Opinion is not always truth; it is truth filtered through the mood, the disposition, the education, the stand-point of the spectator. While the bishops affirmed that orthodoxy was their 'doxy, the Dissenters were just as firmly persuaded that the orthodox religion dwelt with them; while the Pope fulminated his bulls of excommunication against them both, arrogating to the Roman see the pure unquestionable orthodox faith. In that and kindred controversies it was Milton's belief that unlicensed, unrestricted printing would be a grand helper, and no hinderance to the eternal truth.

To the jealousy of a government, or the bigotry of a church, demanding an enslaved press, he replies, that "a state governed by the rules of justice and fortitude, or a church built upon the rock of faith and true knowledge, cannot be so pusillanimous" as to dread the utmost liberty of criticism.

Yet it was not the licentiousness of the press He was willing that it should be as free as the air, or the light of heaven, to pour its good and evil alike into the world; but he would hold the writers to a

for which Milton pleaded.

proper responsibility to the laws, not to vomit slander through the press, nor to infringe the fundamental precepts of morals and good order. That is, publishers were not to be allowed to violate the innocent peace of society, or of individuals; to permit that were not liberty, but flagitious licentiousness.

"I deny not," says the great champion of regulated liberty, "but that it is of great concernment to the church and commonwealth to have a vigilant eye how books bemean themselves as well as men; and therefore to confine, imprison, and do sharpest justice on them as malefactors; for books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency 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 honest 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 lifeblood of a master-spirit embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life. 'Tis 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 that etherial and fifth essence, the breath of reason itself, and slays an immortality rather than a life."

Milton did not fear the most convulsing agitation: he saw, in what some thought chaos, nothing but an unchained people "casting off

the old and wrinkled skin of corruption, waxing young again, entering the glorious ways of truth and prosperous virtue, and destined to become great and honorable in these latter days." Here occurs this burst of sublime and unrivalled eloquence

"Methinks I see in my mind a noble and puissant nation rousing herself, like the 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 unscaling her long abused sight at the fountain itself of heavenly radiance, while the whole brood of timorous and flocking birds, with those also that love the twilight, flutter about, amazed at what she means."

What he says concerning the inconsistency of the Parliament in its treatment of the license question, is keen and just: "Who cannot discern the fineness of this politic drift, and who are its contrivers? that while the bishops were to be baited down, then all presses might be open: it was the people's birthright and privilege in time of Parliament;

it was the breaking forth of light. But now, the bishops abrogated and voided out of the church, as if our reformation sought no more but to make room for others into their seats under another name, the episcopal arts begin to bud again; the cruse of truth must run no more oil; liberty of printing must be inthralled under a prelatical commission of twenty;* the privilege of the people nullified, and which is worse, the freedom of learning must groan again, and to her old fetters."+

This entire "Plea" of Milton's is a model of style, impressive dignity, and persuasive eloquence. In sublimity of thought and elevation of sentiment, it is unique and unrivalled in English letters. Some of the sentences are stiff with splendor, while its frequent figurativeness renders it what Burke fitly calls it, "the most magnificent of prose poems.'

Notwithstanding its splendor, cogency, and unanswerable logic, the Parliament turned a deaf ear to Milton's address, and remained inexorably determined to preserve the license

* In allusion to a then recent act of Parliament, placing the license under charge of such a commission.