LI8KAJU
 
 LITTLE MASTERPIECES
 
 Little Masterpieces 
 
 Edited by Bliss Perry 
 JOHN MILTON 
 
 Selections, chiefly Autobiographical, from the 
 Pamphlets and Letters, 
 
 with 
 The Tractate on Education and Areopagitica 
 
 NEW YORK 
 DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 
 
 1902
 
 Copyright, 1901, by 
 
 DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION, . . vii 
 
 AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL. 
 
 Milton's Personal History, . . 3 
 His Purity of Life, . . . .16 
 
 His Blindness, . . . . . 29 
 
 His Dedication to Truth, . . 40 
 
 TRUE MARRIAGE, 59 
 
 POLITICAL. 
 
 The English Reformation, . . 69 
 
 Sketch of Bradshaw, ... 79 
 
 Sketches of Cromwell and Fairfax, 84- 
 Letters of State Concerning the 
 
 Massacre in Piedmont, . . 88 
 
 PERSONAL LETTERS. 
 
 To Leonard Philaras, . . . 103 
 
 To Peter Heimbach, .... 107 
 
 ON EDUCATION, 109 
 
 AREOPAGITICA, 133
 
 Editor's Introduction 
 
 Tii
 
 EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION. 
 
 IN one of the most memorable passages of 
 Milton's prose writings,* published at the 
 very beginning of his activity as a pam- 
 phleteer, he makes a significant confession 
 concerning his use of prose: "I should not 
 choose this manner of writing, wherein 
 knowing myself inferior to myself, led by the 
 genial power of nature to another task, I 
 have the use, as I may account, but of my 
 left hand." That other task to which the 
 genial power of nature led him was the pro- 
 duction of poetry, and a young man who 
 had already written "L' Allegro" and "II 
 Penseroso," "Lycidas" and "Comus," might 
 be pardoned for long hesitancy before turn- 
 ing to an alien instrument of expression. 
 "But when God commands to take the trum- 
 pet, and blow a dolorous or a jarring blast, 
 it lies not in man's will what he shall say or 
 what he shall conceal." So thought this 
 most fastidious of English poets, when he 
 bade farewell to the quiet ways and the 
 serene hours devoted to the muse, and boldly 
 entered the arena of political and theological 
 controversy. Many a "jarring blast" he was. 
 
 *"The Reason of Church Government Urged 
 Against Prelaty."
 
 Editor's Introduction 
 
 to blow, many a sore fight was his to wage, 
 before the long conflict closed in the utter 
 ruin of the cause he held most dear, and he 
 was left free once more, in obscurity and 
 blindness and sorrow, to fulfil the dream of 
 his youth, and compose a poem that the 
 world would not willingly let die. Twenty 
 of the best years of his life were spent as a 
 soldier of liberty, with the prose pamphlet 
 as his weapon. Yet high as was his courage, 
 and extraordinary as were some of the feats 
 which he performed, one cannot help feeling 
 that, to use Milton's own metaphor, he was 
 fighting all the time with his left hand. A 
 born poet, his true province was song rather 
 than speech, and even speech, in such a 
 conflict as he entered, turned too soon into 
 the hoarse, bitter, confused shoutings of the 
 battle-field. The poet of "Lycidas" was out 
 of place there, and yet such was his native, 
 Samson-like power, that with either hand 
 and with any \veapon he could put his 
 enemies to disastrous rout. 
 
 The prose works are not easy reading, as 
 a whole, and the lapse of two centuries and 
 a half in time, and the still more significant 
 changes of thought and feeling that have 
 taken place in the English-speaking world 
 since the middle of the seventeenth century, 
 make it difficult for the contemporary reader 
 to peruse them with full comprehension and 
 sympathy. But here and there they contain
 
 Editor's Introduction 
 
 passages of such felicity and beauty, such 
 imperishable grandeur, as to challenge com- 
 parison with anything in the prose literature 
 of the world. 
 
 In making this volume of selections, I have 
 given the first place to four autobiographical 
 passages, in which Milton tells his personal 
 history, defends his purity of life and aim, 
 comments nobly upon his blindness, and 
 dedicates himself to the cause of Truth. 
 Next comes a lofty description of perfect 
 marriage, drawn from "The Doctrine and 
 Discipline of Divorce." For their political as 
 \vell as religious interest I have reprinted the 
 opening and closing pages of "Reformation 
 in England," and have added the sketches of 
 Bradshaw and Cromwell. The Letters of 
 State which Milton dictated to foreign 
 powers concerning the massacre of Protes- 
 tants in Piedmont will be read with keen 
 curiosity by all admirers of the sonnet, 
 "Avenge, O Lord, Thy slaughtered saints." 
 Of Milton's personal letters I have chosen 
 two, one relating to his blindness, the other 
 to his peaceful old age. 
 
 I have given in full the two best known of 
 Milton's prose treatises, the tract "On Edu- 
 cation," and the famous "Areopagitica," or 
 plea for free speech. Brief preparatory notes 
 accompany each selection in the volume. 
 
 There are aspects of Milton's controversial 
 writings which such a book as this does not
 
 Editor's Introduction 
 
 adequately represent. He was often matched 
 against ignoble and unscrupulous antago- 
 nists, and, like them, availed himself of mere 
 vituperation and abuse. His personalities 
 directed against Salmasius and More would 
 be ridiculous if it were not for their ferocity. 
 By nature a recluse, many of his passionate 
 political invectives and exhortations quite 
 missed the practical point that then occupied 
 men's minds, and thus gave some of his most 
 laborious compositions a pathetic and fatal 
 ineffectiveness. But Time has a kindly way, 
 after all, of dealing with such great spirits 
 as the Puritan poet. We forget their mortal 
 blunders, their immediate defeat: what we 
 remember is their "sunrise aim," their un- 
 wearied hope and effort. To Milton, more 
 than to most soldiers of freedom, the centu- 
 ries have been generous. They have been 
 mindful of all that was glorious in him, and 
 have discovered nothing that was base. 
 
 BLISS PERRY. 
 
 xii
 
 Autobiographical
 
 MILTON'S PERSONAL HISTORY 
 
 [This autobiographical passage is taken from 
 ''The Second Defence of the People of England," 
 which was published in May, 1654. Three years 
 earlier, Milton had published "A Defence of the 
 People of England," written in reply to a pam- 
 phlet of Salmasius (Claude de Saumaise), a fa- 
 mous Continental scholar who had been engaged, 
 after the execution of Charles I., to uphold the 
 royal cause against the Commonwealth. Salma- 
 sius was discomfited by the unexpected passion 
 and power of this "First Defence," a work which 
 cost Milton his eyesight. But another champion 
 of the Stuarts, named Du Moulin, published, with 
 some assistance from a rather disreputable Scotch- 
 man, Alexander More (whom Milton supposed to 
 be the sole author), an anonymous reply to the 
 "First Defence." This gave Milton an oppor- 
 tunity for a crushing rejoinder in the "Second 
 Defense," which is one of the most interesting of 
 his controversial writings. Both Defences were 
 written in Latin.] 
 
 
 
 I WAS born at London, of an honest 
 family; my father was distinguished by the 
 undeviating integrity of his life ; my mother, 
 by the esteem in which she was held, and the 
 alms which she bestowed. My father des- 
 tined me from a child to the pursuits of 
 literature; and my appetite for knowledge 
 was so voracious, that, from twelve years of 
 age, I hardly ever left my studies, or went to 
 bed before midnight. This primarily led to 
 3
 
 Milton 
 
 my loss of sight. My eyes were naturally 
 weak, and I "was subject to frequent head- 
 aches; which, however, could not chill the 
 ardor of my curiosity, or retard the prog- 
 ress of my improvement. My father had 
 me daily instructed in the grammar-school, 
 and by other masters at home. He then, 
 after I had acquired a proficiency in various 
 languages, and had made a considerable 
 progress in philosophy, sent me to the Uni- 
 versity of Cambridge. Here I passed seven 
 years in the usual course of instruction and 
 study, with the approbation of the good, 
 and without any stain upon my character, 
 till I took the degree of Master of Arts. 
 After this, I did not, as this miscreant feigns, 
 run away to Italy, but of my own accord 
 retired to my father's house, whither I was 
 accompanied by the regrets of most of the 
 fellows of the college, who showed me no 
 common marks of friendship and esteem. On 
 my father's estate, where he had determined 
 to pass the remainder of his days, I enjoyed 
 an interval of uninterrupted leisure, -which I 
 entirely devoted to the perusal of the Greek 
 and Latin classics; though I occasionally 
 visited the metropolis, either for the sake of 
 purchasing books, or of learning something 
 new in mathematics or in music, in which I, 
 at that time, found a source of pleasure and 
 amusement. In this manner I spent five 
 years till my mother's death. I then became 
 4
 
 Milton's Personal History 
 
 anxious to visit foreign parts, and particu- 
 larly Italy. My father gave me his permis- 
 sion, and I left home with one servant. On 
 my departure, the celebrated Henry Woot- 
 ton, who had long been King James's ambas- 
 sador at Venice, gave me a signal proof of 
 his regard, in an elegant letter which he 
 wrote, breathing not only the warmest 
 friendship, but containing some maxims of 
 conduct which I found very useful in my 
 travels. The noble Thomas Scudamore, King 
 Charles's ambassador, to whom I carried 
 letters of recommendation, received me most 
 courteously at Paris. His lordship gave me 
 a card of introduction to the learned Hugo 
 Grotius, at that time ambassador from the 
 Queen of Sweden to the French court; whose 
 acquaintance I anxiously desired, and to 
 whose house I was accompanied by some of 
 his lordship's friends. A few days after, 
 when I set out for Italy, he gave me letters 
 to the English merchants on my route, that 
 they might show me any civilities in their 
 power. Taking ship at Nice, I arrived at 
 Genoa, and afterwards visited Leghorn, 
 Pisa, and Florence. In the latter city, -which 
 I have always more particularly esteemed for 
 the elegance of its dialect, its genius, and its 
 taste, I stopped about two months; when I 
 contracted an intimacy with many persons 
 of rank and learning, and was a constant 
 attendant at their literary parties; a prac-
 
 Milton 
 
 tice which prevails there, and tends so much 
 to the diffusion of knowledge, and the pres- 
 ervation of friendship. No time will ever 
 abolish the agreeable recollections which I 
 cherish of Jacob Gaddi, Carolo Dati, Fresco- 
 baldo, Cultellero, Bonomatthai, Clementillo, 
 Francisco, and many others. From Florence 
 I went to Siena, thence to Rome, where, 
 after I had spent about two months in view- 
 ing the antiquities of that renowned city, 
 where I experienced the most friendly atten- 
 tions from Lucas Holstein, and other learned 
 and ingenious men, I continued my route to 
 Naples. There I was introduced by a cer- 
 tain recluse, with whom I had travelled from 
 Rome, to John Baptista Manso, marquis of 
 Villa, a nobleman of distinguished rank and 
 authority, to whom Torquato Tasso, the il- 
 lustrious poet, inscribed his book on friend- 
 ship. During my stay, he gave me singular 
 proofs of his regard : he himself conducted me 
 round the city, and to the palace of the 
 viceroy; and more than once paid me a visit 
 at my lodgings. On my departure he gravely 
 apologized for not having shown me more 
 civility, which he said he had been restrained 
 from doing, because I had spoken with so 
 little reserve on matters of religion. When I 
 was preparing to pass over into Sicily and 
 Greece, the melancholy intelligence which I 
 received of the civil commotions in England 
 made me alter my purpose ; for I thought it 
 6
 
 Milton's Personal History 
 
 base to be travelling for amusement abroad, 
 while my fellow-citizens \vere fighting for 
 liberty at home. While I was on my way 
 back to Rome, some merchants informed me 
 that the English Jesuits had formed a plot 
 against me if I returned to Rome, because I 
 had spoken too freely on religion ; for it was 
 a rule which I laid down to myself in those 
 places, never to be the first to begin any 
 conversation on religion; but if any ques- 
 tions were put to me concerning my faith, to 
 declare it without any reserve or fear. I, 
 nevertheless, returned to Rome. I took no 
 steps to conceal either my person or my 
 character; and for about the space of two 
 months I again openly defended, as I had 
 done before, the reformed religion in the very 
 metropolis of popery. By the favor of God, 
 I got safe back to Florence, where I was 
 received with as much affection as if I had 
 returned to my native country. There I 
 stopped as many months as I had done be- 
 fore, except that I made an excursion for a 
 few days to Lucca; and, crossing the Apen- 
 nines, passed through Bologna and Ferrara 
 to Venice. After I had spent a month in 
 surveying the curiosities of this city, and had 
 put on board a ship the books which I had 
 collected in Italy, I proceeded through Ve- 
 rona and Milan, and along the Leman lake 
 to Geneva. The mention of this city brings 
 to my recollection the slandering More, and
 
 Milton 
 
 makes me again call the Deity to witness, 
 that in all those places in which vice meets 
 with so little discouragement, and is prac- 
 tised with so little shame, I never once 
 deviated from the paths of integrity and vir- 
 tue, and perpetually reflected that, though 
 my conduct might escape the notice of men, 
 it could not elude the inspection of God. At 
 Geneva I held daily conferences with John 
 Deodati, the learned professor of theology. 
 Then pursuing my former route through 
 France, I returned to my native country, 
 after an absence of one year and about three 
 months; at the time when Charles, having 
 broken the peace, was renewing what is 
 called the episcopal war with the Scots, in 
 which the Royalists being routed in the first 
 encounter, and the English being universally 
 and justly disaffected, the necessity of his 
 affairs at last obliged him to convene a 
 parliament. As soon as I was able, I hired 
 a spacious house in the city for mj^self and 
 my books; where I again with rapture 
 renewed my literary pursuits, and where I 
 calmly awaited the issue of the contest, 
 which I trusted to the wise conduct of Provi- 
 dence, and to the courage of the people. 
 The vigor of the Parliament had begun to 
 humble the pride of the bishops. As long as 
 the liberty of speech was no longer subject 
 to control, all mouths began to be opened 
 against the bishops ; some complained of the
 
 Milton's Personal History 
 
 vices of the individuals, others of those of the 
 order. They said that it was unjust that 
 they alone should differ from the model of 
 other reformed churches; that the govern- 
 ment of the church should be according to 
 the pattern of other churches, and particu- 
 larly the word of God. This awakened all 
 my attention and my zeal. I saw that a 
 way was opening for the establishment of 
 real liberty ; that the foundation was laying 
 for the deliverance of man from the yoke of 
 slavery and superstition ; that the principles 
 of religion, which were the first objects of 
 our care, would exert a salutary influence 
 on the manners and constitution of the repub- 
 lic; and as I had from my youth studied 
 the distinctions between religious and civil 
 rights, I perceived that if I ever wished to be 
 of use, I ought at least not to be wanting 
 to my country, to the church, and to so 
 many of my fellow-Christians, in a crisis of 
 so much danger; I therefore determined to 
 relinquish the other pursuits in which I was 
 engaged, and to transfer the whole force of 
 my talents and my industry to this one im- 
 portant object. I accordingly wrote two 
 books to a friend concerning the reformation 
 of the Church of England. Afterwards, when 
 two bishops of superior distinction vindi- 
 cated their privileges against some principal 
 ministers, I thought that on those topics, to 
 the consideration of which I was led solely 
 9
 
 Milton 
 
 by my love of truth, and my reverence for 
 Christianity, I should not probably write 
 worse than those who were contending only 
 for their own emoluments and usurpations. 
 I therefore answered the one in two books, 
 of which the first is inscribed, "Concerning 
 Prelatical Episcopacy," and the other "Con- 
 cerning the Mode of Ecclesiastical Govern- 
 ment;" and I replied to the other in some 
 Animadversions, and soon after in an Apol- 
 ogy. On this occasion it was supposed that 
 I brought a timely succor to the ministers, 
 who were hardly a match for the eloquence 
 of their opponents ; and from that time I was 
 actively employed in refuting any answers 
 that appeared. When the bishops could no 
 longer resist the multitude of their assail- 
 ants, I had leisure to turn my thoughts to 
 other subjects; to the promotion of real and 
 substantial liberty ; which is rather to be 
 sought from within than from without ; and 
 whose existence depends, not so much on the 
 terror of the sword, as on sobriety of con- 
 duct and integrity of life. When, therefore, I 
 perceived that there were three species of 
 liberty which are essential to the happiness 
 of social life religious, domestic, and civil; 
 and as I had already written concerning the 
 first, and the magistrates were strenuously 
 active in obtaining the third, I determined to 
 turn my attention to the second, or the 
 domestic species. As this seemed to involve 
 10
 
 Milton's Personal History 
 
 three material questions, the conditions of 
 the conjugal tie, the education of the children, 
 and the free publication of the thoughts, I 
 made them objects of distinct consideration. 
 I explained my sentiments, not only concern- 
 ing the solemnization of the marriage, but 
 the dissolution, if circumstances rendered it 
 necessary; and I drew my arguments from 
 the divine law, which Christ did not abolish, 
 or publish another more grievous than that 
 of Moses. I stated my own opinions, and 
 those of others, concerning the exclusive ex- 
 ception of fornication, which our illustrious 
 Selden has since, in his "Hebrew Wife," more 
 copiously discussed ; for he in vain makes a 
 vaunt of liberty in the senate or in the 
 forum, who languishes under the vilest servi- 
 tude, to an inferior at home. On this sub- 
 ject, therefore, I published some books which 
 were more particularlv necessary at that 
 time, when man and wife were often the 
 most inveterate foes, when the man often 
 staid to take care of his children at home, 
 while the mother of the family was seen 
 in the camp of the enemy, threatening 
 death and destruction to her husband. 
 I then discussed the principles of educa- 
 tion in a summary manner, but sufficiently 
 copious for those who attend seriously 
 to the subject ; than which nothing can 
 be more necessary to principle the minds of 
 men in virtue, the only genuine source of 
 11
 
 Milton 
 
 political and individual liberty, the onh- true 
 safeguard of states, the bulwark of their 
 prosperity and renown. Lastly, I wrote my 
 "Areopagitica," in order to deliver the press 
 from the restraints with which it was en- 
 cumbered ; that the power of determining 
 what was true and what was false, what 
 ought to be published and what to be sup- 
 pressed, might no longer be entrusted to a 
 few illiterate and illiberal individuals, who 
 refused their sanction to any work which 
 contained views or sentiments at all above 
 the level of the vulgar superstition. On the 
 last species of civil liberty, I said nothing, 
 because I saw that sufficient attention was 
 paid to it by the magistrates; nor did I 
 write anything on the prerogative of the 
 crown, till the king, voted an enemy by the 
 Parliament, and vanquished in the field, was 
 summoned before the tribunal which con- 
 demned him to lose his head. But when, at 
 length, some Presbyterian ministers, who 
 had formerly been the most bitter enemies 
 to Charles, became jealous of the growth of 
 the independents, and of their ascendancy in 
 the parliament, most tumultuously clamored 
 against the sentence, and did all in their 
 power to prevent the execution, though they 
 were not angry, so much on account of the 
 act itself, as because it was not the act of 
 their party; and when they dared to affirm, 
 that the doctrine of the Protestants, and of 
 12
 
 Milton's Personal History 
 
 all the reformed churches, \vas abhorrent to 
 such an atrocious proceeding against kings ; 
 I thought that it became me to oppose such 
 a glaring falsehood; and accordingly, with- 
 out any immediate or personal application 
 to Charles, I showed, in an abstract con- 
 sideration of the question, what might law- 
 fully be done against t3'rants; and in sup- 
 port of what I advanced, produced the 
 opinions of the most celebrated divines ; 
 while I vehemently inveighed against the 
 egregious ignorance or effrontery of men, 
 who professed better things, and from whom 
 better things might have been expected. 
 That book did not make its appearance till 
 after the death of Charles ; and was written 
 rather to reconcile the minds of the people 
 to the event, than to discuss the legitimacy 
 of that particular sentence which concerned 
 the magistrates, and which was already 
 executed. Such were the fruits of my private 
 studies, which I gratuitously presented to 
 the church and to the state; and for which 
 I was recompensed by nothing but impunity ; 
 though the actions themselves procured me 
 peace of conscience, and the approbation of 
 the good ; while I exercised that freedom of 
 discussion which I loved. Others, without 
 labor or desert, got possession of honors 
 and emoluments; but no one ever knew me 
 either soliciting anything myself or through 
 the medium of my friends, ever beheld me in 
 13
 
 Milton 
 
 . supplicating posture at the doors of the 
 -senate, or the levees of the great. I usually 
 kept myself secluded at home, where my own 
 property, part of which had been withheld 
 -during the civil commotions, and part of 
 which had been absorbed in the oppressive 
 contributions which I had to sustain, 
 afforded me a scanty subsistence. When I 
 was released from these engagements, and 
 thought that I was about to enjoy an in- 
 terval of uninterrupted ease, I turned my 
 thoughts to a continued history of my coun- 
 try, from the earliest times to the present 
 period. I had already finished four books, 
 -when, after the subversion of the monarchy, 
 and the establishment of a republic, I was 
 surprised by an invitation from the council 
 of state, who desired my services in the office 
 for foreign affairs. A book appeared soon 
 after, which was ascribed to the King, and 
 contained the most invidious charges against 
 the Parliament. I was ordered to answer it ; 
 and opposed the Iconoclast to his Icon. I 
 did not insult over fallen majesty, as is pre- 
 tended; I only preferred Queen Truth to King 
 Charles. The charge of insult, which I saw 
 that the malevolent would urge, I was at 
 some pains to remove in the beginning of the 
 work; and as often as possible in other 
 places. Salmasius then appeared, to whom 
 they were not, as More says, long in looking 
 -about for an opponent, but immediately ap- 
 14
 
 Milton's Personal History 
 
 pointed me, who happened at the time to 
 be present in the council. I have thus, sir, 
 given some account of myself, in order to 
 stop your mouth, and to remove any preju- 
 dices which your falsehoods and misrepresen- 
 tations might cause even good men to enter- 
 tain against me. 
 
 15
 
 HIS PURITY OF LIFE. 
 
 [This indignant vindication of the purity of 
 Milton's life at Cambridge University and during 
 his quiet years of subsequent study is taken from 
 "An Apology for Smectymnuus, " 1642. Five 
 Presbyterian ministers had written a joint pam- 
 phlet against prelacy, signed Smectymnuus, after 
 the initial letters of their names. This pamphlet 
 had been bitterly attacked, and, because of his 
 defence of it, Milton's personal character had been 
 vilified.] 
 
 I MUST be thought, if this libeller (for now 
 he shows himself to be so) can find belief, 
 after an inordinate and riotous youth spent 
 at the university, to have been at length 
 "vomited out thence." For which commo- 
 dious lie, that he may be encouraged in the 
 trade another time, I thank him ; for it hath 
 given me an apt occasion to acknowledge 
 publicly with all grateful mind, that more 
 than ordinary favor and respect, which I 
 f-iund above any of my equals at the hands 
 of those courteous and learned men, the fel- 
 lows of that college wherein I spent some 
 years : who at my parting, after I had taken 
 two degrees, as the manner is, signified 
 many ways how much better it would con- 
 tent them that I would stay; as by many 
 letters full of kindness and loving respect, 
 both before that time, and long after, I was 
 16
 
 His Purity of Life 
 
 assured of their singular good affection to- 
 wards me. Which being likewise prepense to 
 all such as were for their studious and civil 
 life worthy of esteem, I could not wrong 
 their judgments and upright intentions, so 
 much as to think I had that regard from 
 them for other cause, than that I might be 
 still encouraged to proceed in the honest and 
 laudable courses, of which they apprehended 
 I had given good proof. And to those in- 
 genuous and friendly men, who were ever the 
 countenancers of virtuous ard hopeful wits, 
 I wish the best and happiest things, that 
 friends in absence wish one to another. 
 
 As for the common approbation or dislike 
 of that place, as now it is, that I should 
 esteem or disesteem myself, or any other the 
 more for that, too simple and too credulous 
 is the confuter, if he think to obtain with me, 
 or any right discerner. Of small practice 
 were that ph\ r sician, who could not judge by 
 what both she or her sister hath of long 
 time vomited, that the worser stuff she 
 strongly keeps in her stomach, but the better 
 she is ever kecking at, and is queasy. She 
 vomits now out of sickness; but ere it will 
 be \vell with her, she must vomit by strong 
 physic. In the meantime that suburb sink, 
 as this rude scavenger calls it, and more 
 than scurrilously taunts it with the plague, 
 having a worse plague in his middle entrail, 
 that suburb wherein I dwell shall be in my 
 2 17
 
 Milton 
 
 account a more honorable place than his 
 university. Which as in the time of her bet- 
 ter health, and mine own younger judgment, 
 I never greatly admired, so now much less. 
 But he follows me to the city, still usurping 
 and forging beyond his book notice, which 
 only he affirms to have had; "and where my 
 morning haunts are, he wisses not." It is 
 wonder that, being so rare an alchymist of 
 slander, he could not extract that, as well 
 as the university vomit, and the suburb sink 
 which his art could distil so cunningly; but 
 because his lembec fails him, to give him and 
 nvy the more vexation, I will tell him. 
 
 Those morning haunts are where they 
 should be, at home; not sleeping, or con- 
 cocting the surfeits of an irregular feast, but 
 up and stirring, in winter often ere the sound 
 of any bell awake men to labor, or to devo- 
 tion; in summer as oft with the bird that 
 first rouses, or not much tardier, to read 
 good authors, or cause them to be read, till 
 the attention be weary, or memor}' have its 
 full fraught: then, with useful and generous 
 labors preserving the body's health and 
 hardiness to render lightsome, clear, and not 
 lumpish obedience to the mind, to the cause 
 of religion, and our country's liberty, when 
 it shall require firm hearts in sound bodies to 
 stand and cover their stations, rather than 
 to see the ruin of our protestation, and the 
 anforcement of a slavish life. 
 18
 
 His Purity of Life 
 
 These are the morning practices: proceed 1 
 now to the afternoon; "in playhouses," he 
 says, "and the bordelloes." Your intelli- 
 gence, unfaithful spy of Canaan? He gives 
 in his evidence, that "there he hath traced 
 me." Take him at his word, readers; but. 
 let him bring good sureties ere ye dismiss 
 him, that while he pretended to dog others, 
 he did not turn in for his own pleasure: for 
 so much in effect he concludes against him- 
 self, not contented to be caught in every 
 other gin, but he must be such a novice as; 
 to be still hampered in his own hemp. In the 
 Animadversions, saith he, I find the mention; 
 of old cloaks, false beards, night-walkers,, 
 and salt lotion ; therefore, the animadverter 
 haunts play-houses and bordelloes ; for if he 
 did not, how could he speak of such gear? 
 Now that he may know what it is to be a, 
 child, and yet to meddle with edged tools, I 
 turn his antistrophon upon his own head; 
 the confuter knows that these things are the 
 furniture of playhouses and bordelloes, there- 
 fore, by the same reason, "the confuter him- 
 self hath been traced in those places." Was' 
 it such a dissolute speech, telling of some 
 politicians who were wont to eavesdrop in> 
 disguises, to say they were often liable to a. 
 night walking cudgeller, or the emptying of a 
 urinal? What if I had written as your friend 
 the author of the aforesaid mime, "Mundus 
 alter et idem," to have been ravished like 
 19
 
 Milton 
 
 some young Cephalus or Hylas, by a troop 
 of camping housewives in Viraginea, and 
 that he was there forced to swear himself an 
 uxorious varlet; then after a long servitude 
 to have come into Aphrodisia that pleasant 
 country, that gave such a sweet smell to his 
 nostrils among the shameless courtezans of 
 Desvergonia? Surely he would have then 
 concluded me as constant at the bordello, as 
 the galley-slave at his oar. 
 
 But since there is such necessity to the 
 hearsay of a tire, a periwig, or a vizard, 
 that plays must have been seen, what diffi- 
 culty was there in that? when in the colleges 
 so many of the young divines, and those in 
 next aptitude to divinity, have been seen so 
 often upon the stage, writhing and unboning 
 their clergy limbs to all the antic and dis- 
 honest gestures of Trinculoes, buffoons, and 
 bawds ; prostituting the shame of that min- 
 istry, which either they had, or were nigh 
 having, to the eyes of courtiers and court 
 ladies, with their grooms and mademoi- 
 selles. There, while they acted and overacted, 
 among other young scholars, I was a spec- 
 tator ; they thought themselves gallant men, 
 and I thought them fools ; they made sport, 
 and I laughed; they mispronounced, and I 
 misliked; and, to makeup the atticism, thev 
 \vere out, and I hissed. Judge now whether 
 so many good textmen were not sufficient to 
 instruct me of false beards and vizards, with- 
 20
 
 His Purity of Life 
 
 out more expositors; and how can this 
 confuter take the face to object to me the 
 seeing of that which his reverend prelates 
 allow, and incite their young disciples to 
 act? For if it be unlawful to sit and be- 
 hold a mercenary comedian personating 
 that which is least unseemly for a hireling 
 to do, how much more blameful is it to 
 endure the sight of as vile things acted 
 by persons either entered, or presently to 
 enter into the ministry; and how much 
 more foul and ignominious for them to be 
 the actors! 
 
