Chapter II (5)

"Whereas divers good orders have been lately made by both Houses of Parliament for suppressing the late great abuses and frequent disorders in printing many forged, scandalous, seditious, libellous and unlicensed Papers, Pamphlets and Books, to the great defamation of Religion and Government--which orders (notwithstanding the diligence of the Company of Stationers to put them in full execution) have taken little or no effect, by reason the Bill in preparation for the redress of the said disorders hath hitherto been retarded through the present distractions, and very many, as well Stationers and Printers, as others of sundry other professions not free of the Stationers' Company, have taken upon them to set up sundry private printing-presses in corners, and to print, vend, publish and disperse Books, Pamphlets and Papers, in such multitudes that no industry could be sufficient to discover or bring to punishment all the several abounding delinquents.... It is therefore ordered that no ... Book, Pamphlet, Paper, nor part of any such Book, Pamphlet or Paper, shall from henceforth be printed, bound, stitched, or put to sale by any person or persons whatsoever, unless the same be first approved of and licensed under the hands of such person or persons as both or either of the said Houses shall appoint for the licensing of the same, and entered in the Register Book of the Company of Stationers according to ancient custom, and the Printer thereof to put his name thereto.... And the Master and Wardens of the said Company, the Gentleman-Usher of the House of Peers, the Sergeant of the Commons House, and their Deputies ... are hereby authorized and required from time to time to make diligent search in all places where they shall think meet for all unlicensed printing presses ... and to seize and carry away such printing-presses ... and likewise to make diligent search in all suspected printing-houses, warehouses, shops and other places ... and likewise to apprehend all Authors, Printers, and other persons whatsoever employed in compiling, printing, stitching, binding, publishing and dispersion of the said scandalous, unlicensed and unwarrantable Papers, Books and Pamphlets ... and to bring them, afore either of the Houses, or the Committee of Examinations, that so they may receive such farther punishments as their offences shall demerit.... And all Justices of the Peace, Captains, Constables and other officers, are hereby ordered and required to be aiding and assisting to the foresaid persons in the due execution of all and singular the premises, and in the apprehension of offenders against the same, and, in case of opposition, to break open doors and locks.--And it is further ordered that this Order be forthwith printed and published, to the end that notice may be taken thereof, and all contemners of it left inexcusable."

Such was the famous _Ordinance for Printing_ of the Long Parliament, dated June 14, 1643. Within a week afterwards it was brought into working trim by the nomination of the persons to whom the business of licensing was to be entrusted. For Books of Divinity a staff of twelve Divines was appointed, the _imprimatur_ of any one of whom should be sufficient--to wit: Mr. THOMAS GATAKER, Mr. CALIBUTE DOWNING, Dr. THOMAS TEMPLE, Mr. JOSEPH CARYL, Mr. EDMUND CALAMY, Mr. CHARLES HEKLE, Mr. OBADIAH SEDGWICK, Mr. CARTER of Yorkshire, Mr. JOHN DOWNHAM, Mr. JAMES CRANFORD, Mr. BACHELER, and Mr. JOHN ELLLS, junior. The first seven of these, it will be noted (if not also the eighth), were members of the Westminster Assembly; the others were, I think, all parish-ministers in or near London. For what we should call Miscellaneous Literature, including Poetry, History, and Philosophy, the licensers appointed were Sir NATHANIEL BRENT (Judge of the Prerogative Court), Mr. JOHN LANGLEY (successor of Gill the younger in the Head-mastership of St. Paul's School), and Mr. FARNABIE. The licensing of Law-Books was to belong to certain designated Judges and Serjeants-at-law; of Books of Heraldry, to the three Herald Kings at Arms; of Mathematical Books, Almanacks, and Prognostications, to the Reader in Mathematics at Gresham College for the time being, or a certain Mr. Booker instead; and for things of no consequence--viz. "small pamphlets, portraitures, pictures and the like" --the Clerk of the Stationers' Company for the time being was to be authority enough.[Footnote: The Ordinance is printed in the Lords Journals under date June 14, 1644. Rushworth prints it under the same date (V. 335-6), and adds the names of the licensers, as appointed by the Commons June 20 and 21.]

