Page images
PDF
EPUB

Wrought still within them; and no less desire

To found this nether empire, which might rise,

By policy, and long process of time,
In emulation opposite to Heaven.

Which when Beelzebub perceived, than whom,

Satan except, none higher sat, with grave 300
Aspect he rose, and in his rising seemed
A pillar of state; deep on his front engraven
Deliberation sat and public care;

And princely counsel in his face yet shone.
Majestic, though in ruin. Sage he stood,
With Atlantean shoulders fit to bear

The weight of mightiest monarchies; his look

Drew audience and attention still as night Or summer's noontide air, while thus he spake:

"Thrones and Imperial Powers, Offspring of Heaven,

310

Ethereal Virtues! or these titles now Must we renounce, and changing style, be called

Princes of Hell? for so the popular vote Inclines-here to continue, and build up here

A growing empire; doubtless! while we dream,

And know not that the King of Heaven hath doomed

This place our dungeon-not our safe retreat

Beyond his potent arm, to live exempt From Heaven's high jurisdiction, in new league

Banded against his throne, but to remain 320 In strictest bondage, though thus far removed,

Under the inevitable curb, reserved
His captive multitude. For he, be sure,
In highth or depth, still first and last will
reign

Sole king, and of his kingdom lose no part
By our revolt, but over Hell extend
His empire, and with iron scepter rule
Us here, as with his golden those in Heaven.
What sit we then projecting peace and war?
War hath determined us, and foiled with
loss

330

Irreparable; terms of peace yet none Vouchsafed or sought; for what peace will be given

To us enslaved, but custody severe,
And stripes, and arbitrary punishment
Inflicted? and what peace can we return,

But, to our power, hostility, and hate, Untamed reluctance, and revenge, though slow,

Yet ever plotting how the Conqueror least May reap his conquest, and may least rejoice

In doing what we most in suffering feel? 340 Nor will occasion want, nor shall we need With dangerous expedition to invade Heaven, whose high walls fear no assault or siege,

Or ambush from the Deep. What if we find

Some easier enterprise? There is a place (If ancient and prophetic fame in Heaven Err not), another World, the happy seat Of some new race called Man, about this time

To be created like to us, though less
In power and excellence, but

more

favored

350

[blocks in formation]
[blocks in formation]

390

"Well have ye judged, well ended long debate, Synod of gods! and, like to what ye are, Great things resolved; which from the lowest deep

Will once more lift us up, in spite of fate, Nearer our ancient seat-perhaps in view Of those bright confines, whence, with neighboring arms

And opportune excursion, we may chance Re-enter Heaven; or else in some mild zone Dwell not unvisited of Heaven's fair light, Secure, and at the brightening orient beam Purge off this gloom; the soft delicious air,

400

[blocks in formation]
[blocks in formation]
[blocks in formation]

More tolerable; if there be cure or charm 460
To respite, or deceive, or slack the pain
Of this ill mansion; intermit no watch
Against a wakeful foe, while I abroad
Through all the coasts of dark destruction
seek

Deliverance for us all: this enterprise
None shall partake with me." Thus saying,

rose

The Monarch, and prevented all reply; Prudent, lest, from his resolution raised, Others among the chief might offer now (Certain to be refused) what erst they feared, 470

And, so refused, might in opinion stand His rivals, winning cheap the high repute Which he through hazard huge must earn. But they

Dreaded not more the adventure than his voice

Forbidding; and at once with him they rose. Their rising all at once was as the sound Of thunder heard remote. Towards him they bend

With awful reverence prone; and as a god Extol him equal to the Highest in Heaven. Nor failed they to express how much they praised

480

That for the general safety he despised His own; for neither do the Spirits damned Lose all their virtue,-lest bad men should boast

Their specious deeds on Earth, which glory excites,

Or close ambition varnished o'er with zeal. Thus they their doubtful consultations dark

Ended, rejoicing in their matchless Chief; As when from mountain-tops the dusky clouds

Ascending, while the North-wind sleeps, o'er-spread

Heaven's cheerful face, the louring element

490

Scowls o'er the darkened landskip snow or shower;

If chance the radiant sun with farewell sweet

Extend his evening beam, the fields revive,

[blocks in formation]

3. LIBERTY AND DISCIPLINE

[From Areopagitica, 1644]

THE VIRTUE OF BOOKS

I deny not but that it is of greatest concernment 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 absolutely 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 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. It is true, 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, therefore, 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 elemental life, but strikes at the ethereal and fifth essence, the breath of reason itself; slays an immortality rather than a life.

