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all he delivers, is but under the tuition, under the correction of his patriarchal licencer to blot or alter what precifely accords not with the hidebound humor which he calls his judgement. When every acute reader upon the first fight of a pedantick licence, will be ready with. thefe like words to ding the book a coits distance from him, I hate a pupil teacher, I endure not an inftructer that comes to me under the wardship of an overseeing fift. I know nothing of the licencer, but that I have his own hand here for his arrogance; who fhall warrant me his judgement? The State Sir, replies the Stationer, but has a quick return, The State fhall be my governours, but not my criticks; they may be miftak'n in

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the choice of a licencer, as eafily as this licencer may be mistak'n in an author: This is fome common ftuffe; and he might adde from Sir Francis Bacon, That fuch authoriz'd books are but the language of the times. For though a licencer fhould happ'n to be judicious more then ordnary, which will be a great jeopardy of the next fucceffion, yet his very office and his commiffion enjoyns him to let paffe nothing but what is vulgarly receiv'd already. Nay, which is more lamentable, if the work of any deceafed author, though never fo famous in his life-time, and even to this day, come to their hands for licence to be Printed, or Reprinted, if there be found in his book one fentence of a ventrous edge, utter'd

in the height of zeal, and who knows whether it might not be the dictat of a divine Spirit, yet not fuiting with every low decrepit humor of their own, though it were Knox himself, the Reformer of a Kingdom that fpake it, they will not pardon him their dafh: the fenfe of that great man fhall to all posterity be loft, for the fearfulneffe, or the prefumptuous rafhneffe of a perfunctory licencer. And to what an author this violence hath bin lately done, and in what book of greatest confequence to be faithfully publifht, I could now inftance, but fhall forbear till a more convenient feafon. Yet if these. things be not refented feriously and timely by them who have the remedy in their power, but that fuch iron moulds as

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thefe fhall have autority to knaw out the choifeft periods of exquifiteft books, and to commit fuch a treacherous fraud against the orphan remainders of worthieft men after death, the more forrow will belong to that haples race of men, whofe misfortune it is to have underftanding. Henceforth let no man care to learn, or care to be more then worldly wife; for certainly in higher matters to be ignorant and flothfull, to be a common ftedfaft dunce will be the only pleafant life, and only in request.

And as it is a particular difefteem of every knowing perfon alive, and moft injurious to the writt'n labours and monuments of the dead, fo to me it seems an undervaluing and vilifying of the

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whole Nation. I cannot fet fo light by all the invention, the art, the wit, the grave and folid judgement which is in England, as that it can be comprehended in any twenty capacities how good foever, much leffe that it should not passe except their fuperintendence be over it, except it be fifted and ftrain'd with their ftrainers, that it should be uncurrant without their manuall ftamp. Truth and understanding are not fuch wares as to be monopoliz'd and traded in by tickets and ftatutes, and ftandards. We muft not think to make a staple commodity of all the knowledge in the Land, to mark and licence it like our broad cloath, and our wooll packs. What is it but a fervitude like that im

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