The effects of this new Ordinance of Parliament were immediately visible. Whether because Parliament itself now seemed in earnest for the control of the Press, or because the new staff of licensers were determined to exercise their powers and earn their perquisites, or because the Master and Wardens of the Stationers' Company then in. office felt their hands strengthened and worked hard (Mr. Samuel Bourne was Master, and Mr. Samuel Man and Mr. Richard Whittaker were Wardens), certain it is that authors, printers, and publishers were brought at once into greater obedience. Ten times as many books, pamphlets and papers, we have shown, were duly licensed and registered in the second half of the year 1643, or from the date of the new Ordinance onwards, as had been licensed and registered in the preceding half-year.[Footnote: I ought to note, however, that the swelling out is caused chiefly by the shoals of _Mercuries, Diurnals, Scouts, Intelligencers_,&c. that were now registered. These news-sheets of the Civil War, the infant forms of our newspapers, had previously appeared at will; and there seems to have been particular activity in bringing them under the operation of the Ordinance, so as to deprive Royalism of the aid of the Press.]

Now, it so chanced that the first edition of Milton's _Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce_ had been ready for the press exactly after the new Ordinance had come into operation. What had been his behaviour? He had paid no attention to the Ordinance whatever. He had been one of those "contemners" of it whom the Ordinance itself had taken the precaution of rendering inexcusable by the clause ordering its own publication! The treatise had appeared on or about the 3rd of August, unlicensed and unregistered, just as its predecessors, the Anti-Episcopal pamphlets, had been. Nay, there was this difference, that there was no printer's full name on the title-page of the Divorce treatise, but only the semi- anonymous, declaration "Printed by T. P. and M. S. in Goldsmiths' Alley" [Footnote: See full title-page, _antè_, p. 44. ] That Milton had acted deliberately in all this there can be no doubt. Not that we need suppose him to have made it a point of honour to outbrave the new law in general by continuing to publish without a licence; but because, in this particular case, he had no choice but to do so, and did not mind doing so. He wanted to publish his new Doctrine of Divorce: was he to go the round of the twelve Reverend Gentlemen who had just been appointed licensers of all books of Theology and Ethics, and wait till he found one of them sufficiently obtuse, or sufficiently asleep, to give his _imprimatur_ to a doctrine so shocking? Clearly, nothing remained but to get any printer to undertake the treatise that would print it in its unlicensed state, the printer trusting the author and both running the risk. Whatever hesitations the printer may have had, Milton had none. He had taken no pains to conceal the authorship; and, when he found the doctrine of the treatise in disrepute, he had disdained even the pretence of the anonymous. The second edition, published in February 1643-4, appeared, as the first had done, without licence or registration, and indeed with no more distinct imprint at the foot of the title-page than "_London, Imprinted in the yeare_ 1664"; but, to make up for this informality, it contained Milton's dedication to the Parliament and the Assembly signed with his name. It was as if he said, "I do break your Ordinance for Printing, but I let you know who I am that do so." Since then Milton had published two more pamphlets--his _Tract on Education_, addressed to Hartlib (June 1644), and his _Bucer Tract_, continuing the Divorce subject (July 1644). In both of these he had conformed to the Ordinance. Both are duly registered in the Stationers' Books, the former as having been licensed by Mr. Cranford (_antè_, p. 233), the latter by Mr. Downham (_antè_, p. 255). In licensing the new Divorce Tract, even though it did consist mainly of extracts from Bucer, Mr. Downham must have been either off his guard or very good-natured.

Milton's carelessness or contempt of the Ordinance for Printing had now found him out. The charge of heresy, or of monstrous and dangerous opinion, preferred against him by Palmer and the clergy, was one about which there might be much argument _pro_ and _con_, and with which most Parliamentary men might not be anxious to meddle. But here, in aid of that charge, another charge, much more definite, had been brought forward. The officials of the Stationers' Company were chosen from year to year; and the Master for the year beginning in the middle of 1644 was Mr. Robert Mead, with Mr. John Parker and Mr. Richard Whittaker for Wardens. It was these persons, if I mistake not, who thought themselves bound, either by sympathy with the horror caused by Milton's doctrine, or by sheer official duty, to oblige Mr. Palmer and his brethren of the Assembly by pointing out that both the editions of Milton's obnoxious pamphlet had been published in evasion of the law. There can be little doubt that the Assembly divines and the London clergy generally were at the back of the affair; but it was convenient for them to put forward others as the nominal accusers. "The Stationers' Company," these accusers virtually said, "knows nothing of these two publications, and has none of the discredit of them; they are not registered in the Company's books, and do not appear to have been ever licensed; and, if Mr. Milton, who has avowed himself the author, is to be questioned for the doctrine advanced in them, perhaps it would be well that he should at the same time have the imprints on his two title-pages put before him--_'Printed by T. P. and M. S. in Goldsmiths' Alley,'_ and _'London, Imprinted in the yeare_ 1644'--and asked how he dared defy the law in that way, and who the printers are that abetted him." Such, studying all the particulars, is the most exact interpretation I can put on the Petition of the Stationers' Company to the Commons, Aug. 24, as it affected Milton. There was a trade-feeling behind it. There was a resentment against certain printers and booksellers (probably quite well known to the Master and Wardens) for their contempt of trade-discipline, as well as against Milton for his part in the matter. It was really rather hard on Milton. For, doubtless, the new Ordinance for Printing had been passed by Parliament not with a view to any application of it to sound Parliamentarians like him, but as a check upon writers of the other side; and, doubtless, he was not singular in having neglected the Ordinance. Probably scores of Parliamentarian writers had taken the same liberty. Still, as he had offended against the letter of the law, and as those whom his doctrine had shocked now chose to avail themselves of this offence of his against the letter of the law, he found himself in an awkward position. All depended on the discretion of that "Committee of Printing," reinforced by four additional members, to which the Commons (Aug. 26) had entrusted the delicate task of dealing with him, and the farther task of revising the Ordinance of the previous year and seeing whether it could be improved or extended. They might trouble him much, or they might let him alone.

