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66 EXTRACTS FROM THE

AREOPAGITICA.”

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musing, searching, revolving new notions and ideas wherewith to present, as with their homage and their fealty, the approaching reformation; others, as fast reading, trying all things, assenting to the force of reason and convincement. This is a lively and cheerful presage of our happy success and victory. For as in a body when the blood is fresh, the spirits pure and vigorous, not only to vital, but to rational faculties, and those in the acutest and the pertest operations of wit and subtlety, it argues in what good plight and constitution the body is; so, when the cheerfulness of the people is so sprightly up as that it has not only wherewith to guard well its own freedom and safety, but to spare, and to bestow upon the solidest and sublimest points of controversy and new invention, it betokens us not degenerated, nor drooping to a fatal decay, by casting off the old and wrinkled skin of corruption, to outlive these pangs, and wax young again, entering the glorious ways of truth and prosperous virtue, destined to become great and honourable in these latter ages. Methinks I see in my mind a noble and puissant nation rousing herself like a strong man after sleep, and shaking her invincible locks; methinks I see her as an eagle, mewing1 her mighty youth, and kindling her undazzled eyes at the full mid-day beam; purging and unsealing her long-abused sight at the fountain itself of heavenly radiance; while the whole noise of timorous and flocking birds, with those also that love the twilight, flutter about, amazed at what she means, and, in their envious gabble, would prognosticate a year of sects and schisms.

What should ye do, then? Should ye suppress all this flowery crop of knowledge and new light sprung up, and yet springing daily, in this city? Should ye set an oligarchy of twenty engrossers 2 over it, to bring a famine upon our minds again, when we shall know nothing but what is measured to us by their bushel? Believe it, Lords and Commons, they who counsel ye to such a suppressing, do as good as bid ye suppress yourselves; and I will soon show how. If it be desired to know the immediate cause of all this free writing and free speaking, there cannot be assigned a truer than your own mild, and free, and humane government; it is the liberty, Lords and Commons, which your own valorous and happy counsels have purchased us; liberty, which is the nurse of all great wits,— this is that which hath rarified and enlightened our spirits, like the influence of heaven; this is that which hath enfranchised, enlarged, and lifted up our apprehensions degrees above themselves. Ye cannot make us now less capable, less knowing, less eagerly pursuing of the truth, unless ye first make yourselves, that made us so, less the lovers, less the founders, of our true liberty. We can grow ignorant again, brutish, formal, and slavish, as ye found us; but you, then, must first become that which you cannot be, oppressive,

1 Mewing, i.e., moulting, casting off old and damaged feathers that their place may be supplied with new and uninjured ones. This operation is analogous to the conduct of the people at the time in rejecting old opinions and abolishing old institutions, and replacing them by others; hence Milton's use of the term.

2. e., monopolizers.

arbitrary, and tyrannous, as they were from whom ye have freed us. That our hearts are now more capacious, our thoughts more erected to the search and expectation of greatest and exactest things, is the issue of your own virtue propagated in us; ye cannot suppress that, unless ye reinforce an abrogated and merciless law, that fathers may dispatch at will their own children; and who shall then stick closest to ye and excite others? Not he who takes up arms for coat and conduct, and his four nobles of Danegelt.1 Although I dispraise not the defence of just immunities, yet I love my peace better, if that were all. Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely, according to conscience, above all liberties.

2. OPINION OF MILTON, IN HIS LATER YEARS, OF THE CIVIL WAR.2(INTRODUCTORY REMARKS TO BOOK III. OF HISTORY OF BRITAIN.")

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In the late troubles, a Parliament being called to redress many things, as it was thought, the people, with great courage and expectation to be eased of what discontented them, chose for their behoof in Parliament such as they thought best affected to the public good, and some, indeed, men of wisdom and integrity; the rest (to be sure the greater part), whom wealth or ample possessions, or bold and active ambition rather than merit, had commended to the same place.

