"in Athens and free Rome" would refuse to look at MILTON's politico-classical pages! But to the AREOPAGITICA.

In August 1644, his "Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce," then newly published, had been inveighed against from the Pulpit by a fanatical Preacher before the Parliament, who exhorted the two Houses to vote their reprobation of it; and the Assembly, or Convocation of non-conforming Divines, procured the Authour to be summoned before the House of Lords: that House dismissed him however without its suppression. Attacks on the Freedom of Discussion like these, and in his own case, must have been additional incentives for him to comply with alacrity when importuned to stand forward the Champion of intellectual Liberty. The Tract before us appeared in the November following; and certain passages should be regarded as levelled at these petulant adversaries. But throughout this address to the Lords and Commons, he is evidently anxious to be understood to controvert this Ordinance under an entire confidence, that they would hearken to the voice of Truth, and had been surprised into this ill-advised pro

cedure, thus adroitly showing that he had no desire to impute to them motives which might shake the public confidence reposed in their integrity and good intentions.

Dryden impeached the Defence of the English People as having been in part purloined from Buchanan's Dialogue de Jure Regni apud Scotos. Whether this accusation be well grounded, or whether Dryden was willing to mistake for plagiarism the natural, and, it is most likely, unavoidable coincidence of sentiment between two masterly Writers, discussing the grounds and reasons of free Government under predilections similar, and equally strong, it would be foreign to my undertaking to collate their respective works for the purpose of ascertaining. Here it will be sufficient to remark, that no such charge can be preferred against our Authour for the, ensuing pages. (In proclaiming the doctrine that no Writing ought to be subjected to censure previous to publication, MILTON appears, at least so far as my enquiries have reached, to have the merit of being the earliest in any country who formally asserted the Rights of the Press against the usurpation of a Licenser: a proud, an illustrious

e

distinction which the breath of Calumny can

never tarnish.

Not adverting to this circumstance, a late Poet Laureate hastily imputed that as a fault in this Oration which such a situation prescribed. He therefore qualified the liberal praise he bestowed on it by excepting some " tedious historical digressions."

I have

never met with an Editor, who, for throwing his mind back to the Authour's time, and reading a work in the full spirit in which it was written, can be set in competition with Mr. Warton. Consequently, it is an occurrence extremely rare to discover in the very miscellaneous matter of his Annotations a confused or imperfect perception of the passage which he is considering, through inattention to the existing circumstances of the Writer's day. These "historical digressions" are, I agree with him, dilated: that they would be superfluous in a Publication in the decline of the eighteenth century is likewise allowed. "The date is out of such prolixity." But the tasteful Critic happened to overlook, that the informed class of the community was at that time much less numerous than it is at present; and that the

Liberty of the Press was to MILTON and to his contemporaries a topic of discussion altogether new. It followed, that it was incumbent on him to open it considerably more in detail than would at this time be requisite. Then how was he to develope the reasoning satisfactorily without some prelusive strictures of historical investigation? In regard to their political Education, the Public, we should remember, were still in their infancy, and it was indispensable to initiate them in the rudiments. Without something of this nature they could not have understood, or would not have acknowleged, the principle. It is somewhere remarked by Lord Bacon of Luther, that finding "his own "solitude," and in no ways aided by contemporary opinion, the Father of religious Reformation was forced to awaken all Antiquity, that he might call it to his succour and "make a party against his own time." For a like reason, MILTON began with showing, that "no Nation or well-instituted State, if they valued Books at all, did ever use this way of Licensing."

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The darkness then prevalent, that is comparatively with the brighter days, and the wider

spread of intellectual light which we enjoy, induced Writers of every description to be full and circumstantial, and to exercise little discrimination in selecting. Our Poets were slow in learning the art to blot; and not unfrequently lost themselves in expansion. Few Prose-writers had any fear, that they could oppress their subject, or weary their Readers. Most of them heaped together all they could amass; like Burton and Hakewill. Of this rambling manner and of the protracted digressions of the age, Waterhous, in his Commentary on Fortescue de Laudibus Legum Angliæ affords many a tedious specimen, and Whitelock's "Notes uppon

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the King's Writt for choosing Members of “Parlement,” are full as desultory and trying to the patience. Not only so, parallels drawn from the Greek and Roman Writers then passed for precedents, from which arguments of great force might be deduced. Now the case is greatly altered. They would inevitably disparage any modern production, as an idle and ambitious vanity to display that sort of reading, of which it would at this day be an affront to suppose any man above the common level, ignorant. Even the