For licenser there was now, the Archbishop of Canterbury to wit, for
religious literature. Of course the Primate read by deputy, usually
one of his chaplains. The reader into whose hands _Paradise Lost_
came, though an Oxford man, and a cleric on his preferment, who had
written his pamphlet against the dissenters, happened to be one whose
antecedents, as Fellow of All Souls, and Proctor (in 1663), ensured
his taking a less pedantic and bigoted view of his duties. Still,
though Dryden's dirty plays would have encountered no objection before
such a tribunal, the same facilities were not likely to be accorded to
anything which bore the name of John Milton, ex-secretary to Oliver,
and himself an austere republican. Tomkyns--that was the young
chaplain's name--did stumble at a phrase in Book i, 598,
With fear of change
Perplexes monarchs.
There had been in England, and were to be again, times when men had
hanged for less than this. Tomkyns, who was sailing on the smooth sea
of preferment with a fair wind, did not wish to get into trouble, but
at last he let the book pass, Perhaps he thought it was only religious
verse written for the sectaries, which would never be heard of
at court, or among the wits, and that therefore it was of little
consequence what it contained.
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