The “Areopagitica” is by far the best known of Milton’s prose writings, being the only one whose topic is not obsolete.  It is also composed with more care and art than the others.  Elsewhere he seeks to overwhelm, but here to persuade.  He could without insincerity profess veneration for the Lords and Commons to whom his discourse is addressed, and he spares no pains to give them a favourable opinion both of his dutifulness and his reasonableness.  More than anywhere else he affects the character of a practical man, pressing home arguments addressed to the understanding rather than to the pure reason.  He points out sensibly, and for him calmly, that the censorship is a Papal invention, contrary to the precedents of antiquity; that while it cannot prevent the circulation of bad books, it is a grievous hindrance to good ones; that it destroys the sense of independence and responsibility essential to a manly and fruitful literature.  We hear less than might have been expected about first principles, of the sacredness of conscience, of the obligation on every man to manifest the truth as it is within him.  He does not dispute that the magistrate may suppress opinions esteemed dangerous to society after they have been published; what he maintains is that publication must not be prevented by a board of licensers.  He strikes at the censor, not at the Attorney-General.  This judicious caution cramped Milton’s eloquence; for while the “Areopagitica” is the best example he has given us of his ability as an advocate, the diction is less magnificent than usual.  Yet nothing penned by him in prose is better known than the passage beginning, “Methinks I see in my mind a noble and puissant nation;” and none of his writings contain so many seminal sentences, pithy embodiments of vital truths.  “Revolutions of ages do not oft recover the loss of a rejected truth.”  “A dram of well-doing should be preferred before many times as much the forcible hindrance of evil doing.  For God more esteems the growth and completing of one virtuous person than the restraint of ten vicious.”  “Opinion in good men is but knowledge in the making.”  “A man maybe a heretic in the truth.”  Towards the end the argument takes a wider sweep, and Milton, again the poet and the seer, hails with exultation the approach of the time he thinks he discerns when all the Lord’s people shall be prophets.  “Behold now this vast city, a city of refuge, the mansion house of liberty, encompassed and surrounded with His protection; the shop of war hath not there more anvils and hammers working to fashion out the plates and instruments of armed justice in defence of beleaguered truth, than there be pens and heads there, sitting by their studious lamps, musing, searching, revolving new notions and ideas wherewith to present, as with their homage and their fealty, the approaching reformation.”  He clearly indicates that he regards the licensing ordinance as not really the offspring of an honest though mistaken concern for