 But because as well by this upbraiding to 
 me the bordelloes, as by other suspicious 
 glancings in his book, he \vould seem privily 
 to point me out to his readers, as one whose 
 custom of life were not honest, but licentious, 
 I shall entreat to be borne with, though I 
 digress; and in a way not often trod, ac- 
 quaint ye with the sum of my thoughts in 
 this matter, through the course of my years 
 and studies : although I am not ignorant 
 how hazardous it will be to do this under the 
 nose of the envious, as it were in skirmish 
 to change the compact order, and in- 
 stead of outward actions, to bring inmost 
 thoughts into front. And I must tell ye, 
 readers, that by this sort of men I have been 
 already bitten at ; yet shall they not for me 
 know how slightly they are esteemed, unless 
 they have so much learning as to read what 
 21
 
 Milton 
 
 in Greek aitetpoxaXia* is, which, together 
 with envy, is the common disease of those 
 who censure books that are not for their 
 reading. With me it fares now, as with him 
 whose outward garment hath been injured 
 and ill-bedighted ; for having no other shift, 
 what help but to turn the inside outwards, 
 especially if the lining be of the same, or, as 
 it is sometimes, much better? So if my name 
 and outward demeanor be not evident 
 enough to defend me, I must make trial if the 
 discovery of my inmost thoughts can : where- 
 in of two purposes, both honest and both 
 sincere, the one perhaps I shall not miss; 
 although I fail to gain belief with others, of 
 being such as my perpetual thoughts shall 
 here disclose me, I may yet not fail of suc- 
 cess in persuading some to be such really 
 themselves, as they cannot believe me to be 
 more than what I feign. 
 
 I had my time, readers, as others have, 
 who have good learning bestowed upon 
 them, to be sent to those places where, the 
 opinion was, it might be soonest attained ; 
 and as the manner is, was not unstudied in 
 those authors which are most condemned. 
 Whereof some were grave orators and his- 
 torians, whose matter methought I loved 
 indeed, but as my age then was, so I under- 
 
 *' AneipOKaTiia, is the conduct of one who is 
 wanting in the knowledge of what is polite and 
 becoming. J. A. ST. JOHN. 
 
 22
 
 His Purity of Life 
 
 stood them ; others were the smooth elegiac 
 poets, whereof the schools are not scarce, 
 whom both for the pleasing sound of their 
 numerous writing, which in imitation I 
 found most easy, and most agreeable to 
 nature's part in me, and for their matter, 
 which what it is, there be few who know 
 not, I was so allured to read, that no recre- 
 ation came to me better welcome. For that 
 it was then those years with me which are 
 excused, though they be least severe, I may 
 be saved the labor to remember ye. Whence 
 having observed them to account it the chief 
 glory of their wit, in that they were ablest 
 to judge, to praise, and by that could esteem 
 themselves worthiest to love those high per- 
 fections, which under one or other name 
 they took to celebrate; I thought with my- 
 self by every instinct and presage of nature, 
 which is not wont to be false, that what 
 emboldened them to this task, might with 
 such diligence as they used embolden me; 
 and that what judgment, wit, or elegance 
 was my share, would herein best appear, 
 and best value itself, by how much more 
 wisely, and with more love of virtue I should 
 choose (let rude ears be absent) the object of 
 not unlike praises. For albeit these thoughts 
 to some will seem virtuous and commend- 
 able, to others only pardonable, to a third 
 sort perhaps idle ; yet the mentioning of them 
 now will end in serious. 
 23
 
 Milton 
 
 Nor blame it, readers, in those years to 
 propose to themselves such a reward, as the 
 noblest dispositions above other things in 
 this life have sometimes preferred : whereof 
 not to be sensible when good and fair in one 
 person meet, argues both a gross and shal- 
 low judgment, and withal an ungentle and 
 swainish breast. For by the firm settling of 
 these persuasions, I became, to my best mem- 
 ory, so much a proficient, that if I found 
 those authors anywhere speaking unworthy 
 things of themselves, or unchaste of those 
 names which before they had extolled; this 
 effect it wrought with me, from that time 
 forward their art I still applauded, but the 
 men I deplored ; and above them all, preferred 
 the two famous renowners of Beatrice and 
 Laura, who never write but honor of them 
 to whom they devote their verse, displaying 
 sublime and pure thoughts, without trans- 
 gression. And long it was not after, when I 
 was confirmed in this opinion, that he who 
 would not be frustrate of his hope to write 
 well hereafter in laudable things, ought him- 
 self to be a true poem; that is, a composi- 
 tion and pattern of the best and honor- 
 ablest things; not presuming to sing high 
 praises of heroic men, or famous cities, unless 
 he have in himself the experience and the 
 practice of all that which is praiseworth}-. 
 These reasonings, together with a certain 
 niceness of nature, an honest haughtiness, 
 24
 
 His Purity of Life 
 
 and self-esteem either of what I was, or what 
 I might be, (which let envy call pride,) and 
 lastly that modest}-, whereof, though not in 
 the title-page, yet here I may be excused to 
 make some beseeming profession ; all these 
 uniting the supply of their natural aid to- 
 gether, kept ' me still above those low de- 
 scents of mind, beneath which he must deject 
 and plunge himself, that can agree to sale- 
 able and unlawful prostitutions. 
 
 Next, (for hear me out now, readers), that 
 I may tell }^e whither my younger feet wan- 
 dered ; I betook me among those lofty fables 
 and romances, which recount in solemn 
 cantos the deeds of knighthood founded by 
 our victorious kings, and from hence had in 
 renown over all Christendom. There I read 
 it in the oath of every knight, that he should 
 defend to the expense of his best blood, or of 
 his life, if it so befell him, the honor and 
 chastity of virgin or matron; from whence 
 even then I learned what a noble virtue 
 chastity sure must be, to the defence of which 
 so many worthies, by such a dear adventure 
 of themselves, had sworn. And if I found in 
 the storv afterward, any of them, by word 
 or deed, breaking that oath, I judged it the 
 same fault of the poet, as that which is 
 attributed to Homer, to have written inde- 
 cent things of the gods. Only this my mind 
 gave me, that every free and gentle spirit, 
 without that oath, ought to be born a 
 25
 
 Milton 
 
 knight, nor needed to expect the gilt spur, or 
 the laying of a sword upon his shoulder to 
 stir him up both by his counsel and his arms, 
 to secure and protect the weakness of any 
 attempted chastity. So that even these 
 books, which to many others have been the 
 fuel of wantonness and loose living, I can- 
 not think how, unless by divine indulgence, 
 proved to me so many incitements, as you 
 have heard, to the love and steadfast obser- 
 vation of that virtue which abhors the so- 
 ciety of bordelloes. 
 
 Thus, from the laureate fraternity of poets, 
 riper years and the ceaseless round of study 
 and reading led me to the shady spaces of 
 philosophy; but chiefly to the divine volumes 
 of Plato, and his equal Xenophon: where, if 
 I should tell ye what I learnt of chastity and 
 love, I mean that which is truly so, whose 
 charming cup is only virtue, which she bears 
 in her hand to those who are worthy; (the 
 rest are cheated with a thick intoxicating 
 potion, which a certain sorceress, the abuser 
 of love's name, carries about;) and how the 
 first and chiefest office of love begins and 
 ends in the soul, producing those happy 
 twins of her divine generation, knowledge 
 and virtue. With such abstracted sublimities 
 as these, it might be worth your listening, 
 readers, as I may one day hope to have ye 
 in a still time, when there shall be no chid- 
 ing; not in these noises, the adversary, as 
 26
 
 His Purity of Life 
 
 ye know, barking at the door, or searching 
 for me at the bordelloes, where it may be he 
 has lost himself, and raps up without pity 
 the sage and rheumatic old prelates, with all 
 her young Corinthian laity, to inquire for 
 such a one. 
 
 Last of all, not in time, but as perfection 
 is last, that care was ever had of me, with 
 my earliest capacity, not to be negligently 
 trained in the precepts of the Christian 
 religion : this that . I have hitherto related, 
 hath been to show, that though Christianity 
 had been but slightly taught me, yet a 
 certain reservedness of natural disposition, 
 and moral discipline, learnt out of the 
 noblest philosophy, was enough to keep me 
 in disdain of far less incontinences than this 
 of the bordello. But having had the doctrine 
 of holy scripture unfolding those chaste and 
 high mysteries, with timeliest care infused, 
 that "the body is for the Lord, and the Lord 
 for the body;" thus also I argued to myself, 
 that if unchastity in a woman, whom St. 
 Paul terms the glory of man, be such a 
 scandal and dishonor, then certainly in a 
 man, who is both the image and glory of 
 God, it must, though commonly not so 
 thought, be much more deflouring and dis- 
 honorable; in that he sins both against his 
 own body, which is the perfecter sex, and his 
 own glory, which is in the woman; and, 
 that which is worst, against the image and 
 27
 
 Milton 
 
 glory of God, which is in himself. Nor did 
 I slumber over that place expressing such 
 high rewards of ever accompanying the 
 Lamb with those celestial songs to others 
 inapprehensible, but not to those who were 
 not denied with -women, which doubtless 
 means fornication ; for marriage must not be 
 called a defilement. 
 
 Thus large I have purposely been, that if I 
 have been justly taxed with this crime, it 
 may come upon me, after all this my con- 
 fession, with a tenfold shame: but if I have 
 hitherto deserved no such opprobrious word, 
 or suspicion, I may hereby engage myself 
 now openly to the faithful observation of 
 what I have professed.
 
 HIS BLINDNESS. 
 
 [From "The Second Defence of the People of 
 England."] 
 
 LET us now come to the charges which 
 \vere brought against myself. Is there any- 
 thing reprehensible in my manners or my 
 conduct? Surely nothing. What no one, not 
 totally divested of all generous sensibility, 
 would have done, he reproaches me with 
 want of beauty and loss of sight. 
 
 "A monster huge and hideous, void of sight." 
 
 I certainly never supposed that I should have 
 been obliged to enter into a competition for 
 beauty with the Cyclops ; but he immediately 
 corrects himself, and says, "though not in- 
 deed huge, for there cannot be a more spare, 
 shrivelled, and bloodless form." It is of no 
 moment to say anything of personal appear- 
 ance, yet lest (as the Spanish vulgar, im- 
 plicitly confiding in the relations of their 
 priests, believe of heretics) any one, from the 
 representations of my enemies, should be led 
 to imagine that I have either the head of a 
 dog, or the horn of a rhinoceros, I will say 
 something en the subject, that I may have 
 29
 
 Milton 
 
 an opportunity of paying my grateful ac- 
 knowledgments to the Deity, and of refuting 
 the most shameless lies. I do not believe 
 that I was ever once noted for deformity, by 
 any one who ever saw me ; but the praise of 
 beauty I am not anxious to obtain. My 
 stature certainly is not tall ; but it rather 
 approaches the middle than the diminutive. 
 Yet what if it were diminutive, when so 
 many men, illustrious both in peace and 
 war, have been the same? And how can 
 that be called diminutive, which is great 
 enough for every virtuous achievement? 
 Nor, though very thin, was I ever deficient 
 in courage or in strength; and I was wont 
 constantly to exercise myself in the use of the 
 broadsword, as long as it comported with 
 my habit and my years. Armed with this 
 weapon, as I usually was, I should have 
 thought myself quite a match for any one, 
 though much stronger than myself; and I 
 felt perfectly secure against the assault of 
 any open enemy. At this moment I have the 
 same courage, the same strength, though not 
 the same eyes; yet so little do they betray 
 any external appearance of injury, that they 
 are as unclouded and bright as the eyes of 
 those who most distinctly see. In this in- 
 stance alone I am a dissembler against my 
 will. My face, which is said to indicate a total 
 privation of blood, is of a complexion entirely 
 opposite to the pale and the cadaverous ; so 
 30
 
 His Blindness 
 
 that, though I am more than forty years 
 old, there is scarcely any one to whom I do 
 not appear ten years younger than I am ; 
 and the smoothness of my skin is not, in the 
 least, affected by the wrinkles of age. If 
 there be one particle of falsehood in this rela- 
 tion, I should deservedly incur the ridicule 
 of many thousands of my countrymen, and 
 even many foreigners to whom I am per- 
 sonally known. But if he, in a matter so 
 foreign to his purpose, shall be found to have 
 asserted so many shameless and gratuitous 
 falsehoods, you may the more readily esti- 
 mate the quantity of his veracity on other 
 topics. Thus much necessity compelled me 
 to assert concerning my personal appear-, 
 ance. Respecting yours, though I have been 
 informed that it is most insignificant and 
 contemptible, a perfect mirror of the worth- 
 lessness of your character and the malevo- 
 lence of your heart, I say nothing, and no 
 one will be anxious that anything should be 
 said. I wish that I could with equal facility 
 refute what this barbarous opponent has 
 said of my blindness ; but I cannot do it ; 
 and I must submit to the affliction. It is 
 not so wretched to be blind, as it is not to 
 be capable of enduring blindness. But why 
 should I not endure a misfortune, which it 
 behoves every one to be prepared to endure 
 if it should happen; which may, in the com- 
 mon course of things, happen to any man; 
 31
 
 Milton 
 
 and which has been known to happen to the 
 most distinguished and virtuous persons in 
 history. Shall I mention those wise and 
 ancient bards, \vhose misfortunes the gods 
 are said to have compensated by superior 
 endowments, and whom men so much re- 
 vered, that they chose rather to impute their 
 want of sight to the injustice of heaven than 
 to their own want of innocence or virtue? 
 What is reported of the Augur Tiresias is 
 well known ; of whom Apollonius sung thus 
 in his Argonauts: 
 
 "To men he dar'd the will divine disclose, 
 Nor feared what Jove might in his wrath impose. 
 The gods assigned him age, without decay, 
 But snatched the blessing of his sight away." 
 
 But God himself is truth; in propagating 
 which, as men display a greater integrity 
 and zeal, they approach nearer to the simili- 
 tude of God, and possess a greater portion 
 of his love. We cannot suppose the deity 
 envious of truth, or unwilling that it should 
 be freely communicated to mankind. The 
 loss of sight, therefore, which this inspired 
 sage, who was so eager in promoting knowl- 
 edge among men, sustained, cannot be con- 
 sidered as a judicial punishment. Or shall I 
 mention those worthies who were as dis- 
 tinguished for wisdom in the cabinet, as for 
 valor in the field? And first Timoleon of 
 Corinth, who delivered his city and all Sicily 
 32
 
 His Blindness 
 
 from the yoke of slavery ; than whom there 
 never lived in any age, a more virtuous man, 
 or a more incorrupt statesman: next Ap- 
 pius Claudius, whose discreet counsels in the 
 senate, though they could not restore sight 
 to his own eyes, saved Italy from the for- 
 midable inroads of Pyrrhus : then Ca?cilius 
 Metellus the high-priest, who lost his sight, 
 while he saved, not only the city, but the 
 palladium, the protection of the city, and the 
 most sacred relics, from the destruction of the 
 flames. On other occasions Providence has 
 indeed given conspicuous proofs of its regard 
 for such singular exertions of patriotism 
 and virtue; what, therefore, happened to so 
 great and so good a man, I can hardly place 
 in the catalogue of misfortunes. Why should 
 I mention others of later times, as Dandolo 
 of Venice, the incomparable Doge; or Boemar 
 Zisca, the bravest of generals, and the cham- 
 pion of the cross ; or Jerome /ianchius, and 
 some other theologians of the highest repu- 
 tation? For it is evident that the patriarch 
 Isaac, than whom no man ever enjoyed more 
 of the divine regard, lived blind for many 
 years; and perhaps also his son Jacob, who 
 was equally an object of the divine benevo- 
 lence. And in short, did not our Saviour 
 himself clearly declare that that poor man 
 whom he restored to sight had not been 
 born blind, either on account of his own sins 
 or those of his progenitors? And with re- 
 3 33
 
 Milton 
 
 spect to myself, though I have accurately 
 examined my conduct, and scrutinized my 
 soul, I call thee, God, the searcher of 
 hearts, to witness, that I am not conscious, 
 either in the more early or in the later pe- 
 riods of my life, of having committed any 
 enormity, which might deservedly have 
 marked me out as a fit object for such a 
 calamitous visitation. But since my enemies 
 boast that this affliction is only a retribu- 
 tion for the transgressions of my pen, I 
 again invoke the Almighty to witness, that 
 I never, at any time, wrote anything which I 
 did not think agreeable to truth, to justice, 
 and to piety. This was my persuasion then, 
 and I feel the same persuasion now. Nor" 
 was I ever prompted to such exertions by the 
 influence of ambition, by the lust of lucre or 
 of praise; it was only by the conviction of 
 duty and the feeling of patriotism, a disin- 
 terested passion for the extension of civil and 
 religious liberty. Thus, therefore, "when I 
 was publicly solicited to write a reply to the 
 Defence of the royal cause, when I had to 
 contend with the pressure of sickness, and 
 with the apprehension of soon losing the 
 sight of my remaining eye, and when my 
 medical attendants clearly announced, that 
 if I did engage in the work, it would be 
 irreparably lost, their premonitions caused 
 no hesitation and inspired no dismay. I 
 would not have listened to the voice even of 
 34
 
 His Blindness 
 
 Esculapius himself from the shrine of Epi- 
 dauris, in preference to the suggestions of 
 the heavenly monitor within my breast ; my 
 resolution was unshaken, though the alter- 
 native was either the loss of my sight, or the 
 desertion of my duty : and I called to mind 
 those two destinies, which the oracle of 
 Delphi announced to the son of Thetis : 
 
 "Two fates may lead me to the realms of night: 
 If staying here, around Troy's wall I fight, 
 To my dear home no more must I return; 
 But lasting glory will adorn my urn. 
 But, if I withdraw from the martial strife, 
 Short is my fame, but long will be my life." 
 
 11. ix. 
 
 I considered that many had purchased a less 
 good by a greater evil, the meed of glory by 
 the loss of life; but that I might procure 
 great good by little suffering; that though I 
 am blind, I might still discharge the most 
 honorable duties, the performance of which, 
 as it is something more durable than glory, 
 ought to be an object of superior admira- 
 tion and esteem; I resolved, therefore, to 
 make the short interval of sight, which was 
 left me to enjoy, as beneficial as possible to 
 the public interest. Thus it is clear by what 
 motives I was governed in the measures 
 which , I took, and the losses which I sus- 
 tained. Let then the calumniators of the 
 divine goodness cease to revile, or to make 
 me the object of their superstitious imagina- 
 35
 
 Milton 
 
 tions. Let them consider, that my situation, 
 such as it is, is neither an object of my 
 shame or my regret, that my resolutions are 
 too firm to be shaken, that I am not de- 
 pressed by any sense of the divine displeas- 
 ure; that, on the other hand, in the most 
 momentous periods, I have had full experi- 
 ence of the divine favor and protection ; and 
 that, in the solace and the strength which 
 have been infused into me from above, I have 
 been enabled to do the will of God ; that I 
 may oftener think on what he has bestowed, 
 than on what he has withheld; that, in 
 short, I am unwilling to exchange my con- 
 sciousness of rectitude with that of any other 
 person; and that I feel the recollection a 
 treasured store of tranquillity and delight. 
 But, if the choice were necessary, I would, 
 sir, prefer my blindness to yours ; yours is a 
 cloud spread over the mind, which darkens 
 both the light of reason and of conscience ; 
 mine keeps from my view only the colored 
 surfaces of things, while it leaves me at 
 liberty to contemplate the beaut}' and sta- 
 bility of virtue and of truth. How many 
 things are there besides which I would not 
 willingly see; how many which I must see 
 against my will ; and how few which I feel 
 any anxiety to see ! There is, as the apostle 
 }ias remarked, a way to strength through 
 weakness. Let me then be the most feeble 
 creature alive, as long as that feebleness 
 36
 
 His Blindness 
 
 serves to invigorate the energies of my ra- 
 tional and immortal spirit ; as long as in 
 that obscurity, in which I am enveloped, the 
 light of the divine presence more clearly 
 shines, then, in proportion as I am weak, I 
 shall be invincibly strong ; and in proportion 
 as I am blind, I shall more clearly see. O ! 
 that I may thus be perfected by feebleness, 
 and irradiated by obscurity ! And, indeed, 
 in my blindness, I enjoy in no inconsiderable 
 degree the favor of the Deity, who regards 
 me with more tenderness and compassion in 
 proportion as I am able to behold nothing 
 but himself. Alas ! for him who insults me, 
 who maligns and merits public execration! 
 For the divine law not only shields me from 
 injury, but almost renders me too sacred to 
 attack ; not indeed so much from the priva- 
 tion of my sight, as from the overshadowing 
 of those heavenly wings which seem to have 
 occasioned this obscurity; and which, when 
 occasioned, he is wont to illuminate with an 
 interior light, more precious and more pure. 
 To this I ascribe the more tender assiduities 
 of my friends, their soothing attentions, their 
 kind visits, their reverential observances; 
 among whom there are some with whom I 
 may interchange the Pyladean and Thesean 
 dialogue of inseparable friends : 
 
 "Orest. Proceed, and be rudder of my feet, by 
 shewing me the most endearing love." 
 
 Etirip- in Orest. 
 37
 
 Milton 
 And in another place, 
 
 "Lend vour hand to your devoted friend, 
 Throw your arm round my neck, and I will 
 conduct you on the way." 
 
 This extraordinary kindness, which I experi- 
 ence, cannot be any fortuitous combination ; 
 and friends, such as mine, do not suppose 
 that all the virtues of a man are contained 
 in his eyes. Nor do the persons of principal 
 distinction in the commonwealth suffer me to 
 be bereaved of comfort, when they see me 
 bereaved of sight, amid the exertions which I 
 made, the zeal which I showed, and the 
 dangers which I run for the liberty which I 
 love. But, soberly reflecting on the casual- 
 ties of human life, they show me favor and 
 indulgence, as to a soldier who has served 
 his time, and kindly concede to me an exemp- 
 tion from care and toil. They do not strip 
 me of the badges of honor which I have 
 once worn; they do not deprive me of the 
 places of public trust to which I have been 
 appointed ; they do not abridge my salary or 
 emoluments ; which, though I may not do so 
 much to deserve as I did formerly, they are 
 too considerate and too kind to take away ; 
 and, in short, they honor me as much as 
 the Athenians did those whom they deter- 
 mined to support at the public expense in the 
 Prytaneum. Thus, while both God and man 
 unite in solacing me under the weight of my 
 38
 
 His Blindness 
 
 affliction, let no one lament my loss of sight 
 in so honorable a cause. And let me not 
 indulge in unavailing grief, or want the 
 courage either to despise the revilers of my 
 blindness, or the forbearance easily to pardon 
 the ofience. 
 
 39
 
 HIS DEDICATION TO TRUTH. 
 
 [This noble passage, which contains the famous 
 words in which Milton expresses his purpose of 
 writing an epic poem, forms the preface to the 
 Second Book of "The Reason of Church Govern- 
 ment urged against Prelaty," 1641.] 
 
 How happy were it for this frail, and as it 
 may be called mortal life of man, since all 
 earthly things which have the name of good 
 and convenient in our daily use, are withal 
 so cumbersome and full of trouble, if knowl- 
 edge, yet which is the best and lightsomest 
 possession of the mind, were, as the common 
 saying is, no burden ; and that what is 
 wanted of being a load to any part of the 
 body, it did not with a heavy advantage 
 overlay upon the spirit ! For not to speak 
 of that knowledge that rests in the contem- 
 plation of natural causes and dimensions, 
 which must needs be a lower wisdom, as the 
 object is low, certain it is, that he who hath 
 obtained in more than the scantiest measure 
 to know anything distinctly of God, and of 
 his true worship, and what is infallibly good 
 and happy in the state of man's life, what 
 in itself evil and miserable, though vulgarly 
 not so esteemed; he that hath obtained to 
 know this, the only high valuable wisdom 
 40
 
 His Dedication to Truth 
 
 indeed, remembering also that God, even to 
 a strictness, requires the improvement of 
 these his entrusted gifts, cannot but sustain 
 a sorer burden of mind, and more pressing, 
 than any supportable toil or weight which 
 the body can labor under, how and in what 
 manner he shall dispose and employ those 
 sums of knowledge and illumination, which 
 God hath sent him into this world to trade 
 with. And that which aggravates the bur- 
 den more, is, that, having received amongst 
 his allotted parcels certain precious truths, 
 of such an orient lustre as no diamond can 
 equal, which nevertheless he has in charge to 
 put off at any cheap rate, yea, for nothing 
 to them that will; the great merchants of 
 this world, fearing that this course would 
 soon discover and disgrace the false glitter 
 of their deceitful wares, \vherewith they 
 abuse the people, like poor Indians with 
 beads and glasses, practise by all means how 
 they may suppress the vending of such rari- 
 ties, and at such a cheapness as would undo 
 them, and turn their trash upon their hands. 
 Therefore by gratifying the corrupt desires of 
 men in fleshly doctrines, they stir them up to 
 persecute with hatred and contempt all those 
 that seek to bear themselves uprightly in 
 this their spiritual factory : which they fore- 
 seeing, though they cannot but testify of 
 truth, and the excellency of that heavenly 
 traffic which they bring, against what oppo- 
 41
 
 Milton 
 
 sition or danger soever, yet needs must it sit 
 heavily upon their spirits, that being, in 
 God's prime intention and their own, selected 
 heralds of peace, and dispensers of treasure 
 inestimable, without price, to them that 
 have no peace, they find in the discharge of 
 their commission, that they are made the 
 greatest variance and offence, a very sword 
 and fire both in house and city over the 
 whole earth. This is that which the sad 
 prophet Jeremiah laments: "Woe is me, my 
 mother, that thou hast borne me, a man of 
 strife and contention!" And although divine 
 inspiration must certainly have been sweet 
 to those ancient prophets, yet the irksome- 
 ness of that truth \vhich they brought was 
 so unpleasant unto them, that everywhere 
 they call it a burden. Yea, that mysterious 
 book of revelation, which the great evangel- 
 ist was bid to eat, as it had been some eye- 
 brightening electuary of knowledge and fore- 
 sight, though it were sweet in his mouth, 
 and in the learning, it was bitter in his belly, 
 bitter in the denouncing. Nor was this hid 
 from the \vise poet Sophocles, who in that 
 place of his tragedy where Tiresias is called 
 to resolve King, CEdipus in a matter which 
 he knew would be grievous, brings him in 
 bemoaning his lot, that he knew more than 
 other men. For surely to every good and 
 peaceable man, it must in nature needs be a 
 hateful thing to be the displeaser and mo- 
 42
 
 His Dedication to Truth 
 
 lester of thousands; much better would it 
 like him doubtless to be the messenger of 
 gladness and contentment, which is his chief 
 intended business to all mankind, but that 
 they resist and oppose their own true happi- 
 ness. But when God commands to take the 
 trumpet, and blow a dolorous or a jarring 
 blast, it lies not in man's will what he shall 
 say, or what he shall conceal. If he shall 
 think to be silent as Jeremiah did, because 
 of the reproach and derision he met with 
 daily, "And all his familiar friends watched 
 for his halting," to be revenged on him for 
 speaking the truth, he would be forced to 
 confess as he confessed: "His word was in 
 my heart as a burning fire shut up in my 
 bones; I was weary with forbearing, and 
 could not stay." Which might teach these 
 times not suddenly to condemn all things that 
 are sharply spoken or vehemently written as 
 proceeding out of stomach, virulence, and ill- 
 nature ; but to consider rather, that if the 
 prelates have leave to say the worst that 
 can be said, or do the worst that can be 
 done, while they strive to keep to themselves, 
 to their great pleasure and commodity, 
 those things which they ought to render up, 
 no man can be justly offended with him that 
 shall endeavor to impart and bestow, with- 
 out any gain to himself, those sharp but 
 saving words which would be a terror and 
 a torment in him to keep back. For me, I 
 43
 
