1. The origin, inventors and object of Book licen- 2. What is to be thought in general of reading books, 3. The Order [of 14 June 1643] conduces nothing 29 24 24 25 3 Description of the English nation, The power of Truth, An appeal for toleration, spiritual unity and peace, 80 INTRODUCTION. HAT half-living thing-a book: may be regarded in many ways. It may be confidered in connection with the circumftances which led to its conception and creation; and in the midst of which it appeared. It may be ftudied, as exhibiting the moral intent, the mental power of its author. Its contents may be analysed as to their intrinsic truthfulness or falfity. We may trace and identify its influence upon its own age and on fucceeding generations. This is an apprehenfion of the mind of a book. More than this. We may examine its style, its power and manner of expreffing that mind. The ringing collocation of its words, the harmonious cadence of its fentences, the flashing gem-like beauty of isolated paffages, the juft mapping out of the general argument, the due fubordination of its feveral parts, their final inweaving into one overpowering conclufion these are the features, difcovering, illuminating, enforcing the mind of a book. Much of what is in books is false, much only half true, much true. It is impoffible to separate the tares from the wheat. Every one, therefore of neceffity—muft read discriminatively; often fifting and searching for first principles, often tefting the catenation of an argument, often treasuring up incidental truths for future use; enjoying-as delights by the way-whatever felicity of expreffion, gorgeousness of imagination, vividness of description, or aptnefs of illuftration may glance, like funshine, athwart the path: the journey's end being Truth. The purpose through these English Reprints is to bring this modern age face to face with the works of our forefathers. The Editor and his clumsy framework 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 circumstance, 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 said and their manner of faying 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 fcholars. With this wider variety and increased power of the English mind, the diligent ftudy 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 shall be reputed a disgrace to be ignorant of our mother tongue and of that which it enshrines. There is also no better or more effential 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 displaying them to a more public gaze-they shall, 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 queftioning and adjusting his prerogative, in deftroying 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 Press, 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. 66 The danger of fuch unbounded liberty, and the danger of bounding it, have produced a problem in the science of Government which human understanding feems hitherto unable to folve. If nothing may be published but what civil authority shall have previously approved, power must 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 diffufe discontent, there can be no peace; and if every sceptick 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 it seems 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 confcience above all liberties. † . . . Though all • Lives of English Poets, I., 153, 154. London, 1781. .. † p. 73. |