forth the severe censure of an unbeliever of a very different order, the illustrious Bayle.385 Blount also attacked Christianity in several original treatises, or rather in several treatises purporting to be original; for he was the most audacious of literary thieves, and transcribed, without acknowledgment, whole pages from authors who had preceded him.  His delight was to worry the priests by asking them how light existed before the sun was made, how Paradise could be bounded by Pison, Gihon, Hiddekel and Euphrates, how serpents moved before they were condemned to crawl, and where Eve found thread to stitch her figleaves.  To his speculations on these subjects he gave the lofty name of the Oracles of Reason; and indeed whatever he said or wrote was considered as oracular by his disciples.  Of those disciples the most noted was a bad writer named Gildon, who lived to pester another generation with doggrel and slander, and whose memory is still preserved, not by his own voluminous works, but by two or three lines in which his stupidity and venality have been contemptuously mentioned by Pope.386

Little as either the intellectual or the moral character of Blount may seem to deserve respect, it is in a great measure to him that we must attribute the emancipation of the English press.  Between him and the licensers there was a feud of long standing.  Before the Revolution one of his heterodox treatises had been grievously mutilated by Lestrange, and at last suppressed by orders from Lestrange’s superior the Bishop of London.387 Bohun was a scarcely less severe critic than Lestrange.  Blount therefore began to make war on the censorship and the censor.  The hostilities were commenced by a tract which came forth without any license, and which is entitled A Just Vindication of Learning and of the Liberty of the Press, by Philopatris.388 Whoever reads this piece, and is not aware that Blount was one of the most unscrupulous plagiaries that ever lived, will be surprised to find, mingled with the poor thoughts and poor words of a thirdrate pamphleteer, passages so elevated in sentiment and style that they would be worthy of the greatest name in letters.  The truth is that the just Vindication consists chiefly of garbled extracts from the Areopagitica of Milton.  That noble discourse had been neglected by the generation to which it was addressed, had sunk into oblivion, and was at the mercy of every pilferer.  The literary workmanship of Blount resembled the architectural workmanship of those barbarians who used the Coliseum and the Theatre of Pompey as quarries, who built hovels out of Ionian friezes and propped cowhouses on pillars of lazulite.  Blount concluded, as Milton had done, by recommending that any book might be printed without a license, provided that the name of the author or publisher were registered.389 The Just Vindication was well received.  The blow was speedily followed up.  There still remained in the Areopagitica many fine passages which Blount had not used in his