 Milton 
 
 have determined to lay up as the best treas- 
 ure and solace of a good old age, if God 
 vouchsafe it me, the honest liberty of free 
 speech from my youth, where I shall think 
 it available in so dear a concernment as the 
 church's good. For if I be, either by disposi- 
 tion or -what other cause, too inquisitive, or 
 suspicious of myself and mine own doings, 
 who can help it? But this I foresee, that 
 should the church be brought under heavy 
 oppression, and God have given me ability 
 the while to reason against that man that 
 should be the author of so foul a deed ; or 
 should she, by blessing from above on the 
 industry and courage of faithful men, change 
 this her distracted estate into better days, 
 without the least furtherance or contribution 
 of those few talents, which God at that 
 present had lent me; I foresee what stories 
 I should hear within myself, all my life after, 
 of discourage and reproach. Timorous and 
 ungrateful, the church of God is now again 
 at the foot of her insulting enemies, and thou 
 bewailest. What matters it for thee, or thy 
 bewailing? When time was, thou couldst 
 not find a syllable of all that thou hast read, 
 or studied, to utter in her behalf. Yet ease 
 and leisure was given thee for thy retired 
 thoughts, out of the sweat of other men. 
 Thou hast the diligence, the parts, the lan- 
 guage of a man, if a vain subject were to be 
 adorned or beautified ; but when the cause of 
 44
 
 His Dedication to Truth 
 
 God and his church was to be pleaded, for 
 which purpose that tongue was given thee 
 which thou hast, God listened if he could 
 hear thy voice among his zealous servants, 
 but thou wert dumb as a beast ; from hence- 
 forward be that which thine own brutish 
 silence hath made thee. Or else I should 
 have heard on the other ear: Slothful, and 
 ever to be set light by, the church hath now 
 overcome her late distresses after the un- 
 wearied labors of many her true servants 
 that stood up in her defence; thou also 
 wouldst take upon thee to share amongst 
 them of their joy: but wherefore thou? 
 Where canst thou show any word or deed of 
 thine which might have hastened her peace? 
 Whatever thou dost now talk, or write, or 
 look, is the alms of other men's active pru- 
 dence and zeal. Dare not now to say or 
 do anything better than thy former sloth 
 and infancy ; or if thou darest, thou dost 
 impudently to make a thrifty purchase of 
 boldness to thyself, out of the painful merits 
 of other men; what before was thy sin is 
 now thy duty, to be abject and worthless. 
 These, and such-like lessons as these, I know 
 would have been my matins duly, and my 
 even-song. But now by this little diligence, 
 mark what a privilege I have gained with 
 good men and saints, to claim my right of 
 lamenting the tribulations of the church, if 
 she should suffer, when others, that have 
 45
 
 Milton 
 
 ventured nothing for her sake, have not the 
 honor to be admitted mourners. But if 
 she lift up her drooping head and prosper, 
 among those that have something more than 
 wished her welfare, I have my charter and 
 freehold of rejoicing to me and my heirs. 
 Concerning therefore this wayward subject 
 against prelaty, the touching whereof is so 
 distasteful and disquietous to a number of 
 men, as by what hath been said I may de- 
 serve of charitable readers to be credited, 
 that neither envy nor gall hath entered me 
 upon this controversy, but the enforcement 
 of conscience only, and a preventive fear lest 
 the omitting of this duty should be against 
 me, when I would store up to myself the 
 good provision of peaceful hours : so, lest it 
 should be still imputed to me, as I have 
 found it hath been, that some self-pleasing 
 humor of vain-glory hath incited me to con- 
 test with men of high estimation, now while 
 green years are upon my head; from this 
 needless surmisal I shall hope to dissuade the 
 intelligent and equal auditor, if I can but 
 say successfully that which in this exigent 
 behoves me ; although I would be heard only, 
 if it might be, by the elegant and learned 
 reader, to whom principally for a while I 
 shall beg leave I may address myself. To 
 him it will be no new thing, though I tell 
 him that if, I hunted after praise, by the 
 ostentation of wit and learning, I should not 
 46
 
 His Dedication to Truth 
 
 write thus out of mine own season when I 
 have neither yet completed to my mind the 
 full circle of my private studies, although I 
 complain not of any insufficiency to the mat- 
 ter in hand; or were I ready to my wishes, 
 it were a folly to commit anything elabo- 
 rately composed to the careless and inter- 
 rupted listening of these tumultuous times. 
 Next, if I were wise only to my own ends, I 
 would certainly take such a subject as of 
 itself might catch applause, whereas this 
 hath all the disadvantages on the contrary,, 
 and such a subject as the publishing where- 
 of might be delayed at pleasure, and time 
 enough to pencil it over with all the curious 
 touches of art, even to the perfection of a 
 faultless picture; when as in this argument 
 the not deferring is of great moment to the 
 good speeding, that if solidity have leisure to 
 do her office, art cannot have much. Lastly, 
 I should not choose this manner of writing, 
 wherein knowing myself inferior to myself, 
 led by the genial power of nature to another 
 task, I have the use, as I may account, but 
 of my left hand. And though I shall be 
 foolish in saying more to this purpose, yet, 
 since it \vill be such a folly, as wisest men go 
 about to commit, having only confessed and 
 so committed, I may trust with more reason, 
 because with more folly, to have courteous 
 pardon. For although a poet, soaring in the 
 high reason of his fancies, with his garland 
 47
 
 Milton 
 
 and singing robes about him, might, without 
 apology, speak more of himself than I mean 
 to do; } r et for me sitting here below in the 
 cool element of prose, a mortal thing among 
 many readers of no empyreal conceit, to 
 venture and divulge unusual things of myself, 
 I shall petition to the gentler sort, it may 
 not be envy to me. I must say, therefore, 
 that after I had for my first years, by the 
 ceaseless diligence and care of my father, 
 (whom God recompense!) been exercised to 
 the tongues, and some sciences, as my age 
 \vould suffer, by sundry masters and teach- 
 ers, both at home and at the schools, it was 
 found that whether aught was imposed me 
 by them that had the overlooking, or be- 
 taken to of mine own choice in English, or 
 other tongue, prosing or versing, but chiefly 
 by this latter, the style, by certain vital 
 signs it had, was likely to live. But much 
 latelier in the private academies of Italy, 
 whither I was favored to resort, perceiving 
 that some trifles which I had in memory, 
 composed at under twenty or thereabout, 
 (for the manner is, that every one must give 
 some proof of his wit and reading there,) 
 met with acceptance above what was looked 
 for; and other things, which I had shifted in 
 scarcity of books and conveniences to patch 
 tip amongst them, were received with writ- 
 ten encomiums, which the Italian is not for- 
 ward to bestow on men of this side the 
 48
 
 His Dedication to Truth 
 
 Alps ; I began thus far to assent both to 
 them and divers of my friends here at home, 
 and not less to an inward prompting which 
 now grew daily upon me, that by labor and 
 intense study, (which I take to be my por- 
 tion in this life,) joined with the strong 
 propensity of nature, I might perhaps leave 
 something so \vritten to aftertimes, as they 
 should not willingly let it die. These 
 thoughts at once possessed me, and these 
 other; that if I were certain to \vrite as men 
 buy leases, for three lives and downward, 
 there ought no regard be sooner had than to 
 God's glory, by the honor and instruction 
 of my country. For \vhich cause, and not 
 only for that I knew it would be hard to 
 arrive at the second rank among the Latins, 
 I applied myself to that resolution, which 
 Ariosto followed against the persuasions of 
 Bembo, to fix all the industry and art I 
 could unite to the adorning of my native 
 tongue ; not to make verbal curiosities the 
 end, (that \vere a toilsome vanity,) but to be 
 an interpreter and relater of the best and 
 sagest things among mine own citizens 
 throughout this island in the mother dialect. 
 That what the greatest and choicest wits of 
 Athens, Rome, or modern Italy, and those 
 Hebrews of old did for their country, I, in 
 my proportion, with this over and above, of 
 being a Christian, might do for mine; not 
 caring to be once named abroad, though 
 4 49
 
 Milton 
 
 perhaps I could attain to that, but content 
 with these British islands as my world; 
 whose fortune hath hitherto been, that if the 
 Athenians, as some say, made their small 
 deeds great and renowned by their eloquent 
 writers, England hath had her noble achieve- 
 ments made small by the unskilful handling 
 of monks and mechanics. 
 
 Time serves not now, and perhaps I might 
 seem too profuse to give any certain account 
 of what the mind at home, in the spacious 
 circuits of her musing, hath liberty to pro- 
 pose to herself, though of highest hope and 
 hardest attempting; whether that epic form 
 whereof the two poems of Homer, and those 
 other two of Virgil and Tasso, are a diffuse, 
 and the book of Job a brief model : or 
 whether the rules of Aristotle herein are 
 strictly to be kept, or nature to be followed, 
 which in them that know art, and use judg- 
 ment, is no transgression, but an enriching 
 of art : and lastly, what king or knight, be- 
 fore the Conquest, might be chosen in whom 
 to lay the pattern of a Christian hero. And 
 as Tasso gave to a prince of Italy his choice 
 whether he would command him to write of 
 Godfrey's expedition against the Infidels, or 
 Belisarius against the Goths, or Charlemain 
 against the Lombards ; if to the instinct of 
 nature and the emboldening of art aught 
 may be trusted, and that there be nothing 
 adverse in our climate, or the fate of this 
 50
 
 His Dedication to Truth 
 
 age, it haply would be no rashness, from an 
 equal diligence and inclination, to present 
 the like offer in our own ancient stories; 
 or whether those dramatic constitutions, 
 wherein Sophocles and Euripides reign, shall 
 be found more doctrinal and exemplary to 
 a nation. The scripture also affords us a 
 divine pastoral drama in the Song of Solo- 
 mon, consisting of two persons, and a double 
 chorus, as Origen rightly judges. And the 
 Apocalypse of St. John is the majestic image 
 of a high and stately tragedy, shutting up 
 and intermingling her solemn scenes and acts 
 with a sevenfold chorus of hallelujahs and 
 harping symphonies: and this my opinion 
 the grave authority of Pareus, commenting 
 that book, is sufficient to confirm. Or if 
 occasion shall lead, to imitate those magnific 
 odes and hymns, wherein Pindarus and Cal- 
 limachus are in most things worthy, some 
 others in their frame judicious, in their mat' 
 ter most an end faulty. But those frequent 
 songs throughout the law and prophets be- 
 yond all these, not in their divine argument 
 alone, but in the very critical art of composi- 
 tion, may be easily made appear over all the 
 kinds of lyric poesy to be incomparable, 
 These abilities, wheresoever they be found, 
 are the inspired gift of God, rarely bestowed, 
 but yet to some (though most abuse) in 
 every nation; and are of power, beside the 
 office of a pulpit, to imbreed and cherish in a 
 51
 
 Milton 
 
 great people the seeds of virtue and public 
 civility, to allay the perturbations of the 
 mind, and set the affections in right tune ; to 
 celebrate in glorious and lofty hymns the 
 throne and equipage of God's almightiness, 
 and \vhat he works, and what he suffers to 
 be \vrought with high providence in his 
 church; to sing victorious agonies of martyrs 
 and saints, the deeds and triumphs of just 
 and pious nations, doing valiantly through 
 faith against the enemies of Christ; to de- 
 plore the general relapses of kingdoms and 
 states from justice and God's true worship. 
 Lastly, whatsoever in religion is holy and 
 sublime, in virtue amiable or grave, whatso- 
 ever hath passion or admiration in all the 
 changes of that which is called fortune from 
 without, or the wily subtleties and refluxes 
 of man's thoughts from within; all these 
 things with a solid and treatable smooth- 
 ness to paint out and describe. Teaching 
 over the whole book of sanctity and virtue, 
 through all the instances of example, with 
 such delight to those especially of soft and 
 delicious temper, who will not so much as 
 look upon truth herself, unless they see her 
 elegantly dressed ; that whereas the paths of 
 honesty and good life appear now rugged 
 and difficult, though they be indeed easy and 
 pleasant, they will then appear to all men 
 both easy and pleasant, though they were 
 rugged and difficult indeed. And what a 
 52
 
 His Dedication to Truth 
 
 benefit this would be to our youth and 
 gentry, may be soon guessed by what we 
 know of the corruption and bane which 
 they suck in daily from the writings and 
 interludes of libidinous and ignorant poet- 
 asters, who having scarce ever heard of that 
 which is the main consistence of a true poem, 
 the choice of such persons as they ought to 
 introduce, and what is moral and decent to 
 each one ; do for the most part lay up vicious 
 principles in sweet pills to be swallowed 
 down, and make the taste of virtuous docu- 
 ments harsh and sour. But because the 
 spirit of man cannot demean itself lively in 
 this body, without some recreating intermis- 
 sion of labor and serious things, it were 
 happy for the commonwealth, if our magis- 
 trates, as in those famous governments of 
 old, would take into their care, not only the 
 deciding of our contentious law-cases and 
 brawls, but the managing of our public 
 sports and festival pastimes; that they 
 might be, not such as were authorized a 
 while since, the provocations of drunkenness 
 and lust, but such as may inure and harden 
 our bodies by martial exercises to all \varlike 
 skill and performance; and may civilize, 
 adorn, and make discreet our minds by the 
 learned and affable meeting of frequent acad- 
 emies, and the procurement of wise and art- 
 ful recitations, sweetened with eloquent and 
 graceful enticements to the love and practice 
 53
 
 Milton 
 
 of justice, temperance, and fortitude, in- 
 structing and bettering the nation at all 
 opportunities, that the call of wisdom and 
 virtue may be heard everywhere, as Solomon 
 saith: "She crieth without, she uttereth her 
 voice in the streets, in the top of high places, 
 in the chief concourse, and in the openings of 
 the gates." Whether this may not be, not 
 only in pulpits, but after another persuasive 
 method, at set and solemn paneguries, in 
 theatres, porches, or what other place or 
 way may win most upon the people to re- 
 ceive at once both recreation and instruction, 
 let them in authority consult. The thing 
 which I had to say and those intentions 
 which have lived within me ever since I 
 could conceive myself anything worth to my 
 country, I return to crave excuse that urgent 
 reason hath plucked from me, by an abortive 
 and foredated discovery. And the accom- 
 plishment of them lies not but in a power 
 above man's to promise; but that none; 
 hath by more studious ways endeavored, 
 and with more unwearied spirit that none 
 shall, that I dare almost aver of myself, as 
 far as life and free leisure will extend; and 
 that the land had once enfranchised herself 
 from this impertinent yoke of prelaty, under 
 whose inquisitorious and tyrannical duncery, 
 no free and splendid wit can flourish. Nei- 
 ther do I think it shame to covenant with 
 any knowing reader, that for some few years 
 54
 
 His Dedication to Truth 
 
 yet I may go on trust with him toward the 
 payment of what I am now indebted, as 
 being a work not to be raised from the heat 
 of youth, or the vapors of wine; like that 
 which flows at waste from the pen of some 
 vulgar amorist, or the trencher fury of a 
 rhyming parasite ; nor to be obtained by the , 
 invocation of dame Memory and her siren 
 daughters, but by devout prayer to that 
 eternal Spirit, who can enrich with all utter- 
 .ance and knowledge, and sends out his sera- 
 phim, with the hallowed fire of his altar, to 
 touch and purify the lips of whom he pleases : 
 to this must be added industrious and select 
 reading, steady observation, insight into all 
 seemly and generous arts and affairs; till 
 which in some measure be compassed, at 
 mine own peril and cost, I refuse not to sus- 
 tain this expectation from as many as are 
 not loth to hazard so much credulity upon 
 the best pledges that I can give them. Al- 
 though it nothing content me to have dis- 
 closed thus much beforehand, but that I 
 trust hereby to make it manifest with what 
 small willingness I endure to interrupt the 
 pursuit of no less hopes than these, and leave 
 a calm and pleasing solitariness, fed with 
 cheerful and confident thoughts, to embark 
 in a troubled sea of noises and hoarse dis- 
 putes, put from beholding the bright counte- 
 nance of truth in the quiet and still air of 
 delightful studies, to come into the dim re-
 
 Milton 
 
 flection of hollow antiquities sold by the 
 seeming bulk, and there be fain to club quo- 
 tations \vith men whose learning and belief 
 lies in marginal stuffings, who, when they 
 have, like good sumpters, laid ye down their 
 horse-loads of citations and fathers at your 
 door with a rhapsody of who and who were 
 bishops here or there, ye may take off their 
 packsaddles, their day's work is done, and 
 episcopacy, as they think, stoutly vindicated. 
 Let any gentle apprehension, that can dis- 
 tinguish learned pains from unlearned drudg- 
 ery imagine what pleasure or profoundness 
 can be in this, or what honor to deal 
 against such adversaries. But were it the 
 meanest under-service, if God by his secretary 
 conscience enjoin it, it were sad for me if I 
 should draw back; for me especially, now 
 when all men offer their aid to help, ease, 
 and lighten the difficult labors of the church, 
 to whose service, by the intentions of my 
 parents and friends, I was destined of a child, 
 and in mine own resolutions: till coming to 
 some maturity of years, and perceiving what 
 tyranny had invaded the church, that he 
 who would take orders must subscribe slave, 
 and take an oath withal, which, unless he 
 took with a conscience that would retch, he 
 must either straight perjure, or split his 
 faith; I thought it better to prefer a blame- 
 less silence before the sacred office of speak- 
 ing, bought and begun with servitude 
 56
 
 His Dedication to Truth 
 
 and forswearing. Howsoever, thus church- 
 outed by the prelates, hence may appear 
 the right I have to meddle in these matters, 
 as before the necessity and constraint ap- 
 peared. 
 
 57
 
 True Marriage 
 
 59
 
 TRUE MARRIAGE. 
 The Fourth Reason. 
 
 [Chapter VI., Book I., of "The Doctrine and Dis- 
 cipline of Divorce." Milton believed that divorce 
 should be permitted for other grounds besides 
 those recognized by the canon law. The unhappy 
 circumstances attendant upon his first marriage 
 undoubtedly turned his mind to the consideration 
 of the subject. The marriage took place in the 
 summer of 1 643, but Milton's wife, who w r as only 
 seventeen, left him shortly after the ceremony and 
 remained for two years an inmate of her mother's 
 household. In 1645 he received her back, and she 
 became the mother of his daughters. It is possi- 
 ble that "The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce" 
 dates from the very summer of the marriage ; an 
 enlarged edition certainly appeared in the next 
 February, 1644.] 
 
 FOURTHLY, Marriage is a covenant, the very 
 being whereof consists not in a forced cohabi- 
 tation, and counterfeit performance of duties, 
 but in unfeigned love and peace: and of 
 matrimonial love, no doubt but that was 
 chiefly meant, which by the ancient sages 
 was thus parabled; that Love, if he be not 
 twin born, yet hath a brother wondrous 
 like him, called Anteros; whom while he 
 seeks all about, his chance is to meet with 
 many false and feigning desires, that wander 
 singly up and down in his likeness : by them 
 61
 
 Milton 
 
 in their borrowed garb, Love, though not 
 wholly blind, as poets wrong him, yet hav- 
 ing but one eye, as being born an archer 
 aiming, and that eye not the quickest in this 
 dark region here below, \vhich is not Love's 
 proper sphere, partly out of the simplicity 
 and credulity which is native to Him, often 
 deceived, embraces and consorts him with 
 these obvious and suborned striplings, as if 
 they were his mother's own sons; for so he 
 thinks them, while they subtlely keep them- 
 selves most on his blind side. But after a 
 while, as his manner is, "when soaring up into 
 the high tower of his Apogaeum, above the 
 shadow of the earth, he darts out the direct 
 rays of his then most piercing eyesight upon 
 the impostures and trim disguises that were 
 used with him, and discerns that this is not 
 his genuine brother, as he imagined ; he has 
 no longer the power to hold fellowship with 
 such a personated mate: for straight his 
 arrows lose their golden heads, and shed 
 their purple feathers, his silken braids un- 
 twine, and slip their knots, and that original 
 and fiery virtue given him by fate all on a 
 sudden goes out, and leaves him undeified 
 and despoiled of all his force; till finding 
 Anteros at last, he kindles and repairs the 
 almost-faded ammunition of his deity by the 
 reflection of a coequal and homogeneal fire. 
 Thus mine author sung it to me : and by the 
 leave of those who would be counted the 
 62
 
 True Marriage 
 
 only grave ones, this is no mere amatorious 
 novel; (though to be wise and skilful in these 
 matters, men heretofore of greatest name in 
 virtue have esteemed it one of the highest 
 arcs, that human contemplation circling up- 
 wards can make from the globy sea whereon 
 she stands;) but this is a deep and serious 
 verity, showing us that love in marriage 
 cannot live nor subsist unless it be mutual; 
 and where love cannot be, there can be left 
 of wedlock nothing but the empty husk of an 
 outside matrimony, as undelightful and un- 
 pleasing to God as any other kind of hypoc- 
 risy. So far is his command from tying men 
 to the observance of duties \vhich there is no 
 help for, but they must be dissembled. If 
 Solomon's advice be not over-frolic, "Live 
 joyfully," saith he, "with the wife whom 
 thou lovest, all thy days, for that is thy 
 portion:" how then, where we find it im- 
 possible to rejoice or to love, can we obey 
 this precept? How miserably do we defraud 
 ourselves of that comfortable portion, which 
 God gives us, by striving vainly to glue an 
 error together, which God and nature will 
 not join, adding but more vexation and 
 violence to that blissful society by our im- 
 portunate superstition, that will not hearken 
 to St. Paul, 1 Cor. vii., who, speaking of 
 marriage and divorce, determines plain 
 enough in general, that God therein "hath 
 called us to peace, and not to bondage!" 
 63
 
 Milton 
 
 Yea, God himself commands in his law more 
 than once, and by his prophet' Malachi, as 
 Calvin and the best translations read, that 
 "he who hates, let him divorce," that is, he 
 who cannot love. Hence it is that the rab- 
 bins, and Maimonides, famous among the 
 rest, in a book of his set forth by Buxtor- 
 fius, tells us, that "divorce was permitted by 
 Moses to preserve peace in marriage, and 
 quiet in the family." Surely the Jews had 
 their saving peace about them as well as 
 we; yet care was taken that this wholesome 
 provision for household peace should also be 
 allowed them : and must this be denied to 
 Christians? perverseness ! that the law 
 should be made more provident of peace- 
 making than the gospel ! that the gospel 
 should be put to beg a most necessary help 
 of mercy from the law, but must not have 
 it ! and that to grind in the mill of an un- 
 delighted and servile copulation, must be the 
 only forced work of a Christian marriage, 
 ofttimes with such a yokefellow, from whom 
 both love and peace, both nature and relig- 
 ion mourns to be separated. I cannot there- 
 fore be so diffident, as not securely to con- 
 clude that he who can receive nothing of the 
 most important helps in marriage, being 
 thereby disenabled to return that duty which 
 is his, with a clear and hearty countenance, 
 and thus continues to grieve whom he would 
 not, and is no less grieved ; that man ought 
 64,
 
 True Marriage 
 
 even for love's sake and peace to move 
 divorce upon good and liberal conditions to 
 the divorced. And it is a less breach of wed- 
 lock to part with wise and quiet consent 
 betimes, than still to foil and profane that 
 mystery of joy and union with a polluting 
 sadness and perpetual distemper: for it is 
 not the outward continuing of marriage that 
 keeps whole that covenant, but whatsoever 
 does most according to peace and love, 
 whether in marriage or in divorce, he it is 
 that breaks marriage least ; it being so often 
 written, that "Love only is the fulfilling of 
 every commandment." 
 5 
 
 65
 
 Political 
 
 67
 
 THE ENGLISH REFORMATION 
 
 [The opening and closing passages from the 
 pamphlet "Of Reformation in England," 1641.] 
 
 Sir, Amidst those deep and retired 
 thoughts, which, with every man Christianly 
 instructed, ought to be most frequent of 
 God, and of his miraculous ways and work 
 amongst men, and of our religion and works, 
 to be performed to him ; after the story of 
 our Saviour Christ, suffering to the lowest 
 bent of \veakness in the flesh, and presently 
 triumphing to the highest pitch of glory in 
 the spirit, which drew up his body also ; till 
 we in both be united to him in the revela- 
 tion of his kingdom, I do not know of any- 
 thing more worthy to take up the whole 
 passion of pity on the one side, and joy on 
 the other, than to consider first the foul and 
 sudden corruption, and then, after many a 
 tedious age, the long deferred, but much 
 more wonderful and happy reformation of 
 the church in these latter days. Sad it is 
 to think how that doctrine of the gospel 
 planted by teachers divinely inspired, and by 
 them winnowed and sifted from the chaff of 
 overdated ceremonies, and refined to such a 
 spiritual height and temper of purity, and 
 69
 
 Milton 
 
 knowledge of the Creator, that the body, 
 with all the circumstances of time and place, 
 were purified by the affections of the regener- 
 ate soul, and nothing left impure but sin; 
 faith needing not the weak and fallible of- 
 fice of the senses, to be either the ushers 
 or interpreters of heavenly mysteries, save 
 where our Lord himself in his sacraments 
 ordained; that such a doctrine should, 
 through the" grossness and blindness of her 
 professors, and the fraud of deceivable tradi- 
 tions, drag so downwards, as to backslide 
 one way into the Jewish beggary of old cast 
 rudiments, and stumble forward another 
 way into the new-vomited paganism of 
 sensual idolatry, attributing purity or im- 
 purity to things indifferent, that they might 
 bring the inward acts of the spirit to the 
 outward and customary eye-service of the 
 body, as if they could make God earthly and 
 fleshly, because they could not make them- 
 selves heavenly and spiritual : they began to 
 draw down all the divine intercourse betwixt 
 God and the soul, yea, the very shape of 
 God himself, into an exterior and bodily 
 form, urgently pretending a necessity and 
 obligement of joining the bod}' in a formal 
 reverence and worship circumscribed ; they 
 hallowed it, they fumed up, they sprinkled 
 it, they bedecked it, not in robes of pure 
 innocency, but of pure linen, with other de- 
 formed and fantastic dresses, in palls and 
 70
 
 The English Reformation 
 
 mitres, gold, and gewgaws fetched from 
 Aaron's old \vardrobe, or the flamins vestry : 
 then was the priest set to con his motions 
 and his postures, his liturgies and his lurries, 
 till the soul by this means of overbodying 
 herself, given up justly to fleshly delights, 
 bated her wing apace downward : and find- 
 ing the ease she had from her visible and 
 sensuous colleague, the body, in performance 
 of religious duties, her pinions now broken, 
 and flagging, shifted off from herself the 
 labor of high soaring any more, forgot her 
 heavenly flight, and left the dull and droiling 
 carcase to plod on in the old road, and 
 drudging trade of outward conformity. And 
 here out of question from her perverse con- 
 ceiting of God and holy things, she had fallen 
 to believe no God at all, had not custom and 
 the worm of conscience nipped her incre- 
 dulity : hence to all the duties of evangelical 
 grace, instead of the adoptive and cheerful 
 boldness which our new alliance with God 
 requires, came servile and thrallike fear: for 
 in very deed, the superstitious man by his 
 good will is an atheist; but being scared 
 from thence by the pangs and gripes of a 
 boiling conscience, all in a pudder shuffles up 
 to himself such a God and such a \vorship 
 as is most agreeable to remedy his fear; 
 which fear of his, as also is his hope, fixed 
 only upon the flesh, renders likewise the 
 whole faculty of his apprehension carnal; 
 71
 
 Milton 
 
 and all the inward acts of worship, issuing 
 from the native strength of the soul, run out 
 lavishly to the upper skin, and there harden 
 into a crust of formality. Hence men came 
 to scan the scriptures by the letter, and in 
 the covenant of our redemption, magnified 
 the external signs more than the quickening 
 power of the Spirit; and yet, looking on 
 them through their own guiltiness with a 
 servile fear, and finding as little comfort, or 
 rather terror from them again, they knew 
 not how to hide their slavish approach to 
 God's behests, by them not understood, nor 
 worthily received, but by cloaking their ser- 
 vile crouching to all religious presentments, 
 sometimes lawful, sometimes idolatrous, 
 under the name of humility, and terming 
 the piebald frippery and ostentation of cere- 
 monies, decency. 
 
