and monopolizers in the trade of book-selling; who under pretence of the poor in their Company not to be defrauded, and the just retaining of each man his severall copy, which God forbid should be gainsaid, brought 5 divers glosing colours to the House, which were indeed but colours, and serving to no end except it be to exercise a superiority over their neighbours, men who doe not therefore labour in an honest profession to which learning is indetted, that they should be made other 10 mens vassals. Another end is thought was aym'd at by some of them in procuring by petition this Order, that having power in their hands, malignant books might the easier scape abroad, as the event shews. But of these Sophisms and Elenchs of marchandize I skill not. This 15 I know, that errors in a good government and in a bad are equally almost incident; for what Magistrate may not be mis-inform'd, and much the sooner, if liberty of Printing be reduc't into the power of a few? But to redresse willingly and speedily what hath bin err'd, and 20 in highest autority to esteem a plain advertisement more then others have done a sumptuous bribe, is a vertue (honour'd Lords and Commons) answerable to Your highest actions, and whereof none can participat but greatest and wisest men.

NOTES.

Page 1.

NOTES.

Observe that the Speech opens with what the Greek grammarians called an anacoluthon,' = a syntactical'non sequitur' or incoherence. The sense is plain enough; only the grammatical letter is violated. Such carelessnesses are common in Milton's prose writings, as in Clarendon's and others of the seventeenth century, till Dryden introduced a more correct style. With the instance in the text compare such Latin and Greek uses of the nominative as in Virgil, Æneid, xii. 161, &c.; of the accusative in Sophocles, Antigone 21, &c.; and Thucydides' use of the dative, as in v. III, πολλοῖς γὰρ προορωμένοις κ.τ.λ.

Line 1. They who to States, &c., i. e. (i) orators, and (ii) writers.

States heads of states.

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Psalm lxxxii:

Holt White quotes from Milton's translation of

'God in the great assembly stands

Of kings and lordly States.'

Also from Sidney's Arcadia: I can do nothing without all the States of Arcadia; what they will determine I know not,' &c. Compare how the names of their kingdoms are used to denote the kings themselves; as e. g. in King Lear France King of France, &c.

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3. wanting, not wishing for, or needing, but being without. See below, p. 102.

in a private condition. These words explain how 'access' is 'wanted'. as being private men.

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6. alter'd changed, perturbed. Alter is literally to make other or different. issue. The word was by no means confined in Milton's time to a favourable sense.

7. success

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Thus Paradise Regained, iv. I:

• Perplex'd and troubled at his bad success,

The tempter stood.'

8. censure opinion. This word in Milton's time was not limited to denote only unfavourable judgment. See Shakspere passim; as Hamlet, i. 3. 69: Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment.'

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of what, &c. born of, springing from, based on what.

as the subject was, &c. This speech was published in November, 1644; see Introduction. The works that had preceded it were, Of Reformation in England, Prelatical Episcopacy, Reason of Church Government, Animadversions, &c., all published in 1641; Apology for Smectymnuus in 1642. The Tractate on Education, The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, and Martin Bucer's Judgment were published in the same year with the Areopagitica.

12. likely. This adverb is still retained in Lowland Scotch, and in the phrase most likely.

[might disclose. What is the grammatical subject to might disclose?] 13. formost. See Morris's English Accidence, § 123.

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16. to a passion into a state of intense feeling, of excitement and enthusiasm. Milton is often carried away'—' rapt'—by his subject in this splendid work.

then our than. See Morris's English Accidence, § 312.

[17. Explain incidentall to a Preface.]

18. though I stay not, &c.= though I confess at once.

it to wish and promote their countries liberty.

22. a certain testimony, if not a Trophey. It will show how ready I am to fight for my country, whether I conquer or not. In this particular cause he was not to conquer for some fifty years. The Areopagitica became a 'trophy' as well as a 'testimony' in 1694. See Introduction.

P. 2, 1. 5. to which, &c. Milton had not yet perhaps fully discovered the disheartening fact that the Presbyterian party when in power was to show itself as little capable of an enlightened tolerance as the Episcopalians whom they had overthrown-that ' new foes' were arising

Threatening to bind our souls with secular chains,'

and re-enthrall free conscience—that, really as well as etymologically, 'New Presbyter is but Old Priest writ large.'

are...

arrived. A more accurate phrase than our have arrived.

7. and yet from such a steep disadvantage, &c. We were so sunken that our rising again might well have seemed hopeless and impossible, as was the rising again of the Romans after their decline and fall, all whose 'manhood' (= Lat. virtus, manliness, valour) could not recover them; and yet we have recovered ourselves.

[13. Neither is it, &c. Explain it here.]

15. which if I now first, &c. His Of Reformation in England, for instance, is filled with delight at what he was witnessing, and praise of those who were accomplishing it. See also An Apology for Smectymnuus, passim.

19. unwillingest. See below, p. 93. 22. courtship. See Comus, 321-5:

'Shepherd, I take thy word,

And trust thy honest offer'd courtesy,

Which oft is sooner found in lowly sheds

With smoky rafters, than in tap'stry halls

And courts of princes, where it first was named
And yet is most pretended.

The word court is itself of humble origin-from Lat. cohortem= =a farmyard; see Max Müller's Lectures on the Science of Language, 2nd Series. 25. the other here denotes the third of the three principal things' what is called the latter just below. So sometimes in Elizabethan English both, the conjunction, is used when more than two objects are linked together; so