are unimportant and may be forgotten; if but th the attention may be riveted upon the picture. Th thought of these English Writers is not dead. flumbers. Understand and then subtract from it, th local colouring of time and circumstance, and it inftinct with life: either the noxious life of fo delufive error, or the ethereal life of Truth. W have not, as yet, in all things attained to the heig of our Predeceffors' far-feeing conception: and eve the just measuring of their many mistakes and erro may not be time and effort thrown away. While there is very much for us to learn from o Ancients, both in what they said and their manner faying it; there bids fair to be an increasing numbe of learners among the Moderns. England is on th eve of a great Education, in the which the unlettere will become readers, the readers ftudents, the studen scholars. With this wider variety and increase power of the English mind, the diligent study of th national Literature and Language can hardly fa both to spread and to deepen. The number of fu learners tends therefore to multiply, until it shall reputed a disgrace to be ignorant of our mother tong and of that which it enshrines. There is also no better or more effential preparati for the outcome of a glorious literature in the Futur than the careful study and accurate appreciation the treasures of the Past. The prefent Merchan Adventurer will efteem the English Reprints' to b crowned with a happy fuccefs; if-bringing tho treasures, as from afar, to every one's home, and the displaying them to a more public gaze-they shall, however infignificant a degree, tend to that happy En The Printing Prefs, among many advantages, broug to its early poffeffors one conftant perplexity, whic however, affumed different forms to different mind The power of every man, of every educated man, w by it immensely increased for good or for evil. Th Tue-hearted grieved over the facility the prefs gave the spread of error. The high-bred defpot chafed t the new power ceafeleffly exercised by the low-bred atellect in queftioning and adjusting his prerogative, 1 destroying his would-be almightiness in the mind of he people, in bringing him under Law. The ministers f the religions then extant were alarmed at the ready romulgation of those restless inquiries into the ultiate nature of all things, left they should undermine he foundations of civil fociety and ecclefiaftical polity, nd fo reduce the world to chaotic confufion. Thus me from confcientious duty, others with a wicked tisfaction, all unitedly or in turn, joined in clogging he Prefs, in curtailing the new power that God in His Providence had bestowed upon mankind. Dr. Johnfon, in his Life of Milton-which, either or wilful mifreprefentation or crafs incapacity to apreciate his subject, is to his perpetual difcredit-fairly epresents the views of one fide on the Liberty of the refs, and through that the boundless liberty of uman thought. "The danger of fuch unbounded liberty, and the danger of Sounding it, have produced a problem in the science of Governent which human understanding seems hitherto unable to folve. nothing may be published but what civil authority shall have reviously approved, power muft always be the standard of uth; if every dreamer of innovations may propagate his procts, there can be no fettlement; if every murmurer at governent may diffuse discontent, there can be no peace; and if every eptick in theology may teach his follies, there can be no reli on. The remedy against these evils is to punish the authors; r it is yet allowed that every society may punish, though not event, the publication of opinions, which that society shall ink pernicious; but this punishment, though it may crush the thor, promotes the book; and it seems not more reasonable to ave the right of printing unrestrained, because writers may be terwards cenfured, than it would be to fleep with doors unbolted, cause 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 cording to confcience above all liberties. † Though all Lives of English Poets, I., 153, 154. London, 1781. † p. 73. THOUGH ALL the windes of doctrin were let loose to play upon the ear fo Truth be in the field, we do injurioufly by licencing and pr hibiting to mifdoubt her strengh. Let her and Falfhood grapp who ever knew Truth put to the wors, in a free and open counter. Her confuting is the best and sureft fupreffing. Who knows not that Truth is ftrong next to the Almighty; t needs no policies, no ftratagems, no licencings to make her v torious, thofe are the shifts and the defences that error u against her power. As we learn from his Second Defence-written t years after the present work—the fingularly concepti mind of Milton had grouped into one cycle fubjec of no apparent immediate connection. Epifcopac Divorce, Education, Freedom of the Individual, Fre dom of the Prefs, had, to his mind, one point of ide tity and contact, one connecting link, Liber This, a cardinal thought of his entire life, feems have almost overpowered him, as he faw the breakof the system of the Thorough, the nation uprising agai the tyranny of a few, and laying-for all coming ag -the foundations of that religious, civil, and domet Liberty, which it is our happiness to enjoy. Of that great cycle, the 'Areopagitica' occupies b a fubordinate part, Milton claffifying it under domet liberty with divorce and education. He there a tells us, his purpose in writing it : "I wrote my Areopagitica, in order to deliver the prefs fr the restraints with which it was encumbered; that the power determining what was true and what was falfe, what ought to published and what to be fuppreffed, might no longer be trusted to a few illiterate and illiberal individuals, who refu their fanction to any work which contained views or fentime at all above the level of the vulgar fuperftition."† The following Orders, &c., have been reprinte partly to give the groundwork of fact to Milton's arg ment; partly to show the strong hand and the blu mind of our Ancestors in respect to the Prefs; a partly to affift to a more perfect realization of the tagonistic ideas and circumftances, in the midft which, Milton conceived the 'Areopagitica,' and so render more apparent its beauty and originality. * p. 74. + Profe Works, I., 259: ST. JOHN'S Ed., 1848. DECREE OF Starre-Chamber, CONCERNING PRINTING, Made the eleventh day of July Imprinted at London by Robert Barker In Camera Stellata coram Con cilio ibidem, vndecimo die His day Sir Iohn Bankes Knight, His Ma ieflies Attourney Generall, produced in Cour a Decree drawn and penned by the aduice of the Right Honourable the Lord Keeper of the great Seale of England, the moft Reuerend Fo ther in God the Lord Arch-Bishop of Canterbury his Grace, the Right Honorable and Right Reuerend Father. in God the Lord Bishop of London Lord high Treasurer of England, the Lord chiefe Iuftices, and the Lord chieft Baron, touching the regulating of Printers and Founders of letters, whereof the Court hauing confideration, the said Decree was directed and ordered to be here Recorded, and to the end the fame may be publique, and that euery on whom it may concerne may take notice thereof, The Cour hath now alfo ordered, That the said Decree fhall fpeedily be Printed, and that the same be fent to His Maiefties Printer for that purpofe. Whereas the three and twentiet day of Tune in the eight ana twentieth yere of the reigne of the late Queene Elizabeth, and before, diuers Decrees and Ordinances haue beene made for the better gouernment and regulating of Printers and Printing, which Orders and Decrees have beene found by experience to be defectiu in fome particulars; Ana diuers abufes have fithenc arifen, and beene practifed by the craft and malice of wicked and euill difpofed perfons, to the preiudice of the publike; And diuers libellous, seditious, and mutinous bookes hau beene unduly printed, and other bookes and papers without licence, to the disturbance of the peace of the Church and State: For prevention whereof in time to come, It is now Ordered and Decreed, That the faid former Decrees and Ordinances fhall fland in force with these Additions, Explanations, and Alterations following, viz. |