One only of his prose works is still remembered and still read for its splendid English.  That is Areopagitica, a passionate appeal for a free press.  Milton desired that a man should have not only freedom of thought, but freedom to write down and print and publish these thoughts.  But the rulers of England, ever since printing had been introduced, had thought otherwise, and by law no book could be printed until it had been licensed, and no man might set up a printing press without permission from Government.  To Milton this was tyranny.  “As good almost kill a man as kill a good book,” he said, and again “Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to my conscience above all liberties.”  He held the licensing law in contempt, and to show his contempt he published Areopagitica without a license and without giving the printer’s or bookseller’s name.  It was not the first time Milton had done this, and his enemies tried to use it against him to bring him into trouble.  But he had become by this time too important a man, and nothing came of it.

Time went on, the bitter struggle between King and people came to an end.  The people triumphed, and the King laid his head upon the block.  Britain was without ruler other than Parliament.  It was then, one March day in 1649, that a few grave-faced, somber-clad men knocked at the door of Milton’s house.  We can imagine them tramping into the poet’s low-roofed study, their heavy shoes resounding on the bare floor, their sad faces shaded with their tall black hats.  And there, in sing-song voices, they tell the astonished man that they come from Parliament to ask him to be Secretary for Foreign Tongues.

Milton was astonished, but he accepted the post.  And now his life became a very busy one.  It had been decided that all letters to foreign powers should be written in Latin, but many Governments wrote to England in their own languages.  Milton had to translate these letters, answer them in Latin, and also write little books or pamphlets in answer to those which were written against the Government.

It was while he was busy with this, while he was pouring out bitter abuse upon his enemies or upon the enemies of his party, that his great misfortune fell upon him.  He became blind.  He had had many warnings.  He had been told to be careful of his eyes, for the sight of one had long been gone.  But in spite of all warnings he still worked on, and at length became quite blind.

His enemies jeered at him, and said it was a judgment upon him for his wicked writing.  But never for a moment did Milton’s spirit quail.  He had always been sure of himself, sure of his mission in life, sufficient for himself.  And now that the horror of darkness shut him off from others, shut him still more into himself, his heart did not fail him.  Blind at forty-three, he wrote:—­