they suck, first into the courts of princes, acquainting them with the
choicest delights and criticisms of sin. As perhaps did that Petronius
whom Nero called his Arbiter, the master of his revels; and the
notorious ribald of Arezzo, dreaded and yet dear to the Italian
courtiers. I name not him for posterity's sake, whom Henry VIII. named
in merriment his Vicar of hell. By which compendious way all the
contagion that foreign books can infuse will find a passage to the
people far and shorter than an Indian voyage, though it could be
sailed either by the north of Cataio eastward, or of Canada
westward, while our Spanish licensing gags the English press never
so severely.

  But on the other side that infection which is from books of
controversy in religion is more doubtful and dangerous to the
learned than to the ignorant; and yet those books must be permitted
untouched by the licenser. It will be hard to instance where any
ignorant man hath been ever seduced by papistical book in English,
unless it were commended and expounded to him by some of that
clergy: and indeed all such tractates, whether false or true, are as
the prophecy of Isaiah was to the eunuch, not to be understood without
a guide. But of our priests and doctors how many have been corrupted
by studying the comments of Jesuits and Sorbonists, and how fast
they could transfuse that corruption into the people, our experience
is both late and sad. It is not forgot, since the acute and distinct
Arminius was perverted merely by the perusing of a nameless
discourse written at Delft, which at first he took in hand to confute.

  Seeing, therefore, that those books, and those in great abundance,
which are likeliest to taint both life and doctrine, cannot be
suppressed without the fall of learning and of all ability in
disputation, and that these books of either sort are most and
soonest catching to the learned, from whom to the common people
whatever is heretical or dissolute may quickly be conveyed, and that
evil manners are as perfectly learnt without books a thousand other
ways which cannot be stopped, and evil doctrine not with books can
propagate, except a teacher guide, which he might also do without
writing, and so beyond prohibiting, I am not able to unfold, how
this cautelous enterprise can be exempted from the number of vain
and impossible attempts. And he who were pleasantly disposed could not
well avoid to liken it to the exploit of that gallant man who
thought to pound up the crows by shutting his park gate.

  Besides another inconvenience, if learned men be the first receivers
out of books and dispreaders both of vice and error, how shall the
licensers themselves be confided in, unless we can confer upon them,
or they assume to themselves above all others in the land, the grace
of infallibility and uncorruptedness? And again, if it be true that
a wise man, like a good refiner, can gather gold out of the
drossiest volume, and that a fool will be a fool with the best book,
yea or without book; there is no reason that we should deprive a
wise man of any advantage to his wisdom, while we seek to restrain
from a fool, that which being restrained will be no hindrance to his
folly. For if there should be so much exactness always used to keep
that from him which is unfit for his reading, we should in the
judgment of Aristotle not only, but of Solomon and of our Saviour, not
vouchsafe him good precepts, and by consequence not willingly admit
him to good books; as being certain that a wise man will make better
use of an idle pamphlet, than a fool will do of sacred Scripture.

  'Tis next alleged we must not expose ourselves to temptations
without necessity, and next to that, not employ our time in vain
things. To both these objections one answer will serve, out of the
grounds already laid, that to all men such books are not
temptations, nor vanities, but useful drugs and materials wherewith to
temper and compose effective and strong medicines, which man's life
cannot want. The rest, as children and childish men, who have not
the art to qualify and prepare these working minerals, well may be
exhorted to forbear, but hindered forcibly they cannot be by all the
licensing that Sainted Inquisition could ever yet contrive. Which is
what I promised to deliver next, That this order of licensing conduces
nothing to the end for which it was framed; and hath almost
prevented me by being clear already while thus much hath been
explaining. See the ingenuity of Truth, who, when she gets a free
and willing hand, opens herself faster than the pace of method and
discourse can overtake her.

  It was the task which I began with, to show that no nation, or
well instituted state, if they valued books at all, did ever use
this way of licensing; and it might be answered, that this is a
piece of prudence lately discovered. To which I return, that as it was
a thing slight and obvious to think on, so if it had been difficult to
find out, there wanted not among them long since who suggested such
a course; which they not following, leave us a pattern of their
judgment that it was not the not knowing, but the not approving, which
was the cause of their not using it.

  Plato, a man of high authority, indeed, but least of all for his
commonwealth, in the book of his Laws, which no city ever yet
received, fed his fancy by making many edicts to his airy
burgomasters, which they who otherwise admire him wish had been rather
buried and excused in the genial cups of an Academic night sitting. By
which laws he seems to tolerate no kind of learning but by unalterable
decree, consisting most of practical traditions, to the attainment
whereof a library of smaller bulk than his own Dialogues would be
abundant. And there also enacts, that no poet should so much as read
to any private man what he had written, until the judges and
law-keepers had seen it, and allowed it. But that Plato meant this law
peculiarly to that commonwealth which he had imagined, and to no
other, is evident. Why was he not else a lawgiver to himself, but a
transgressor, and to be expelled by his own magistrates; both for