 Then was baptism changed into a kind of 
 exorcism, and water, sanctified by Christ's 
 institute, thought little enough to wash off 
 the original spot, without the scratch or 
 cross impression of a priest's forefinger: and 
 that feast of free grace and adoption to 
 which Christ invited his disciples to sit as 
 brethren, and coheirs of the happy covenant, 
 which at that table was to be sealed to 
 them, even that feast of love and heavenly- 
 admitted fellowship, the seal of filial grace, 
 became the subject of horror, and glouting 
 adoration, pageanted about like a dreadful 
 72
 
 The English Reformation 
 
 idol ; which sometimes deceives well-meaning 
 men, and beguiles them of their reward, by 
 their voluntary humility; which indeed is 
 fleshly pride, preferring a foolish sacrifice, 
 and the rudiments of the world, as St. Paul 
 to the Colossians explaineth, before a sa- 
 voury obedience to Christ's example. Such 
 was Peter's unseasonable humility, as then 
 his knowledge was small, when Christ came 
 to wash his feet ; who at an impertinent 
 time would strain courtesy with his master, 
 and falling troublesomely upon the lowly, 
 all -wise, and unexaminable intention of 
 Christ, in what he went with resolution to 
 do, so provoked by his interruption the meek 
 Lord, that he threatened to exclude him from 
 his heavenly portion, unless he could be con- 
 tent to be less arrogant and stiffhecked in his 
 humility. 
 
 But to dwell no longer in characterizing 
 the depravities of the church, and how they 
 sprung, and how they took increase ; when I 
 recall to mind at last, after so many dark 
 ages, wherein the huge overshadowing train 
 of error had almost swept all the stars out 
 of the firmament of the church ; how the 
 bright and blissful Reformation (by divine 
 power) struck through the black and settled 
 night of ignorance and antichristian tyr- 
 anny, methinks a sovereign and reviving 
 joy must needs rush into the bosom of him 
 that reads or hears; and the sweet odor of 
 73
 
 Milton 
 
 the returning gospel imbathe his soul with 
 the fragrancy of heaven. Then was the 
 sacred Bible sought out of the dusty corners 
 where profane falsehood and neglect had 
 thrown it, the schools opened, divine and 
 human learning raked out of the embers of 
 forgotten tongues, the princes and cities 
 trooping apace to the new erected banner of 
 salvation ; the martyrs, with the unresistible 
 might of weakness, shaking the powers of 
 darkness, and scorning the fiery rage of the 
 old red dragon. 
 
 Thou, therefore, that sittest in light and 
 glory unapproachable, parent of angels and 
 men ! next, thee I implore, omnipotent King, 
 Redeemer of that lost remnant whose nature 
 thou didst assume, ineffable and everlasting 
 Love! and thou, the third subsistence of 
 divine infinitude, illumining Spirit, the joy 
 and solace of created things! one Tripersonal 
 godhead ! look upon this thy poor and al- 
 most spent and expiring church, leave her 
 not thus a prey to these importunate wolves, 
 that wait and think long till they devour 
 thy tender flock ; these wild boars that have 
 broke into thy vineyard, and left the print 
 of their polluting hoofs on the souls of thy 
 servants. O let them not bring about their 
 damned designs, that stand now at the en- 
 trance of the bottomless pit, expecting the 
 74
 
 The English Reformation 
 
 watchword to open and let out those dread- 
 ful locusts and scorpions, to reinvolve us in 
 that pitchy cloud of infernal darkness, where 
 we shall never more see the sun of thy truth 
 again, never hope for the cheerful dawn, 
 never more hear the bird of morning sing. 
 Be moved with pity at the afflicted state of 
 this our shaken monarchy, that now lies 
 laboring under her throes, and struggling 
 against the grudges of more dreadful calami- 
 ties. 
 
 O thou, that, after the impetuous rage of 
 five blood\ r inundations, and the succeeding 
 sword of intestine war, soaking the land in 
 her own gore, didst pity the sad and cease- 
 less revolution of our swift and thick-coming 
 sorrows; when we were quite breathless, of 
 thy free grace didst motion peace, and terms 
 of covenant with us ; and having first well- 
 nigh freed us from antichristian thraldom, 
 didst build up this Britannic empire to a 
 glorious and enviable height, with all her 
 daughter-islands about her; stay us in this 
 felicity, let not the obstinacy of our half- 
 obedience and will-worship bring forth that 
 viper of sedition, that for these fourscore 
 years hath been breeding to eat through the 
 entrails of our peace; but let her cast her 
 abortive spawn without the danger of this 
 travailing and throbbing kingdom : that we 
 may still remember in our solemn thanks- 
 givings, how for us the northern ocean even 
 75
 
 Milton 
 
 to the frozen Thule was scattered with the 
 proud shipwrecks of the Spanish Armada, 
 and the very maw of hell ransacked, and 
 made to give up her concealed destruction, 
 ere she could vent it in that horrible and 
 damned blast. 
 
 how much more glorious will those 
 former deliverances appear, when we shall 
 know them not only to have saved us from 
 greatest miseries past, but to have reserved 
 us for greatest happiness to come ! Hitherto 
 thou hast but freed us, and that not fully, 
 from the unjust and tyrannous claim of thy 
 foes ; now unite us entirely, and appropriate 
 us to thyself, tie us everlasting!}- in willing 
 homage to the prerogative of thy eternal 
 throne. 
 
 And now we know, thou our most cer- 
 tain hope and defence, that thine enemies 
 have been consulting all the sorceries of the 
 great whore, and" have joined their plots 
 with that sad intelligencing tyrant that 
 mischiefs the world with his mines of Ophir, 
 and lies thirsting to revenge his naval ruins 
 that have larded our seas: but let them all 
 take counsel together, and let it come to 
 nought ; let them decree, and do thou cancel 
 it ; let them gather themselves, and be scat- 
 tered ; let them embattle themselves, and be 
 broken; let them embattle, and be broken, 
 for thou art with us. 
 
 Then, amidst the hymns and hallelujahs of 
 76
 
 The English Reformation 
 
 saints, some one may perhaps be heard offer- 
 ing at high strains in new and lofty measure 
 to sing and celebrate thy divine mercies and 
 marvellous judgments in this land through- 
 out all ages ; whereby this great and warlike 
 nation, instructed and inured to the fervent 
 and continual practice of truth and right- 
 eousness, and casting far from her the rags 
 of her whole vices, may press on hard to 
 that high and happy emulation, to be found 
 the soberest, \visest, and most Christian 
 people at that day, when thou, the eternal 
 and shortly expected King, shalt open the 
 clouds to judge the several kingdoms of the 
 world, and distributing national honors 
 and rewards to religious and just common- 
 wealths, shalt put an end to all earthly 
 tyrannies, proclaiming thy universal and 
 mild monarchy through heaven and earth ; 
 where they undoubtedly, that by their 
 labors, counsels, and prayers, have been 
 earnest for the common good of religion and 
 their country, shall receive above the inferior 
 orders of the blessed, the regal addition of 
 principalities, legions, and thrones into their 
 glorious titles, and in supereminence of bea- 
 tific vision, progressing the dateless and irre- 
 voluble circle of eternity, shall clasp insepar- 
 able hands with joy and bliss, in overmeasure 
 for ever. 
 
 But they contrary, that by the impairing 
 and diminution of the true faith, the dis- 
 17
 
 Milton 
 
 tresses and servitude of their country, aspire 
 to high dignity, rule, and promotion here, 
 after a shameful end in this life, (which God 
 grant them,) shall be thrown down eternally 
 into the darkest and deepest gulf of hell, 
 where, under the despiteful control, the 
 trample and spurn of all the other damned, 
 that in the anguish of their torture shall 
 have no other ease than to exercise a raving 
 and bestial tyranny over them as their slaves 
 and negroes, they shall remain in that plight 
 for ever, the basest, the lowermost, the most 
 dejected, most underfoot, and downtrodden 
 vassals of perdition. 
 
 78
 
 SKETCH OF BRADSHAW. 
 
 [From "The Second Defence of the People of 
 England."] 
 
 JOHN BRADSHAW* (a name which will be 
 repeated with applause wherever liberty is 
 cherished or is known) was sprung from a 
 noble family. All his early life he sedulously 
 employed in making himself acquainted with 
 the laws of his country; he then practised 
 with singular success and reputation at the 
 bar ; he showed himself an intrepid and un- 
 wearied advocate for the liberties of the 
 people: he took an active part in the most 
 momentous affairs of the state, and occasion- 
 ally discharged the functions of a judge with 
 
 *Had John Bradshaw lived in any of the free 
 states of antiquity he would have had innumer- 
 able statues erected to him, while historians and 
 orators would have vied with each other in doing 
 honor to his memory. It has happened alto-* 
 gether otherwise. By the accident of the Restora- 
 tion, which gave a new turn to the current of 
 public opinion, Bradshaw's name, which could 
 not be buried in oblivion, was overwhelmed with 
 obloquy. As a specimen of what was formerly 
 written against him, I will cite a passage from 
 Anthony a Wood, a very good and honest man, 
 but deeply prejudiced against all those who had 
 made a figure in the Commonwealth. Speaking 
 of a law book written by one John March, he 
 79
 
 Milton 
 
 the most inviolable integrity. At last, when 
 he was entreated by the parliament to pre- 
 side in the trial of the king, he did not refuse 
 the dangerous office. To a profound knowl- 
 edge of the law, he added the most compre- 
 hensive views, the most generous sentiments, 
 manners the most obliging and the most 
 pure. Hence he discharged that office with a 
 propriety almost without a parallel; he in- 
 spired both respect and awe; and, though 
 menaced by the daggers of so many assas- 
 sins, he conducted himself with so much con- 
 says, '"Tis dedicated to that monster of men, 
 John Bradshaw, Sergeant at law, and Lord 
 President of the Council of State." With the 
 flagitious treatment of Bradshaw's remains by 
 that profligate individual Charles the Second, 
 most persons are already acquainted ; but it may, 
 nevertheless, be worth while to introduce here 
 Anthony a Wood's account of the transaction. 
 "The next morning the carcass of John Brad- 
 shaw, President of the High Court of Justice, 
 which had been with great solemnity buried in 
 St. Peter's Church, at Westminster, 22nd Novem- 
 ber, 1569, was carried in a cart to Holbourn 
 also ; and the next day following that, which was 
 the 30th of January, on which day King Charles 
 the First was beheaded in 1648, they were drawn 
 to Tyburn on three several sledges, followed by 
 the universal outcry of the people. Afterwards, 
 they being pulled out from their coffins, were 
 hanged at the several angles of that triple tree, 
 where they hung till the sun was set ; after which, 
 they were taken down, their heads cut off, to be 
 set on Westminster Hall, and their loathsome 
 trunks thrown into a deep hole under the gal- 
 80
 
 Sketch of Bradshaw 
 
 sistency and gravity, with so much presence 
 of mind and so much dignity of demeanor, 
 that he seems to have been purposely des- 
 tined by Providence for that part which he 
 so nobly acted on the theatre of the world. 
 And his glory is as much exalted above that 
 of all other tyrannicides, as it is both more 
 humane, more just, and more strikingly 
 grand, judicially to condemn a tyrant, than 
 to put him to death without a trial. In 
 other respects there was no forbidding aus- 
 terity, no moroseness in his manner; he 
 
 lows, where they now remain. At the same time 
 Ireton's tomb was broken down, and what 
 remained over the graves of Cromwell and Brad- 
 shaw were clean swept away, and no footstep 
 left of their remembrances in that royal and 
 stately burial-place of our English kings." To 
 show, however, the different estimation in which 
 the same name may be held b}- different persons, 
 I will here introduce that eloquent and startling 
 epitaph written by an American on Bradshaw, 
 before the Avar of independence. It is said to have 
 been dated from Anapolis, June 21st, 1773, and 
 to have been engraven on a cannon, whence 
 copies were taken and hung up in almost every 
 house in the continent of America : 
 
 "STRANGER! ere thou pass, contemplate this 
 cannon, nor regardless be told that near its base 
 lies deposited the dust of John Bradshaw, who, 
 nobly superior to selfish regards, despising alike 
 the pageantry of courtly splendour, the blast of 
 calumny, and the terror of regal vengeance, pre- 
 sided in the illustrious band of heroes and patriots 
 who fairly and openly adjudged Charles Stuart, 
 tyrant of England, to a public and exemplary 
 6 81
 
 Milton 
 
 was courteous and benign; but the great 
 character which he then sustained, he with 
 perfect consistency still sustains, so that you 
 would suppose that not only then, but in 
 every future period of his life, he was sitting 
 in judgment upon the king. In the public 
 business his activity is unwearied ; and he 
 alone is equal to a host. At home his hos- 
 pitality is as splendid as his fortune will 
 permit : in his friendships there is the most 
 inflexible fidelity; and no one more readily 
 discerns merit, or more liberally rewards it. 
 Men of piety and learning, ingenious persons 
 in all professions, those who have been dis- 
 tinguished by their courage or their mis- 
 fortunes, are free to participate his bounty; 
 and if they want not his bounty, they are 
 sure to share his friendship and esteem. He 
 never ceases to extol the merits of others, or 
 to conceal his own; and no one was ever 
 more ready to accept the excuses, or to par- 
 don the hostility, of his political opponents. 
 If he undertake to plead the cause of the 
 oppressed, to solicit the favor or deprecate 
 
 death, thereby presenting to the amazed world, 
 and transmitting down through applauding ages, 
 the most glorious example of unshaken virtue, 
 love of freedom, and impartial justice, ever ex- 
 hibited on the blood-stained theatre of human 
 action. Oh ! reader, pass not on till thou hast 
 blest his memory, and never never forget that 
 rebellion to tyrants, is obedience to God." J. A. 
 St. John. 
 
 82
 
 Sketch of Bradshaw 
 
 the resentment of the powerful, to reprove 
 the public ingratitude towards any particular 
 individual, his address and his perseverance 
 are beyond all praise. On such occasions no 
 one could desire a patron or a friend more 
 able, more zealous, or more eloquent. No 
 menace could divert him from his purpose; 
 no intimidation on the one hand, and no 
 promise of emolument or promotion on the 
 other, could alter the serenity of his counte- 
 nance, or shake the firmness of his soul. By 
 these virtues, which endeared him to his 
 friends and commanded the respect even of 
 his enemies, he, sir, has acquired a name 
 which, while you and such as you are mould- 
 ering in oblivion, will flourish in every age, 
 and in every country in the world. 
 
 83
 
 SKETCHES OF CROMWELL AND FAIRFAX. 
 
 [From "The Second Defence of the People of 
 England."] 
 
 OLIVER CROMWELL was sprung from a line 
 of illustrious ancestors, who were distin- 
 guished for the civil functions which they sus- 
 tained under the monarchy, and still more for 
 the part which they took in restoring and es- 
 tablishing true religion in this country. In 
 the vigor and maturity of his life, which he 
 passed in retirement, he was conspicuous for 
 nothing more than for the strictness of his 
 religious habits, and the innocence of his life; 
 and he had tacitly cherished in his breast 
 that flame of piety which was afterwards to 
 stand him in so much stead on the greatest 
 occasions, and in the most critical exigencies. 
 In the last parliament which was called by 
 the king, he was elected to represent his native 
 town, when he soon became distinguished by 
 the justness of his opinions, and the vigor 
 and decision of his councils. When the sword 
 was drawn, he offered his services, and was 
 appointed to a troop of horse, whose num- 
 bers were soon increased by the pious and 
 the good, who flocked from all quarters to 
 his standard ; and in a short time he almost 
 8-i
 
 Sketches of Cromwell and Fairfax 
 
 surpassed the greatest generals in the magni- 
 tude and the rapidity of his achievements. 
 Nor is this surprising; for he was a soldier 
 disciplined to perfection in the knowledge of 
 himself. He had either extinguished, or by 
 habit had learned to subdue, the whole host 
 of vain hopes, fears, and passions, which 
 infest the soul. He first acquired the govern- 
 ment of himself, and over himself -acquired 
 the most signal victories ; so that on the first 
 day he took the field against the external 
 enemy, he was a veteran in arms, consum- 
 mately practised in the toils and exigencies 
 of war. It is not possible for me in the nar- 
 row limits in which I circumscribe myself on 
 this occasion, to enumerate the many towns 
 which he has taken, the many battles which 
 he has won. The whole surface of the Brit- 
 ish empire has been the scene of his exploits, 
 and the theatre of his triumphs; which alone 
 \vould furnish ample materials for a history, 
 and want a copiousness of narration not 
 inferior to the magnitude and diversity of the 
 transactions. This alone seems to be a 
 sufficient proof of his extraordinary and 
 almost supernatural virtue, that by the 
 vigor of his genius, or the excellence of his 
 discipline, adapted, not more to the necessi- 
 ties of war than to the precepts of Chris- 
 tianity, the good and the brave were from 
 all quarters attracted to his camp, not only 
 as to the best school of military talents, but 
 85
 
 Milton 
 
 of piety and virtue; and that during the 
 whole war, and the occasional intervals of 
 peace, amid so many vicissitudes of faction 
 and of events, he retained and still retains 
 the obedience of his troops, not by largesses 
 or indulgence, but by his sole authority and 
 the regularity of his pay. In this instance 
 his fame may rival that of C}'rus, of Epa- 
 minondas, or any of the great generals of 
 antiquity. Hence he collected an army as 
 numerous and as well equipped as any one 
 ever did in so short a time; which was 
 uniformly obedient to his orders, and clear to 
 the affections of the citizens; which was 
 formidable to the enemy in the field, but 
 never cruel to those who laid down their 
 arms; which committed no lawless ravages 
 on the persons or the property of the inhabi- 
 tants; who, when they compared their con- 
 duct with the turbulence, the intemperance, 
 the impiety, and the debauchery of the royal- 
 ists, were wont to salute them as friends, 
 and to consider them as guests. They were 
 a stay to the good, a terror to the evil, and 
 the warmest advocates for every exertion 
 of piety and virtue. 
 
 Nor would it be right to pass over the 
 name of Fairfax, who united the utmost 
 fortitude with the utmost courage; and 
 the spotless innocence of whose life seemed 
 to point him out as the peculiar favorite 
 of Heaven. Justly, indeed, may you be ex- 
 86
 
 Sketches of Cromwell and Fairfax 
 
 cited to receive this wreath of praise; though 
 you have retired as much as possible from 
 the world, and seek those shades of pri- 
 vacy which were the delight of Scipio. Nor 
 was it only the enemy whom you sub- 
 dued, but you have triumphed over that 
 flame of ambition and that lust of glory 
 \vhich are wont to make the best and the 
 greatest of men their slaves. The purity of 
 your virtues and the splendor of your ac- 
 tions consecrate those sweets of ease which 
 you enjoy, and which constitute the wished- 
 for haven of the toils of man. Such was the 
 ease which, when the heroes of antiquity 
 possessed, after a life of exertion and glory 
 not greater than yours, the poets, in de- 
 spair of finding ideas or expressions better 
 suited to the subject, feigned that they were 
 received into heaven, and invited to recline 
 at the tables of the gods. But whether it 
 were your health, which I principally be- 
 lieve, or any other motive which caused you 
 to retire, of this I am convinced, that noth- 
 ing could have induced you to relinquish the 
 service of your country, if you had not 
 known that in your successor liberty would 
 meet with a protector, and England with a 
 stay to its safet} r , and a pillar to its glory. 
 
 87
 
 LETTERS OF STATE CONCERNING THE 
 MASSACRE IN PIEDMONT 
 
 [Milton had accepted in 1649 the post of Latin 
 Secretary to the Council of State. His duties 
 were to prepare despatches for the Committee for 
 Foreign Affairs, and to translate despatches re- 
 ceived from the Continent. This task was not an 
 engrossing one, and Milton made use of his leisure 
 to write the "Eikonoklastes" (a reply to the 
 royalist "Eikon Basilike"), the First and Second 
 "Defence of the People of England," and other 
 pamphlets. In April, 1655, three years after his 
 blindness had become total, Milton, in common 
 with his Protestant countrymen, was shocked by 
 the massacre of Vaudois peasants by orders of 
 their sovereign, the Duke of Savoy. Milton's per- 
 sonal feelings were expressed in one of the best 
 known of his sonnets, "Avenge, O Lord, thy 
 slaughtered saints." But it was also his duty, as 
 Latin Secretary, to write the remonstrances which 
 Cromwell despatched to various European pow- 
 ers. The letter to the Duke of Savoy marked by 
 notable diplomatic restraint is given here, as 
 well as the indignant communications to such 
 Protestant powers as Sweden, the United Prov- 
 inces, and Switzerland. Through the intervention 
 of Cardinal Mazarin, to whom Milton likewise 
 sent a letter, the Vaudois Protestants received 
 some temporary protection. The fact that Ad- 
 miral Blake's fleet was then in the Mediterranean 
 doubtless assisted the Duke of Savoy to see the 
 force of England's protest.] 
 .88
 
 State Letters on Piedmont Massacre 
 
 OLIVER, the Protector, &c., to the most Se- 
 rene Prince, IMMANUEL Duke of SAVOY, 
 Prince of Piedmont, Greeting. 
 
 Most Serene Prince, 
 
 LETTERS have been sent us from Geneva, as 
 also from the Dauphinate, and many other 
 places bordering upon your territories, 
 wherein we are given to understand, that 
 such of your royal highness's subjects as 
 profess the reformed religion, are commanded 
 by your edict, and by your authority, within 
 three da\ r s after the promulgation of your 
 edict, to depart their native seats and habi- 
 tations, upon pain of capital punishment, 
 and forfeiture of all their fortunes and es- 
 tates, unless they will give security to relin- 
 quish their religion within twenty days, and 
 embrace the Roman Catholic faith. And that 
 when they applied themselves to your royal 
 highness in a most suppliant manner, im- 
 ploring a revocation of the said edict, and 
 that, being received into pristine favor, 
 they might be restored to the liberty granted 
 them by your predecessors, a part of your 
 army fell upon them, most cruelly slew 
 several, put others in chains, and compelled 
 the rest to fly into desert places, and to the 
 mountains covered with snow, where some 
 hundreds of families are reduced to such dis- 
 tress, that it is greatly to be feared, they 
 will in a short time all miserably perish 
 89
 
 Milton 
 
 through cold and hunger. These things, 
 when they were related to us, we could not 
 choose but be touched with extreme grief 
 and compassion for the sufferings and calami- 
 ties of this afflicted people. Now in regard 
 we must acknowledge ourselves linked to- 
 gether not only by the same tie of humanity, 
 but by joint communion of the same religion, 
 we thought it impossible for us to satisfy 
 our duty to God, to brotherly charity, or 
 our profession of the same religion, if we 
 should only be affected with a bare sorrow 
 for the misery and calamity of our brethren, 
 and not contribute all our endeavors to 
 relieve and succor them in their unexpected 
 adversity, as much as in us lies. Therefore 
 in a greater measure we most earnestly be- 
 seech and conjure your royal highness, that 
 you would call back to your thoughts the 
 moderation of your most serene predecessors, 
 and the liberty by them granted and con- 
 firmed from time to time to their subjects the 
 Vaudois. In granting and confirming which, 
 as they did that which without all question 
 was most grateful to God, who has been 
 pleased to reserve the jurisdiction and power 
 over the conscience to himself alone, so there 
 is no doubt, but that they had a due consid- 
 eration of their subjects also, whom they 
 found stout and most faithful in war, and 
 always obedient in peace. And as your 
 royal serenity in other things most laudably 
 90 '
 
 State Letters on Piedmont Massacre 
 
 follows the footsteps of your immortal an- 
 cestors, so we again and again beseech your 
 royal highness not to swerve from the path 
 wherein they trod in this particular; but 
 that you would vouchsafe to abrogate both 
 this edict, and whatsoever else may be de- 
 creed to the disturbance of your subjects 
 upon the account of the reformed religion; 
 that you would ratify to them their conceded 
 privileges and pristine liberty, and command 
 their losses to be repaired, and that an end 
 be put to their oppressions. Which if your 
 royal highness shall be pleased to see per- 
 formed, you will do a thing most acceptable 
 to God, revive and comfort the miserable in 
 dire calamity, and most highly oblige all 
 your neighbors, that profess the reformed 
 religion, but more especially ourselves, who 
 shall be bound to look upon your clemency 
 and benignity toward your subjects as the 
 fruit of our earnest solicitation. Which will 
 both engage us to a reciprocal return to 
 all good offices, and lay the solid foun- 
 dations not only of establishing, but in- 
 creasing, alliance and friendship between 
 this republic and your dominions. Nor 
 do we less promise this to ourselves from 
 your justice and moderation ; to which we 
 beseech Almighty God to incline your mind 
 and thoughts. And so we cordially im- 
 plore just Heaven to bestow upon your 
 highness and your people the blessings of 
 91
 
 Milton 
 
 peace and truth, and prosperous success in 
 all your affairs. 
 
 Whitehall, May , 1655. 
 
 OLIVER, Protector, to the most Serene Prince, 
 CHARLES GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS, King- of the 
 SWEDES, Greeting: 
 
 WE make no question but that the fame 
 of that most rigid edict has reached your 
 dominions, whereby the Duke of Savoy has 
 totally ruined his Protestant subjects inhab- 
 iting the Alpine valleys, and commanded 
 them to be exterminated from their native 
 seats and habitations, unless they will give 
 security to renounce their religion received 
 from their forefathers, in exchange for the 
 Roman Catholic superstition, and that within 
 twenty days at furthest : so that many being 
 killed, the rest stripped to their skins, and 
 exposed to most certain destruction, are now 
 forced to wander over desert mountains, and 
 through perpetual winter, together with 
 their wives and children, half dead with cold 
 and hunger : and that your majesty has laid 
 it to heart, with a pious sorrow and com- 
 passionate consideration, we as little doubt. 
 For that the Protestant name and cause, 
 although they differ among themselves in 
 some things of little consequence, is never- 
 theless the same in general, and united in one 
 common interest, the hatred of our adver- 
 saries, alike incensed against Protestants, 
 92
 
 State Letters on Piedmont Massacre 
 
 very easily demonstrates. Now there is no- 
 body can be ignorant that the kings of the 
 Swedes have always joined with the re- 
 formed, earning their victorious arms into 
 Germany in defence of the Protestants with- 
 out distinction. Therefore we make it our 
 chief request, and that in a more especial 
 manner to your majesty, that you "would 
 solicit the Duke of Savoy by letters ; and, by 
 interposing your intermediating authority, 
 endeavour to avert the horrid cruelty of this 
 edict, if possible, from people no less innocent 
 than religious. For we think it superfluous 
 to admonish \ r our majesty whither these 
 rigorous beginnings tend, and what they 
 threaten to all the Protestants in general. 
 But if he rather choose to listen to his anger, 
 than to our joint entreaties and interces- 
 sions; if there be any tie, any charity or 
 communion of religion to be believed and 
 worshipped, upon consultations duly first 
 communicated to your majesty, and the chief 
 of the Protestant princes, some other course 
 is to be speedily taken, that such a numer- 
 ous multitude of our innocent brethren may 
 not miserably perish for \vant of succor and 
 assistance. Which, in regard we make no 
 question but that it is your majesty's opin- 
 ion and determination, there can be nothing 
 in our opinion more prudently resolved, than 
 to join our reputation, authority, counsels, 
 forces, and whatever else is needful, with all 
 93
 
 Milton 
 
 the speed that may be, in pursuance of so 
 pious a design. In the meantime, we be- 
 seech Almighty God to bless your majesty. 
 
 OLIVER, Protector, &c., to the High and 
 Mighty Lords, the States of the UNITED 
 PROVINCES. 
 
