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Areopagitica: Part II
Areopagitica: Part II
But some will say, what though the inventors were bad, the thing for all
that may be good? It may so: yet if that thing be no such deep invention, but
obvious, and easy for any man to light on, and yet best and wisest
commonwealths through all ages, and occasions have forborne to use it, and
falsest seducers, and oppressors of men were the first who took it up, and to
no other purpose but to obstruct and hinder the first approach of Reformation;
I am of those who believe, it will be a harder alchemy than Lullius^31 ever
knew, to sublimate^32 any good use out of such an invention. Yet this only is
what I request to gain from this reason, that it may be held a dangerous and
suspicious fruit, as certainly it deserves for the tree that bore it, until I
can dissect one by one the properties it has. But I have first to finish as
was propounded, what is to be thought in general of reading books, whatever
sort they be, and whether be more the benefit, or the harm that thence
proceeds?
[Footnote 31: Raymond Lully, a scientist of the 13th century.]
[Footnote 32: Extract.]
Not to insist upon the examples of Moses, Daniel and Paul, who were
skilful in all the learning of the Egyptians, Chaldeans, and Greeks, which
could not probably be without reading their books of all sorts in Paul
especially, who thought it no defilement to insert into holy Scripture, the
sentences of three Greek poets, and one of them a tragedian, 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 of our
faith, made a decree forbidding Christians the study of heathen learning: for,
said he, they wound us with our own weapons, and with our own arts and
sciences they overcome us. And indeed the Christians were put so to their
shifts by this crafty means, and so much in danger to decline into all
ignorance, that the two Apollinarii were fain as a man may say, to coin all
the seven liberal sciences out of the Bible, reducing it into divers forms or
orations, poems, dialogues, even to the calculating of a new Christian
grammar. But saith the historian Socrates, the providence of God provided
better than the industry of Apollinarius and his son, by taking away that
illiterate law with the life of him who devised it. So great an injury they
then held it to be deprived of Hellenic learning; and thought it a persecution
more undermining, and secretly decaying the church than the open cruelty of
Decius or Dioclesian. And perhaps it was the same politic drift that the devil
whipped St. Jerome in a lenten dream, for reading Cicero; or else it was a
phantasm bred by the fever which had then seis`d^33 him. For had an angel been
his discipliner, unless it were for dwelling too much upon Ciceronianisms, and
had chastised the reading, not the vanity, it had been plainly partial; first
to correct him for grave Cicero, and not for scurril Plautus whom he confesses
to have been reading not long before; next to correct him only, and let so
many more ancient Fathers wax old in those pleasant and florid studies without
the lash of such a tutoring apparition; insomuch that Basil teaches how some
good use may be made of Margites a sportful poem, not now extant, written by
Homer; and why not then of Morgante an Italian romance much to the same
purpose. But if it be agreed we shall be tried by visions, there is a vision
recorded by Eusebius far ancienter than this tale of Jerome to the nun
Eustochium, and besides has nothing of a fever in it. Dionysius Alexandrinus
was about the year 240, a person of great name in the Church for piety and
learning, who had wont to avail himself much against heretics by being
conversant in their books; until a certain presbyter laid it scrupulously to
his conscience how he durst venture himself among those defiling volumes. The
worthy man loath to give offense 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 what ever 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^34 that of the Apostle to the Thessalonians,
prove^35 all things, hold fast that which is good. And he might have added
another remarkable saying of the same author; to the pure all things are pure,
not only meats and drinks, but all kind of knowledge whether of good or evil;
the knowledge 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. Wholesome meats to a vitiated stomach differ little or nothing
from unwholesome; and best books to a naughty mind are not unappliable to
occasions of evil. Bad meats will scarce breed good nourishment in the
healthiest concoction: but herein the difference is of bad books, that they to
a discreet and judicious reader serve in many respects to discover, to
confute, to forewarn, and to illustrate. Whereof what better witness can ye
expect I should produce, than one of your own now sitting in Parliament, the
chief of learned men reputed in this land, Mr. Selden, whose volume of natural
and national laws proves, not only by great authorities brought together, but
by exquisite^36 reasons and theorems almost mathematically demonstrative, that
all opinions, yea errors, known, read, and collated, are of main service and
assistance toward the speedy attainment of what is truest. I conceive
therefore, that when God did enlarge the universal diet of man`s body, saving
ever the rules of temperance, he then also, as before, left arbitrary the
dieting and repasting of our minds; as wherein every mature man might have to
exercise his own leading capacity. How great a virtue is temperance, how much
of moment through the whole life of man? yet God commits the managing so great
a trust, without particular law or prescription, wholly to the demeanor of
every grown man. And therefore when he himself tabled^37 the Jews from heaven,
that omer which was every man`s daily portion of manna, is computed to have
been more than might have well sufficed the heartiest feeder thrice as many
meals. For those actions which enter into a man, rather than issue of him, and
therefore defile not, God uses not to captivate under a perpetual childhood of
prescription, but trusts him with the gift of reason to be his own chooser;
there were but little work left for preaching, if law and compulsion [should]
grow so fast upon those things which heretofore were governed only by
exhortation. Solomon informs us that much reading is a weariness to the flesh;
but neither he, nor other inspired author, tells us that such or such reading
is unlawful: yet certainly had God thought good to limit us herein, it had
been much more expedient to have told us what was unlawful, than what was
wearisome. 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 burned those books which were their own; the Magistrate by this
example is not appointed: these men practised the books, another might perhaps
have read them in some sort usefully. Good and evil we know in the field of
this world grow up together almost inseparably; and the knowledge of good is
so involved and interwoven with the knowledge of evil, and in so many cunning
resemblances hardly to be discerned, that those confused seeds which were
imposed on Psyche as an incessant labor to cull out, and sort asunder, were
not more intermixed. It was from out of 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 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 better, he is the true warfaring Christian. I
can not praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed,
that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race,
where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat.
