are unimportant and may be forgotten; if but that the attention may be riveted upon the picture. The thought of these English Writers is not dead. It flumbers. Understand and then fubtract from it, the local colouring of time and circumftance, and it is instinct with life: either the noxious life of foul delufive error, or the ethereal life of Truth. We have not, as yet, in all things attained to the height of our Predeceffors' far-feeing conception: and even the just measuring of their many mistakes and errors may not be time and effort thrown away. While there is very much for us to learn from our Ancients, both in what they faid and their manner of saying it; there bids fair to be an increasing number of learners among the Moderns. England is on the eve of a great Education, in the which the unlettered will become readers, the readers ftudents, the students scholars. With this wider variety and increased power of the English mind, the diligent study of the national Literature and Language can hardly fail both to spread and to deepen. The number of fuch learners tends therefore to multiply, until it fhall be reputed a disgrace to be ignorant of our mother tongue and of that which it enfhrines. There is also no better or more essential preparative for the outcome of a glorious literature in the Future, than the careful study and accurate appreciation of the treasures of the Paft. The prefent MerchantAdventurer will efteem the English Reprints' to be crowned with a happy fuccefs; if-bringing those treasures, as from afar, to every one's home, and there difplaying them to a more public gaze-they fhall, in however infignificant a degree, tend to that happy End. The Printing Prefs, among many advantages, brought to its early poffeffors one conftant perplexity, which, however, affumed different forms to different minds. The power of every man, of every educated man, was by it immensely increased for good or for evil. The true-hearted grieved over the facility the prefs gave to the spread of error. The high-bred defpot chafed at the new power ceafeleffly exercised by the low-bred intellect in questioning and adjusting his prerogative, in destroying his would-be almightinefs in the mind of the people, in bringing him under Law. The ministers of the religions then extant were alarmed at the ready promulgation of those reftlefs inquiries into the ultimate nature of all things, left they should undermine the foundations of civil fociety and ecclefiaftical polity, and fo reduce the world to chaotic confufion. Thus fome from confcientious duty, others with a wicked fatisfaction, all unitedly or in turn, joined in clogging the Prefs, in curtailing the new power that God in His Providence had bestowed upon mankind. Dr. Johnson, in his Life of Milton—which, either for wilful mifreprefentation or crafs incapacity to appreciate his fubject, is to his perpetual difcredit-fairly represents the views of one fide on the Liberty of the Prefs, and through that the boundless liberty of human thought. "The danger of fuch unbounded liberty, and the danger of bounding it, have produced a problem in the science of Government which human understanding seems hitherto unable to folve. If nothing may be published but what civil authority shall have previously approved, power muft always be the standard of truth; if every dreamer of innovations may propagate his projects, there can be no fettlement; if every murmurer at government may diffuse discontent, there can be no peace; and if every fceptick in theology may teach his follies, there can be no religion. The remedy against these evils is to punish the authors; for it is yet allowed that every fociety may punish, though not prevent, the publication of opinions, which that fociety fhall think pernicious; but this punishment, though it may crush the author, promotes the book; and i. feems not more reasonable to leave the right of printing unreftrained, because writers may be afterwards cenfured, than it would be to fleep with doors unbolted, because by our laws we can hang a thief.' Milton's answer to this had been already written :"Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience above all liberties. † . . . Though all • Lives of English Poets, I., 153, 154. London, 1781. † p. 73. the windes of doctrin were let loofe to play upon the earth, fo Truth be in the field, we do injurioufly by licencing and prohibiting to mifdoubt her strengh. Let her and Falfhood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the wors, in a free and open encounter. Her confuting is the beft and sureft fupreffing. Who knows not that Truth is strong next to the Almighty; fhe needs no policies, no ftratagems, no licencings to make her victorious, thofe are the shifts and the defences that error uses against her power."* As we learn from his Second Defence-written ten years after the prefent work-the fingularly conceptive mind of Milton had grouped into one cycle fubjects of no apparent immediate connection. Epifcopacy, Divorce, Education, Freedom of the Individual, Freedom of the Press, had, to his mind, one point of identity and contact, one connecting link,-Liberty. This, a cardinal thought of his entire life, seems to have almoft overpowered him, as he faw the break-up of the fyftem of the Thorough, the nation uprising against the tyranny of a few, and laying-for all coming ages -the foundations of that religious, civil, and domestic Liberty, which it is our happiness to enjoy. Of that great cycle, the 'Areopagitica' occupies but a fubordinate part, Milton classifying it under domestic liberty with divorce and education. He there also tells us, his purpose in writing it : "I wrote my Areopagitica, in order to deliver the prefs from the restraints with which it was encumbered; that the power of determining what was true and what was falfe, what ought to be published and what to be fuppreffed, might no longer be entrufted to a few illiterate and illiberal individuals, who refused their fanction to any work which contained views or fentiments at all above the level of the vulgar fuperftition."† The following Orders, &c., have been reprinted; partly to give the groundwork of fact to Milton's argument; partly to show the strong hand and the blunt mind of our Ancestors in refpect to the Prefs; and partly to affift to a more perfect realization of the antagonistic ideas and circumftances, in the midst of which, Milton conceived the 'Areopagitica,' and so to render more apparent its beauty and originality. ⚫ p. 74 + Profe Works, I., 259: ST. JOHN'S Ed., 1848 A DECREE OF Starre-Chamber, CONCERNING PRINTING, Made the eleventh day of July Imprinted at London by Robert Barker cilio ibidem, vndecimo die Iulij, Anno decimo tertio His day Sir Iohn Bankes Knight, His Maieflies Attourney Generall, produced in Court a Decree drawn and penned by the aduice of the Right Honourable the Lord Keeper of the great Seale of England, the moft Reuerend Father in God the Lord Arch-Bishop of Canterbury his Grace, the Right Honorable and Right Reuerend Father in God the Lord Bishop of London Lord high Treasurer of England, the Lord chiefe Iuftices, and the Lord chiefe Baron, touching the regulating of Printers and Founders of letters, whereof the Court hauing confideration, the said Decree was directed and ordered to be here Recorded, and to the end the fame may be publique, and that euery one whom it may concerne may take notice thereof, The Court hath now alfo ordered, That the said Decree fhall fpeedily be Printed, and that the same be fent to His Maiefties Printer for that purpofe. Whereas the three and twentieth day of Iune in the eight ana twentieth yere of the reigne of the late Queene Elizabeth, ana before, diuers Decrees and Ordinances haue beene made for the better gouernment and regulating of Printers ana Frinting, which Orders and Decrees haue beene founa by experience to be defectiue in fome particulars; Ana diuers abufes have fithence arifen, and beene practifed by the craft and malice of wicked and euill difpofed perfons, to the preiudice of the publike; And diuers libellous, seditious, and mutinous bookes haue beene vnduly printed, and other bookes and papers without licence, to the disturbance of the peace of the Church and State: For preuention whereof in time to come, It is now Ordered and Decreed, That the faid former Decrees and Ordinances fhall fland in force with these Additions, Explanations, and Alterations following, viz. |