They let him alone. The Committee, I find, did indeed proceed so far in the general business assigned to them. They must have even drafted some new or supplementary Ordinance for the regulation of Printing, and obtained the agreement of the House to the draft; for, though I am unable to find any record of such proceeding in the _Commons' Journals_, there is this distinct entry in the _Lords' Journals_ under date Sept. 18, 1644: "A message was brought from the House of Commons by Mr. Rous and others, to desire concurrence in two Ordinances--(1) Concerning Ordination of Ministers, (2) Concerning Printing. The answer returned was, That this House will send an answer to this message by messengers of their own." The Lords, it appears in the sequel, did apply themselves to the Ordination Ordinance, so that the Commons received it back amended, and it passed, Oct. 1. But I find no farther mention of the new Printing Ordinance. Cromwell's great Accommodation or Toleration motion, passed in the Commons, in Solicitor St. John's modified form, on the 13th of September, had, it may be remembered, caused a sudden pause among the Presbyterian zealots. It may have helped indirectly to strangle many things; and I should not wonder if among them was the prosecution of the business prescribed to the Committee of Printing by the Order of Aug. 26. The Accommodation Order was a demand generally for clearer air and breathing-room for everybody, more of English freedom, and less of Scottish inquisitorship. If there had been ever any real intention among the Parliamentary people to proceed against Milton, it had now to be dropped.

THE AREOPAGITICA; A SPEECH FOR THE LIBERTY OF UNLICENSED PRINTING.

One good effect the incident had produced. It had prescribed for Milton a new piece of work. This Parliamentary Ordinance for Printing with which it had been proposed to crush him; this whole system of Censorship and licensing of books that had prevailed so long in England and almost everywhere else; this delegation of the entire control of a nation's Literature to a state-agency consisting of a few prejudiced parsons and schoolmasters seated atop, to decide what should go into the funnel, and a Company of Stationers seated below, to see that nothing else came out of the funnel:-was not this a subject on which something might be said? Would it not be more than a revenge if Milton were to express his thoughts on this subject? Would it not be a service of moment to England? What might not be hoped for from the Parliament if they were fitly addressed on such a theme? It was the great question of Liberty in all its forms that England was then engaged in. Civil Liberty, Liberty of Worship, Liberty of Conscience, were the phrases ringing in the English air. But in the midst of this general clamour for Liberty no one yet had moved for one form of Liberty, which would be a very substantial instalment of the whole, and yet was practicable and perhaps within sight--the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing. Let this then be Milton's new undertaking! In the fact that it had been so clearly assigned to him, nay, forced upon him by circumstances, he began to discern a certain regulation, not quite dependent on his own forethought, of the recent course of his life. "When the Bishops at length had fallen prostrate, aimed at by the shafts of all, and there was no more trouble from _them_," he afterwards wrote, reviewing this portion of his life, "then I turned my thoughts to other matters--if I might in anything promote the cause of true and solid liberty; which is chiefliest to be sought for not without, but within, and to be gained not by fighting, but by the right basing and the right administration of life. When, therefore, I perceived that there are in all three sorts of liberty, without the presence of which life can hardly anyhow be suitably gone through--Ecclesiastical, Domestic or Private, and Civil--then, as I had already written on the first, and as I saw that the Magistrate was sedulously occupied with the third, I took to myself that which was left second, viz. Domestic Liberty. That also appearing to consist of three parts--whether Marriage were rightly arranged, whether the Education of Children were properly conducted, and whether, finally, there were the power of free Philosophising--I explained what I thought, not only concerning the due contracting of Marriage, but also, if it were necessary, the due dissolution of the same.... On that subject I put forth some books, exactly at that time when husband and wife were often the bitterest enemies, he at home with his children, and she, the mother of the family, busy in the camp of the enemy, threatening death and destruction to her husband.... Then I treated the Education Question more briefly in one little book.... Finally, on the subject of the liberation of the Press, so that the judgment of the true and the false, what should be published and what suppressed, should not be in the hands of a few men, and these mostly unlearned and of common capacity, erected into a censorship over books--an agency through which no one almost either can or will send into the light anything that is above the vulgar taste--on this subject, in the form of an express oration, I wrote my _Areopagitica_." [Footnote: The Latin of the passage will be found in the _Defensio Secunda pro Popalo Anglicano._] In this passage, written in 1654, there is a slight anachronism. _All_ Milton's Marriage and Divorce tracts had not yet been published: two of them were still to come. At the moment at which we have arrived, however, that mapping out of his labours on the Domestic or Private form of the general question of Liberty which the passage explains must have already been in his mind. He had written largely on a Reform in Marriage and Divorce, and more briefly on a Reform in Education. In the Marriage and Divorce subject he had found himself met with an opposition which did not permit him yet to lay it aside; but meanwhile, in consequence of that opposition, nay, of the very form it had taken, there had dawned on him, by way of interlude and yet of strictly continuous industry, a great third enterprise. In any lull of war with the Titans what is Jove doing? Fingering his next thunderbolt. Released from all trouble by the Committee of the Commons, and left at leisure in Aldersgate Street, through September, October, and November, 1644, what was Milton doing? Preparing his _Areopagitica_.