Assuredly we bring not innocence into the world, we bring impurity much
rather: that which purifies us is trial, and trial is by what is contrary.
That virtue therefore which is but a youngling in the contemplation of evil,
and 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^38
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 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
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 tracts, and hearing all manner of reason? And this is the benefit
which may be had of books promiscuously read. But of the harm that may result
hence three kinds are usually reckoned. First, is feared the infection that
may spread; but then all human learning and controversy in religious points
must remove out of the world, yea the Bible itself; for that ofttimes relates
blasphemy not nicely,^39 it describes the carnal sense of wicked men not
unelegantly,^40 it brings in holiest men passionately murmuring against
Providence through all the arguments of Epicurus: in other great disputes it
answers dubiously and darkly to the common reader: and ask a Talmudist what
ails the modesty of his marginal keri,^41 that Moses and all the Prophets can
not persuade him to pronounce the textual chetiv.^42 For these causes we all
know the Bible itself put by the Papist into the first rank of prohibited
books. The ancientest Fathers must be next removed, as Clement of Alexandria,
and that Eusebian book of evangelic preparation, transmitting our ears through
a hoard of heathenish obscenities to receive the Gospel. Who finds not that
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 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,^43 dreaded, and yet dear to the Italian courtiers. I name not
him^44 for posterity`s sake, whom Harry the Eighth, named in merriment his
vicar of hell. By which compendious way all the contagion that foreign books
can infuse, will find a passage to the people far easier and shorter than an
Indian voyage, though it could be sailed either by the north of Cataio^45
eastward, or of Canada westward, while our Spanish licensing gags the English
press never so severely. But on the other side that infection which is from
books of controversy in religion, is more doubtful and dangerous to the
learned, than to the ignorant; and yet those books must be permitted untouched
by the licenser. It will be hard to instance where any ignorant man hath been
ever seduced by Papistical book in English, unless it were commended and
expounded to him by some of that clergy: and indeed all such tracts whether
false or true are as the Prophecy of Isaiah was to the Eunuch, not to be
understood without a guide. But of our priests and doctors how many have been
corrupted by studying the comments of Jesuits and Sorbonnists,^46 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^47 Arminius was
perverted merely by the perusing of a nameless discourse written at Delft,
which at first he took in hand to confute. Seeing therefore that those books,
and those in great abundance which are likeliest to taint both life and
doctrine, can not be suppressed without the fall of learning, and of all
ability in disputation, and that these books of either sort are most and
soonest catching to the learned, from whom to the common people whatever is
heretical or dissolute may quickly be conveyed, and that evil manners are as
perfectly learned without books a thousand other ways which can not 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 able to unfold, how this cautelous^48 enterprise of licensing can be
exempted from the number of vain and impossible attempts. And he who were
pleasantly disposed, could not well avoid to liken it to the exploit of that
gallant man who thought to pound up the crows by shutting his park gate.
Besides another inconvenience, if learned men be the first receivers out of
books and dispreaders both of vice and error, how shall the licensers
themselves be confided in, unless we can confer upon them, or they assume to
themselves above all others in the land, the grace of infallibility, and
uncorruptedness? And again if it be true, that a wise man like a good refiner
can gather gold out of the drossiest volume, and that a fool will be a fool
with the best book, yea or without book, there is no reason that we should
deprive a wise man of any advantage to his wisdom, while we seek to restrain
from a fool that which being restrained will be no hindrance to his folly. For
if there should be so much exactness always used to keep that from him which
is unfit for his reading, we should in 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 ourselves to
temptations without necessity, and next to that, not employ our time in vain
things. To both these objections one answer will serve, out of the grounds
already laid, that to all men such books are not temptations, nor vanities;
but useful drugs and materials wherewith to temper and compose effective and
strong medicines, which man`s life can not want.^49 The rest, as children and
childish men, who have not the art to qualify and prepare these working
minerals, well may be exhorted to forbear, but hindered forcibly they can not
be by all the licensing that sainted inquisition could ever yet contrive;
which is what I promised to deliver next, that this order of licensing
conduces nothing to the end for which it was framed: and hath almost
prevented^50 me by being clear already while thus much hath been explaining.
