned men be the first receivers out of books and dispreaders both of vice and error, how shall the licensers themselves be confided in, unless we can confer upon them, or they assume to themselves above all others in the land, the grace of infallibility and uncorruptedness? And again if it be true, that a wise man, like a good refiner 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 restrained will be no hindrance to his folly. For if there should be so much exactness always used to keep that from him which is unfit for his reading, 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; as being certain that a wise man will make better use of an idle pamphlet, than a fool will do of sacred Scripture. 2 'Tis next alleged we must not expose ourselves to temptations without necessity, and next to that, not employ our time in vain things. 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 wherewith to temper and compose effective and strong medicines, which man's life cannot want.3 The rest, as children and childish men, who have not the art to qualify and prepare these working minerals, well may be exhorted to forbear, but hindered forcibly they cannot be by all the licensing that Sainted Inquisition could ever yet contrive; which is what I promised to deliver next, That this order of licensing conduces nothing to the end for which it was framed; and hath almost prevented me by being clear already 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. 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. 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 by making many edicts to his airy burgomasters, 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, but by unalterable decree, consisting most of practical 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 private 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. Why was he not else a lawgiver to himself, but a transgressor, and to be expelled by his own magistrates; both for the wanton epigrams and dialogues which he made, and his perpetual reading of Sophron, Mimus, and Aristophanes, books of grossest infamy, and also for commending the latter of them though he were the malicious libeller of his chief friends, to be read by the tyrant Dionysius, who had little need of such trash to spend his time on? But that he knew this licensing of poems had reference and dependence to many other provisos there set down in his fancied republic, which in this world could have no place: and so neither he himself, nor any magistrate, or city ever imitated that course, which taken apart from those other collateral injunctions must needs be vain and fruitless. For if they fell upon one kind of strictness, 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 corruption, and be necessitated to leave others round about wide open. If we think to regulate printing, thereby to rectify manners, 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 licensers 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, there are shrewd books, with dangerous frontispieces, set to sale; who shall prohibit them, shall twenty licensers? The villages also must have their visitors to inquire what lectures the bagpipe and the rebeck reads even to the ballatry, and the gamut of every municipal fiddler, for • Prevented me, "come in advance of its place in my arrangement." 5 Rebeck. A rustic fiddle. See "Illustrations of English Beligion* in this Library, page 132, Note 2. |