Engendering with me, of that rape begot 795 cry And hourly born, with sorrow infinite My bowels, their repast; then, bursting 800 Afresh, with conscious terrors vex me That rest or intermission none I find. And me, his parent, would full soon devour But thou, O father, I forewarn thee, shun Save he who reigns above, none can re- She finished; and the subtle Fiend his lore 815 Soon learned, now milder, and thus answered smooth: "Dear daughter-since thou claim'st me for thy sire, And my fair son here show'st me, the dear pledge Of dalliance had with thee in Heaven, and joys Destined to that good hour. No less rejoiced His mother bad, and thus bespake her sire: "The key of this infernal pit, by due 850 And by command of Heaven's all-powerful King, Then sweet, now sad to mention, through I keep, by him forbidden to unlock pass through Under spread ensigns marching, might With horse and chariots ranked in loose Some capital city; or less than if this frame array; So wide they stood, and like a furnacemouth Cast forth redounding smoke and ruddy flame. Before their eyes in sudden view appear The secrets of the hoary Deep, a dark 891 Illimitable ocean, without bound, Without dimension; where length, breadth, and highth, And time, and place, are lost; where eldest Night Of Heaven were falling, and these elements In mutiny had from her axle torn 926 The steadfast Earth. At last his sailbroad vans He spreads for flight, and, in the surging smoke Uplifted, spurns the ground; thence many a league, As in a cloudy chair, ascending rides 930 Audacious; but, that seat soon failing, meets A vast vacuity. All unawares, Weakening the sceptre of old Night: first, Shoots far into the bosom of dim Night A glimmering dawn. Here Nature first begins Her farthest verge, and Chaos to retire, As from her outmost works, a broken foe, With tumult less and with less hostile din; 1040 Wearied, I fell asleep. But now lead on; Who for my wilful crime art banished demean themselves as well as men; and hence. 620 This further consolation yet secure Well pleased, but answered not; for now too nigh 625 The Archangel stood, and from the other hill To their fixed station, all in bright array, The Cherubim descended, on the ground Gliding meteorous, as evening mist Risen from a river o'er the marish glides, And gathers ground fast at the laborer's heel 631 Homeward returning. High in front advanced, The brandished sword of God before them blazed, 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 pre- [10 serve 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 dragon's 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 [20 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 precious lifeblood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life. 'Tis true, no age can restore a life, whereof perhaps there is no great loss; and revolutions of ages do not oft recover the loss of a rejected [30 truth, for the want of which whole nations fare the worse. We should be wary therefore what persecution we raise against the living labors of public men, how we spill that seasoned life of man, preserved and stored up in books; since we see a kind of homicide may be thus committed, sometimes a martyrdom, and if it extend. to the whole impression, a kind of massacre, whereof the execution ends not [40 in the slaying of an elemental life, but strikes at that ethereal and fifth essence the breath of reason itself; slays an immortality rather than a life. . . . But some will say, "What though the inventors were bad, the thing for all that may be good?" It may so; yet if that thing be no such deep invention, but obvious, and easy for any man to light on, and yet best and wisest common- [50 wealths through all ages and occasions have forborne to use it, and falsest seducers and oppressors of men were the first who took it up, and to no other purpose but to obstruct and hinder the first approach of Reformation, I am of those who believe, it will be a harder alchemy |