See the ingenuity^51 of truth, who when she gets a free and willing hand,
opens herself faster, than the pace of method and discourse can overtake her.
It was the task which I began with, to show that no nation, or well instituted
state, if they valued books at all, did ever use this way of licensing; and it
might be answered, that this is a piece of prudence lately discovered, to
which I return, that as it was a thing slight and obvious to think on, for 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
received, fed his fancy with making many edicts to his airy^52 burgomasters,
which they who otherwise admire him, wish had been rather buried and excused
in the genial cups of an academic night-sitting. By which laws he seems to
tolerate no kind of learning, but by unalterable decree, consisting most of
practical traditions, to the attainment whereof a library of smaller bulk than
his own dialogues would be abundant. And there also enacts that no poet should
so much as read to any private man, what he had written, until the judges and
lawkeepers had seen it, and allowed it: but that Plato meant this law
peculiarly to that Commonwealth which he had imagined, and to no other, is
evident. Why was he not else a law-giver to himself, but a transgressor, and
to be expelled by his own magistrates, both for the wanton epigrams and
dialogues which he made, and his perpetual reading of Sophron Mimus, and
Aristophanes, books of grossest infamy, and also for commending the latter of
them though he were the malicious libeller of his chief friends,^53 to be read
by the tyrant Dionysius, who had little need of such trash to spend his time
on? But that he knew this licensing of poems had reference and dependence to
many other provisos there set down in his fancied republic, which in this
world could have no place: and so neither he himself, nor any magistrate, or
city ever imitated that course, which taken apart from those other collateral
injunctions must needs be vain and fruitless. For if they fell upon^54 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 recreations and
pastimes, all that is delightful to man. No music must be heard, no song be
set or sung, but what is grave and Doric. There must be licensing dancers,
that no gesture, motion, or deportment be taught our youth but what by their
allowance shall be thought honest; for such Plato was provided of; it will ask
more than the work of twenty licensers to examine all the lutes, the violins,
and the guitars in every house; they must not be suffered to prattle as they
do, but must be licensed what they may say. And who shall silence all the airs
and madrigals, that whisper softness in chambers? The windows also, and the
balconies must be thought on, there are shrewd^55 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 rebbeck^56 reads even to the balladry, and the gamut of every
municipal fiddler, for these are the countryman`s Arcadias^57 and his Monte
Mayors.^57 Next, what more national corruption, for which England hears ill^58
abroad, then household gluttony; who shall be the rectors^59 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 work-masters to see them cut into
a less wanton garb. Who shall regulate all the mixed conversation^60 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 less hurtful, how less enticing,
herein consists the grave and governing wisdom of a State. To sequester out of
the world into Atlantic and Utopian polities,^61 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 pittance, and prescription, and
compulsion, what were virtue but a name, what praise could be then due to
well-doing, what grammercy^62 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.^63 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, 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 can not 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 can not 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 can not 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 remove them both alike. This justifies the high providence
of God, who though he command 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 effect 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 I the chooser, a dram of well-doing
should be preferred before many times as much the forcible hindrance of
evil-doing. For God sure esteems the growth and completing of one virtuous
person, more than the restraint of ten vicious. And albeit whatever thing we
hear or see, sitting, walking, traveling, 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 hitherto is far
insufficient to the end which it intends. Do we not see, not once or oftener,
but weekly that continued court-libel^64 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`ll say. But
certain, if execution be remiss or blindfold now, and in this particular, what
will it be hereafter, 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^65:
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^66 men. There be also books
which are partly useful and excellent, partly culpable and pernicious; this
work will ask as many more officials to make expurgations and expunctions,^67
that the commonwealth of learning be not damnified.^68 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 importation
of their whole suspected typography. In a word, that this order may be exact,
and not deficient, ye must reform it perfectly according to the model of
Trent^69 and Seville,^70 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 whereto ye meant it. If to prevent sects and
schisms, who is so unread or so uncatechised in story, that hath not heard of
many sects refusing books as a hindrance, and preserving their doctrine
unmixed for many ages, only by unwritten traditions. The Christian faith, for
that was once a schism, is not unknown to have spread all over Asia, ere any
Gospel or Epistle was seen in writing. If the amendment of manners be aimed
at, look into Italy and Spain, whether those places be one scruple the better,
the more honest, the wiser, the chaster, since all the inquisitional rigor
that hath been executed upon books.
