just ready for press when the ordinance of 1643 came into operation.
He published it without licence and without printer's name, in
defiance of the law, and awaited the consequences. There were no
consequences. He repeated the offence in a second edition in February,
1644, putting his name now (the first edition had been anonymous), and
dedicating it to the very Parliament whose ordinance he was setting
at nought. This time the Commons, stirred up by a petition from
the Company of Stationers, referred the matter to the committee of
printing. It went no further. Either it was deemed inexpedient
to molest so sound a Parliamentarian as Milton, or Cromwell's
"accommodation resolution" of September 13, 1644, opened the eyes of
the Presbyterian zealots to the existence in the kingdom of a new, and
much wider, phase of opinion, which ominously threatened the compact
little edifice of Presbyterian truth that they had been erecting with
a profound conviction of its exclusive orthodoxy.

The occurrence had been sufficient to give a new direction to Milton's
thoughts. Regardless of the fact that his plea for liberty in marriage
had fallen upon deaf ears, he would plead for liberty of speech. The
_Areopagitica, for the Liberty of unlicensed Printing_, came out in
November, 1644, an unlicensed, unregistered publication, without
printer's or bookseller's name. It was cast in the form of a speech
addressed to the Parliament. The motto was taken from Euripides, and
printed in the original Greek, which was not, when addressed to the
Parliament of 1644, the absurdity which it would be now. The title is
less appropriate, being borrowed from the _Areopagitic Discourse_ of
Isocrates, between which and Milton's _Speech_ there is no resemblance
either in subject or style. All that the two productions have in
common is their form. They are both unspoken orations, written to the
address of a representative assembly--the one to the Boule or Senate