It appeared November 24, a month after the Second Battle of Newbury, and the very day before that outbreak by Cromwell, against the Earl of Manchester for slackness in the battle, which led to the Self-Denying Ordinance and the New-Modelling of the Army. It was a small quarto of 40 pages with this title:--

AREOPAGITICA;

A Speech of Mr. John Milton for the Liberty of Unlicens'd Printing, to the Parlament of England.

[Greek: Touleutheron d'ekeino, ei tis thelei polei
Chræston ti bouleum eis meson pherein, echon.
Kai tauth o chræzon, lampros esth, o mæ thelon,
Siga ti touton estin isaiteron polei;]
_Euripid. Hicetid._

This is true Liberty, when free-born men
Having to advise the public may speak free,
Which he who can, and will, deserv's high praise,
Who neither can nor will, may hold his peace;
What can be juster in a State than this?
_Euripid. Hicetid_.
London, Printed in the yeare 1644.

There was no printer's or bookseller's name to the pamphlet; and it came forth unlicensed and unregistered. It would have been indeed absurd to ask one of the Censors to license a pamphlet cutting up the whole system of Censorship. Still here was another deliberate breach of the law by Milton. It was probably to soften and veil the offence that the pamphlet was cast into the form of a continuous Speech or Pleading by Milton to Parliament directly, without recognition of the public in preface or epilogue. [Footnote: That Nov. 24, 1644, was the day of the publication of the _Areopagitica_ I learn from Thomason's MS. note "Novemb. 24" in the copy among the King's Pamphlets in the British Museum; Press Mark 12. G. e.9./182.]

The _Areopagitica_ is now by far the best-known of Milton's pamphlets, and indeed the only one of his prose-works generally read. Knowing his other prose-writings, I have sometimes been angry at this choice of one of his pamphlets by which to recollect him as an English prose-writer. I have ascribed it to our cowardly habit of taking delight only in what we already agree with, of liking to read only what we already think, or have been schooled into considering glorious, axiomatic, and British. As there are parts of Milton's prose-writings that would be even now as discomposing and irritating to an orthodox Briton as to an orthodox Spaniard or Russian, a genuine British reader might be expected perhaps to tend to those parts by preference. Hence there is something not wholly pleasing in the exclusive rush in our country now-a-days upon the _Areopagitica_ as representative of Milton's prose. And yet the reasons for the fact are perhaps sufficient. Though the doctrine of the Treatise is now axiomatic, one remembers, as one reads, that the battle for it had then to be fought, that Milton was the first and greatest to fight it, and that this very book did more than any other to make the doctrine an axiom in Britain. But, besides this historical interest, the book possesses an interest of peculiar literary attractiveness. It is perhaps the most skilful of all Milton's prose- writings, the most equable and sustained, the easiest to be read straight through at once, and the fittest to leave one glowing sensation of the power of the author's genius. It is a pleading of the highest eloquence and courage, with interspersed passages of curious information, keen wit, and even a rich humour, such as we do not commonly look for in Milton. He must have taken great pains to make the performance popular.

