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.

"'Tis true, no age can restore a life, whereof, perhaps, there is
no great loss; and revolutions of ages do not oft recover the loss
of a rejected truth, for the want of which whole nations fare the
worse.

"We should be wary, therefore, what persecutions we raise against
the living labours of public men; how we spill that seasoned life
of man preserved and stored up in books; since we see a kind of
homicide may be thus committed, sometimes a martyrdom, and, if it
extend to the whole impression, a kind of massacre, whereof the
execution ends not in the slaying of an elemental life, but
strikes at that ethereal and fifth essence, the breath of reason
itself; slays an immortality rather than a life."

This is a fine defence of the inviolability of a good and proper book.

A bad book will generally die of itself, but there is something horribly
malignant about a wicked book, as it must always be worse than a
wicked man, for a man can repent, but a book cannot.

It is the men of letters who keep alive the books of the great from
generation to generation, and they are never likely to preserve a
wicked book from oblivion. Ultimately such go to light fires and
encompass groceries.

Your loving old
G.P.

8

MY DEAR ANTONY,

Milton, of whom I wrote in my last letter, was five years older than
Jeremy Taylor, of whom I am going to write to-day. The latter's
writings differ very much from Milton's, although they were
contemporaries for the whole of the former's life.

From the grave an