He published about the same time his "Areopagitica, a speech of Mr.
John Milton for the liberty of unlicensed Printing." The danger of
such unbounded liberty, and the danger of bounding it, have produced
a problem in the science of government, which human understanding
seems hitherto unable to solve. If nothing may be published but
what civil authority shall have previously approved, power must
always be the standard of truth; if every dreamer of innovations may
propagate his prospects, there can be no settlement; if every
murmurer at government may diffuse discontent, there can be no
peace; and if every sceptic in theology may teach his follies, there
can be no religion. The remedy against these evils is to punish the
authors; for it is yet allowed that every society may punish, though
not prevent, the publication of opinions which that society shall
think pernicious; but this punishment, though it may crush the
author, promotes the book; and it seems not more reasonable to leave
the right of printing unrestrained because writers may be afterwards
censured, than it would be to sleep with doors unbolted, because by
our laws we can hang a thief.

But whatever were his engagements, civil or domestic poetry was
never long out of his thoughts.

About this time (1645) a collection of his Latin and English poems
appeared, in which the "Allegro," and "Penseroso," with some others,
were first published.

He had taken a larger house in Barbican for the reception of
scholars; but the numerous relations of his wife, to whom he
generously granted refuge for a while, occupied his rooms. In time,
however, they went away; "and the house again," says Philips, "now