 WE make no question but that you have 
 already been informed of the Duke of Savoy's 
 edict, set forth against his subjects inhabit- 
 ing the valleys at the feet of the Alps, ancient 
 professors of the orthodox faith; by which 
 edict they are commanded to abandon their 
 native habitations, stripped of all their for- 
 tunes, unless within twenty days they em- 
 brace the Roman faith; and with what 
 cruelty the authority of this edict has raged 
 against a needy and harmless people, many 
 being slain by the soldiers, the rest plundered 
 and driven from their houses, together with 
 their wives and children, to combat cold and 
 hunger among desert mountains, and per- 
 petual snow. These things with what com- 
 motion of mind you heard related, what a 
 fellow-feeling of the calamities of brethren 
 pierced your breasts, we readily conjectured 
 from the depth of our own sorrow, which 
 certainly is most heavy and afflictive. For 
 being engaged together by the same tie of 
 religion, no wonder we should be so deeply 
 moved with the same affections upon the 
 dreadful and undeserved sufferings of our 
 94
 
 State Letters on Piedmont Massacre 
 
 brethren. Besides, that your conspicuous 
 piety and charity toward the orthodox, 
 wherever overborne and oppressed, has been 
 frequently experienced in the most urging 
 straits and calamities of the churches. For 
 my own part, unless my thoughts deceive 
 me, there is nothing wherein I should desire 
 more willingly to be overcome, than in good- 
 will and charity toward brethren of the same 
 religion, afflicted and wronged in their quiet 
 enjoyments; as being one that would be ac- 
 counted always ready to prefer the peace and 
 safety of the churches before my particular 
 interests. So far, therefore, as hitherto lay 
 in our power, we have written to the Duke 
 of Savoy, even almost to supplication, be- 
 seeching him that he would admit into his 
 breast more placid thoughts and kinder 
 effects of his favor toward his most inno- 
 cent subjects and suppliants ; that he would 
 restore the miserable to their habitations 
 and estates, and grant them their pristine 
 freedom in the exercise of their religion. 
 Moreover, we wrote to the chiefest princes 
 and magistrates of the Protestants, whom 
 we thought most nearly concerned in these 
 matters, that they would lend us their assist- 
 ance to entreat and pacify the Duke of Savoy 
 in their behalf. And we make no doubt now 
 but you have done the same, and perhaps 
 much more. For this so dangerous a prece- 
 dent, and lately renewed severity of utmost 
 
 95
 
 Milton 
 
 cruelty toward the reformed, if the authors 
 of it meet with prosperous success, to what 
 apparent dangers it reduces our religion, we 
 need not admonish your prudence. On the 
 other side, if the duke shall once but permit 
 himself to be atoned and won bv our united 
 applications, not only our afflicted brethren, 
 but we ourselves shall reap the noble and 
 abounding harvest and reward of this labo- 
 rious undertaking. But if he still persist in 
 the same obstinate resolutions of reducing 
 to utmost extremity those people, (among 
 whom our religion was either disseminated 
 by the first doctors of the gospel, and pre- 
 served from the defilement of superstition, or 
 else restored to its pristine sincerity long 
 before other nations obtained that felicity, ) 
 and determines their utter extirpation and 
 destruction ; we are ready to take such other 
 course and counsels with yourselves, in com- 
 mon with the rest of our reformed friends 
 and confederates, as may be most necessary 
 for the preservation of just and good men, 
 upon the brink of inevitable ruin ; and to 
 make the duke himself sensible that we can 
 no longer neglect the heavy oppressions and 
 calamities of our orthodox brethren. Fare- 
 well. 
 
 To the Evangelic Cities of SWITZERLAND. 
 
 WE make no question but the late calamity 
 of the Piedmontois, professing our religion, 
 96
 
 State Letters on Piedmont Massacre 
 
 reached your ears before the unwelcome news 
 of it arrived with us : who being a people 
 under the protection and jurisdiction of the 
 Duke of Savoy, and by a severe edict of their 
 prince commanded to depart their native 
 habitations, unless within three days they 
 gave security to embrace the Roman religion, 
 soon after were assailed by armed violence, 
 that turned their dwellings into slaughter- 
 houses, while others, without number, were 
 terrified into banishment, where now naked 
 and afflicted, without house or home, or any 
 covering from the weather, and ready to 
 perish through hunger and cold, they misera- 
 bly wander through desert mountains, and 
 depths of snow, together with their wives 
 and children. And far less reason have we to 
 doubt but that so soon as they came to 
 3 r our knowledge, you laid these things to 
 heart, with a compassion no less sensible 
 of their multiplied miseries than ourselves ; 
 the more deeply imprinted perhaps in your 
 minds, as being next neighbors to the suf- 
 ferers. Besides that, we have abundant 
 proof of your singular love and affection for 
 the orthodox faith, of your constancy in 
 retaining it, and your fortitude in defending 
 it. Seeing then, by the most strict commun- 
 ion of religion, that you, together with our- 
 selves, are all brethren alike, or rather one 
 body with those unfortunate people, of which 
 no member can be afflicted without the feel- 
 7 97
 
 Milton 
 
 ing, without pain, without the detriment 
 and hazard of the rest ; we thought it con- 
 venient to write to your lordships concerning 
 this matter, and let you understand how we 
 believe it to be the general interest of us all, 
 as much as in us lies, with our common aid 
 and succor to relieve our exterminated and 
 indigent brethren ; and not only to take care 
 for removing their miseries and afflictions, 
 but also to provide that the mischief spread 
 no further, nor encroach upon ourselves in 
 general, encouraged by example and success. 
 We have \vritten letters to the Duke of Savoy > 
 wherein we have most earnestly besought 
 him, out of his wonted clemency, to deal 
 more gently and mildly with his most faith- 
 ful subjects, and to restore them, almost 
 ruined as they are, to their goods and habi- 
 tations. And we are in hopes that, by these 
 our entreaties, or rather by the united inter- 
 cessions of us all, the most serene prince at 
 length will be atoned, and grant what we 
 have requested with so much importunity. 
 But if his mind be obstinately bent to other 
 determinations, we are ready to communi- 
 cate our consultations with yours, by what 
 most prevalent means to relieve and re-es- 
 tablish most innocent men, and our most 
 dearly beloved brethren in Christ, tormented 
 and overlaid with so many wrongs and op- 
 pressions, and preserve them from inevitable 
 and undeserved ruin. Of whose welfare and 
 98
 
 State Letters on Piedmont Massacre 
 
 safety, as I am assured, that you, according 
 to your wonted piety, are most cordially 
 tender ; so, for our own parts, we cannot but 
 in our opinion prefer their preservation be- 
 fore our most important interests, even the 
 safeguard of our own life. Farewell. 
 
 0. P. 
 Westminster, May 19th, 1655. 
 
 Superscribed, To the most Illustrious and 
 Potent Lords, the Consuls and Senators 
 of the Protestant Cantons and Confed- 
 erate Cities of Switzerland, Greeting. 
 
 99
 
 Personal Letters 
 
 101
 
 TO LEONARD PHILARAS, THE ATHENIAN. 
 
 [This letter gives details concerning Milton's 
 loss of eyesight, but is chiefly notable for its 
 serene courage.] 
 
 I HAVE always been devotedly attached to 
 the literature of Greece, and particularly to 
 that of your Athens ; and have never ceased 
 to cherish the persuasion that that city 
 would one day make me ample recompense 
 for the warmth of my regard. The ancient 
 genius of your renowned country has fa- 
 vored the completion of my prophecy in 
 presenting me with your friendship and es- 
 teem. Though I was known to you only by 
 my writings, and we were removed to such 
 distance from each other, you most courte- 
 ously addressed me by letter ; and \vhen you 
 unexpectedly came to London, and saw me 
 who could no longer see, my affliction, which 
 causes none to regard me \vith greater ad- 
 miration, and perhaps many even with feel- 
 ings of contempt, excited your tenderest 
 sympathy and concern. You would not suf- 
 fer me to abandon the hope of recovering 
 my sight ; and informed me that you had an 
 intimate friend at Paris, Doctor Thevenot, 
 103
 
 Milton 
 
 who was particular!}' celebrated in disorders 
 of the eyes, whom you would consult about 
 mine, if I would enable you to lay before him 
 the causes and symptoms of the complaint. 
 I will do what you desire, lest I should seem 
 to reject that aid which perhaps may be 
 offered me by Heaven. It is now, I think, 
 about ten years since I perceived my vision 
 to grow weak and dull ; and at the same time 
 I was troubled with pain in my kidne\-s and 
 bowels, accompanied with flatulency. In the 
 morning, if I began to read, as was my 
 custom, my eyes instantly ached intensely, 
 but were refreshed after a little corporeal 
 exercise. The candle which I looked at, 
 seemed as it were encircled with a rainbow. 
 Not long after the sight in the left part of 
 the left eye (which I lost some years before 
 the other) became quite obscured ; and pre- 
 vented me from discerning any object on that 
 side. The sight in my other eye has now 
 been gradually and sensibly vanishing away 
 for about three years; some months before it 
 had entirely perished, though I stood mo- 
 tionless, everything which I looked at seemed 
 in motion to and fro. A stiff cloudy vapor 
 seemed to have settled on my forehead and 
 temples, which usually occasions a sort of 
 somnolent pressure upon my eyes, and par- 
 ticularly from dinner till the evening. So 
 that I often recollect what is said of the 
 poet Phineas in the Argonautics: 
 104
 
 To Leonard Philaras, the Athenian 
 
 "A stupor deep his cloudy temples bound, 
 And when he walk'd he seem'd as whirling 
 
 round, 
 Or in a feeble trance he speechless lay." 
 
 I ought not to omit that while I had any 
 sight left, as soon as I lay down on my bed 
 and turned on either side, a flood of light 
 used to gush from my closed eyelids. Then, 
 as my sight became daily more impaired, the 
 colors became more faint, and were emitted 
 with a certain inward crackling sound; but 
 at present, every species of illumination be- 
 ing, as it were, extinguished, there is diffused 
 around me nothing but darkness, or dark- 
 ness mingled and streaked with an ashy 
 brown. Yet the darkness in which I am per- 
 petually immersed seems always, both by 
 night and day, to approach nearer to white 
 than black; and when the eye is rolling in 
 its socket, it admits a little particle of light, 
 as through a chink. And though your physi- 
 cian may kindle a small ray of hope, yet I 
 make up my mind to the malady as quite 
 incurable; and I often reflect, that as the 
 wise man admonishes, days of darkness are 
 destined to each of us, the darkness which I 
 experience, less oppressive than that of the 
 tomb, is, owing to the singular goodness of 
 the Deity, passed amid the pursuits of litera- 
 ture and the cheering salutations of friend- 
 ship. But if, as is written, "Man shall not 
 live by bread alone, but by every word that 
 105
 
 Milton 
 
 proceedeth from the mouth of God," why 
 may not any one acquiesce in the privation 
 of his sight, when God has so amply fur- 
 nished his mind and his conscience with 
 eyes? While he so tenderly provides for me, 
 while he so graciously leads me by the hand 
 and conducts me on the way, I will, since it 
 is his pleasure, rather rejoice than repine at 
 being blind. And, my dear Philaras, what- 
 ever may be the event, I wish you adieu 
 with no less courage and composure than if 
 I had the eyes of a h-nx. 
 
 Westminster, September 28, 1654. 
 
 106
 
 TO PETER HEINBACH. 
 
 [This is the latest of Milton's personal letters. 
 It was written in the year of the Great Plague, 
 when the poet was living in obscurity near Lon- 
 don. He had already completed "Paradise Lost," 
 which \vas published in the year following.] 
 
 IT is not strange as you \vrite that report 
 should have induced you to believe, that I 
 had perished among the numbers of my 
 countrymen who fell in a year so fatally 
 visited by the ravages of the plague. If that 
 rumor sprung, as it seems, out of solicitude 
 for my safety, I consider it as no unpleasing 
 indication of the esteem in which I am held 
 among you. But by the goodness of God, 
 who provided for me a place of refuge in the 
 country, I yet enjoy both life and health; 
 which, as long as they continue, I shall be 
 happy to employ in any useful undertaking. 
 It gives me pleasure to think that, after so 
 long an interval, I have again occurred to 
 your remembrance; though, owing to the 
 luxuriance of } r our praise, you seem almost 
 to lead me to suspect that you had quite 
 forgotten one in whom you say that you 
 admire the union of so many virtues ; from 
 such an union I might dread too numerous 
 a progeny, if it were not evident that the 
 virtues flourish most in penury and distress. 
 107
 
 Milton 
 
 But one of those virtues has made me but 
 an ill return for her hospitable reception in 
 my breast; for what you term policy, and 
 which I wish that you had rather called 
 patriotic piety, has, if I may so say, almost 
 left me, who was charmed with so sweet a 
 sound, without a country. The other virtues 
 harmoniously agree. Our country is wher- 
 ever we are well off. I will conclude after 
 first begging you if there be any errors in the 
 diction or the punctuation, to impute it to 
 the boy who wrote this, who is quite igno- 
 rant of Latin, and to whom I was, with no 
 little vexation, obliged to dictate not the 
 words, but, one by one, the letters of which 
 they were composed. I rejoice to find that 
 your virtues and talents, of which I saw the 
 fair promise in your youth, have raised you 
 to so honorable a situation under the 
 prince; and I \vish you every good which 
 you can enjoy. Adieu. 
 London, Aug. 15L&, 1666. 
 
 108
 
 On Education 
 
 109
 
 ON EDUCATION. 
 
 i After Milton's return from Italy in 1639, he 
 undertook the education of his two nephews, 
 John and Edward Phillips, and of a few other 
 pupils. He became deeply interested in the the- 
 ory of teaching, and the following "Tract on 
 Education," addressed in 1644 to Samuel Hart- 
 lib, a Londoner of German birth who had a pas- 
 sion for school reform, outlines a scheme for the 
 instruction of youth. Possibly the tract is no 
 more conclusive than other famous discussions 
 of educational theory, but its interest is undeni- 
 able, and its definition of "a complete and gen- 
 erous education" has never been surpassed.] 
 
 TO MASTER SAMUEL HARTLIB. 
 
 I AM long since persuaded, Master Hartlib, 
 that to say or do aught worth memory and 
 imitation, no purpose or respect should 
 sooner move us than simply the love of God, 
 and of mankind. Nevertheless to write now 
 the reforming of education, though it be one 
 of the greatest and noblest designs that can 
 be thought on, and for the want whereof 
 this nation perishes; I had not yet at this 
 time been induced, but by your earnest en- 
 treaties and serious conjurements ; as having 
 my mind for the present half diverted in the 
 pursuance of some other assertions, the 
 knowledge and the use of which cannot but 
 111
 
 Milton 
 
 be a great furtherance both to the enlarge- 
 ment of truth, and honest living with much 
 more peace. Nor should the laws of any 
 private friendship have prevailed with me 
 to divide thus, or transpose my former 
 thoughts, but that I see those aims, those 
 actions, which have won you with me the 
 esteem of a person sent hither by some good 
 providence from a far country to be the 
 occasion and incitement of great good to 
 this island. 
 
 And, as I hear, you have obtained the 
 same repute with men of most approved 
 wisdom, and some of the highest authority 
 among us; not to mention the learned cor- 
 respondence which you hold in foreign parts, 
 and the extraordinary pains and diligence 
 \vhich you have used in this matter, both 
 here and beyond the seas; either by the 
 definite will of God so ruling, or the peculiar 
 sway of nature, which also is God's working. 
 Neither can I think that so reputed and so 
 valued as you are, you would, to the forfeit 
 of your own discerning ability, impose upon 
 me an unfit and overponderous argument; 
 but that the satisfaction which you profess 
 to have received, from those incidental dis- 
 courses which we have wandered into, hath 
 pressed and almost constrained you into a 
 persuasion, that what you require from me 
 in this point, I neither ought nor can in con- 
 science defer beyond this time, both of so 
 112
 
 On Education 
 
 much need at once, and so much opportunity 
 to try what God hath determined. 
 
 I will not resist, therefore, whatever it is, 
 either of divine or human obligement, that 
 you lay upon me; but will forthwith set 
 down in writing, as you request me, that 
 voluntary idea, which hath long, in silence, 
 presented itself to me, of a better education, 
 in extent and comprehension far more large, 
 and yet of time far shorter, and of attain- 
 ment far more certain, than hath been yet in 
 practice. Brief I shall endeavor to be; for 
 that which I have to say, assuredly this 
 nation hath extreme need should be done 
 sooner than spoken. To tell you, therefore, 
 what I have benefited herein among old re- 
 nowned authors, I shall spare ; and to search 
 what many modern Januas and Didactics, 
 more than ever I shall read, have projected, 
 my inclination leads me not. But if you can 
 accept of these few observations which have 
 flowered off, and are as it were the burnish- 
 ing of many studious and contemplative 
 years, altogether spent in the search of relig- 
 ious and civil knowledge, and such as pleased 
 you so well in the relating, I here give you 
 them to dispose of. 
 
 The end then of learning is to repair the 
 ruins of our first parents by regaining to 
 know God aright, and out of that knowl- 
 edge to love him, to imitate him, to be like 
 him, as we may the nearest by possessing 
 8 113
 
 Milton 
 
 our souls of true virtue, which being united 
 to the heavenly grace of faith, makes up the 
 highest perfection. But because our under- 
 standing cannot in this body found itself 
 but on sensible things, nor arrive so clearly 
 to the knowledge of God and things invisible, 
 as by orderly conning over the visible and 
 inferior creature, the same method is neces- 
 sarily to be followed in all discreet teaching. 
 And seeing every nation affords not experi- 
 ence and tradition enough for all kinds of 
 learning, therefore we are chiefly taught the 
 languages of those people who have at any 
 time been most industrious after wisdom ; 
 so that language is but the instrument con- 
 veying to us things useful to be known. 
 And though a linguist should pride himself 
 to have all the tongues that Babel cleft the 
 world into, yet if he have not studied the 
 solid things in them, as well as the words 
 and lexicons, he were nothing so much to be 
 esteemed a learned man, as any yeoman or 
 tradesman competently wise in his mother 
 dialect only. 
 
 Hence appear the many mistakes which 
 have made learning generally so unpleasing 
 and so unsuccessful; first, we do amiss to 
 spend seven or eight years merely in scraping 
 together so much miserable Latin and Greek, 
 as might be learned otherwise easily and de- 
 lightfully in one year. And that which casts 
 our proficiency therein so much behind, is 
 114
 
 On Education 
 
 our time lost partly in too oft idle vacancies 
 given both to schools and universities; 
 partly in a preposterous exaction, forcing 
 the empty wits of children to compose 
 themes, verses, and orations, which are the 
 acts of ripest judgment, and the final work 
 of a head filled by long reading and observ- 
 ing, with elegant maxims and copious inven- 
 tion. These are not matters to be wrung 
 from poor striplings, like blood out of the 
 nose, or the plucking of untimely fruit. Be- 
 sides the ill habit which they get of \vretched 
 barbarizing against the Latin and Greek 
 idiom, with their untutored Anglicisms, 
 odious to be read, yet not to be avoided 
 without a well-continued and judicious con- 
 versing among pure authors digested, which 
 they scarce taste. Whereas, if after some 
 preparatory grounds of speech by their cer- 
 tain forms got into memory, they were led to 
 the praxis thereof in some chosen short book 
 lessoned thoroughly to them, they might 
 then forthwith proceed to learn the sub- 
 stance of good things, and arts in due order, 
 which would bring the whole language 
 quickh- into their power. This I take to be 
 the most rational and most profitable way 
 of learning languages, and whereby we may 
 best hope to give account to God of our 
 youth spent herein. 
 
 And for the usual method of teaching arts, 
 I deem it to be an old error of universities, 
 115
 
 Milton 
 
 not yet well recovered from the scholastic 
 grossness of barbarous ages, that instead of 
 beginning with arts most easy, (and those be 
 such as are most obvious to the sense,) they 
 present their young unmatriculated novices, 
 at first coming, with the most intellective 
 abstractions of logic and metaphysics ; so 
 that they having but newly left those gram- 
 matic flats and shallows, where they stuck 
 unreasonably to learn a few words with 
 lamentable construction, and now on the 
 sudden transported under another climate, 
 to be tossed and turmoiled with their unbal- 
 lasted wits in fathomless and unquiet deeps 
 of controversy, do for the most part grow 
 into hatred and contempt of learning, 
 mocked and deluded all this while with rag- 
 ged notions and babblements, while they 
 expected worthy and delightful knowledge; 
 till poverty or youthful years call them im- 
 portunately their several wa}-s, and hasten 
 them, with the sway of friends, either to an 
 ambitious and mercenary, or ignorantly 
 zealous divinity : some allured to the trade of 
 law, grounding their purposes not on the 
 prudent and heavenly contemplation of jus- 
 tice and equity, which was never taught 
 them, but on the promising and pleasing 
 thoughts of litigious terms, fat contentions, 
 and flowing fees; others betake them to 
 state affairs, with souls so unprincipled in 
 virtue and true generous breeding, that flat- 
 116
 
 On Education 
 
 tery and court-shifts and tyrannous aphor- 
 isms appear to them the highest points of 
 wisdom ; instilling their barren hearts with 
 a conscientious slavery ; if, as I rather think, 
 it be not feigned. Others, lastly, of a more 
 delicious and airy spirit, retire themselves 
 (knowing no better) to the enjoyments of 
 ease and luxury, living out their days in feast 
 and jollity; which indeed is the wisest and 
 safest course of all these, unless they were 
 with more integrity undertaken. And these 
 are the errors, and these are the fruits of 
 misspending our prime youth at the schools 
 and universities as we do, either in learning 
 mere words, or such things chiefly as were 
 better unlearned. 
 
 I shall detain you now no longer in the 
 demonstration of what we should not do, 
 but straight conduct you to a hillside, where 
 I will point you out the right path of a 
 virtuous and noble education ; laborious in- 
 deed at the first ascent, but else so smooth, 
 so green, so full of goodly prospect, and 
 melodious sounds on every side, that the 
 harp of Orpheus was not more charming. I 
 doubt not but ye shall have more ado to 
 drive our dullest and laziest youth, our 
 stocks and stubs, from the infinite desire of 
 such a happy nurture, than we have now to 
 hale and drag our choicest and hopefullest 
 wits to that asinine feast of sowthistles and 
 brambles, which is commonly set before them 
 117
 
 Milton 
 
 as all the food and entertainment of their 
 tenderest and most docible age. I call there- 
 fore a complete and generous education, that 
 which fits a man to perform justly, skilfully, 
 and magnanimously all the offices, both pri- 
 vate and public, of peace and war. And 
 how all this may be done between twelve 
 and one and twenty, less time than is now 
 bestowed in pure trifling at grammar and 
 sophistry, is to be thus ordered. 
 
 First, to find out a spacious house and 
 ground about it fit for an academy, and big 
 enough to lodge a hundred and fifty persons, 
 whereof twenty or thereabout may be at- 
 tendants, all under the government of one, 
 \vho shall be thought of desert sufficient, and 
 ability either to do all, or wisely to direct 
 and oversee it done. This place should be at 
 once both school and university, not needing 
 a remove to any other house of scholarship, 
 except it be some peculiar college of law, or 
 physic, where they mean to be practitioners; 
 but as for those general studies which take 
 up all our time from Lily to commencing, as 
 they term it, master of art, it should be ab- 
 solute. After this pattern, as many edifices 
 may be converted to this use as shall be 
 needful in every city throughout this land, 
 which would tend much to the increase of 
 learning and civility every where. This num- 
 ber, less or more thus collected, to the con- 
 venience of a foot company, or interchange- 
 118
 
 On Education 
 
 ably two troops of cavalry, should divide 
 their day's work into three parts as it lies 
 orderly ; their studies, their exercise, and their 
 diet. 
 
 For their studies: first, they should begin 
 with the chief and necessary rules of some 
 good grammar, either that now used, or any 
 better; and while this is doing, their speech 
 is to be fashioned to a distinct and clear 
 pronunciation, as near as may be to the 
 Italian, especially in the vowels. For we 
 Englishmen being far northerly, do not open 
 our mouths in the cold air wide enough to 
 grace a southern tongue ; but are observed by 
 all other nations to speak exceeding close and 
 inward, so that to smatter Latin with an 
 English mouth, is as ill a hearing as law 
 French. Next, to make them expert in the 
 usefullest points of grammar, and withal to 
 season them and win them early to the love 
 of virtue and true labor, ere any nattering 
 seducement or vain principle seize them 
 wandering, some easy and delightful book of 
 education would be read to them, whereof 
 the Greeks have store, as Cebes, Plutarch, 
 and other Socratic discourses. But in Latin 
 we have none of classic authority extant, 
 except the two or three first books of Quinc- 
 tilian, and some select pieces elsewhere. 
 
 But here the main skill and groundwork 
 will be, to temper them such lectures and 
 explanations, upon every opportunity, as 
 119
 
 Milton 
 
 may lead and draw them in willing obe- 
 dience, inflamed with the study of learning 
 and the admiration of virtue; stirred up with 
 high hopes of living to be brave men, and 
 worthy patriots, dear to God, and famous 
 to all ages. That they may despise and 
 scorn all their childish and ill-taught quali- 
 ties, to delight in manly and liberal exercises, 
 which he who hath the art and proper elo- 
 quence to catch them with, what with mild 
 and effectual persuasions, and what with the 
 intimation of some fear, if need be, but 
 chiefly by his own example, might in a short 
 space gain them to an incredible diligence 
 and courage, infusing into their young 
 breasts such an ingenuous and noble ardor, 
 as would not fail to make many of them 
 renowned and matchless men. At the same 
 time, some other hour of the day, might be 
 taught them the rules of arithmetic; and 
 soon after the elements of geometr\ r , even 
 playing, as the old manner was. After even- 
 ing repast, till bedtime, their thoughts would 
 be best taken up in the easy grounds of 
 religion, and the story of scripture. 
 
 The next stejj would be to the authors of 
 agriculture, Cato, Varro, and Columella, for 
 the matter is most easy; and, if the language 
 be difficult, so much the better, it is not a 
 difficulty above their years. And here will 
 be an occasion of inciting, and enabling them 
 hereafter to improve the tillage of theif 
 120
 
 On Education 
 
 country, to recover the bad soil, and to 
 remedy the waste that is made of good ; for 
 this was one of Hercules' praises. Ere half 
 these authors be read (which will soon be 
 with plying hard and daily) they cannot 
 choose but be masters of any ordinary prose. 
 So that it will be then seasonable for them 
 to learn in any modern author the use of the 
 globes, and all the maps, first, with the old 
 names, and then with the new; or they 
 might be then capable to read any compen- 
 dious method of natural philosophy. 
 
 And at the same time might be entering 
 into the Greek tongue, after the same man- 
 ner as was before prescribed in the Latin ; 
 whereby the difficulties of grammar being 
 soon overcome, all the historical physiology 
 of Aristotle and Theophrastus are open be- 
 fore them, and, as I may say, under contri- 
 bution. The like access will be to Vitruvius, 
 to Seneca's natural questions, to Mela, Cel- 
 sus, Pliny, or Solinus. And having thus 
 passed the principles of arithmetic, geometry, 
 astronomy, 'and geography, with a general 
 compact of physics, they may descend in 
 mathematics to the instrumental science of 
 trigonometry, and from thence to fortifica- 
 tion, architecture, enginery, or navigation. 
 And in natural philosophy they may proceed 
 leisurely from the histor\ r of meteors, min- 
 erals, plants, and living creatures, as far as 
 anatomy. 
 
 121
 
 Milton 
 
 Then also in course might be read to 
 them, out of some not tedious writer, the 
 institution of physic, that they may know 
 the tempers, the humours, the seasons, and 
 how to manage a crudity; which he who 
 can wisely and timelv do, is not only a great 
 physician to himself and to his friends, but 
 also may, at some time or other, save an 
 army by this frugal and expenseless means 
 only; and not let the healthy and stout 
 bodies of young men rot away under him 
 for want of this discipline ; which is a great 
 pity, and no less a shame to the commander. 
 To set forward all these proceedings in 
 nature and mathematics, what hinders but 
 that the}' may procure, as oft as shall be 
 needful, the helpful experience of hunters, 
 fowlers, fishermen, shepherds, gardeners, 
 apothecaries; and in the other sciences, 
 architects, engineers, mariners, anatomists; 
 who doubtless would be ready, some for re- 
 ward, and some to favor such a hopeful 
 seminary. And this will give them such a 
 real tincture of natural knowledge, as they 
 shall never forget, but daily augment with 
 delight. Then also those poets which are 
 now counted most hard, will be both facile 
 and pleasant, Orpheus, Hesiod, Theocritus, 
 Aratus, Xicander, Oppian, Dionysius; and in 
 Latin, Lucretius, Manilius, and the rural 
 part of Virgil. 
 
 By this time, years and good general pre- 
 122
 
 On Education 
 
 cepts, will have furnished them more dis- 
 tinctly with that act of reason which in 
 ethics is called Proairesis; that they may 
 with some judgment contemplate upon 
 moral good and evil. Then will be required 
 a special reinforcement of constant and sound 
 indoctrinating, to set them right and firm, 
 instructing them more amply in the knowl- 
 edge of virtue and the hatred of vice ; while 
 their young and pliant affections are led 
 through all the moral works of Plato, Xeno- 
 phon, Cicero, Plutarch, Laertius, and those 
 Locrian remnants ; but still to be reduced in 
 their nightward studies wherewith they close 
 the day's work, under the determinate sen- 
 tence of David or Solomon, or the evan- 
 gelists and apostolic scriptures. Being per- 
 fect in the knowledge of personal duty, they 
 may then begin the study of economics. 
 And either now or before this, they may have 
 easily learned, at any odd hour, the Italian 
 tongue. And soon after, but with wariness 
 and good antidote, it would be wholesome 
 enough to let them taste some choice come- 
 dies, Greek, Latin, or Italian ; those tragedies 
 also, that treat of household matters, as 
 Trachiniae, Alcestis, and the like. 
 
