I deny not but that it is of greatest concernment in the Church and Commonwealth, to have a vigilant eye how books demean themselves as well as men; and thereafter to confine, imprison, and do sharpest justice on them as malefactors: for books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them. I know they are as lively, and as vigorously productive, as those fabulous dragons’ teeth; and being sown up and down, may chance to spring up armed men. And yet on the other hand, unless wariness be used, 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. Many a man lives a burden to the earth; but a good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life. _Areopagitica_ =3. His Poetry.= The great bulk of Milton’s poetry was written during two periods separated from each other by twenty years: (_a_) the period of his university career and his stay at Horton, from 1629 to 1640; and (_b_) the last years of his life, from about 1660 to 1674. The years between were filled by a few sonnets. (_a_) While still an undergraduate Milton began to compose poems of remarkable maturity and promise. They include the fine and stately _Ode on the Morning of Christ’s Nativity_ (1629), and the poems _On Shakespeare_ (1630) and _On Arriving at the Age of Twenty-three_ (1631). These poems show Milton’s command of impressive diction and his high ideals, both literary and religious. While at Horton (1634) he composed _L’Allegro_ and _Il Penseroso_, two longish poems in octosyllabic couplets dealing with the respective experiences of the gay and thoughtful man. The pieces are decorative rather than descriptive, artificial rather than natural, but they are full of scholarly fancy and adroit poetical phrasing. _Comus_ (1637) belongs to this period, and is a masque containing some stiff but beautiful blank verse and some quite charming lyrical measures. _Lycidas_ (1637) is an elegy on his friend Edward King, who was drowned on a voyage to Ireland.