he gilt spur, or the laying of a sword upon his
shoulder to stir him up both by his counsel and his arms, to secure
and protect the weakness of any attempted chastity. So that even these
books, which to many others have been the fuel of wantonness and loose
living, I can not think how, unless by divine indulgence, proved to
me so many incitements, as you have heard to the love and stedfast
observation of that virtue which abhors the society of bordelloes.

IV

IN DEFENSE OF BOOKS[81]

I deny not, but that it is of greatest concernment in the Church and
Commonwealth, to have a vigilant eye how books demean themselves as
well as men; and thereafter 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 purest 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 life-blood 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 ethereal and
fifth essence, the breath of reason itself, slays an immortality
rather than a life. But lest I should be condemned of introducing
license, while I oppose licensing, I refuse not the pains to be so
much historical, as will serve to show what hath been done by ancient
and famous commo