 The next removal must be to the study of 
 politics; to know the beginning, end, and 
 reasons of political societies ; that they may 
 not, in a dangerous fit of the commonwealth, 
 be such poor, shaken, uncertain reeds, of 
 123
 
 Milton 
 
 such a tottering conscience, as many of our 
 great counsellors have lately shown them- 
 selves, but steadfast pillars of the state. 
 After this, they are to dive into the grounds 
 of law, and legal justice ; delivered first and 
 with best warrant by Moses; and as far as 
 human prudence can be trusted, in those ex- 
 tolled remains of Grecian lawgivers, Lycur- 
 gus, Solon, Zaleucus, Charondas, and thence 
 to all the Roman edicts and tables with their 
 Justinian; and so down to the Saxon and 
 common laws of England, and the statutes. 
 Sundays also and every evening may be 
 now understandingly spent in the highest 
 matters of theolog3 r , and church history, 
 ancient and modern; and ere this time the 
 Hebrew tongue at a set hour might have 
 been gained, that the scriptures may be now 
 read in their own original ; whereto it would 
 be no impossibility to add the Chaldee and 
 the Syrian dialect. When all these employ- 
 ments are \vell conquered, then will the 
 choice histories, heroic poems, and Attic 
 tragedies of stateliest and most regal argu- 
 ment, with all the famous political orations, 
 offer themselves; which if the}- were not only 
 read, but some of them got by memory, and 
 solemnh- pronounced with right accent and 
 grace, as might be taught, would endue 
 them even with the spirit and vigor of 
 Demosthenes or Cicero, Euripides or Soph- 
 ocles. 
 
 124
 
 On Education 
 
 And now, lastly, will be the time to read 
 with them those organic arts, which enable 
 men to discourse and write perspicuously, 
 elegantly, and according to the fittest style, 
 of lofty, mean, or lowly. Logic, therefore, 
 so much as is useful, is to be referred to this 
 due place with all her well-couched heads 
 and topics, until it be time to open her con- 
 tracted palm into a graceful and ornate 
 rhetoric, taught out of the rule of Plato, 
 Aristotle, Phalereus, Cicero, Hermogenes, 
 Longinus. To which poetry would be made 
 subsequent, or indeed rather precedent, as 
 being less subtle and fine, but more simple, 
 sensuous, and passionate. I mean not here 
 the prosody of a verse, which they could not 
 but have hit on before among the rudiments 
 of grammar; but that sublime art which in 
 Aristotle's poetics, in Horace, and the Italian 
 commentaries of Castelvetro, Tasso, Mazzoni, 
 and others, teaches what the laws are of a 
 true epic poem, what of a dramatic, what of 
 a lyric, what decorum is, which is the grand 
 masterpiece to observe. This would make 
 them soon perceive what despicable creatures 
 our common rhymers and play-writers be; 
 and show them what religious, what glori- 
 ous and magnificent use might be made of 
 poetry, both in divine and human things. 
 
 From hence, and not till now, will be the 
 right season of forming them to be able 
 writers and composers in every excellent 
 125
 
 . Milton 
 
 matter, when they shall be thus fraught with 
 an universal insight into things. Or whether 
 they be to speak in parliament or council, 
 honor and attention would be waiting on 
 their lips. There \vould then also appear 
 in pulpits other visage, other gestures, and 
 stuff otherwise wrought than what we now 
 sit under, ofttimes to as great a trial of our 
 patience as any other that they preach to us. 
 These are the studies wherein our noble and 
 our gentle youth ought to bestow their time, 
 in a disciplinary way, from twelve to one 
 and twenty: unless they rely more upon their 
 ancestors dead, than upon themselves living. 
 In which methodical course it is so supposed 
 they must proceed by the steady pace of 
 learning onward, as at convenient times, for 
 memory's sake, to retire back into the mid- 
 dle ward, and sometimes into the rear of 
 \vhat they have been taught, until they have 
 confirmed and solidly united the whole body 
 of their perfected knowledge, like the em- 
 battling of a Roman legion. Now will be 
 worth the seeing, what exercises and recrea- 
 tions may best agree, and become these 
 studies. 
 
 The course of stud}' hitherto briefly de- 
 scribed is, what I can guess by reading, likest 
 to those ancient and famous schools of Py- 
 thagoras, Plato, Isocrates, Aristotle, and such 
 others, out of which were bred such a number 
 of renowned philosophers, orators, historians, 
 126
 
 On Education 
 
 poets, and princes all over Greece, Italy, and 
 Asia, besides the flourishing studies of Cyrene 
 and Alexandria. But herein it shall exceed 
 them, and supply a defect as great as that 
 which Plato noted in the commonwealth of 
 Sparta; whereas that city trained up their 
 youth most for war, and these in their acade- 
 mies and Lycaeum all for the gown, this 
 institution of breeding which I here delineate 
 shall be equally good both for peace and 
 war. Therefore about an hour and a half 
 ere they eat at noon should be allowed them 
 for exercise, and due rest afterwards ; but the 
 time for this may be enlarged at pleasure, 
 according as their rising in the morning shall 
 be early. 
 
 The exercise which I commend first, is the 
 exact use of their weapon, to guard, and to 
 strike safely with edge or point; this will 
 keep them healthy, nimble, strong, and well 
 in breath; is also the likeliest means to make 
 them grow large and tall, and to inspire 
 them with a gallant and fearless courage, 
 which being tempered with seasonable lec- 
 tures and precepts to them of true fortitude 
 and patience, will turn into a native and 
 heroic valor, and make them hate the cow- 
 ardice of doing wrong. They must be also 
 practised in all the locks and gripes of wrest- 
 ling, wherein Englishmen were wont to 
 excel, as need may often be in fight to tug, 
 to grapple, and to close. And this perhaps 
 127
 
 Milton 
 
 will be enough, wherein to prove and heat 
 their single strength. 
 
 The interim of unsweating themselves regu- 
 larly, and convenient rest before meat, may, 
 both with profit and delight, be taken up in 
 recreating and composing their travailed 
 spirits with the solemn and divine harmonies 
 of music, heard or learned ; either whilst the 
 skilful organist plies his grave and fancied 
 descant in lofty fugues, or the whole sym- 
 phony with artful and unimaginable touches 
 adorn and grace the well-studied chords of 
 some choice composer ; sometimes the lute or 
 soft organ-stop waiting on elegant voices, 
 either to religious, martial, or civil ditties; 
 \vhich, if wise men and prophets be not ex- 
 tremely out, have a great power over dispo- 
 sitions and manners, to smooth and make 
 them gentle from rustic harshness and dis- 
 tempered passions. The like also would not 
 be inexpedient after meat, to assist and 
 cherish nature in her first concoction, and 
 send their minds back to study in good tune 
 and satisfaction. Where having followed it 
 close under vigilant eyes, till about two 
 hours before supper, they are, by a sudden 
 alarm or watchword, to be called out to 
 their military motions, under sky or covert, 
 according to the season, as was the Roman 
 wont; first on foot, then, as their age per- 
 mits, on horseback, to all the art of cavalry ; 
 that having in sport, but with much exact- 
 128
 
 On Education 
 
 ness and daily muster, served out the rudi- 
 ments of their soldiership, in all the skill of 
 embattling, marching, encamping, fortifying, 
 besieging, and battering, with all the helps 
 of ancient and modern stratagems, tactics, 
 and warlike maxims, they may as it were 
 out of a long war come forth renowned and 
 perfect commanders in the service of their 
 country. They would not then, if they were 
 trusted with fair and hopeful armies, suffer 
 them, for -want of just and wise discipline, to 
 shed away from about them like sick feath- 
 ers, though they be never so oft supplied; 
 they would not suffer their empty and un- 
 recruitable colonels of twenty men in a com- 
 pany, to quaff out or convey into secret 
 hoards, the wages of a delusive list, and a 
 miserable remnant ; yet in the meanwhile to 
 be overmastered with a score or two of 
 drunkards, the only soldiery left about them, 
 or else to comply with all rapines and vio- 
 lences. No, certainly, if they knew aught of 
 that knowledge that belongs to good men or 
 good governors, they would not suffer these 
 things. 
 
 But to return to our own institute : besides 
 these constant exercises at home, there is an- 
 other opportunity of gaining experience to IDC 
 won from pleasure itself abroad; in those 
 vernal seasons of the year when the air is 
 calm and pleasant, it were an injury and 
 sullenness against nature, not to go out and 
 9 129
 
 Milton 
 
 see her riches, and partake in her rejoicing 
 with heaven and earth. I should not there- 
 fore be a persuader to them of studying much 
 then, after two or three years that they have 
 well laid their grounds, but to ride out in 
 companies, with prudent and staid guides, 
 to all the quarters of the land : learning and 
 observing all places of strength, all com- 
 modities of building and of soil, for towns 
 and tillage, harbors and ports for trade. 
 Sometimes taking sea as far as to our navv, 
 to learn there also what they can in the 
 practical knowledge of sailing and of sea- 
 fight. 
 
 These ways would try all their peculiar 
 gifts of nature ; and if there \vere any secret 
 excellence among them would fetch it out, 
 and give it fair opportunities to advance 
 itself by, which could not but mightily re- 
 dound to the good of this nation, and bring 
 into fashion again those old admired virtues 
 and excellencies, with far more advantage 
 now in this purity of Christian knowledge. 
 Nor shall we then need the monsieurs of 
 Paris to take our hopeful youth into their 
 slight and prodigal custodies, and send them 
 over, back again, transformed into mimics, 
 apes, and kickshaws. But if they desire to 
 see other countries at three or four and 
 twenty years of age, not to learn principles, 
 but to enlarge experience, and make wise 
 observation, they will by that time be such 
 130
 
 On Education 
 
 as shall deserve the regard and honor of all 
 men where they pass, and the society and 
 friendship of those in all places who are best 
 and most eminent. And, perhaps, then other 
 nations will be glad to visit us for their 
 breeding, or else to imitate us in their own 
 country. 
 
 Now, lastly, for their diet there cannot be 
 much to say, save only that it would be best 
 in the same house ; for much time else would 
 be lost abroad, and many ill habits got ; and 
 that it should be plain, healthful, and moder- 
 ate, I suppose is out of controversy. Thus, 
 Mr. Hartlib, you have a general view in 
 writing, as your desire was, of that which 
 at several times I had discoursed with you 
 concerning the best and noblest way of edu- 
 cation; not beginning, as some have done, 
 from the cradle, which yet might be worth 
 many considerations, if brevity had not been 
 my scope; many other circumstances also I 
 could have mentioned, but this, to such as 
 have the worth in them to make trial, for 
 light and direction may be enough. Only I 
 believe that this is not a bow for every man 
 to shoot in, that counts himself a teacher; 
 but will require sinews almost equal to those 
 which Homer gave Ulysses ; yet I am withal 
 persuaded that it may prove much more easy 
 in the assay, than it now seems at distance, 
 and much more illustrious ; hdwbeit, not 
 more difficult than I imagine, and that im- 
 131
 
 Milton 
 
 agination presents me with nothing but very 
 happy, and very possible according to best 
 wishes; if God have so decreed, and this age 
 have spirit and capacity enough to appre- 
 hend. 
 
 132
 
 Areopagitica 
 
 133
 
 AREOPAGITICA. 
 
 A SPEECH FOR 
 THE LIBERTY OF UNLICENSED PRINTING. 
 
 TO THE PARLIAMENT OF ENGLAND. 
 
 "This is true liberty, when free-born men, 
 Having to advise the public, may speak free, 
 Which he who can, and will, deserves high 
 
 praise ; 
 
 Who neither can, nor will, may hold his peace: 
 What can be juster in a state than this?" 
 
 Euripid. Hicetid. 
 
 ["In England, in 1556, under Mary, the Sta- 
 tioners' Company was invested with legal privi- 
 leges, having the twofold object of protecting the 
 book trade and controlling writers. All publica- 
 tions \vere required to be registered in the register 
 of the company. No persons could set up a 
 press without a license, or print anything which 
 had not been previously approved by some offi- 
 cial censor. . . . But the fall of the royal au- 
 thority did not mean the emancipation of the 
 press. The Parliament had no intention of let- 
 ting go the control which the monarchy had 
 exercised. . . . The Star Chamber was abol- 
 ished, but its powers of search and seizure were 
 transferred to the Company of Stationers. 
 Licensing was to go on as before, but to be 
 exercised by special commissioners, instead of by 
 the Archbishop and the Bishop of London. Only 
 whereas, before, contraband had consisted of 
 Presbyterian books, henceforward it was Catholic 
 and Anglican books which would be suppressed. 
 335
 
 Milton 
 
 "Such was not Milton's idea of the liberty of 
 thought and speech in a free commonwealth. 
 . . . The 'Areopagitica, for the Liberty of 
 unlicensed Printing,' came out in November, 
 1644, an unlicensed, unregistered publication, 
 without printer's or bookseller's name. It was 
 cast in the form of a speech addressed to the 
 Parliament. The motto was taken from Euripi- 
 des, and printed in the original Greek, which was 
 not, when addressed to the Parliament of 1644, 
 the absurdity which it would be now. The title 
 is less appropriate, being borrowed from the 
 ' Areopagitic Discourse' of Isocrates, between which 
 and Milton's 'Speech' there is no resemblance 
 either in substance or style. . . . Milton's 
 Speech is in his own best style; a copious flood 
 of majestic eloquence, the outpouring of a noble 
 soul with a divine scorn of narrow dogma and 
 paltry aims." Mark Pattison's "Milton."] 
 
 THEY, -who to states and governors of 
 the commonwealth direct their speech, high 
 court of parliament! or wanting such access 
 in a private condition, write that which they 
 foresee may advance the public good ; I sup- 
 pose them, as at the beginning of no mean 
 endeavor, not a little altered and moved in- 
 wardly in their minds; some with doubt of 
 what will be the success, others with fear 
 of what will be the censure ; some with hope, 
 others with confidence of what the}' have to 
 speak. And me perhaps each of these dispo- 
 sitions, as the subject was whereon I entered, 
 may have at other times variously affected ; 
 and likely might in these foremost expres- 
 sions now also disclose which of them 
 136
 
 Areopagitica 
 
 swayed most, but that the very attempt of 
 this address thus made, and the thought of 
 whom it hath recourse to, hath got the 
 power within me to a passion, far more wel- 
 come than incidental to a preface. 
 
 Which though I stay not to confess ere 
 any ask, I shall be blameless, if it be no 
 other than the joy and gratulation -which it 
 brings to all who wish to promote their 
 country's liberty; whereof this whole dis- 
 course proposed will be a certain testimony, 
 if not a trophy. For this is not the liberty 
 which we can hope, that no grievance ever 
 should arise in the commonwealth : that let 
 no man in this world expect ; but when com- 
 plaints are freely heard, deeply considered, 
 and speedily reformed, then is the utmost 
 bound of civil liberty obtained that wise 
 men look for. To which if I now manifest, 
 by the very sound of this which I shall 
 utter, that we are already in good part 
 arrived, and yet from such a steep dis- 
 advantage of tyranny and superstition 
 grounded into our principles, .as was beyond 
 the manhood of a Roman recovery, it will be 
 attributed first, as is most due, to the strong 
 assistance of God, our deliverer; next, to 
 your faithful guidance and undaunted wis- 
 dom, lords and commons of England! Nei- 
 ther is it in God's esteem, the diminution 
 of his glory, when honorable things are 
 spoken of good men, and worthy magis- 
 137
 
 Milton 
 
 trates; which if I now first should begin to 
 do, after so fair a progress of your laudable 
 deeds, and such a long obligement upon the 
 whole realm to your indefatigable virtues, 
 I might be justly reckoned among the tar- 
 diest and the unwillingest of them that 
 praise ye. 
 
 Nevertheless there being three principal 
 things, without which all praising is but 
 courtship and flatter}' : first, when that only 
 is praised which is solidly worth praise; 
 next, when greatest likelihoods are brought, 
 that such things are truly and really in those 
 persons to whom they are ascribed ; the 
 other, when he who praises, by showing that 
 such his actual persuasion is of whom he 
 writes, can demonstrate that he flatters not ; 
 the former two of these I have heretofore 
 endeavored, rescuing the employment from 
 him who went about to impair your merits 
 with a trivial and malignant encomium ; the 
 latter as belonging chiefly to mine own 
 acquittal, that whom I so extolled I did not 
 flatter, hath been reserved opportunely to 
 this occasion. For he who freely magnifies 
 what hath been nobly done, and fears not to 
 declare as freely what might be done better, 
 gives ye the best covenant of his fidelity ; 
 and that his loyalist affection and his hope 
 waits on your proceedings. His highest 
 praising is not flattery, and his plainest ad- 
 vice is a kind of praising; for though I 
 138
 
 Areopagitica 
 
 should affirm and hold by argument, that it 
 would fare better with truth, with learning, 
 and the commonwealth, if one of your pub- 
 lished orders, which I should name, were 
 called in; yet at the same time it could not 
 but much redound to the lustre of your mild 
 and equal government, whenas private per- 
 sons are hereby animated to think ye better 
 pleased with public advice than other statists 
 have been delighted heretofore with public 
 flattery. And men will then see what differ- 
 ence there is between the magnanimity of 
 a triennial parliament, and that jealous 
 haughtiness of prelates and cabin counsellors 
 that usurped of late, whenas they shall ob- 
 serve ye in the midst of your victories and 
 successes more gently brooking written ex- 
 ceptions against a voted order, than other 
 courts, which had produced nothing worth 
 memory but the \veak ostentation of wealth, 
 would have endured the least signified dis- 
 like at any sudden proclamation. 
 
 If I should thus far presume upon the meek 
 demeanor of your civil and gentle greatness, 
 lords and commons ! as what your published 
 order hath directly said, that to gainsay, I 
 might defend myself with ease, if any should 
 accuse me of being new or insolent, did they 
 but know how much better I find ye esteem 
 it to imitate the old and elegant humanity 
 of Greece, than the barbaric pride of a Hun- 
 nish and Norwegian stateliness. And out of 
 139
 
 Milton 
 
 those ages, to whose polite wisdom and let- 
 ters we owe that we are not yet Goths and 
 Jutlanders, I could name him who from his 
 private house wrote that discourse to the 
 parliament of Athens, that persuades them 
 to change the form of democracy which was 
 then established. Such honor was done in 
 those days to men who professed the study 
 of wisdom and eloquence, not only in their 
 own country, but in other lands, that cities 
 and signiories heard thefn gladly, and with 
 great respect, if they had aught in public 
 to admonish the state. Thus did Dion Pru- 
 sarus, a stranger and a private orator, 
 counsel the Rhodians against a former edict ; 
 and I abound with other like examples, 
 which to set here would be superfluous. But 
 if from the industry of a life wholly dedicated 
 to studious labors, and those natural endow- 
 ments haply not the worst for two and fifty 
 degrees of northern latitude, so much must 
 be" derogated, as to count me not equal to 
 any of those who had this privilege, I would 
 obtain to be thought not so inferior, as 
 yourselves are superior to the most of them 
 who received their counsel ; and how far you 
 excel them, be assured, lords and commons ! 
 there can be no greater testimony appear, 
 than when your prudent spirit acknowledges 
 and obeys the voice of reason, from what 
 quarter soever it be heard speaking; and 
 renders ye as willing to repeal any act of 
 140
 
 Areopagitica 
 
 your own setting forth, as any set forth by 
 your predecessors. 
 
 If ye be thus resolved, as it were injury to 
 think ye were not, I know not what should 
 withhold me from presenting ye with a fit 
 instance wherein to show both that love of 
 truth which ye eminently profess, and that 
 uprightness of your judgment w r hich is not 
 wont to be partial to yourselves ; by judging 
 over again that order which ye have or- 
 dained "to regulate printing: that no 
 book, pamphlet, or paper shall be henceforth 
 printed, unless the same be first approved 
 and licensed by such, or at least one of such, 
 as shall be thereto appointed." For that 
 part which preserves justly every man's copy 
 to himself, or provides for the poor, I touch 
 not ; only wish they be not made pretences to 
 abuse and persecute honest and painful men, 
 who offend not in either of these particulars. 
 But that other clause of licensing books, 
 which we thought had died with his brother 
 quadragesimal and matrimonial when the 
 prelates expired, I shall now attend with 
 such a homilv, as shall lay before }*e, first, 
 the inventors of it to be those whom ye will 
 be loath to own ; next, what is to be thought 
 in general of reading, whatever sort the 
 books be ; and that this order avails nothing 
 to the suppressing of scandalous, seditious, 
 and libellous books, which were mainly in- 
 tended to be suppressed. Last, that it will 
 141
 
 Milton 
 
 be primely to the discouragement of all 
 learning, and the stop of truth, not only by 
 disexercising and blunting our abilities, in 
 what we know already, but by hindering 
 and cropping the discovery that might be 
 yet further made, both in religious and civil 
 wisdom. 
 
 I deny not, but that it is of greatest con- 
 cernment in the church and commonwealth, 
 to have a vigilant eye how books demean 
 themselves, as well as men ; and thereafter to 
 confine, imprison, and do sharpest justice on 
 them as malefactors ; for books are not abso- 
 lutely dead things, but do contain a progeny 
 of life in them to be as active as that soul 
 was whose progeny they are; nay, they do 
 preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and 
 extraction of that living intellect that bred 
 them. I know they are as lively, and as 
 vigorously productive, as those fabulous 
 dragon's teeth: and being sown up and 
 down, may chance to .spring up armed men. 
 And yet, on the other hand, unless wariness 
 be used, as good almost kill a man as kill a 
 good book: who kills a man kills a reason- 
 able creature, God's image; but he who de- 
 stroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills 
 the image of God, as it were, in the eye. 
 Many a man lives a burden to the earth ; 
 but a good book is the precious life-blood of 
 a master-spirit, embalmed and treasured up 
 on purpose to a life beyond life. It is true, 
 142
 
 Areopagitica 
 
 no age can restore a life, whereof, perhaps, 
 there is no great loss; and revolutions of 
 ages do not oft recover the loss of a rejected 
 truth, for the want of which whole nations 
 fare the worse. We should be wary, there- 
 fore, what persecution we raise against the 
 living labors of public men, how we spill 
 that seasoned life of man, preserved and 
 stored up in books; since we see a kind of 
 homicide may be thus committed, sometimes 
 a martyrdom ; and if it extend to the whole 
 impression, a kind of massacre, whereof the 
 execution ends not in the slaying of an ele- 
 mental life, but strikes at the ethereal and 
 fifth essence, the breath of reason itself; slays 
 an immortality rather than a life. But lest 
 I should be condemned of introducing license, 
 while I oppose licensing, I refuse not the 
 pains to be so much historical, as will serve 
 to show what hath been done by ancient 
 and famous commonwealths, against this 
 disorder, till the very time that this project 
 of licensing crept out of the inquisition, was 
 catched up by our prelates, and hath caught 
 some of our presbyters. 
 
 In Athens, where books and wits were ever 
 busier than in any other part of Greece, I 
 find but only two sorts of writings which the 
 magistrate cared to take notice of; those 
 either blasphemous and atheistical, or libel- 
 lous. Thus the books of Protagoras were by 
 the judges of Areopagus commanded to be 
 143
 
 Milton 
 
 burnt, and himself banished the territory for 
 a discourse, begun with his confessing not to 
 know "whether there were gods, or whether 
 not." And against defaming, it was agreed 
 that none should be traduced by name, as 
 was the manner of Vetus Comcedia, wherebv 
 we may guess how they censured libelling; 
 and this course was quick enough, as Cicero 
 writes, to quell both the desperate wits of 
 other atheists, and the open way of defam- 
 ing, as the event showed. Of other sects and 
 opinions, though tending to voluptuousness, 
 and the denying of divine Providence, they 
 took no heed. Therefore we do not read 
 that either Epicurus, or that libertine school 
 of Cyrene, or what the Cynic impudence 
 uttered, was ever questioned by the laws. 
 Neither is it recorded that the writings of 
 those old comedians were suppressed, though 
 the acting of them were forbid ; and that 
 Plato commended the reading of Aristo- 
 phanes, the loosest of them all, to his royal 
 scholar, Dionysius, is commonly known, and 
 may be excused, if holy Chrysostom, as is re- 
 ported, nightly studied so much the same 
 author, and had the art to cleanse a scurri- 
 lous vehemence into the style of a rousing 
 sermon. 
 
 'That other leading city of Greece, Lace- 
 daemon, considering that Lycurgus their 
 lawgiver was so addicted to elegant learning, 
 as to have been the first that brought out 
 144
 
 Areopagitica 
 
 of Ionia the scattered works of Homer, and 
 sent the poet Thales from Crete, to prepare 
 and mollify the Spartan surliness with his 
 smooth songs and odes, the better to plant 
 among them law and civility; it is to be 
 wondered how museless and unbookish they 
 were, minding nought but the feats of war. 
 There needed no licensing of books among 
 thein, for they disliked all but their own 
 laconic apophthegms, and took a slight occa- 
 sion to chase Archilochus out of their city, 
 perhaps for composing in a higher strain than 
 their own soldiery ballads and roundels could 
 reach to ; or if it were for his broad verses, 
 they were not therein so cautious, but they 
 were as dissolute in their promiscuous con- 
 versing ; whence Euripides affirms, in Androm- 
 ache, that their women were all unchaste. 
 
 This much may give us light after -what 
 sort of books were prohibited among the 
 Greeks. The Romans also for many ages 
 trained up only to a military roughness, re- 
 sembling most the Lacedarmonian guise, 
 knew of learning little but what their twelve 
 tables and the pontific college with their 
 augurs and flamens taught them in religion 
 and law ; so unaccjuainted with other learn- 
 ing, that when Carneades and Critolaus, 
 with the stoic Diogenes, coming ambassa- 
 dors to Rome, took thereby occasion to give 
 the city a taste of their philosophy, they 
 were suspected for seducers by no less a man 
 10 145
 
 Milton 
 
 than Cato the Censor, who moved it in the 
 senate to dismiss them speedily, and to ban- 
 ish all such Attic babblers out of Italy. 
 But Scipio and others of the noblest senators 
 withstood him and his old Sabine austerity ; 
 honored 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, 
 Nsevius and Plautus, the first Latin come- 
 dians, had filled the city with all the bor- 
 rowed scenes of Menander and Philemon. 
 Then began to be considered there also what 
 was to be done to libellous books and 
 -authors; for Nasvius 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 magis- 
 trate kept no reckoning. And therefore 
 Lucretius, without impeachment, versifies his 
 Epicurism to Memmius, and had the honor 
 to be set forth the second time by Cicero, so 
 great a father of the commonwealth ; al- 
 though 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 prohil> 
 146
 
 Areopagitica 
 
 ited. And for matters of state, the story of 
 Titus Livius, though it extolled that part 
 which Pompey held, was not therefore sup- 
 pressed by Octavius Caesar, of the other fac- 
 tion. 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 we shall meet with little else but 
 t\ r ranny 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 here- 
 tics 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, the}' met with no interdict that 
 can be cited, till about the year 400, in a 
 Carthaginian council, wherein bishops them- 
 selves were forbid to read the books of 
 147
 
 Milton 
 
 Gentiles, but heresies they might read ; while 
 others long before them, 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 con- 
 science 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 prohibit- 
 ing to be read what they fancied not ; yet 
 sparing in their censures, and the books not 
 many which they so dealt with ; till Martin 
 the Fifth, by his bull, not only prohibited, 
 but was the first that excommunicated the 
 reading of heretical books; for about that 
 time Wickliffe and Husse growing terrible, 
 were they who first drove the papal court to 
 a stricter policy of prohibiting. Which course 
 Leo the Tenth and his successors followed, 
 until the council of Trent and the Spanish 
 inquisition, engendering together, brought 
 forth or perfected those catalogues and ex- 
 purging indexes, that rake through the en- 
 trails of many an old good author, with a 
 violation worse than any could be offered to 
 his tomb. 
 
 14S
 
 Areopagitica 
 
 Nor did the}- stay in matters heretical, but 
 any subject that was not to their palate, 
 thev either condemned in a prohibition, or 
 had it straight into the new purgatory of 
 an index. To fill up the measure of encroach- 
 ment, 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 as well as of 
 Paradise) unless it w r ere approved and li- 
 censed under the hands of two or three 
 gluttonous friars. For example : 
 
 "Let the Chancellor Cini be pleased to see if in 
 this present work be contained aught that may 
 withstand the printing. 
 
