for, not without dust and heat. Assuredly we bring not innocence into the world, we bring impurity much rather: that which purifies us is trial, and trial is by what is contrary. That virtue therefore which is but a youngling in the contemplation of 510 evil, and knows not the utmost that vice promises to her followers, and rejects it, is but a blank virtue, not a pure; her whiteness is but an excremental whiteness; which was the reason why our sage and serious poet Spenser, whom I dare be known to think a better teacher than Scotus or Aquinas, describing true temperance under the person of Guion, brings him in with his Palmer through the Cave of Mammon and the Bower of Earthly Bliss, that he might see and know, and yet abstain/Since therefore the knowledge and survey of vice is in this world so necessary to the 520 constituting of human virtue, and the scanning of error to the confirmation of truth, how can we more safely and with less danger scout into the regions of sin and falsity than by reading all manner of tractates and hearing all manner of reason? And this is the benefit which may be had of books promiscuously read But of the harm that may result hence three kinds are usually reckoned:

510. is but a youngling, i.e., is as a child.

512. rejects it, from ignorance and not from knowledge.

512. blank, empty. 513. excremental, outside, surface, not thorough.

514. Spenser. Milton was a reat admirer of the poet Spenser. The passages referred to here are from the Faery Queene, Book II., Cantos 7 and 12.

515. Scotus. John Duns Scotus died at Cologne A.D. 1308.

516. Aquinas. Thomas Aquinas died 1274. The two Iwere the most famous of the schoolmen, or weavers of subtle sophistry, during the Middle

530

540

AREOPAGITICA.

First, is feared the infection that may spread; but then all human learning and controversy in religious points must remove out of the world, yea the Bible itself; for that ofttimes relates blasphemy not nicely, it describes the carnal sense of wicked men not unelegantly, it brings in holiest men passionately murmuring against Providence through all the arguments of Epicurus: in other great disputes it answers dubiously and darkly to the common reader: And ask a Talmudist what ails the modesty of his marginal Keri, that Moses and all the Prophets cannot persuade him to pronounce the textual Chetiv. For these causes we all know the Bible itself put by the Papist into the first rank of prohibited books. The ancientest fathers must be next removed, as Clement of

531. not nicely, not disguisedly, openly.

=

531. carnal sense, fleshly longings; L. caro, carnis flesh. 532. not unelegantly, in elegant language. Cf. "The Song of Solomon."

533. passionately murmuring, as in the Book of Job.

533, 534. through all the arguments, etc., i.e., using arguments similar to those of Epicurus.

534. Epicurus. See note to 7. 183 and "Historical Notes."

536. Talmudist. The Talmuds are two in number-the Babylonian and the Hebrew. They are commentaries on the Hebrew Scripture. Milton himself explains in his Apology for Smectymnuus:

"God, who is the author both of Purity and Eloquence, chose this phrase as fittest in that vehement character wherein he spake. Otherwise, that plain word might have easily been forborne: which the Masorites and Rabbinical scholiasts not well attending have often used to blur the margin with Keri instead of Ketiv, and gave us this rule out

of their Talmud, that all words
which in the law are writ un-
seemly must be changed to more
civil words."

The text of the Scripture itself is called, in Hebrew, the Ketiv. What is read is called the Keri. Milton wrote Chetiv instead of Ketiv, in accordance with the pronunciation of the German Jews (Holt White). The word "Talmud " itself means doctrine.

536. what ails the modesty, etc., What is the fault to find with the Chetiv, or the actual words, that they will not read them?

538. textual Chetiv, i.e., actual words of the text. Milton calls these scholiasts :

"Fools who would teach men to read more decently than God thought fit to write."

-Apology to Smectymnuus. 540. ancientest; another superlative strange to our ears.

540, 541. Clement of Alexdria, a presbyter of the church in Alexandria about 200 A.D., and the writer of several ecclesiastical works.

Alexandria, and that Eusebian book of Evangelic preparation, transmitting our ears through a hoard of heathenish obscenities to receive the Gospel. Who finds not that Irenæus, Epiphanius, Jerome, and others discover more heresies than they well confute, and that oft for heresy which is the truer opinion? Nor boots it to say for these, and all the heathen writers of greatest infection, if it must be thought so, with whom is bound up the life of human learning, that they writ in an unknown tongue, so long as we are sure those languages are known as well to the worst of men, who are 550 both most able and most diligent to instil the poison 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

making them acquainted, or
familiar with.

553. criticisms, choice seleo-
tions, as the results of the choice
of a writer selecting critically.

554. that. Here used as an epithet of reproach, like the Latin "iste."

554. Petronius, the "Arbiter

Elegentiæ or " 'Judge of fine
taste." Petronius died in A.D.
66.

554, 555. master of his revels,
the one in charge of the court
revels. There was also a Master
of the Revels at the court of the
Stuarts, who had the arrange-
ment of the court masques and
festivals.

555. the notorious ribald of Arezzo, Pietro Aretino, a writer of pungent but loose satires, who died A.D. 1557; ribald is from Fr. ribaud, It. ribaldo.

555, 556. dreaded and yet dear, dreaded by those he satirised, dear to the others who enjoyed the satires.