Happy Birthday, Mr. Milton

Wow — four hundred years, and (many) people still don’t even furrow their brows when you say the name “John Milton.” Most of us aspire to be remembered for one-fourth of that span, if that much.

Today, Milton’s memory is honored (if not read, exactly) principally for his epic works, Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained — and, to a lesser extent, for his other poetry.

But in his time he was also something of a political gadfly. Wikipedia speaks of his “radical, republican politics and heretical religious views,” which — coming, as they did, before, during, and after the English Civil War — ensured either his popularity (during Cromwell’s Commonwealth) or his ostracism (during the monarchy).

Among the forward-thinking issues which Milton made a point of espousing was freedom of written expression (what we’d call freedom of the press, today).

Milton himself had been burned by censorship in the past, experiences which certainly colored his thinking a bit.

(Specifically — hey, this was 17th-century England — he’d raised hackles over his publication of four tracts arguing in favor of divorce. Wikipedia, again: “Arguing for divorce at all, let alone a version of no-fault divorce, was extremely controversial at this time, leading Milton to be publicly attacked by religious figures who sought to ban his tracts… The overarching argument of the four tracts is that private divorce by mutual consent for incompatibility is consonant with Christian Scripture.” Theological and political considerations aside, the subject was of interest to Milton because he himself had been abandoned by his wife, Mary Powell, shortly after they’d been married.)

With such a history, a lesser man might have tucked his tail between his legs and “reformed” — continuing perhaps to complain to his friends and associates (or, these days, setting up a pseudonymous blog).

Milton did not tuck his tail between his legs, though. He made a nuisance of himself. Specifically, he wrote and had published an (eventually) enormously influential tract called Areopagitica, subtitled “A speech of Mr John Milton for the liberty of unlicensed printing to the Parliament of England” — one of the first major public expressions, by an important author, of outrage against censorship.

The first couple of sentences give you a good sense of the entirety of Areopagitica, for (ahem) better and for worse:

They who to States and Governours of the Commonwealth direct their Speech, High Court of Parlament, or wanting such accesse in a private condition, write that which they foresee may advance the publick good; I suppose them as at the beginning of no meane endeavour, not a little alter’d and mov’d inwardly in their mindes: Some with doubt of what will be the successe, others with fear of what will be the censure; some with hope, others with confidence of what they have to speake. And me perhaps each of these dispositions, as the subject was whereon I enter’d, may have at other times variously affected; and likely might in these formost expressions now also disclose which of them sway’d most, but that the very attempt of this addresse thus made, and the thought of whom it hath recourse to, hath got the power within me to a passion, farre more welcome then incidentall to a Preface.

Yeah. My reaction, too.

Basically, he’s saying here something roughly like the following:

Okay, look, I know: Some writers who set out to make public pronouncements on what’s important to them, especially pronouncements to or about the authorities, have personal advancement on their minds. They look forward to the authorities’ praise, fear their censure. But you know what? The very fact that they’ve got to worry one way or the other, well, I want to tell you — it pisses me off. Which isn’t entirely a bad thing, if you ask me.

And he goes on in the same style for eighteen thousand words. Sorry to disappoint, but I will not translate the rest of it. But you can get a flavor for how it goes from a couple of quotations in Milton’s words, but not hedged around with all the verbal shrubbery of that opening:

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.

…

We should be wary therefore what persecution we raise against the living labours 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 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.

Apparently, the immediate (official) response to Areopagitica was a deafening silence. According to the British Library, writing earlier today about the issue for Taking Liberties, its “free exhibition on the 900-year struggle for Britain’s freedoms and rights”:

What impact did Areopagitica have?

Though powerfully argued, no one took any notice. In fact controls were reinforced after the Restoration with a new Licensing Act in 1662. Total control over the approval of books was invested in Roger L’Estrange, the Witchfinder General of the Printing trade. He censored and edited many books. In 1663, printer John Twyn was hanged, drawn and quartered for publishing material suggesting that the monarch was accountable to his subjects.

Nonetheless, the impact of a piece of writing — of a person’s life — can extend for many centuries, as long as it’s preserved. Such will not be the case, obviously, for works which have been censored, and we owe to the eventual relaxation of censorship laws the fact that we can read Areopagitica at all (or if not read it, at least appreciate it).

Happy birthday, JM. Thank you for your poetry, whose influence I accept because it has been acknowledged by both poets and teachers. But thank you for Areopagitica, too, whose influence I can see for myself, every time I open a newspaper or a blogger’s most recent post.