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.

The Areopagitæ were judges at Athens in its more flourishing time, who
sat on Mars Hill and made decrees and passed sentences which were
delivered in public and commanded universal respect.

I will quote one of the finest passages in this great and splendid
utterance:--

"I deny not but that it is of greatest concernment in the Church
and Commonwealth to have a vigilant eye how books demean
themselves as well as men; and thereafter to confine, imprison,
and do sharpest justice on them as malefactors: for books are not
absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them
to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay, they
do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of
that living intellect that bred them. I know they are as lively,
and as vigorously productive, as those fabulous dragons' teeth;
and being sown up and down, may chance to spring up armed men.

"And yet on the other hand, unless wariness be used, as good
almost kill a man as kill a good book; who kills a man kills a
reasonable creature, God's image; but he who destroys a good book
kills reason itself; kills the Image of God as it were in the eye.
Many a man lives a burden to the earth; but a good book is the