After an exordium of respectful compliment to the Parliament, the rhetorical skill of which is as masterly as the sincerity is obvious, Milton announces his purpose. He thinks so highly of the Parliament that he will pay them the supreme compliment of questioning the wisdom of one of their ordinances and asking them to repeal it. He then quotes the leading clause of the Printing Ordinance of June 14, 1643, enacting that no Book, Pamphlet, or Paper should thenceforth be printed unless it had previously been approved and licensed by the official censors or one of them. He is to challenge, he says, only that part of the Ordinance. He is not to challenge the part for preventing piracy of copyright; which he thinks quite just, though he can see that it may be abused so as to annoy honest men and booksellers. From a passage farther on we learn also that Milton did not object to a prohibition of anonymous publication; for he refers with entire approbation to a previous Parliamentary Ordinance, enacting that no book should be printed unless the names of the author and printer, or at least that of the printer, were registered. If Parliament had stopped at that Order, they would have been well advised; it is the licensing Enactment of the subsequent Order of June 1643 that he is to reason against. Books, indeed, were things of which a Commonwealth ought to take no less vigilant charge than of their living subjects, "For Books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul whose progeny they are." All the more reason to beware of violence against books. "As good almost kill a man as kill a good book. Who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image; but he who destroys 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." And how had this slaying of books, and even the prevention of their birth, by a Censorship, grown up? After a historical sketch of the state of the law and practice respecting books among the Greeks, the Romans, and the early and mediaeval Christians, Milton arrives at the conclusion that the system of Censorship and Licensing was an invention of the worst age of the Papacy, perfected by the Spanish Inquisition. He gives one or two specimens of the elaborate _imprimaturs_ prefixed to old Italian books, and makes much fun of them. The Papal invention, he continues, had passed on into Prelatic England. "These are the pretty responsories, these are the dear antiphonies that so bewitched our late prelates and their chaplains with the goodly echo they made, and besotted us to the gay imitation of a lordly _imprimatur_, one from the Lambeth House [the Archbishop of Canterbury's Palace, where MSS. had to be left by their authors for revision by his chaplains], another from the west end of Paul's [the site of Stationers' Hall]."

Yes! but, whoever were the inventors, might not the invention itself be good? To this question Milton next proceeds, and it leads him into the vitals of the subject.

He contends, in the first place, for the scholar's liberty of universal reading at his own peril, his right of unlimited intellectual inquisitiveness. What though there are bad and mischievous books? "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.'" Good and evil are inextricably mixed up together in everything in this world; and the very discipline to virtue and strength consists in full walking amid both, distinguishing, avoiding, and choosing. "I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out to see her adversary, but slinks out of the race where that immortal garland is to be run for notwithstanding dust and heat. Assuredly we bring not innocence into the world, we bring impurity much rather; that which purifies is trial, and trial is by what is contrary." There is much more in the same strain, a favourite one with Milton, with instances of readings in evil books turned to good account. Plato's Censorship of Books, or general regulation of literature by the magistrate, is handled gently, as only Plato's whimsy for his own airy Republic. What if the principle of State- licensing were carried out? "Whatever thing we hear or see, sitting, walking, travelling, or conversing, may be fitly called our book." Well, shall the State regulate singing, dancing, street-music, concerts in the house, looking out at windows, standing on balconies, eating, drinking, dressing, love-making? "It would be better done to learn that the law must needs be frivolous which goes to restrain things uncertainly, and yet equally, working to good and to evil. And, were I the chooser, a dram of well-doing should be preferred before many times as much the forcible hindrance of evil-doing." Besides, suppression even of such tangible things as books by a Censorship was really impracticable, and everybody knew it. In spite of the existing Censorship, were not Royalist libels against the Parliament in everybody's hands in London every week, wet from the press? The system was a monstrous injustice and annoyance, and it did not answer its own end.