[Footnote 33: Possessed.]
[Footnote 34: Consistent with.]
[Footnote 35: Test.]
[Footnote 36: Carefully sought out.]
[Footnote 37: Fed.]
[Footnote 38: External.]
[Footnote 39: Fastidiously.]
[Footnote 40: Not without elaboration.]
[Footnote 41: Comment.]
[Footnote 42: Text.]
[Footnote 43: Aretino.]
[Footnote 44: Probably the poet Skelton.]
[Footnote 45: Cathay, in Tartary.]
[Footnote 46: From the theological college of the Sorbonne, in Paris.]
[Footnote 47: Clear-thinking.]
[Footnote 48: Tricky, deceptive.]
[Footnote 49: Do without.]
[Footnote 50: Anticipated.]
[Footnote 51: Ingenuousness, frankness.]
[Footnote 52: Imaginary.]
[Footnote 53: e.g., of Socrates.]
[Footnote 54: Adopted vigorously.]
[Footnote 55: Wicked.]
[Footnote 56: Fiddle.]
[Footnote 57: Popular novels of the 15th century.]
[Footnote 58: Is ill-spoken of.]
[Footnote 59: Governors.]
[Footnote 60: Intercourse.]
[Footnote 61: i.e., into imaginary commonwealths, like Bacon`s "New Atlantis"
and More`s "Utopia."]
[Footnote 62: Great thanks.]
[Footnote 63: Puppet shows.]
[Footnote 64: "Mercurius Aulicus," a royalist journal.]
[Footnote 65: Published.]
[Footnote 66: Ordinary.]
[Footnote 67: Omissions.]
[Footnote 68: Injured.]
[Footnote 69: Council of Trent.]
[Footnote 70: Headquarters of the Spanish Inquisition.]
Another reason, whereby to make it plain that this order will miss the
end it seeks, consider by the quality which ought to be in every licenser. It
can not 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 behooves him, there
can not be a more tedious and unpleasing journey-work, a greater loss of times
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 can not 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 with
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. This is what I had to show wherein this order can
not conduce to that end, whereof it bears the intention.
I lastly proceeded 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 lamentation
of prelates, upon every least breath of a motion to remove pluralities,^71 and
distribute more equally church revenues, that then all learning would be
forever dashed and discouraged. But as for that opinion, I never found cause
to think that the tenth part of learning stood or fell with the clergy: nor
could I ever but hold it for a sordid and unworthy speech of any churchman who
had a competency left him. If therefore ye be loath to dishearten utterly and
discontent, not the mercenary crew of false pretenders to learning, but the
free and ingenuous sort of such as evidently were born to study, and love
learning for itself, not for lucre, or any other end, but the service of God
and of truth, and perhaps that lasting fame and perpetuity of praise which God
and good men have consented shall be the reward of those whose 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 displeasure 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 ferular,^72 to come under the fescu^72 of
an Imprimatur? if serious and elaborate writings, as if they were no more than
the theme of a grammar lad under his pedagogue must not be uttered^73 without
the cursory 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 wherein he was born, for other than a fool
or a foreigner. When a man writes to the world, he summons up all his reason,
and 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 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 Palladian^74 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 book-writing, and if he be not repulsed, or slighted, must appear
in print like a puny^75 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
can not 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 most diligent 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, or 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 most
accurate 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 tuition, under the
correction of his patriarchal licenser to blot or alter what precisely accords
not with the hidebound 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^76 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 is
some common stuff;" and he might add from Sir Francis Bacon, That such
authorized books are but the language of the times. For though a licenser
should happen to be judicious more than ordinarily, which will be a great
jeopardy of the next succession, yet his very office, and his commission
enjoins 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, come to other 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
humor of their own, though it were Knox himself, the reformer of a kingdom
that spake it, they will not pardon him their dash:^77 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 violence 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 iron molds^78 as these shall
have authority to gnaw out the choicest periods of the most exquisite books,
and to commit such a treacherous fraud against the orphan remainders of
worthiest men after death, the more sorrow will belong to that hapless race of
men, whose misfortune it is to have understanding. Henceforth let no man care
to learn, or care to be more than worldly wise; for certainly in higher
matters to be ignorant and slothful, to be a common steadfast dunce will be
the only pleasant life, and only in request.
[Footnote 71: The holding of several livings by one clergyman had been a chief
cause of complaint against the Episcopal Church.]
[Footnote 72: Rod.]
[Footnote 73: Published.]
[Footnote 74: From Pallas, goddess of learning.]
[Footnote 75: Minor.]
[Footnote 76: Throw violently]
[Footnote 77: Dare to blot it out.]
[Footnote 78: Rust.]
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