But when once the superficial zeal and popular fumes that acted their new magistracy were cooled and spent in them, straight every one betook himself (setting the Commonwealth behind, his private ends before,) to do as his own profit or ambition led him. Then was justice delayed, and soon after denied; spite and favour determined all hence faction, thence treachery, both at home and in the field; everywhere wrong and oppression; foul and horrid deeds committed daily, or maintained in secret or in open. Some who had been called from shops or warehouses, without other merit, to sit in supreme councils and committees (as their breeding was), fell to huckster the Commonwealth. Others did thereafter as men could soothe and humour them best; so he who would give most, or, under covert of hypocritical zeal, insinuate basest, enjoyed unworthily the rewards of learning and fidelity, or escaped the punishment of his crimes and misdeeds. Their votes and ordinances, which men looked should have contained the repealing of bad laws, and the immediate constitution of better, resounded with nothing else but new impositions, taxes, excises,-yearly, monthly, weekly. Not to reckon the offices, gifts, and preferments bestowed and shared among themselves, they in the meanwhile who were ever faithfulest to this cause, and freely aided them in person or with

1 The Danegelt was a tax imposed on the people to defray the expense of resisting the invasions of the Danes, or to purchase peace by an ignominious tribute. It was first levied by King Ethelred, and was abolished by Stephen.

2 This highly-instructive retrospect of the proceedings in which he was engaged has been very frequently suppressed in editions of Milton's works.

MILTON'S OPINION ON THE CIVIL WAR.

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their substance when they durst not compel either, slighted and bereaved after of their just debts by greedy sequestrations, were tossed up and down, after miserable attendance from one committee to another with petitions in their hands, yet either missed the obtaining of their suit, or though it were at length granted (mere shame and reason ofttimes extorting from them at least a show of justice), yet, by their sequestrators and subcommittees abroad, men for the most part of insatiable hands and noted disloyalty,those orders were commonly disobeyed; which, for certain, durst not have been without secret compliance, if not compact, with some superiors able to bear them out. There were of their own number those who secretly contrived and fomented those troubles and combustions in the land which openly they sat to remedy, and who would continually find such work as should keep them from being ever brought to that terrible stand of laying down their authority.

one.

And if the state were in this plight, religion was not in much better, to reform which a certain number of divines' were called, neither chosen by any rule or custom ecclesiastical, nor eminent for either piety or knowledge above others left out,—only as each member of Parliament in his private fancy thought fit, so elected one by The most part of them were such as had preached and cried down, with great show of zeal, the avarice and pluralities of bishops and prelates that one cure of souls was a full employment for one spiritual pastor, how able soever, if not a charge above human strength. Yet these conscientious men (ere any part of the work done for which they came together, and that on the public salary) wanted not boldness, to the ignominy and scandal of their pastorlike profession, and especially of their boasted reformation, to seize into their hands, or not unwillingly to accept (besides one, sometimes two or more of the best livings) collegiate masterships in the universities, rich lectures in the city, setting sail to all winds that might blow gain into their covetous bosoms: by which means these great rebukers of non-residence among so many distant cures were not ashamed to be seen so quickly pluralists and non-residents themselves, to a fearful condemnation, doubtless, by their own mouths.

Thus they who of late were extolled as our greatest deliverers, and had the people wholly at their devotion, by so discharging the trust as we see, did not only weaken and unfit themselves to be dispensers of what liberty they pretended, but unfitted also the people, now grown worse and more disordinate, to receive or to digest any liberty at all. For stories teach us that liberty, sought out of season, in a corrupt and degenerate age, brought Rome itself to a farther slavery; for liberty hath a sharp and double edge, fit only to be handled by just and virtuous men; to bad and dissolute, it becomes a mischief, unwieldy in their own hands; neither is it completely given but by them who have the happy skill to know what is grievance and unjust to a people, and how to remove it

1 Milton here refers to the Westminster Assembly.

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wisely; what good laws are wanting, and how to frame them sub stantially, that good men may enjoy the freedom which they merit, and the bad the curb which they need. But to do this, and to know these exquisite proportions, the heroic wisdom which is required, surmounted far the principles of these narrow politicians. Britain, to speak a truth not often spoken, as it is a land fruitful enough of men courageous and stout in war, so it is naturally not over fertile of men able to govern justly and prudently in peace, trusting only in their mother wit; valiant, indeed, and prosperous to win a field; but to know the end and reason of winning, injudicious and unwise; in good or bad success alike unteachable. For the sun, which we want, ripens wits as well as fruits; and as wine and oil are imported to us from abroad, so must ripe understanding and many civil virtues be imported into our minds from foreign writings and examples of best ages: we shall else miscarry still, and come short in the attempts of any great enterprise.1

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3. MILTON'S PERSONAL APPEARANCE. (FROM THE SECOND DEFENCE OF THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND.")