If the end were honestly the suppression of false and bad books, and if that end were in itself proper, and also practicable with sufficient means, all would still depend on the qualifications of the Licensers. And here Milton frankly lets the existing English licensers of Books, and especially the twelve parish-ministers among them, know his opinion of their office:--

"It cannot be denied but that he who is made judge to sit upon the birth or death of Books, whether they may be wafted into this world or not, had need to be a man above the common measure, both studious, learned, and judicious: there may be else no mean mistakes in the censure of what is passable or not; which is also no mean injury. If he be of such worth as behoves him, there cannot be a more tedious and unpleasing journey-work, 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 legible, whereof three pages would not down at any time in the fairest print, is an imposition which I cannot believe how he that values time and his own studies, or is but of a sensible nostril, should be able to endure. In this one thing I crave leave of the present Licensers to be pardoned for so thinking: who doubtless took this office up, looking on it through their obedience to the Parliament, whose command 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 solicit their license (!) are testimony enough. Seeing therefore those who now possess the employment by all evident signs wish themselves well rid of it, and that no man of worth, none that is not a plain 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 hereafter--either ignorant, imperious, and remiss, or basely pecuniary.... 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 they must neglect either the one duty or the other, I insist not, because it is a particular, but leave it to their own conscience how they will decide it there."

Closely following this glance at the Licensers and _their_ business is a description of the true Author and _his_ business, and of the indignities and discomforts put upon him by the Licensing system:--

"When a man writes to the world, he summons up all his reason and deliberation to assist him; he searches, meditates, is industrious, and likely consults and confers with his judicious friends: after all which done he takes himself to be informed in what he writes, as well as any that writ 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 Palladian 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 labour of book-writing; and, if he be not repulsed or slighted, must appear in print like a punie [child] with his guardian, and his censor's hand on the back of his title, to be his bail and surety that he is no idiot or seducer;--it cannot be but a dishonour and derogation to the Author, to the Book, to the privilege and dignity of Learning. 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 perhaps a dozen times in one book? The Printer dares not go beyond his licensed copy: so often then must the Author trudge to his leave-giver, that those his new insertions may be viewed; and many a jaunt will be made ere that Licenser (for it must be the same man) can either be found, or found at leisure. Meanwhile either the press must stand still (which is no small damage) or the Author lose his accuratest thoughts, and send the book forth worse than he had made it; which 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 tuition, under the correction, of his patriarchal Licenser, to blot or alter what precisely accords not with the hide-bound humour which he calls his judgment?"

The last half of the pamphlet is perhaps more knotty and powerful than the first. Milton's well-known retrospect of what he had seen in Italy, with his reminiscence of Galileo, occurs here. But his drift has now been made sufficiently apparent; and we shall best discharge what remains of our duty by presenting certain pieces of autobiographical information which the pamphlet supplies:--

We learn, for one thing, that Milton did not stand alone in his detestation of the Censorship, but represented a considerable constituency in the matter, and had even been solicited to be their spokesman and write this pamphlet. Those very words of complaint, he says, which he had heard, six years before, uttered by learned men in Italy against the Inquisition, it had been his fortune to hear uttered of late by "as learned men" in England against the Licensing Ordinance of the Parliament. "And that so generally," he adds, "that, when I had disclosed myself a companion of their discontent, I might say, if without envy, that he whom an honest quæstorship had endeared to the Sicilians [Cicero] was not more by them importuned against Verres than the favourable opinion which I had among many who honour ye, and are known and respected by ye, loaded me with entreaties and persuasions that I would not despair to lay together that which just reason should bring into my mind toward the removal of an undeserved thraldom upon Learning. That this is not therefore the disburdening of a particular fancy, but the common grievance of all those who had prepared their minds and studies above the vulgar pitch to advance truth in others, thus much may satisfy."

Again, in a pamphlet the subject of which is Books and Authors, we have naturally some incidental indications of Milton's literary tastes and preferences. The most interesting of these are perhaps the following:--He was as fond as ever of Spenser, "our sage and serious poet" as he calls him, "whom I dare be known to think a better teacher than Scotus or Aquinas." He thought Arminius "acute and distinct," though perverted. He would be no slave even to Plato, but would take the liberty of quizzing any of the oddities even of that gorgeous intellect. On moral grounds, he could not bear Aristophanes, and wondered how Plato could have recommended "such trash" as the comedies of that writer to the tyrant Dionysius. His great liking for Euripides is shown by his taking four lines from that poet's _Hiketides_ as the motto for the pamphlet. Lord Bacon is again mentioned reverently, once as "Sir Francis Bacon" and again as "Viscount St. Albans." There is a tribute of high admiration to the Parliamentarian peer, Lord Brooke, so recently lost to England, and to the tract on the _Nature of Episcopacy_ he had left behind him: those last words of his dying charge which "I know will ever be of dear and honoured regard with _ye_, so full of meekness and breathing charity that, next to His last testament who bequeathed love and peace to his disciples, I cannot call to mind where I have read or heard words more mild and peaceful." Selden is again referred to and complimented: "one of your own now sitting in Parliament, the chief of learned men reputed in this land." Acquaintance, on the other hand, is implied or avowed, on Milton's part, with some of the most notoriously ribald writers that the world had produced: with Petronius Arbiter, and him of Arozzo "dreaded and yet dear to the Italian Courtiers," and an Englishman whom he will not name, "for posterity's sake," but "whom Harry the Eighth named in merriment his Vicar of Hell." We may add, that Wycliffe and Knox are both honourably mentioned in the _Areopagitica_: Knox as the "Reformer of a Kingdom," and Wycliffe as an Englishman who had perhaps had potentially in him all that had since come from the Bohemian Huss, the German Luther, or the French Calvin.