 "Vincent Rabbata, Vicar of Florence." 
 
 "I have seen this present work, and find nothing 
 athwart the catholic faith and good manners : in 
 witness whereof I have given, &c. 
 
 "Nicolo Cini, Chancellor of Florence." 
 
 "Attending the precedent relation, it is allowed 
 that this present work of Davanzati may be 
 printed. Vincent Rabbata," &c. 
 
 "It may be printed, July 15. 
 
 "Friar Simon Mompei d'Amelia, Chancellor 
 of the Holy Office in Florence." 
 
 Sure they have a conceit, if he of the bot- 
 tomless 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 that which 
 149
 
 Milton 
 
 thay 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, 
 
 "Friar Nicholo Rodolphi, Master of the Holy 
 Palace." 
 
 Sometimes five imprimaturs are seen to- 
 gether, dialogue wise, in the piazza of one 
 titlepage, 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 prettv respon- 
 sories, 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 gav imitation of a 
 lordly imprimatur, one from Lambeth-house, 
 another from the west end of Paul's; so 
 apishly romanizing, that the word of com- 
 mand 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 sought, 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 fa- 
 mous and foremost in the achievements of 
 liberty, will not easily find servile letters 
 150
 
 Areopagitica 
 
 enow to spell such a dictatory presumption 
 Englished. 
 
 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 an- 
 cient state, or polity, or church, nor by any 
 statute left us bv 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 
 cross-legged over the nativity of any man's 
 intellectual offspring; but if it proved a mon- 
 ster, 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, 
 \vas never heard before, till that mysterious 
 iniquity, provoked and troubled at the first 
 entrance of reformation, sought out new 
 limboes and new hells wherein they might 
 include our books also within the number of 
 their damned. And this was the rare morsel 
 so officiously snatched up, and so ill-favoredly 
 351
 
 Milton 
 
 imitated by our inquisiturient bishops, and 
 the attendant minorites, 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 honor truth, 
 will clear ye readily. 
 
 But some will say, what though the in- 
 ventors 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 cer- 
 tainly 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. 
 
 152
 
 Areopagitica 
 
 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 with- 
 out reading their books of all sorts, in Paul 
 especially, who though^ it no defilement to 
 insert into holy scripture the sentences of 
 three Greek poets, and one of them a tra- 
 gedian ; 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, 
 thev wound us with our own weapons, and 
 with our own arts and sciences they over- 
 come us. And indeed the Christians were put 
 so to their shifts by this crafty means, and 
 so much in danger to decline into all igno- 
 rance, that the two Appollinarii were fain, as 
 a 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 Appollinarius and his son, by 
 taking away that illiterate law with the life 
 of him who devised it. So great an injury 
 153
 
 Milton 
 
 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 with 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 on 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 onlv, and 
 let so many more ancient fathers wax old in 
 those pleasant and florid studies, without 
 the lash of such a tutoring apparition ; inso- 
 much 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 bv Euse- 
 bius, far ancienter than this tale of Jerome, 
 to the nun Eustochium, and besides, has 
 nothing of a fever in it. Dionysius Alexandri- 
 nus 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 
 154
 
 Areopagitica 
 
 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, loath 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 remark- 
 able saying of the same author: "To the 
 pure, all things are pure;" not only meats 
 and drinks, but all kinds of knowledge, 
 whether of good or evil : the knowledge can- 
 not 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. Whole- 
 some meats to a vitiated stomach differ lit- 
 tle or nothing from unwholesome; and best 
 books to a naughty mind are not unapplica- 
 ble to occasions of evil. Bad meats will 
 155
 
 Milton 
 
 scarce breed good nourishment in the health- 
 iest concoction ; but herein the difference is of 
 bad books, that they to a discreet and judi- 
 cious reader serve in many respects to dis- 
 cover, to confute, to forewarn, and to illus- 
 trate. 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 theorems almost mathematically dem- 
 onstrative, that all opinions, yea, errors, 
 known, read, and collated, are of main ser- 
 vice and assistance toward the speedy at- 
 tainment 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 particu- 
 lar law or prescription, wholly to the de- 
 meanor 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 
 156
 
 Areopagitica 
 
 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 per- 
 petual 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 here- 
 tofore 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, than what was weari- 
 some. 
 
 As for the burning of those Ephesian books 
 by St. Paul's converts; it is 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 ex- 
 ample 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 know- 
 ledge of good is so involved and interwoven 
 157
 
 Milton 
 
 with the knowledge of evil, and in so many 
 cunning resemblances hardly to be discerned, 
 that those confused seeds which were im- 
 posed upon Pysche as an incessant labor 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 con- 
 tinence 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 warfaring Christian. I cannot praise a 
 fugitive and cloistered virtue unexercised and 
 unbreathed, that never sallies out and seeks 
 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 
 knows not the utmost that vice promises to 
 laer followers, and rejects it, is but a blank 
 158
 
 Areopagitica 
 
 virtue, not a pure; her whiteness is but an 
 excremental whiteness; which was the rea- 
 son why 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 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 world so necessary to the 
 constituting of human virtue, and the scan- 
 ning of error to the confirmation of truth, 
 how can we more safely, and with less dan- 
 ger, 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 pro- 
 miscuously read. But of the harm that may 
 result hence, three kinds are usually reck- 
 oned. 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 pas- 
 sionately murmuring against Providence 
 through all the arguments of Epicurus : in 
 other great disputes it answers dubiously 
 and darkly to the common reader; and ask 
 159
 
 Milton 
 
 a Talmuclist what ails the modesty of his 
 marginal Keri, that Moses and all the proph- 
 ets 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 prohibited books. The 
 ancientest fathers must be next removed, as 
 Clement of Alexandria, and that Eusebian 
 book of evangelical preparation, transmit- 
 ting our ears through a hoard of heathenish 
 obscenities to receive the gospel. Who finds 
 not that Irenaeus, 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 
 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, 
 acquainting 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 yet dear to the 
 Italian courtiers. I name not him, for pos- 
 terity's sake, whom Henry the Eighth named 
 in merriment his vicar of hell. By which 
 160
 
 Areopagitica 
 
 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 licens- 
 ing 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 untouched by the licenser. 
 It will be hard to instance where any igno- 
 rant 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 tractates, 
 whether false or true, are as the prophecy 
 of Isaiah was to the eunuch, not to be "un- 
 derstood 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 perus- 
 ing 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 
 11 161
 
 Milton 
 
 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 dis- 
 solute 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 un- 
 fold, how this cautelous enterprise of licens- 
 ing 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 
 Look; there is no reason that we should 
 deprive a wise man of any advantage to his 
 162
 
 Areopagitica 
 
 wisdom, while we seek to restrain from a 
 fool that which being restrained will be no 
 hinderance 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. 
 
 It is next alleged, we must not expose our- 
 selves to temptations without necessity, and 
 next to that, not employ our time in vain 
 things. To both these objections one answer 
 \vill serve, out of the grounds already laid, 
 that to all men such books are not tempta- 
 tions, nor vanities; but useful drugs and 
 materials wherewith to temper and compose 
 effective and strong medicines, which man's 
 life cannot want. The rest, as children and 
 childish men, who have not the art to qual- 
 ify 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 con- 
 trive; 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 explain- 
 163
 
 Milton 
 
 ing. See the ingenuity of truth, who, when 
 she gets a free and willing hand, opens her- 
 self faster than the pace of method and dis- 
 course 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 judgment 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 re- 
 ceived, fed his fancy with 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 
 164-
 
 Areopagitica 
 
 had written, until the judges and law keep- 
 ers had seen it, and allowed it; but that 
 Plato meant this law peculiarly to that com- 
 monwealth 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 mali- 
 cious 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 provisoes 
 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 endeavor they knew would 
 be but a fond labor ; 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 recrea- 
 165
 
 Milton 
 
 tions 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 pro- 
 vided 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 madri- 
 gals 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 prohibit them, shall twenty licensers? 
 The villages also must have their visitors to 
 inquire what lectures the bagpipe and the 
 rebec reads, even to the ballatry and the 
 gamut of every municipal fiddler; for these 
 are the countrj'tnan's Arcadias, and his 
 Monte Mayors. 
 
 Next, what more national corruption, for 
 which England hears ill abroad, than house- 
 hold gluttony? Who shall be the rectors of 
 our daily rioting? And what shall be done 
 to inhibit the multitudes that frequent those 
 houses where drunkenness is sold and har- 
 bored? Our garments also shouldbe referred 
 to the licensing of some more sober work- 
 166
 
 Areopagitica 
 
 masters, to see them cut into a less \vanton 
 garb. Who shall regulate all the mixed con- 
 versation of our youth, male and female to- 
 gether, as is the fashion of this country? 
 Who shall still appoint what shall be dis- 
 coursed, what presumed, and no further? 
 Lastly, who shall forbid and separate all idle 
 resort, all evil company? 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. 
 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 ordain wisely as in this world of evil, 
 in the midst whereof God hath placed us un- 
 avoidably. Nor is it Plato's licensing of 
 books will do this, which necessarily pulls 
 along with it so many other kinds of licens- 
 ing, as will make us all both ridiculous and 
 weary, and yet frustrate; but those unwrit- 
 ten, or at least unconstraining laws of vir- 
 tuous education, religious and civil nurture, 
 which Plato there mentions, as the bonds 
 and ligaments of the commonwealth, the pil- 
 lars 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 com- 
 monwealth ; but here the great art lies, to 
 discern in what the law is to bid restraint 
 167
 
 Milton 
 
 and punishment, and in what things per- 
 suasion 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 con- 
 tinent? 
 
 Many there be that complain of divine 
 Providence 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 arti- 
 ficial 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 e}^es; 
 herein consisted his merit, herein the right of 
 his reward, the praise of his abstinence. 
 Wherefore did he create passions within us, 
 pleasures round about us, but that these 
 rightly tempered are the very ingredients of 
 virtue? They are not skilful considerers of 
 human things, who imagine to remove sin, 
 by removing the matter of sin ; for, besides 
 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 uni- 
 versal thing as books are; and when this is 
 done, yet the sin remains entire. Though ye 
 168
 
 Areopagitica 
 
 take from a covetous man all his treasure, 
 he has yet one jewel left, ye cannot bereave 
 him of his covetousness. Banish all objects 
 of lust, shut up all youth into the severest 
 discipline that can be exercised in any her- 
 mitage, ye cannot make them chaste, that 
 came not thither so : such great care and 
 wisdom is required to the right managing of 
 this point. 
 
 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 re- 
 move them both alike. This justifies the high 
 providence of God, who, though he com- 
 mands us temperance, justice, continence, yet 
 pours out before us even to a profuseness all 
 desirable things, and gives us minds that can 
 wander beyond all limit and satiety. Why 
 should we then affect a rigor contrary to the 
 manner of God and of nature, by abridging 
 or scanting those means, which books freely 
 permitted, are both to the trial of virtue, 
 and the exercise of truth? 
 
 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 1 
 the chooser, a dram of well-doing should be 
 preferred before many times as much the 
 forcible hinderance of evil-doing. For God 
 sure esteems the growth and completing of 
 169
 
 Milton 
 
 one virtuous person, more than the restraint 
 of ten vicious. And albeit, whatever thing 
 we hear or see, sitting, walking, travelling, 
 or conversing, 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 hith- 
 erto 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 proof of itself. 
 If it were executed, you will say. But cer- 
 tain, if execution be remiss or blindfold now, 
 and in this particular, what will it be here- 
 after, and in other books? 
 
 If then the order shall not be vain and 
 frustrate, behold a new labor, 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 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 overseers, and those no vulgar men. 
 There be also books which 'are partly useful 
 and excellent, partly culpable and pernicious; 
 170
 
 Areopagitica 
 
 this \vork will ask as many more officials, 
 to make expurgations and expunctions, that 
 the commonwealth of learning be not dam- 
 nified. In fine, when the multitude of books 
 increase upon their hands, ye must be fain to 
 catalogue all those printers who are found 
 frequently offending, and forbid the importa- 
 tion of their whole suspected typography. 
 In a word, that this your order may be 
 exact, and not deficient, ye must reform it 
 perfectly, according to the model of Trent 
 and Sevil, which I know ye abhor to do. 
 
 Yet though ye should condescend to this, 
 which God forbid, the order still would be 
 but fruitless and defective to that end where- 
 to 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 hindrance, and preserv- 
 ing 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 inquisi- 
 tional rigor that hath been executed upon 
 books. 
 
 Another reason, whereby to make it plain 
 that this order will miss the end it seeks, 
 171
 
 Milton 
 
 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 be- 
 hoves 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, ofttimes huge volumes. There is 
 no book that is acceptable, unless at certain 
 seasons; but to be enjoined the reading of 
 that at all times, and in a hand scarce legi- 
 ble, whereof three pages would not down at 
 any time in the fairest print, is an imposi- 
 tion 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 perhaps 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 
 172
 
 Areopagitica 
 
 solicit their license, are testimony enough. 
 Seeing therefore those, who now possess the 
 employment, by all evident signs wish them- 
 selves \vell rid of it, and that no man of 
 worth, none that is not a plain unthrift of 
 his own hours, is ever likely to succeed them, 
 except he mean to put himself to the salary 
 of a press corrector, we may easily foresee 
 what kind of licensers we are to expect here- 
 after, either ignorant, imperious, and remiss, 
 or basely pecuniary. This is what I had to 
 show, wherein this order cannot conduce to 
 that end whereof it bears the intention. 
 
 I lastly proceed from the no good it can 
 do, 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 lamenta- 
 tion of prelates, upon every least of a mo- 
 tion 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 un- 
 worthy speech of any churchman, who had 
 a competency left him. If therefore ye be 
 loath to dishearten utterly and discontent, 
 not the merce/iary crew of false pretenders to 
 learning, but the free and ingenuous sort of 
 such as evidently were born to study and 
 173
 
 Milton 
 
 love learning for itself, not for lucre, or any 
 other end, but the service of God and of 
 truth, and perhaps that lasting fame and 
 perpetuity of praise, which God and good 
 men have consented shall be the reward of 
 those \vhose published labors advance 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 corruption, is the greatest dis- 
 pleasure and indignity to a free and knowing 
 spirit that can be put upon him. 
 
 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 \vere no more than the 
 theme of a grammar-lad under his peda- 
 gogue, must not be uttered without the cur- 
 sory eyes of a temporizing and extemporizing 
 licenser? He who is not trusted with 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 
 \vherein 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 
 deliberation to assist him ; he searches, medi- 
 174
 
 Areopagitica 
 
 tates, is industrious, and likelv consults and 
 confers \vith his judicious friends; after all 
 which done, he takes 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 watchings, and expense of Pal- 
 ladian oil, to the hasty view of an unleisured 
 licenser, perhaps much his younger, perhaps 
 far.his inferior in judgment, perhaps one who 
 never knew the labor of bookwriting; 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 dishonor and 
 derogation to the author, to the book, to the 
 privilege and dignity of learning. 
 
 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 licensing, while the book is yet under 
 the press, which not seldom happens to the 
 best and diligentest writers; and that per- 
 haps 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 
 175
 
 Milton 
 
 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 damage, or the 
 author lose his accuratest thoughts, and send 
 the book forth worse than he had made it, 
 which to a diligent writer is the greatest 
 melancholy and vexation that can befall. 
 
 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 delivers, is but under the -tui- 
 tion, under the correction of his patriarchal 
 licenser, to blot or alter what preciselv ac- 
 cords not with the hide-bound humor which 
 he calls his judgment? When every acute 
 reader, upon the first sight of a pedantic 
 license, 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 
 warrant 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 
 176
 
 Areopagitica 
 
 is some common stuff:" and he might add 
 from Sir Francis Bacon, that "such author- 
 ized 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 succes- 
 sion, yet his very office and his commission 
 enjoin him to let pass nothing but what is 
 vulgarly received already. 
 
 Nay, which is more lamentable, if the work 
 of any deceased author, though never so 
 famous in his lifetime, and even to this day, 
 comes to their hands for license to be printed, 
 or reprinted, if there be found in his book 
 one sentence of a venturous 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 
 httmor 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 fearfulness, or 
 the presumptuous rashness of a perfunctory 
 licenser. And to what an author this vio- 
 lence hath been lately done, and in what 
 book, of greatest consequence to be faithfully 
 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 that such ironmoulds as these 
 12 177
 
 Milton 
 
 shall have authority to gnaw out the choic- 
 est periods of exquisitest books, and to com- 
 mit 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 slothful, to be a com- 
 mon steadfast dunce, \vill be the only pleas- 
 ant life, and only in request. 
 
 And as it is a particular disesteem of every 
 knowing person alive, and most injurious to 
 the written labors and monuments of the 
 dead, so to me it seems an undervaluing and 
 vilifying of the whole nation. I cannot set 
 so light by all the invention, the art, the 
 wit, the grave and solid judgment 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 uncurrent -without their manual 
 stamp. Truth and 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 com- 
 modit}'- of all the knowledge in the land, to 
 mark and license it like our broad-cloth and 
 our woolpacks. What is it but a servitude 
 178
 
 Areopagitica 
 
 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? 
 
 Had any one written and divulged errone- 
 ous 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 pase his credit for 
 him, that now he might be safely read; it 
 could not be apprehended less than a dis- 
 graceful punishment. Whence to include the 
 whole nation, and those that never yet thus 
 offended, under such a diffident and sus- 
 pectful prohibition, may plainly be under- 
 stood what a disparagement it is. So much 
 the more whenas debtors and delinquents 
 may walk abroad without a keeper, but un- 
 offensive books must not stir forth without 
 a visible jailer in their title. Nor is it to the 
 common people less than a reproach; for if 
 we be so jealous over them, as that we dare 
 not trust them with an English 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, 
 179
 
 Milton 
 
 whenas in those popish places, where the 
 laity are most hated and despised, the same 
 strictness is used over them. Wisdom we 
 cannot call it, because it stops but one 
 breach of license, nor that either: whenas 
 those corruptions, which it seeks to prevent, 
 break in faster at other doors, which cannot 
 be shut. 
 
 And in conclusion it reflects to the disre- 
 pute of our ministers also, of whose labors 
 we should hope better, and of their profi- 
 ciency 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 preach- 
 ing, they should be still frequented with such 
 an unprincipled, unedified, and laic rabble, as 
 that the whiff of every new pamphlet should 
 stagger them out of their catechism and 
 Christian walking. This may have much 
 reason to discourage the ministers, when 
 such a low conceit is had of all their exhor- 
 tations, 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 unsalable, should not 
 be armor enough against one single En- 
 chiridion, without the castle of St. Angelo of 
 an imprimatur. 
 
 And least some should persuade ye, lords 
 180
 
 Areopagitica 
 
 and commons, that these arguments of 
 learned men's discouragement at this your 
 order are mere flourishes, and not real, I 
 could recount what I have seen and heard 
 in other countries, where this kind of inqui- 
 sition tyrannizes; when I have set among 
 their learned men, (for that honor I had,) 
 and been counted happy to be born in such 
 a place of philosophic freedom, as they sup- 
 posed 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 that England then was 
 groaning loudest under the prelatical yoke, 
 nevertheless I took it as a pledge of future 
 happiness, that other nations were so per- 
 suaded of her liberty. 
 
 Yet was it beyond my hope, that those 
 worthies were then breathing in her air, who 
 should be her leaders to such a deliverance, 
 as shall never be forgotten by any revolu- 
 tion of time that this world hath to finish. 
 When that was once begun, it was as little 
 in my fear, that what words of complaint I 
 181
 
 Milton 
 
 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 myself a compan- 
 ion of their discontent, I might say, if with- 
 out envy, that he whom an honest quaestor- 
 ship had endeared to the Sicilians, was not 
 more by them importuned against Verres, 
 than the favorable opinion which I had 
 among many who honor ye, and are known 
 and respected by ye, loaded me with en- 
 treaties 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. 
 
 That this is not therefore the disburdening 
 of a particular fancy, but the common griev- 
 ance 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 ourselves, 
 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 
 182
 
 Areopagitica 
 
 from preaching, shall come now to silence us 
 from reading, except what they please, it can- 
 not 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. 
 
 That those evils of prelaty which before 
 from five or six and twenty sees were dis- 
 tributively charged upon the whole people 
 will now light wholly upon learning, is not 
 obscure to us : whenas now the pastor of a 
 small unlearned parish, on the sudden shall 
 be exalted archbishop over a large diocese 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 
 jurisdiction over the simplest parishioner, 
 shall now at home in his private chair, as- 
 sume both these over worthiest and excel- 
 lentest books, and ablest authors that write 
 them. This is not the covenants and pro- 
 testations that we have made! This is 
 not to put down prelacy ; this is but to 
 chop an episcopacy; this is but to trans- 
 late the palace metropolitan from one kind 
 of dominion into another; this is but an 
 old canonical sleight of commuting our 
 penance. To startle thus betimes at a mere 
 unlicensed pamphlet, will, after a while, 
 be afraid of every conventicle, and a while 
 183
 
 Milton 
 
 after will make a conventicle of every Chris- 
 tian meeting. 
 
 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 knowledge, cannot be so pusillanimous. 
 While things are yet not constituted in re- 
 ligion, that freedom of writing should IDC 
 restrained by a discipline imitated from the 
 prelates, and learned by them from the in- 
 quisition to shut us up all again into the 
 breast of a licenser, must needs give cause of 
 doubt and discouragement to all learned and 
 religious men; who cannot but discern the 
 fineness of this politic drift, and who are the 
 contrivers; that while bishops were to be 
 baited down, then all presses might be open ; 
 it was the people's birthright and privilege 
 in time of parliament, it was the breaking 
 forth of light. 
 
 But now the 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 
 cruse of truth must run no more oil; liberty 
 of printing must be enthralled again, under 
 a prelatical commission of twenty ; the privi- 
 lege of the prople nullified; and, which is 
 worse, the freedom of learning must groan 
 again, and to her old fetters: all this the 
 parliament yet sitting. Although their own 
 184
 
 Areopagitica 
 
 late arguments and defences against the 
 prelates might remember them, that this ob- 
 structing violence meets for the most part 
 with an event utterly opposite to the end 
 which it drives at: instead of suppressing 
 sects and schisms, it raises them and invests 
 them with a reputation: "The punishing of 
 wits enhances their authority," saith the 
 Viscount St. Aibans; "and a forbidden writ- 
 ing is thought to be a certain spark of 
 truth, that flies up in the faces of them who 
 seek to tread it out." This order, therefore, 
 may prove a nursing mother to sects, but I 
 shall easily show how it will be stepdame to 
 truth : and first, by disenabling us to the 
 maintenance of what is known already. 
 
 Well knows he who uses to consider, that 
 our faith and knowledge thrives by exercise, 
 as well as our limbs and complexion. Truth 
 is compared in scripture to a streaming 
 fountain; if her waters flow not in a per- 
 petual progression, they sicken into a muddy 
 pool of conformity and tradition. A man 
 may be a heretic in the truth; and if he be- 
 lieve things only because his pastor says 
 so, or the assemblv so determines, without 
 knowing other reason, though his belief be 
 true, yet the very truth he holds becomes his 
 heresy. There is not any burden that some 
 would gladlier post off to another, than the 
 charge and care of their religion. There be, 
 who knows not that there be? of protestants 
 185
 
 Milton 
 
 and professors, who live and die in as errant 
 and implicit faith, as any lay papist of 
 Loretto. 
 
 A wealthy man, addicted to his pleasure 
 and to his profits, finds religion to he a 
 traffic so entangled, and of so mam- piddling 
 accounts, that of all mysteries he cannot 
 skill to keep a stock going upon that trade. 
 What should he do? Fain he would have the 
 name to be religious, fain he would bear up 
 \vith his neighbors in that. What does he 
 therefore, but resolve to give over toiling, 
 and to find himself out some factor, to whose 
 care and credit he may commit the whole 
 managing of his religious affairs; some divine 
 of note and estimation that must be. To 
 him he adheres, resigns the whole warehouse 
 of his religion, with all the locks and keys, 
 into his custody; and indeed makes the very 
 person of that man his religion ; esteems his 
 associating with him a sufficient evidence 
 and commendatory of his own pietv. So 
 that a man may say his religion is now no 
 more within himself, but is become a dividual 
 movable, and goes and comes near him, 
 according as that good man frequents the 
 house. He entertains him, gives him gifts, 
 feasts him, lodges him; his religion comes 
 home at night, pra} r s, is liberally supped, 
 and sumptuously laid to sleep; rises, is 
 saluted, and after the malmsey, or some well- 
 spiced bruage, and better breakfasted, than 
 186
 
 Areopagitica 
 
 He- whose morning appetite would have 
 gladly fed on green figs between Bethany 
 and Jerusalem, his religion walks abroad at 
 eight, and leaves his kind entertainer in 
 the shop trading all day without his re- 
 ligion. 
 
 Another sort there be, who when they hear 
 that all things shall be ordered, all things 
 regulated and settled ; nothing written but 
 what passes through the custom-house of 
 certain publicans that have the tonnaging 
 and poundaging of all free-spoken truth, will 
 straight give themselves up into your hands, 
 make them and cut them out what religion 
 ye please: there be delights, there be recrea- 
 tions and jolly pastimes, that will fetch the 
 day about from sun to sun, and rock the 
 tedious year as in a delightful dream. What 
 need they torture their heads with that 
 which others have taken so strictly, and so 
 unalterably into their own purveying? These 
 are the fruits which a dull ease and cessation 
 of our knowledge will bring forth among the 
 people. How goodly, and how to be wished 
 were such an obedient unanimity as this ! 
 What a fine conformity would it starch us all 
 into! Doubtless a staunch and solid piece 
 of framework, as any January could freeze 
 together. 
 
 Nor much better will be the consequence 
 even among the clergy themselves: it is no 
 new thing never heard of before, for a paro- 
 187
 
 Milton 
 
 chial minister, who has his reward, and is at 
 his Hercules' pillars in a warm benefice, to be 
 easily inclinable, if he have nothing else that 
 may rouse up his studies, to finish his circuit 
 in an English Concordance and a topic folio, 
 the gatherings and savings of a sober gradu- 
 ateship, a Harmony and a Catena, treading 
 the constant round of certain common doc- 
 trinal heads, attended with their uses, mo- 
 tives, marks, and means; out of which, as 
 out of an alphabet or sol-fa, by forming and 
 transforming, joining and disjoining vari- 
 ously, a little bookcraft, and two hours' 
 meditation, might furnish him unspeakably 
 to the performance of more than a weekly 
 charge of sermoning: not to reckon up the 
 infinite helps of interliniaries, breviaries, syn- 
 opses, and other loitering gear. But as for 
 the multitude of sermons ready printed and 
 piled up, on every text that is not difficult, 
 our London trading St. Thomas in his 
 vestry, and add to boot St. Martin and St. 
 Hugh, have not within their hallowed limits 
 more vendible ware of all sorts ready made : 
 so that penury he never need fear of pulpit 
 provision, having where so plenteously to 
 refresh his magazine. But if his rear and 
 flanks be not impaled, if his back door be 
 not secured by the rigid licenser, but that a 
 bold book may now and then issue forth, 
 and give the assault to some of his old col- 
 lections in their trenches, it will concern him 
 188
 
 Areopagitica 
 
 then to keep waking, to stand in watch, to 
 set good guards and sentinels about his re- 
 ceived opinions, to \valk the round and coun- 
 ter-round with his fellow-inspectors, fearing 
 lest any of his flock be seduced who also then 
 would be better instructed, better exercised, 
 and disciplined. And God send that the fear 
 of this diligence, which must then be used, do 
 not make us affect the laziness of a licensing 
 church ! 
 
 For if we be sure we are in the right, and 
 do not hold the truth guiltily, which becomes 
 not, if we ourselves condemn not our own 
 weak and frivolous teaching, and the people 
 for an untaught and irreligious gadding 
 route; what can be more fair, than when a 
 man, judicious, learned, and of a conscience, 
 for aught we know, as good as theirs that 
 taught us what we know, shall not privily 
 from house to house, which is more danger- 
 ous, but openly by writing, publish to the 
 world what his opinion is, what his reasons, 
 and wherefore that which is now thought 
 cannot be sound? Christ urged it as where- 
 with to justify himself, that he preached in 
 public; yet writing is more public than 
 preaching; and more easy to refutation if 
 need be, there being so many whose business 
 and profession merely it is to be the cham- 
 pions of truth ; which if they neglect, what 
 can be imputed but their sloth or inability? 
 