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 her followers and rejects it, is but a blank virtue, not a pure; her whiteness is but an excremental whiteness; which was the reason why our sage and serious poet Spenser, (whom I dare be known to think a better teacher than Scotus or Aquinas,) describing true temperance under the person of Guyon, 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 scanning of error to the confirmation of truth, how can we more safely, and with less danger, scout into the regions of sin and falsity, than by reading all manner of tractates, and hearing all manner of reason? And this is the benefit which may be had of books promiscuously read.

OF RESTRAINTS

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

Good and evil we know in the field of this world grow up together almost inseparably; and the knowledge of good is so involved and interwoven with the knowledge of evil, and in so many cunning resemblances hardly to be discerned, that those confused seeds which were imposed upon Psyche as an incessant 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 cleav-regulate all recreations and pastimes, all

ing 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 continence 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

that is delightful to man. No music must be heard, no song be set or sung, but what is grave and Doric. There must be licensing dancers, that no gesture, motion, or deportment be taught our youth, but what by their allowance shall be thought honest; for such Plato was provided of. It will ask more than the work of twenty licensers to examine all the lutes, the violins, and the guitars in every house; they must not be suffered to prattle as they do, but must be

licensed what they may say. And who shall silence all the airs and madrigals that whisper softness in chambers? The windows also, and the balconies, must be thought on; 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 countryman's Arcadias, and his Montemayors.

Next, what more national corruption, for which England hears ill abroad, than household gluttony? Who shall be the rectors of our daily rioting? And what shall be done to inhibit the multitudes that frequent those houses where drunkenness is sold and harbored? Our garments also should be referred to the licensing of some more sober workmasters, to see them cut into a less wanton garb. Who shall regulate all the mixed conversation of our youth, male and female together, as is the fashion of this country? Who shall still appoint what shall be discoursed, what presumed, and no further? Lastly, who shall 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 unavoidably. Nor is it Plato's licensing of books will do this, which necessarily pulls along with it so many other kinds of licensing, as will make us all both ridiculous and weary, and yet frustrate; but those unwritten, or at least unconstraining laws of virtuous education, religious and civil nurture, which Plato there mentions, as the bonds and ligaments of the commonwealth, the pillars and the sustainers of every written statute; these they be, which will bear chief sway in such matters as these, when all licensing will be easily eluded. Impunity and remissness for certain are the bane of a commonwealth; but here the great art lies, to discern in what the law is to bid restraint and punishment, and in what things persuasion only is to work. If every action which is good or evil in man at ripe years were to be under pit

tance, prescription, and compulsion, what were virtue but a name, what praise could be then due to well doing, what gramercy to be sober, just, or continent?

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 artificial Adam, such an Adam as he is in the motions. We ourselves esteem not of that obedience, or love, or gift, which is of force; God therefore left him free, set before him a provoking object ever almost in his eyes; herein consisted his merit, herein the right of his reward, the praise of his abstinence. Wherefore did he create passions within 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 universal thing as books are; and when this is done, yet the sin remains entire. Though ye 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 hermitage, 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 ye thus expel of sin, so much we expel of virtue: for the matter of them both is the same: remove that, and ye remove them both alike. This justifies the high providence of God, who, though he commands 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?

LIBERTY OF THOUGHT

I lastly proceed from the no good it1 can do, to the manifest hurt it causes, in be1i. e., requiring a license for the publication of books.

« PreviousContinue »