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Updated: May 23, 2025
"As good almost kill a man as kill a good book," he said, and again "Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to my conscience above all liberties." He held the licensing law in contempt, and to show his contempt he published Areopagitica without a license and without giving the printer's or bookseller's name.
There can be no doubt, however, that as Milton, in his Areopagitica, had tried to make the official licensers of books, and especially those of them who were ministers, ashamed of their office, so his reasons and sarcasms, conjoined with the irksomeness of the office itself, did produce an immediate effect among those gentlemen, and modify their official conduct.
It may be hard physical work to break stones for a road-way, but the task itself is a simple one the lifting of the arm and dropping it again with sufficient force to split a rock apart. But the writing of a prose masterpiece, such as the Areopagitica, involves the highest human faculties in harmonious action.
Such were the arguments which did what Milton's Areopagitica had failed to do. The Lords yielded without a contest. They probably expected that some less objectionable bill for the regulation of the press would soon be sent up to them; and in fact such a bill was brought into the House of Commons, read twice, and referred to a select committee.
We may add, that Wycliffe and Knox are both honourably mentioned in the Areopagitica: Knox as the "Reformer of a Kingdom," and Wycliffe as an Englishman who had perhaps had potentially in him all that had since come from the Bohemian Huss, the German Luther, or the French Calvin.
Looking round in English for a book that should answer Thoreau's two demands of a style like poetry and sense that shall be both original and inspiriting, I come to Milton's "Areopagitica," and can name no other instance for the moment.
After this it is bathos to speak of the Stationers' Company; but we must do so. For, at the end of the Areopagitica there is a distinct insinuation by Milton that the Ordinance he was asking the Parliament to repeal was less the invention of Parliament itself than of some cunning Stationers. Milton makes a farther and worse insinuation.
"It was bound to come. Go in and win, son. I'll get you a proof of the ad." "Ban!" said Io with brightened regard. "Well?" "Will you put something at the head of your column for me, if that editorial appears?" "What? Wait! I know. The quotation from the Areopagitica. Is that it?" "Yes." "Fine! I'll do it." On the following morning The Patriot appeared as usual.
Milton expresses that in the words "sensuous" and "passionate," which he applies to poetry in the Areopagitica. And the same thing applies to autobiography, where selection is even more necessary than in fiction. Nothing ought to be told, I think, that does not interest or kindle one's own mind in looking back; it is the only condition on which one can hope to interest or kindle other minds.
His Samson Agonistes is perhaps the finest example of a play written in English after the manner of the Greek dramas. Milton wrote The Areopagitica in defence of the liberty of publishers and printers of books. And it stands for all time as the first and greatest argument against interference with the freedom of the press.
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