 Thus much we are hindered and disinured 
 189
 
 Milton 
 
 by this course of licensing towards the true 
 knowledge of what we seem to know. For 
 how much it hurts and hinders the licensers 
 themselves in the calling of their ministry, 
 more than any secular employment, if they 
 will discharge that office as they ought, so 
 that of necessity they must neglect either the 
 one duty or the other, I insist not, because it 
 is a particular, but leave it to their own con- 
 science, how they will decide it there. 
 
 There is yet behind of what I purposed to 
 lay open, tke incredible loss and detriment 
 that this plot of licensing puts us to, more 
 than if some enemy at sea should stop up 
 all our havens, and ports, and creeks; it 
 hinders and retards the importation of our 
 richest merchandise, truth : nay, it was first 
 established and put in practice by anti- 
 christian malice and mystery, or set purpose 
 to extinguish, if it were possible, the light of 
 reformation, and to settle falsehood ; little 
 differing from that policy wherewith the 
 Turk upholds his Alcoran, by the prohibiting 
 of printing. It is not denied, but gladly con- 
 fessed, we are to send our thanks and vows 
 to heaven, louder than most of nations, for 
 that great measure of truth which we enjoy, 
 especially in those main points between us 
 and the pope, \vith his appurtenances the 
 prelates : but he who thinks we are to pitch 
 our tent here, and have attained the utmost 
 prospect of reformation that the mortal 
 190
 
 Areopagitica 
 
 glass wherein we contemplate can show us, 
 till we come to beatific vision, that man by 
 this very opinion declares that he is yet far 
 short of truth. 
 
 Truth indeed came once into the world 
 with her divine Master, and was a perfect 
 shape most glorious to look on : but when he 
 ascended, and his apostles after him were 
 laid asleep, then straight arose a wicked race 
 of deceivers, who, as that story goes of the 
 Egvptian Typhon with his conspirators, 
 how they dealt with the good Osiris, took 
 the virgin Truth, hewed her lovely form into 
 a thousand pieces, and scattered them to the 
 four winds. From that time ever since, the 
 sad friends of Truth, such as durst appear, 
 imitating the careful search that Isis made 
 for the mangled body of Osiris, went up and 
 down gathering up limb by limb still as they 
 could find them. We have not yet found 
 them all, lords and commons, nor ever shall 
 do, till her Master's second coming; he shall 
 bring together ever\ r joint and member, and 
 shall mould them into an immortal feature of 
 loveliness and perfection. Suffer not these 
 licensing prohibitions to stand at ever\ r place 
 of opportunity forbidding and disturbing 
 them that continue seeking, that continue to 
 do our obsequies to the torn body of our 
 martyred saint. 
 
 We boast our light; but if we look not 
 wisely on the sun itself, it smites us into 
 191
 
 Milton 
 
 darkness. Who can discern those planets 
 that are oft combust, and those stars of 
 brightest magnitude that rise and set with 
 the sun, until the opposite motion of their 
 orbs bring them to such a place in the firma- 
 ment, where they may be seen evening or 
 morning? The light which we have gained 
 was given us, not to be ever staring on, but 
 by it to discover onward things more remote 
 from our knowledge. It is not the unfrock- 
 ing of a priest, the unmitring of a bishop, 
 and the removing him from off the Presby- 
 terian shoulders, that will make us a happy 
 nation : no ; if other things as great in the 
 church, and in the rule of life both economi- 
 cal and political, be not looked into and re- 
 formed, we have looked so long upon the 
 blaze that Zuinglius and Calvin have bea- 
 coned up to us, that we are stark blind. 
 
 There be who perpetually complain of 
 schisms and sects, and make it such a calam- 
 ity that any man dissents from their maxims. 
 It is their own pride and ignorance which 
 causes the disturbing, who neither will hear 
 with meekness, nor can convince, yet all 
 must be suppressed which is not found in 
 their S3'ntagma. They are the troublers, 
 they are the dividers of unity, who neglect 
 and permit not others to unite those dis- 
 severed pieces, which are yet wanting to the 
 body of truth. To be still searching what 
 we know not, by what we know, still closing 
 192
 
 Areopagitica 
 
 up truth to truth as we find it, (for all her 
 body is homogeneal, and proportional,) this 
 is the golden rule in theology as well as in 
 arithmetic, and makes up the best harmony 
 in a church; not the forced and outward 
 union of cold, and neutral, and inwardly 
 divided minds. 
 
 Lords and commons of England ! consider 
 what nation it is whereof ye are, and whereof 
 ye are the governors : a nation not slow and 
 dull, but of a quick, ingenious, and piercing 
 spirit ; acute to invent, subtile and sinewy 
 to discourse, not beneath the reach of any 
 point the highest that human capacity can 
 soar to. Therefore the studies of learning in 
 her deepest sciences have been so ancient, and 
 so eminent among us, that writers of good 
 antiquity and able judgment have been per- 
 suaded, that even the school of Pythagoras, 
 and the Persian \visdom, took beginning 
 from the old philosophy of this island. And 
 that wise and civil Roman, Julius Agricola, 
 who governed once here for Caesar, preferred 
 the natural wits of Britain before the labored 
 studies of the French. 
 
 Nor is it for nothing that the grave and 
 frugal Trans}'lvanian sends out yearly from 
 as far as the mountainous borders of Russia, 
 and beyond the Hercynian wilderness, not 
 their youth, but their staid men, to learn 
 our language and our theological arts. Yet 
 that which is above all this, the favor and 
 13 193
 
 Milton 
 
 the love of Heaven, \ve have great argument 
 to think in a peculiar manner propitious and 
 propending towards us. Why else was this 
 nation chosen before any other, that out of 
 her, as out of Sion, should be proclaimed and 
 sounded forth the first tidings and trumpet 
 of reformation to all Europe? And had it 
 not been the obstinate perverseness of our 
 prelates against the divine and admirable 
 spirit of Wickliffe, to suppress him as a 
 schismatic and innovator, perhaps neither 
 the Bohemian Husse and Jerome, no, nor the 
 name of Luther or of Calvin, had been ever 
 known: the glory of reforming all our neigh- 
 bors had been completely ours. But now, 
 as our obdurate clergy have with violence 
 demeaned the matter, we are become hitherto 
 the latest and the backwardest scholars, of 
 whom God offered to have made us the 
 teachers. 
 
 Now once again by all concurrence of signs, 
 and by the general instinct of holy and de- 
 vout men, as they daily and solemnly express 
 their thoughts, God is decreeing to begin 
 some new and great period in his church, 
 even to the reforming of reformation itself; 
 \vhat does he then but reveal himself to his 
 servants, and as his manner is, first to his 
 Englishmen? I say, as his manner is, first to 
 us, though we mark not the method of his 
 counsels, and are unworthy. Behold now 
 this vast city, a city of refuge, the mansion- 
 19-4
 
 Areopagitica 
 
 house of liberty, encompassed and sur- 
 rounded with his protection; the shop of war 
 hath not there more anvils and hammers 
 working, to fashion out the plates and in- 
 struments of armed justice in defence of be- 
 leaguered truth, than there be pens and heads 
 there, sitting by their studious lamps, mus- 
 ing, searching, revolving new notions and 
 ideas wherewith to present, as with their 
 homage and their fealty, the approaching 
 reformation : others as fast reading, trying 
 all things, assenting to the force of reason 
 and convincement. 
 
 What could a man require more from a 
 nation so pliant and so prone to seek after 
 knowledge? What wants there to such a 
 towardly and pregnant soil, but wise and 
 faithful laborers, to make a knowing people, 
 a nation of prophets, of sages, and of wor- 
 thies? We reckon more than five months yet 
 to harvest ; there need not be five weeks, had 
 we but eyes to lift up, the fields are white 
 already. Where there is much desire to 
 learn, there of necessity will be much arguing, 
 much writing, many opinions; for opinion 
 in good men is but knowledge in the making. 
 Under these fantastic terrors of sect and 
 schism, we wrong the earnest and zealous 
 thirst after knowledge and understanding, 
 which God hath stirred up in this city. 
 What some lament of, we rather should re- 
 joice at, should rather praise this pious for- 
 195
 
 Milton 
 
 wardness among men, to reassume the ill 
 deputed care of their religion into their own 
 hands again. A little generous prudence, a 
 little forbearance of one another, and some 
 grain of charity might win all these dili- 
 gencies to join and unite into one general 
 and brotherly search after truth; could we 
 but forego this prelatical tradition of crowd- 
 ing free consciences and Christian liberties 
 into canons and precepts of men. I doubt 
 not, if some great and worthy stranger 
 should come among us, wise to discern the 
 mould and temper of a people, and how to 
 govern it, observing the high hopes and 
 aims, the diligent alacrity of our extended 
 thoughts and reasonings in the pursuance of 
 truth and freedom, but that he would cry 
 out as Pyrrhus did, admiring the Roman 
 docility and courage, "If such were my 
 Epirots, I would not despair the greatest 
 design that could be attempted to make a 
 church or kingdom happy." 
 
 Yet these are the men cried out against for 
 schismatics and sectaries, as if, while the 
 temple of the Lord was building, some cut- 
 ting, some squaring the marble, others hew- 
 ing the cedars, there should be a sort of 
 irrational men, who could not consider there 
 must be many schisms and many dissections 
 made in the quarry and in the timber ere the 
 house of God can be built. And when every 
 stone is laid artfully together, it cannot be 
 196
 
 Areopagitica 
 
 united into a continuity, it can but be con- 
 tiguous in this world : neither can every piece 
 of the building be of one form ; nay, rather 
 the perfection consists in this, that out of 
 many moderate varieties and brotherly dis- 
 similitudes that are not vastly dispropor- 
 tional, arises the goodly and the graceful 
 symmetry that commends the whole pile and 
 structure. 
 
 Let us therefore be more considerate build- 
 ers, more wise in spiritual architecture, when 
 great reformation is expected. For now the 
 time seems come, wherein Moses, the great 
 prophet, may sit in heaven rejoicing to see 
 that memorable and glorious wish of his ful- 
 filled, when not only our seventy elders, but 
 all the Lord's people, are become prophets. 
 No marvel then though some men, and some 
 good men too perhaps, but young in good- 
 ness, as Joshua then was, envy them. They 
 fret, and out of their own weakness are in 
 agony, lest these divisions and subdivisions 
 will undo us. The adversary again ap- 
 plauds, and waits the hour : when they have 
 branched themselves out, saith he, small 
 enough into parties and partitions, then will 
 be our time. Fool ! he sees not the firm root, 
 out of which we all grow, though into 
 branches ; nor will beware, until he see our 
 small divided maniples cutting through at 
 every angle of his ill-united and unwieldy 
 brigade. And that we are to hope better 
 197
 
 Milton 
 
 of all these supposed sects and schisms, and 
 that \ve shall not need that solicitude, honest 
 perhaps, though overtimorous, of them that 
 vex in this behalf, but shall laugh in the end 
 at those malicious applauders of our differ- 
 ences, I have these reasons to persuade me. 
 
 First, when a city shall be as it were be- 
 sieged and blocked about, her navigable 
 river infested, inroads and incursions round, 
 defiance and battle oft rumored to be march- 
 ing up, even to her walls and suburb 
 trenches ; that then the people, or the greater 
 part, more than at other times, wholly taken 
 up with the study of highest and most im- 
 portant matters to be reformed, should be 
 disputing, reasoning, reading, inventing, dis- 
 coursing, even to a rarity and admiration, 
 things not before discoursed or written of, 
 argues first a singular good will, contented- 
 ness, and confidence in your prudent fore- 
 sight, and safe government, lords and com- 
 mons ; and from thence derives itself to a 
 gallant bravery and well-grounded contempt 
 of their enemies, as if there were no small 
 number of as great spirits among us, as his 
 was who, when Rome was nigh besieged by 
 Hannibal, being in the city, bought that 
 piece of ground at no cheap rate whereon 
 Hannibal himself encamped his own regi- 
 ment. 
 
 Next, it is a lively and cheerful presage of 
 our happy success and victory. For as in a 
 198
 
 Areopagitica 
 
 body when the blood is fresh, the spirits pure 
 and vigorous, not only to vital, but to ra- 
 tional faculties, and those in the acutest and 
 the pertest operations of wit and subtlety, it 
 argues in what good plight and constitution 
 the body is; so when the cheerfulness of the 
 people is so sprightly up, as that it has not 
 only wherewith to guard well its own free- 
 dom and safety, but to spare, and to bestow 
 upon the solidest and sublimest points of 
 controversy and new invention, it betokens 
 us not degenerated, nor drooping to a fatal 
 decay, by casting off the old and wrinkled 
 skin of corruption to outlive these pangs, 
 and wax young again, entering the glorious 
 wavs of truth and prosperous virtue, des- 
 tined to become great and honorable in these 
 latter ages. Methinks I see in my mind a 
 noble and puissant nation rousing herself 
 like a strong man after sleep, and shaking 
 her invincible locks: methinks I see her as an 
 eagle mewing her mighty youth, and kin- 
 dling her undazzled eyes at the full midday 
 beam ; purging and unsealing her long- 
 abused sight at the fountain itself of heav- 
 enly radiance; while the whole noise of 
 timorous and nocking birds, with those 
 also that love the twilight, flutter about, 
 amazed at what she means, and in their 
 envious gabble would prognosticate a year 
 of sects and schisms. 
 
 What should ye do then, should ye suppress 
 199
 
 Milton 
 
 all this flowery crop of knowledge and new 
 light sprung up and yet springing daily in 
 this city? Should ye set an oligarchy of 
 twenty engrossers over it, to bring a famine 
 upon our minds again, when we shall know 
 nothing but what is measured to us by their 
 bushel? Believe it, lords and commons! they 
 who counsel ye to such a suppressing, do as 
 good as bid ye suppress yourselves; and I 
 will soon show how. If it be desired to 
 know the immediate cause of all this free 
 writing and free speaking, there cannot be 
 assigned a truer than your own mild, and 
 free, and humane government ; it is the 
 liberty, lords and commons, which your own 
 valorous and happy counsels have purchased 
 us; liberty which is the nurse of all great 
 wits: this is that which hath rarefied and 
 enlightened our spirits like the influence of 
 heaven: this is that which hath enfranchised, 
 enlarged, and lifted up our apprehensions 
 degrees above themselves. Ye cannot make 
 us now less capable, less knowing, less 
 eagerly pursuing of the truth, unless ye first 
 make yourselves, that made us so, less the 
 lovers, less the founders of our true liberty. 
 We can grow ignorant again, brutish, formal, 
 and slavish, as ye found us; but you then 
 must first become that which ye cannot be, 
 oppressive, arbitrary, and tyrannous, as 
 they were from whom ye have freed us. 
 That our hearts are now more capacious, 
 200
 
 Areopagitica 
 
 our thoughts more erected to the search and 
 expectation of greatest and exactest things, 
 is the issue of your o\vn virtue propagated 
 in us; ye cannot suppress that unless ye rein- 
 force an abrogated and merciless law, that 
 fathers may dispatch at will their own chil- 
 dren. And who shall then stick closest to ye 
 and excite others? Not he who takes up 
 arms for coat and conduct, and his four 
 nobles of Danegelt. Although I dispraise not 
 the defence of just immunities, yet love my 
 peace better, if that were all. Give me the 
 liberty to know, to utter, and to argue 
 freely according to conscience, above all 
 liberties. 
 
 What would be best advised then, if it be 
 found so hurtful and so unequal to suppress 
 opinions for the newness or the unsuitable- 
 ness to a customary acceptance, will not be 
 my task to say; I shall only repeat what I 
 have learned from one of your own honor- 
 able number, a right noble and pious lord, 
 who had he not sacrificed his life and for- 
 tunes to the church and commonwealth, we 
 had now missed and bewailed a worthy and 
 undoubted patron of this argument. Ye 
 know him, I am sure; yet I for honour's 
 sake, and may it be eternal to him, shall 
 name him, the Lord Brook. He writing of 
 episcopacy, and by the way treating of sects 
 and schisms, left ye his vote, or rather now 
 the last words of his dying charge, which I 
 201
 
 Milton 
 
 know will ever be of dear and honored re- 
 gard with ye, so full of meekness and breath- 
 ing charity, that next to His last testament, 
 who bequeathed love and peace to his disci- 
 ples, I cannot call to mind where I have read 
 or heard words more mild and peaceful. He 
 there exhorts us to hear with patience and 
 humility those, however they be miscalled, 
 that desire to live purely, in such a use of 
 God's ordinances, as the best guidance of 
 their conscience gives them, and to tolerate 
 them, though in some disconformity to our- 
 selves. The book itself will tell us more at 
 large, being published to the "world, and 
 dedicated to the parliament by him, who 
 both for his life and for his death deserves, 
 that what advice he left be not laid by with- 
 out perusal. 
 
 And now the time in special is, by privilege 
 to write and speak what may help to the 
 further discussing of matters in agitation. 
 The temple of Janus, with his two contro- 
 versial faces, might now not unsignificantly 
 be set open. And though all the winds of 
 doctrine were let loose to play upon the 
 earth, so truth be in the field, we do injuri- 
 ously by licensing and prohibiting to mis- 
 doubt her strength. Let her and falsehood 
 grapple; who ever knew truth put to the 
 worse, in a free and open encounter? Her 
 confuting is the best and surest suppressing. 
 He who hears what praying there is for light 
 202
 
 Areopagitica 
 
 and clear knowledge to be sent down among 
 us, would think of other matters to be con- 
 stituted beyond the discipline of Geneva, 
 framed and fabricated already to our hands. 
 Yet when the new light which we beg for 
 shines in upon us, there be who envy and 
 oppose, if it come not first in at their case- 
 ments. What a collusion is this, whenas we 
 are exhorted bv the wise man to use dili- 
 gence, "to seek for wisdom as for hidden 
 treasures," early and late, that another 
 order shall enjoin us, to know nothing but 
 by statute? When a man hath been laboring 
 the hardest labor in the deep mines of know- 
 ledge, hath furnished out his findings in all 
 their equipage, drawn forth his reasons as it 
 were a battle ranged, scattered and defeated 
 all objections in his way, calls out his ad- 
 versary into the plain, offers him the advan- 
 tage of wind and sun, if he please, only 
 that he may try the matter by dint of argu- 
 ment; for his opponents then to skulk, to 
 lay ambushments, to keep a narrow bridge 
 of licensing where the cha^enger should pass, 
 though it be valor enough in soldiership, is 
 but weakness and cowardice in the wars of 
 truth. For who knows not that truth is 
 strong, next to the Almighty; she needs no 
 policies, nor stratagems, nor licensings to 
 make her victorious; those are the shifts and 
 the defences that error uses against her 
 power : give her but room, and do not bind 
 203
 
 Milton 
 
 her when she sleeps, for then she speaks not 
 true, as the old Proteus did, who spake 
 oracles only when he was caught and bound, 
 but then rather she turns herself into all 
 shapes except her own, and perhaps tunes 
 her voice according to the time, as Micaiah 
 did before Ahab, until she be adjured into her 
 own likeness. 
 
 Yet is it not impossible that she may have 
 more shapes than one? What else is all that 
 rank of things indifferent, wherein truth may 
 be on this side, or on the other, without be- 
 ing unlike herself? What but a vain shadow 
 else is the abolition of "those ordinances, 
 that handwriting nailed to the cross"? 
 What great purchase is this Christian liberty 
 which Paul so often boasts of? His doctrine 
 is, that he who eats or eats not, regards a 
 day or regards it not, may do either to the 
 Lord. How many other things might be 
 tolerated in peace, and left to conscience, had 
 we but charity, and were it not the chief 
 stronghold of our hypocris\ r to be ever judg- 
 ing one another? I fear yet this iron 3 r oke of 
 outward conformity hath left a slavish print 
 upon our necks; the ghost of a linen decency 
 yet haunts us. We stumble, and are impa- 
 tient at the least dividing of one visible con- 
 gregation from another, though it be not in 
 fundamentals; and through our forwardness 
 to suppress, and our backwardness to re- 
 cover, any enthralled piece of truth out of the 
 204
 
 Areopagitica 
 
 gripe of custom, we care not to keep truth 
 separated from truth, which is the fiercest 
 rent and disunion of all. We do not see that 
 while we still affect by all means a rigid ex- 
 ternal formality, we may as soon fall again 
 into a gross conforming stupidity, a stark 
 and dead congealment of "wood and hay 
 and stubble" forced and frozen together, 
 which is more to the sudden degenerating of 
 a church than many subdichotomies of petty 
 schisms. 
 
 Not that I can think well of every light 
 separation; or that all in a church is to be 
 expected "gold and silver, and precious 
 stones:" it is not possible for man to sever 
 the \vheat from the tares, the good fish from 
 the other fry ; that must be the angels' min- 
 istry at the end of mortal things. Yet if all 
 cannot be of one mind, as who looks they 
 should be? this doubtless is more wholesome, 
 more prudent, and more Christian, that 
 many be tolerated rather than all compelled. 
 I mean not tolerated popery, and open super- 
 stition, which as it extirpates all religions 
 and civil supremacies, so itself should be ex- 
 tirpate, provided first that all charitable and 
 compassionate means be used to win and re- 
 gain the \veak and the misled : that also 
 which is impious or evil absolutely either 
 against faith or manners, no law can pos- 
 sibly permit, that intends not to unlaw it- 
 self: but those neighboring differences, or 
 205
 
 Milton 
 
 rather indifferences, are what I speak of, 
 whether in some point of doctrine or of disci- 
 pline, which though they may lye many, yet 
 need not interrupt the unity of vSpirit, if we 
 could but find among us the bond of peace. 
 In the meanwhile, if anyone would write, 
 and bring his helpful hand to the slow-mov- 
 ing reformation which we labor under, if 
 truth have spoken to him before others, or 
 but seemed at least to speak, who hath so 
 bejesuited us, that we should trouble that 
 man with asking license to do so worthy a 
 deed ; and not consider this, that if it come 
 to prohibiting, there is not aught more 
 likely to be prohibited than truth itself: 
 whose first appearance to our eyes, bleared 
 and dimmed with prejudice and custom, is 
 more unsightly and unplausible than many 
 errors; even as the person is of many a great 
 man slight and contemptible to see to. And 
 what do they tell us vainly of new opinions, 
 when this very opinion of theirs, that none 
 must be heard but whom they like, is the 
 worst and newest opinion of all others; and 
 is the chief cause why sects and schisms do 
 so much abound, and true knowledge is kept 
 at distance from us; besides yet a greater 
 danger which is in it. For when God shakes 
 a kingdom, with strong and healthful com- 
 motions, to a general reforming, it is not 
 untrue that many sectaries and false teachers 
 are then busiest in seducing. 
 206
 
 Areopagitica 
 
 But vet more true it is, that God then 
 raises to his own work men of rare abilities, 
 and more than common industry, not only 
 to look back and revive what hath been 
 taught heretofore, but to gain further, and 
 to go on some new enlightened steps in the 
 discovery of truth. For such is the order 
 of God's enlightening his church, to dispense 
 and deal out by degrees his beam, so as our 
 earthly eyes may best sustain it. Neither 
 is God appointed and confirmed, where and 
 out of what place these his chosen shall be 
 first heard to speak ; for he sees not as man 
 sees, chooses not as man chooses, lest we 
 should devote ourselves again to set places 
 and assemblies, and outward callings of men; 
 planting our faith one while in the old con- 
 vocation house; and another while in the 
 chapel at Westminster; when all the faith 
 and religion that shall be there canonized, is 
 not sufficient without plain convincement, 
 and the charity of patient instruction, to 
 supple the least bruise of conscience, to edify 
 "the meanest Christian, who desires to walk 
 in the spirit, and not in the letter of human 
 trust, for all the number of voices that can 
 be there made; no, though Harry the Sev- 
 enth himself there, with all his liege tombs 
 about him, should lend them voices from the 
 dead to swell their number. 
 
 And if the men be erroneous who appear 
 to be the leading schismatics, what with- 
 207
 
 Milton 
 
 holds us but our sloth, our self-will, and dis- 
 trust in the right cause, that we do not give 
 them gentle meetings and gentle dismissions, 
 that we debate not and examine the matter 
 thoroughly with liberal and frequent audi- 
 ence; if not for their sakes yet for our own? 
 Seeing no man who hath tasted learning, but 
 will confess the many ways of profiting by 
 those who, not contented with stale receipts, 
 are able to manage and set forth new posi- 
 tions to the world. And were they but as 
 the dust and cinders of our feet, so long as 
 in that notion they ma}' yet serve to polish 
 and brighten the armory of truth, even for 
 that respect they were not utterly to lie cast 
 away. But if they be of those whom God 
 hath fitted for the special use of these times 
 with eminent and ample gifts, and those per- 
 haps neither among the priests, nor among 
 the pharisees, and we, in the haste of a pre- 
 cipitant zeal, shall make no distinction, but 
 resolve to stop their mouths, because we fear 
 they come with new and dangerous opin- 
 ions, as we commonly forejudge them ere we 
 understand them ; no less than woe to us, 
 while, thinking thus to defend the gospel, we 
 are found the persecutors! 
 
 There have been not a few since the be- 
 ginning of this parliament, both of the pres- 
 bytery and others, who by their unlicensed 
 books to the contempt of an imprimatur 
 first broke that triple ice clung about our 
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 hearts, and taught the people to see day; I 
 hope that none of those were the persuaders 
 to renew upon us this bondage, which they 
 themselves have wrought so much good by 
 contemning. But if neither the check that 
 Moses gave to young Joshua, nor the coun- 
 termand which our Saviour gave to young 
 John, who was so ready to prohibit those 
 whom he thought unlicensed, be not enough 
 to admonish our elders how unacceptable to 
 God their testy mood of prohibiting is; if 
 neither their own remembrance what evil 
 hath abounded in the church by this lett of 
 licensing, and what good they themselves 
 have begun by transgressing it, be not 
 enough, but that they will persuade and 
 execute the most Dominican part of the inqui- 
 sition over us, and are already with one foot 
 in the stirrup so active at suppressing, it 
 would be no unequal distribution in the first 
 place to suppress the suppressors themselves; 
 whom the change of their condition hath 
 puffed up, more than their late experience of 
 harder times hath made wise. 
 
 And as for regulating the press, let no inan 
 think to have the honor of advising ye better 
 than yourselves have done in that order pub- 
 lished next before this, "That no book be 
 printed, unless the printer's and the author's 
 name, or at least the printer's be registered." 
 Those which otherwise come forth, if they be 
 found mischievous and libellous, the fire and 
 14 ' 209
 
 Milton 
 
 the executioner will be the timeliest and the 
 most effectual remedy that man's prevention 
 can use. For this authentic Spanish policy 
 of licensing books, if I have said aught, will 
 prove the most unlicensed book itself within 
 a short while ; and was the immediate image 
 of a star-chamber decree to that purpose 
 made in those times \vhen that court did the 
 rest of those her pious works, for which she 
 is now fallen from the stars with Lucifer. 
 Whereby ye may guess what kind of state 
 prudence, what love of the people, what care 
 of religion or good manners there was at the 
 contriving, although with singular hypocrisy 
 it pretended to bind books to their good 
 behavior. And how it got the upper hand of 
 your precedent order so well constituted 
 before, if we may believe those men whose 
 profession gives them cause to inquire most, 
 it may be doubted there was in it the fraud 
 of some old patentees and monopolizers, in 
 the trade of bookselling; who, under the pre- 
 tence of the poor in their company not to be 
 defrauded, and the just retaining of each 
 man his several copy, (which God forbid 
 should be gainsaid,) brought divers glossing 
 colors to the house, which were indeed but 
 colors, and serving to no end except it be to 
 exercise a superiority over their neighbors; 
 .men who do not therefore labor in an honest 
 profession, to which learning is indebted, 
 that they should be made other men's vas- 
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 Areopagitica 
 
 sals. Another end is thought was aimed at 
 by some of them in procuring by petition 
 this order, that having power in their hands, 
 malignant books might the easier escape 
 abroad, as the event shows. But of those 
 sophisms and elenchs of merchandise I skill 
 not : this I know, that errors in a good gov- 
 ernment and in a bad are equally almost 
 incident; for what magistrate may not be 
 misinformed, and much the sooner, if liberty 
 of printing be reduced into the power of a 
 few? But to redress willingly and speedily 
 what hath been erred, and in highest author- 
 ity to esteem a plain advertisement more 
 than others have done a sumptuous bride, 
 is a virtue (honored lords and commons!) 
 answerable to your highest actions, and 
 whereof none can participate but greatest 
 and wisest men. 
 
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