his reasonableness. More than anywhere else he affects the character of
a practical man, pressing home arguments addressed to the understanding
rather than to the pure reason. He points out sensibly, and for him
calmly, that the censorship is a Papal invention, contrary to the
precedents of antiquity; that while it cannot prevent the circulation of
bad books, it is a grievous hindrance to good ones; that it destroys the
sense of independence and responsibility essential to a manly and
fruitful literature. We hear less than might have been expected about
first principles, of the sacredness of conscience, of the obligation on
every man to manifest the truth as it is within him. He does not dispute
that the magistrate may suppress opinions esteemed dangerous to society
after they have been published; what he maintains is that publication
must not be prevented by a board of licensers. He strikes at the censor,
not at the Attorney-General. This judicious caution cramped Milton's
eloquence; for while the "Areopagitica" is the best example he has given
us of his ability as an advocate, the diction is less magnificent than
usual. Yet nothing penned by him in prose is better known than the
passage beginning, "Methinks I see in my mind a noble and puissant
nation;" and none of his writings contain so many seminal sentences,
pithy embodiments of vital truths. "Revolutions of ages do not oft
recover the loss of a rejected truth." "A dram of well-doing should be
preferred before many times as much the forcible hindrance of evil
doing. For God more esteems the growth and completing of one virtuous
person than the restraint of ten vicious." "Opinion in good men is but
knowledge in the making." "A man maybe a heretic in the truth." Towards
the end the argument takes a wider sweep, and Milton, again the poet and
the seer, hails with exultation the approach of the time he thinks he
discerns when all the Lord's people shall be prophets. "Behold now this
vast city, a city of refuge, the mansion house of liberty, encompassed
and surrounded with His protection; the shop of war hath not there more
anvils and hammers working to fashion out the plates and instruments of
armed justice in defence of beleaguered truth, than there be pens and
heads there, sitting by their studious lamps, musing, searching,
revolving new notions and ideas wherewith to present, as with their
homage and their fealty, the approaching reformation." He clearly
indicates t