He defends it in his posthumous treatise, _De Doctrina Christiana_. It will readily be seen that on almost all these questions Milton was not only--to use the foolish modern phrase--"in advance of his time," but also considerably in advance of ours. Twenty years after his death the Licensing Acts were abolished; for the rest, his reforms are yet to accomplish. It is an odd remark of one of his learned biographers that the _Areopagitica_ is the only one of all Milton's prose writings "whose topic is not obsolete." It is the only one of his prose writings whose thesis commands the general assent of modern readers, and is, therefore, from his own practical point of view, obsolete. The mere enumeration of his opinions suffices to show that Milton's is a sad case of the poet in politics. The labours of the twenty prime years of his manhood have been copiously bewailed. To have Pegasus in harness is bad enough; but when the waggon that he draws is immovably stuck in the mud, and he himself bespattered by his efforts, the spectacle is yet more pitiable. Many of his critics have expressed regret that he did not make for himself an artificial seclusion, and continue his purely poetical labours, with the classics for companions. The questions that drew him into politics were burning questions, it is true; but were there not others to deal with them, good, earnest, sensible, homely people? Samuel Butler has enumerated some of those who were dedicating their time and thought to politics at this important crisis:-- The oyster-women locked their fish up, And trudged away to cry "No Bishop": The mouse-trap men laid save-alls by, And 'gainst ev'l counsellors did cry; Botchers left old cloaths in the lurch, And fell to turn and patch the Church; Some cried the Covenant, instead Of pudding-pies and ginger-bread, And some for brooms, old boots and shoes, Bawled out to purge the Common-house: Instead of kitchen-stuff, some cry A gospel-preaching ministry; And some for old shirts, coats or cloak, No surplices nor service-book; A strange harmonious inclination Of all degrees to reformation. But what was Milton doing in this malodorous and noisy assembly? Might he not with all confidence have left the Church to the oyster-women, and the State to the mouse-trap men? The company that he kept with them ruined his manners; he had to speak loud in order to be heard, to speak broad in order to be respected; and so (bitterest thought of all!) he lost something of that sweet reasonableness which is a poet's proper grace.