I DENY not, but that it is of greatest concernment (concern, importance) in the church and commonwealth, to have a vigilant eye how books demean' (behave) themselves as well as men; and thereafter (accordingly) to confine, imprison, and do sharpest justice on them as malefactors. For books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency (power) of life in them to be (of being) as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a "violl" the purest efficacy and extraction (energy and essence) of that living intellect that bred them. I know they are as lively, and as vigorously productive, as those fabulous dragon's teeth; 2 and being sown up and down, may chance to spring up armed men. And yet, on the other hand, unless wariness (caution) be used, as good almost kill a man as kill a good book. Who (He 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 (with a view) 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 (often do not) recover the loss of a rejected truth, for the want of which whole nations fare the worse. We should be wary (cautious), therefore, what persecutions we raise against the living labours of public men, how we spill (destroy) that seasoned (well-matured) 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 (edition), a kind of massacre, whereof the execution ends not in the slaying of an elemental life (a life of material elements), but strikes at that ethereal and "fift" essence3 the breath of reason itself; [and] slays an immortality rather "then" a life. (1) Demean, from old Fr. démener, to conduct or govern. By an absurd misuse of language, it has long been customary for loose writers and speakers to employ this word as if it came from the adj. mean, and signified to behave unworthily or meanly. (2) Dragon's teeth, sown by Cadmus, and which sprang up armed men. (3) That ethereal, &c., i.e. that ethereal quintessence, which is the breath of reason itself. The notion of Aristotle, then generally received, was that there are 5. THE TEST OF VIRTUE. (FROM THE SAME WORK.) 1 CANNOT praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised, and unbreathed,' that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race,2 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 blank3 virtue, not a pure ;3 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 [Duns] Scotus four elements composing this material world, with a fifth essence peculiar to God and the soul of man. Milton uses this word afterwards ("Paradise Lost," iii. 714)— "Swift to their several quarters hasted then The cumbrous elements, earth, flood, air, fire; (1) Unbreathed. To breathe a norse is to give him such exercise as will afford wholesome play to his lungs; hence, unbreathed is, not exercised, not used or empioyed. See note 1, p. 153. (2) Slinks out, &c.. Virtue, fr. Lat. virtus, manly courage, applied morally, conveys the idea of effort and conflict. The virtue that shrinks from the battle-field is no virtue at all. (3) Blank, pure. The former word (etymologically connected with blink, blanch, bleach, bleak, black) denotes a natural quality, the latter an acquired one; that is blank which retains its original brightness, clearness, or whiteness; that is pure which has been cleansed from pollution of some sort. Blank paper is white, unsullied, unspotted; pure gold is that which has been purified. Milton ("Paradise Regained," i. 74) has "And fit them so Purified, to receive him pure." Plank virtue is simply untried; pure virtue that which has been purified by trial. (4) Excremental. The noun from which this is derived is now only used in an offensive sense; but it was not so in Milton's time. Prynne, writing (in 1628) on the "Unloveliness of Lovelocks," denounces those who "wear false hair or periwigs, or frizzled and powdered bushes of borrowed excrement, as if they were ashamed of the head of God's making, and proud of the tirewoman's." The word merely meant that which was separated (excretum) from the main substance of the body, and was applied to nails and corns, as well as hair. Excremental in the text Deans adventitious, or extrinsic, being no part of the substance. 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.1 2 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 (order) 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 gramercy3 to be (for being) 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 "bin" else a "meer" artificial Adam, such an Adam as he is in the motions. We ourselves esteem not of3 that obedience, or love, or gift, which is of force; God therefore left him free, set before him a provoking (exciting, tempting) 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 cannot from all, in such a universal thing (in things so universally diffused) 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, (1) See Spenser's "Faery Queen," book ii. cantos 7 and 12. (2) Pittance, fr. Fr. pitance, the food doled out to the poor at a monastery. The etymology of pitance is quite undetermined. (3) Gramercy, fr. Fr. grand merci, great thanks. Wilson ("Arte of Logike") has "This childe is a goode boie, gramercie rodde " (i.e. great thanks to the rod!). (4) Motions-the name formerly given to a puppet-show, in which the poupées, or dolls, were moved by wires from behind. Shakspere ("Winter's Tale ") says of Autolycus, "He compassed a motion of the prodigal son," &c. (5) Esteem not of. To esteem of is a very unusual, if not unique, expression : "esteems the growth," see p. 170, follows the ordinary usage. ye cannot make them chaste, that came not thither so; such great care and wisdom is required to the right managing of this point. Suppose we could expel sin by this means; look how much we thus expel of sin, so much we expel of virtue; for the matter of them both is the same; remove that, and ye 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 imit and satiety. Why should we then affect a rigour 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 (a small quantity) of welldoing should be preferred before many times as much [of] the forcible hindrance of evil-doing. For God sure (surely) esteems the growth and completing of one virtuous person more then " the restraint of ten "vitious." And albeit (although) whatever thing we hear or see sitting, walking, travelling, or conversing, may be fitly called our book, and is of the same effect that writings are, yet grant the thing to be prohibited were only books, it appears that this order (the order of the licenser) hitherto is far insufficient to the end which it intends. 6. RESTRICTIONS ON GENERAL LIBERTY OF ACTION. (FROM THE SAME WORK.) Ir we think to "regulat "2 printing, thereby to rectify manners, we must "regulat" all recreations and pastimes, all that is delightful to man. No music must be heard, no song be set (composed) or sung, but what is grave and Doric3 (solemn). (1) Book. Sidney, in the " Arcadia," has "Thus both trees and each thing else be the books of a fancy." (2) Regulat, examin, separat. Milton seems to have adopted as a principle in orthography, that pronunciation, and not etymology, was to govern usage. He wrote, therefore, med'cine, cov'nant, pris'ner, as also forren, iland, &c. In the text examin, &c., is written for the same reason. He rejects the e, both because it is quiescent and in order to make the syllable short. (3) Doric. In Plato's ideal "Republic," the Doric and Phrygian music was admitted, but the Ionic and Lydian excluded, as effeminate. 914 There must be licensing [of] dancers, that no gesture, motion, or deportment be taught our youth, but what by their (i.e. the licensers') allowance' (approval) shall be thought honest (proper, respectable); for such Plato (ie. in his "Republic") was provided of (with). It will ask more " then " the work of twenty licensers to "examin "2 all the lutes, the violins, and the 66 ghittars" 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 "balcone's "3 must be thought on: there are shrewd books with dangerous "frontispices set to sale; who shall prohibit them? Shall twenty licensers? The villages also must have their visitors (inspectors) to enquire what lectures the bagpipe and the "rebbeck" (fiddle) reads even to the ballatry and the gamut (ballad-singing and scraping) of every municipal (town) fiddler; for these are the countryman's "Arcadia's "5 and his Monte Mayors. Next, what more national corruption, for which England hears ill (is ill-spoken of) abroad, "then" household gluttony; who shall be the rectors (controllers) of our daily rioting? and what shall be done to inhibit (restrain) the multitudes that frequent those houses where "drunk'nes" is sold and harboured? Our garments also should be referred to the licensing of some more sober work-masters, to see them cut into less wanton garb. Who shall "regulat " all the mixt conversation (intercourse) of our youth, male and female together, as (1) Allowance. See note 1, p. 123. (2) See note 2, p. 170. (3) Balcone's, i.e. balconies. This is an instance, spelt exactly as in the original edition, of a foreign word, in the act, as it were, of being born into English. It is the Italian word balcone pluralised by crudely putting an s, and stopping off the word from its inflexion by an apostrophe. After a time, the word was spelt as pronounced, balcony, and then no longer treated as a stranger, but pluralised, like others of the same class. (4) Frontispices. This is the correct spelling, fr. low Lat. frontispicium, the front look or façade of a building. "Piece" is utterly wrong, and mystifies the etymology. (5) Countryman's Arcadias. Sidney's romance is here referred to, and another, called "Diana," by George of Monte Mayor, a Spanish writer. These books were the favourite reading of high-born ladies and gentlemen, especially the former, in Queen Elizabeth's reign. The ballads sung in the villages and the music of the town fiddler were for the villagers what the above romances were for the gentry. (6) Hears ill. This is a pure Lat. idiom, male audire. Jonson (Dedication to "the Fox") has "Being an age wherein piety, and the professors of it, hear so ill are so ill-spoken of) on all sides," &c. |