A more special piece of information supplied, or rather only confirmed, by the _Areopagitica_, is that Milton, when he wrote it, had broken off utterly from the Presbyterians, and regarded the domination of that party in the Westminster Assembly with complete disgust. "If it come to inquisitioning again, and licensing," he says, "and that we are so timorous of ourselves, and so suspicious of all men, as to fear each book, and the shaking of every leaf, before we know what the contents are,--if some, who but of late were little better than silenced from preaching, shall come now to silence us from reading, except what they please,--it cannot be guessed what is intended by some but a second tyranny over Learning; and will soon put it out of controversy that Bishops and Presbyters are the same to us, both name and thing." Again, a little farther on, "This is not, ye Covenants and Protestations that we have made, this is not to put down Prelaty: this is but to chop an Episcopacy; this is but to translate the Palace _Metropolitan_ from one kind of dominion into another." Again, "A man may be a heretic in the Truth; and, if he believe things only because his pastor says so, or the Assembly so determines, without knowing other reason, though his belief be true, yet the very truth he holds becomes his heresy." Again, "He who hears what praying there is for light and clearer knowledge to be sent down among us would think of other matters to be constituted, beyond the discipline of Geneva, framed and fabricked already to our hands." Again, of Ecclesiastical Assemblies in general, and the Westminster Assembly in particular, "Neither is God appointed and confined 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 Convocation House, and another while in the Chapel at Westminster; when all the faith 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 there be made--no, though Harry the Seventh himself there, with all his liege tombs about him, should lend them voices from the dead to swell their number," [Footnote: The original meeting-place of the Westminster Assembly, and their meeting-place in the summer months, was Henry the Seventh's Chapel. In winter it was the Jerusalem Chamber--which had been the Convocation House of the English clergy before the Long Parliament.] Again, he says that, if the Presbyterians, themselves so recently released from Episcopal tyranny, should not have been taught by their own suffering, but should continue active in suppressing others, "it would be no unequal distribution in the first place to suppress the suppressors themselves."

Milton, however, the _Areopagitica_ proves, had not passed away from Presbyterianism only to become an ordinary Congregationalist or Independent. In the fight between the Presbyterians and the Independents of the Assembly he would now, undoubtedly, have taken part with the Independents; but Messrs. Goodwin, Nye, and the rest of them, had they interrogated him why, would have found him a strange adherent. For he had passed on into an Independency, if it could be called "Independency," more extreme than theirs, and resembling rather the vague Independency that Cromwell represented, and that was rife in the Army. The very notion of an official "minister of Religion," anyhow appointed, had become comical to him. It had come to seem to him supremely ridiculous that there should be anything like a caste of Brahmins or officers of Religion in England, by whatever means that caste should be formed or recruited. To curtail proof under this head, let me give but one extract. It is the richest bit of sheer humour that I have yet found in Milton, and is better and deeper, in that kind, than anything in Sydney Smith:--

BEING RELIGIOUS BY DEPUTY: OR THE USE OF A POPULAR LONDON CLERGYMAN.

"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 and professors who live and die in as arrant and implicit faith as any lay Papist of Loretto. A wealthy man, addicted to his pleasure and profits, finds Religion to be a traffic so entangled, and of so many piddling accounts, that of all mysteries he cannot skill to keep a stock going on that trade. What should he do? Fain he would have the name to be religious; fain he would bear up with his neighbours in that. What does he therefore but resolves 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 piety. 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, prays, is liberally supt and sumptuously laid to sleep, rises, is saluted; and, after the malmsey or some well-spiced brewage, and better breakfasted than 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 Religion."

