the whole impression, a kind of massacre; whereof the execution ends
not in the slaying of an elemental life, but strikes at that
ethereal and fifth essence, the breath of reason itself, slays an
immortality rather than a life. But lest I should be condemned of
introducing licence, while I oppose licensing, I refuse not the
pains to be so much historical, as will serve to show what hath been
done by ancient and famous commonwealths against this disorder, till
the very time that this project of licensing crept out of the
inquisition, was catched up by our prelates, and hath caught some of
our presbyters.

  In Athens, where books and wits were ever busier than in any other
part of Greece, I find but only two sorts of writings which the
magistrate cared to take notice of; those either blasphemous and
atheistical, or libellous. Thus the books of Protagoras were by the
judges of Areopagus commanded to be burnt, and himself banished the
territory for a discourse begun with his confessing not to know
"whether there were gods, or whether not." And against defaming, it
was agreed that none should be traduced by name, as was the manner
of Vetus Comoedia, whereby we may guess how they censured libelling.
And this course was quick enough, as Cicero writes, to quell both
the desperate wits of other atheists, and the open way of defaming, as
the event showed. Of other sects and opinions, though tending to
voluptuousness, and the denying of Divine Providence, they took no
heed.

  Therefore we do not read that either Epicurus, or that libertine
school of Cyrene, or what the Cynic impudence uttered, was ever
questioned by the laws. Neither is it recorded that the writings of
those old comedians were suppressed, though the acting of them were
forbid; and that Plato commended the reading of Aristophanes, the
loosest of them all, to his royal scholar Dionysius, is commonly
known, and may be excused, if holy Chrysostom, as is reported, nightly
studied so much the same author and had the art to cleanse a
scurrilous vehemence into the style of a rousing sermon.

  That other leading city of Greece, Lacedaemon, considering that
Lycurgus their lawgiver was so addicted to elegant learning, as to
have been the first that brought out of Ionia the scattered works of
Homer, and sent the poet Thales from Crete to prepare and mollify
the Spartan surliness with his smooth songs and odes, the better to
plant among them law and civility, it is to be wondered how museless
and unbookish they were, minding nought but the feats of war. There
needed no licensing of books them; for they disliked all but their own
laconic apothegms, and took a slight occasion to chase Archilochus out
of their city, perhaps for composing in a higher strain than their own
soldierly ballads and roundels could reach to. Or if it were for his
broad verses, they were not therein so cautious but they were as
dissolute in their promiscuous conversing; whence Euripides affirms in
Andromache, that their women were all unchaste. Thus much may give
us light after what sort of books were prohibited among the Greeks.

  The Romans also, for many ages trained up only to a military
roughness resembling most the Lacedaemonian guise, knew of learning
little but what their twelve Tables, and the Pontific College with
their augurs and flamens taught them in religion and law, so
unacquainted with other learning, that when Carneades and Critolaus,
with the Stoic Diogenes coming ambassadors to Rome, took thereby
occasion to give the city a taste of their philosophy, they were
suspected for seducers by no less a man than Cato the Censor, who
moved it in the Senate to dismiss them speedily, and to banish all
such Attic babblers out of Italy. But Scipio and others of the noblest
senators withstood him and his old Sabine austerity; honoured and
admired the men; and the censor himself at last, in his old age,
fell to the study of what whereof before he was so scrupulous. And yet
at the same time, Naevius and Plautus, the first Latin comedians,
had filled the city with all the borrowed scenes of Menander and
Philemon. Then began to be considered there also what was to be done
to libellous books and authors; for Naevius was quickly cast into
prison for his unbridled pen, and released by the tribunes upon his
recantation; we read also that libels were burnt, and the makers
punished by Augustus. The like severity, no doubt, was used, if
aught were impiously written against their esteemed gods. Except in
these two points, how the world went in books, the magistrate kept
no reckoning.

  And therefore Lucretius without impeachment versifies his
Epicurism to Memmius, and had the honour to be set forth the second
time by Cicero, so great a father of the commonwealth; although
himself disputes against that opinion in his own writings. Nor was the
satirical sharpness or naked plainness of Lucilius, or Catullus, or
Flaccus, by any order prohibited. And for matters of state, the
story of Titus Livius, though it extolled that part which Pompey held,
was not therefore suppressed by Octavius Caesar of the other
faction. But that Naso was by him banished in his old age, for the
wanton poems of his youth, was but a mere covert of state over some
secret cause: and besides, the books were neither banished nor
called in. From hence we  shall meet with little else but tyranny in
the Roman-empire; that we may not marvel, if not so often bad as
good books were silenced. I shall therefore deem to have been large
enough, in producing what among the ancients was punishable to
write; save only which, all other arguments were free to treat on.

  By this time the emperors were become Christians, whose discipline
in this point I do not find to have been more severe than what was
formerly in practice. The books of those whom they took to be grand
heretics were examined, refuted, and condemned in the general
Councils; and not all then were prohibited, or burnt, by authority
of the emperor. As for the writings of heathen authors, unless they
were plain invectives against Christianity, as those of Porphyrius and