to count me not equall to any of those who had this priviledge, I would obtain to be thought not so inferior, as your selves are superior to the most of them who receiv'd their counsell: and how farre you excell them, be assur'd, Lords and Commons! there can no greater testimony appear, then when your prudent spirit acknowledges and obeyes the voice of reason, from what quarter soever it be heard speaking; and renders ye as willing to repeal any Act of your own setting forth, as any set forth by your Predecessors. If ye be thus resolv'd, as it were injury to thinke ye were not, I know not what should withhold me from presenting ye with a fit instance wherein to shew both that love of Truth which ye eminently professe, and that uprightnesse of your judgement See the sketch of his Ethical Poem, in which he projected to show, that a full development of Intellect may under due culture be the growth of every Country. "How rude soe'er the exteriour form we find, By the way, it is singular enough, that Gray's first Editor, himself a Poet, should not have perceived that his Authour, in the proemial lines to the exquisite fragment he left of this philosophical work, was emulating the majestic march of Dryden. In his own disposition of the Similies in this exordium, a disposition which Mason would disturb, he is pacing in the very footsteps of his great predecessor. which is not wont to be partiall to your selves; by judging over again that Order which ye have ordain'd to regulate Printing: That no Book, Pamphlet, or Paper shall be henceforth printed, unlesse the same be first approv'd and licenc't by such, or at least one of such as shall be thereto appointed. For that part which preserves justly every mans Copy to himselfe, or provides for the Poor, I touch not, only wish they be not made pretenses to abuse and persecute honest and painfull men, who offend not in either of these particulars. But that other clause of Licencing Books, which we thought had dy'd with his brother quadragesimal and matrimonial when the Prelats expir'd, I shall now attend with such a Homily, as shall lay before ye, first the • For that part which preserves justly every Mans Copy to himselfe, &c.] See this Order in Rushworth's Hist. Collect. V. 335. Lord Mansfield, in the Case of Literary Property, laid considerable stress on this passage, as an authority of weight for the Judgement he was pronouncing in favour of Copyrights: "The single opinion of such a Man as MILTON, speaking after "much consideration upon the very point, is stronger than any "inferences from gathering acorns, and seizing a vacant piece of "ground; when the Writers, so far from thinking of the very "point, speak of an imaginary state of Nature before the inven “tion of Letters.”—Holiday's Life of Lord Mansfield; p. 232, Our Authour could not have ventured to expect that his Tract would be cited from the Bench in such terms of praise by a Chief Justice of England. That other clause of Licensing Books, which we thought had dy'd with his brother quadragesimal and matrimonial, when the Prelats expir'd, I shall now attend with such a Homily,] Quad inventors of it to bee those whom ye will be loath ⚫ to own; next, what is to be thought in generall of reading, what ever sort the Books be; and that this ragesimal:-however quaintly the word now sounds, we must not impute this Latin synonyme for the English Adjective lenten to MILTON as a pedantic intrusion of his own on our language. I find it in The Ordinary, one of Cartwright's Comedies: "But Quadragessimall wits and fancies leane p. 49, 12mo. 1651. Quadragesimal Licenses, I conclude to have been the permissions which, even subsequently to the Reformation, were granted for eating white Meats in Lent, on Ember Days, and on others, which were appointed by Act of Parliament for Fish-Days. "Queen Elizabeth used to say that she would never eat Flesh in Lent without obtaining License from her little black Husband,” (Walton's Life of Hooker: p. 209. ed. 1807) as she called ArchBishop Whitgift. During the inter-regnum, Marriages were by an Ordinance of Parliament solemnized before a civil Magistrate, and without a license. I copy the form of a Certificate on the occasion from the original, now before me. "Sussex. These are to certifie "those whom it may concerne that Thomas Holt of Petersfield "in the County of Southton Clerk, and Charity Shirley of Kird"ford in the County of Sussex, Spinster, were marryed at Plai"stow in the Parish of Kirdford on the one and twentieth of May by Richd. Knowles Esqr. one of the Commissioners "for the Peace in the said County of Sussex. "In the presence of (L. S.) RICH. KNOWLES. " WILLM. MILLWOOD, "JOHN BEATON." MILTON'S allusion must have been to this practice. Homily is here in its original signification-a Discourse, or Discussion: 'Ouλia: see "OMIAOZ, in Steph. Thes. Grac. Order avails nothing to the suppressing of scandalous, seditious, and libellous Books, which were mainly intended to be supprest. Last, that it will be primely to the discouragement of all Learning, and the stop of Truth, not only by disexercising and blunting our abilities in what we know already, but by hindering and cropping the discovery that 2 might bee yet further made both in religious and civill Wisdome. I deny not, but that it is of greatest concernment in the Church and Commonwealth, to have a vigilant eye how Bookes demeane 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 doe contain a potencie of Life in them to be as active as that Soule was whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a violl the purest efficacie and extraction of that living intellect that bred them. I know they are as lively, and as vigorously productive, as those fabulous Dragons teeth; and being sown up and down, may chance to spring up armed men. And yet on the other hand unlesse warinesse be us'd, as good almost kill a Man as kill a good Book; who kills a Man kills a reasonable creature, GODS Image; but hee who destroye a good Booke, kills Reason it selfe, kills the Imageį of GOD, as it were in the eye. Many a Man lives a burden to the Earth; but a good Booke is the C pretious life-blood of a master spirit, imbalm'd and treasur'd up on purpose to a Life beyond Life. "Tis true, no age can restore a Life, whereof perhaps there is no great losse ; and revolutions of ages doe not oft recover the losse 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 labours of publick men, how we spill that season'd Life of Man preserv'd and stor'd up in Books; since we see a kinde of homicide may be thus committed, sometimes a martyrdome; and if it extend to the whole impression, a kinde of massacre, whereof the execution ends not in the slaying of an elementall Life, but strikes at that ethereall and fift essence, the breath of Reason it selfe, slaies an Immortality rather then a Life. But 8 -if it extend to the whole impression, a kinde of massacre whereof the execution ends not in the slaying of an elementall life, but strikes at that ethereall and fift essence, the breath of Reason itselfe; slaies an Immortality rather then a Life.] It is far from unlikely, that this passage floated on Lord Shaftesbury's mind, while remarking that Hobbes "acted in the "spirit of Massacre" by recommending "the very extinguish"ing of Letters," and the extirpation of Greek and Roman Literature (Characteristics; I. 50. 12mo.). The noble Authour well subjoins, "by this reasoning it should follow, that there "can never be any tumults or deposing of Sovereigns at Con"stantinople or in Mogul." But the Writer of the Leviathan had witnessed the instructive lessons taught by antient Learning to Neville and Harrington, to Sydney and MILTON. This it was that made him desirous of its extermination. As now, so in Par. Lost, our Authour availed himself of |