What light does the _Areopagitica_ throw on Milton's notion of Toleration, or Liberty of Conscience, and on his feelings towards the Sects and Sectaries generally among whom he was now ranked? It is not uncommon to regard the _Areopagitica_ as one of the first and greatest English pleas for Liberty of Conscience; and, broadly viewed, it is. But strictly it is not a plea for Liberty of Conscience or for Toleration, but only for the liberty of unlicensed Printing. Milton's views of Liberty of Conscience appear only by implication in the course of this one argument. So far as they do appear, it cannot be said that Milton advocated a Liberty of Conscience so complete and absolute as Roger Williams's or John Goodwin's. He even saves himself from the imputation of doing so. "If all cannot be of one mind," he says, "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 superstition; which, as it extirpates all religious and civil supremacies, so itself should be extirpate--provided first that all charitable and a compassionate means be used to win and regain the weak and the misled. That also which is impious or evil absolutely, either against faith or manners, no law can possibly permit that intends not to unlaw itself." There are hints also to the effect that, while Milton wanted liberty of unlicensed publication for all kinds of books, he did not deny the right of the magistrate to call writers to account, in certain cases, for the opinions they had published. On the whole, therefore, in his theory of Toleration, Milton was decidedly behind some of his contemporaries. One can see, however, that he was uneasy in his exceptions, and had little care for them in comparison with the principle he meant them to limit. Practically he stands forth in the _Areopagitica_ as the advocate of a Toleration that would have satisfied all the necessities of the juncture, by giving full liberty not only to orthodox Congregationalists, but also to Baptists, so-called Antinomians, and Seekers, and perhaps all other Protestant sects that had any real rooting at that time in English society. His whole oration breathes the full principle rather than the exceptions. "Give me," he says, "the liberty to know, to utter and to argue freely according to my conscience, above all liberties." And he makes a brave defence of the existing Sects, without putting a mark of exclusion on any. Those Sects and Schisms, Sects and Schisms, which weak men were bewailing, and the Presbyterians were calling on Parliament to crush, appeared to Milton not only something that must be permitted because it could not be prevented, but positively the finest English phenomenon of the time, and the richest in promise:--

"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 unfrocking of a Priest, the unmitring of a Bishop, and the removing him from off the Presbyterian shoulders, that will make us a happy nation. No, if other things as great in the Church, and in the rule of life both economical and political, be not looked into and reformed, we have looked so long upon the blaze that Zuinglius and Calvin hath beaconed up to us that we are stark blind. There be who perpetually complain of Schisms and Sects, and make it such a calamity that any man dissents from _their_ maxims.... 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, subtle and sinewy to discourse, not beneath the reach of any point the highest that human capacity can soar to.... Now once again, by all concurrence of signs, and by the general instinct of holy and devout 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. What 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-house of Liberty, encompassed and surrounded with His protection. The shop of war hath not there more anvils and hammers working, to fashion out the plates and instruments of armed Justice in defence of beleaguered Truth, than there be pens and heads there, sitting by their studious lamps, musing, 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 labourers, to make a knowing people, a Nation of prophets, of sages, and of worthies?... 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 rejoice at, should praise rather this pious forwardness among men to reassume the ill- deputed care of their Religion into their own hands again.... As in a body, when the blood is fresh, the spirits pure and vigorous, not only to vital, but to rational faculties, and those in the acutest and the pertest operations of art 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 freedom 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, but casting off the old and wrinkled skin of corruption to outlive these pangs and wax young again, entering the glorious ways of Truth and prosperous virtue destined to become great and honourable 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 kindling her undazzled eyes at the full midday beam; purging and unsealing her long-abused sight at the fountain itself of heavenly radiance, while the whole noise of timorous and flocking 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."

After this it is bathos to speak of the Stationers' Company; but we must do so. For, at the end of the _Areopagitica_ there is a distinct insinuation by Milton that the Ordinance he was asking the Parliament to repeal was less the invention of Parliament itself than of some cunning Stationers. "If we may believe those men," he says, "whose profession gives them cause to inquire most [_i.e._ some worthy booksellers of Milton's acquaintance] it may be doubted there was in it the fraud of some old patentees and monopolisers in the trade of bookselling; who, under pretence 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 glozing colours to the House, which were indeed but colours, and serving to no end except it be to exercise a superiority over their neighbours." Milton makes a farther and worse insinuation. "Another end," he says, "is thought was aimed at by some of them in procuring by petition this order--that, having power in their hands, malignant books might easier scape abroad [_i.e._ get about the country], as the event shows." Here was a hit for some of the good people about Paternoster Row.

SECOND PROSECUTION OF MILTON BY THE STATIONERS' COMPANY: CONDUCT OF THE HOUSE OF LORDS IN THE CASE.

It might have been safer for Milton to let the Stationers alone. For, within five weeks after the publication of the _Areopagitica_, I find him again in trouble, and all by the doing of the Stationers' Company, in revenge for his past offences and this new insult. The story, as I have dug it out of the _Lords' Journals_, with some help from old pamphlets, is as follows:--