It is of no moment to say anything of personal appearance; yet, lest any one, from the representations of my enemies, should be led to imagine that I have either the head of a dog or the horn of a rhinoceros, I will say something on the subject, that I may have an opportunity of paying my grateful acknowledgments to the Deity, and of refuting the most shameless lies. I do not believe that I was ever once noted for deformity by any one who ever saw me ; but the praise of beauty I am not anxious to obtain. My stature certainly is not tall, but it rather approaches the middle than the diminutive. Yet, what if it were diminutive, when so many men, illustrious both in peace and war, have been the same? And how can that be called diminutive which is great enough for every virtuous achievement? Nor, though very thin, was I ever deficient in courage or in strength; and I was wont constantly to exercise myself in the use of the broadsword, as long as it comported with my habit and my years. Armed with this weapon, as I usually was, I should have thought myself quite a match for any one, though much stronger than myself, and I felt perfectly secure against the assault of any open enemy. At this moment I have the same courage, the same strength, though not the same eyes; yet so little do they betray any external appearance of injury, that they are as unclouded and bright as the eyes of those who most distinctly see. In this instance alone I am a dissembler against my will. My face, which is said to indicate a total privation of blood, is of a complexion entirely opposite to the pale and the cadaver1 The record of Milton's experience given in this extract, after every allowance is made for such exaggeration as would naturally proceed from the disappointment of his youthful hopes, furnishes a complete refutation of the half-fabulous romances that have been sometimes written as the history of the Commonwealth, while it abundantly corroborates the accounts given by judicious writers such as Hallam.

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ous; so that, though I am more than forty years old, there is scarcely any one to whom I do not appear ten years younger than I am, and the smoothness of my skin is not, in the least, affected by the wrinkles of age. I wish that I could, with equal facility, refute what this barbarous opponent has said of my blindness; but I cannot do it, and I must submit to the affliction. It is not so wretched to be blind as it is not to be capable of enduring blindness. But why should I not endure a misfortune which it behoves every one to be prepared to endure if it should happen,-which may, in the common course of things, happen to any man, and which has been known to happen to the most distinguished and virtuous persons in history? Shall I mention those wise and ancient bards whose misfortunes the gods are said to have compensated by superior endowments, and whom men so much revered, that they chose rather to impute their want of sight to the injustice of Heaven than to their own want of innocence or virtue? With respect to myself, though I have accurately examined my conduct and scrutinized my soul, I call thee, O God, the searcher of hearts, to witness, that I am not conscious, either in the more early or in the later periods of my life, of having committed any enormity which might deservedly have marked me out as a fit object for such a calamitous visitation.

VIII. THOMAS HOBBES.

HOBBES was born at Malmesbury in 1588. He was educated at Oxford, and had the good fortune to become connected with the Devonshire family, who appreciated his services as tutor so highly that he ever after resided and travelled with them, and thus enjoyed the opportunity of becoming acquainted with many of his most famous contemporaries with Bacon, and Jonson, Galileo, and Descartes. On the outbreak of the civil war, he adopted the Royalist principles, and apprehensive that the vigour with which he defended them might excite the violence of the dominant party, he retired to Paris, but shortly after returned to England, and found an undisturbed shelter in the house of his patron, in the congenial society of Cowley and Selden. Charles II., on his restoration, rewarded the services of Hobbes, who had formerly been his tutor, with a pension of £100, but the strong opposition made by the clergy against the principles taught in the works of Hobbes prevented his enjoying much benefit from the patronage of the monarch. He therefore lived in retirement at Chatsworth, the seat of the Earl of Devonshire, where he busied himself in literary pursuits till his death in 1679..

His works are numerous and varied: the chief are a "Translation of Thucydides," a "Treatise on Human Nature," "Leviathan, or the Matter, Form, and Power of a Commonwealth, Ecclesiastical and Civil," "Translations of the Odyssey and Iliad," and "Behemoth, or a History of the Civil Wars." His philosophical writings have exercised great influence on opinion ever since his time, and have provoked

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