What should ye do then? Should ye suppress all this flowery crop of knowledge and new light? Should ye set an oligarchy of twenty engrossers over it, to bring a famine upon our minds again, when we shall know nothing but what is measured to us by their bushel? Believe it, Lords and Commons, they who counsel ye to such a suppressing do as good as bid ye suppress yourselves. If it be desired to know the immediate cause of all this free writing and free speaking, there cannot be assigned a truer than your own mild, and free, and humane government. It is the liberty, Lords and Commons, which our own valorous and happy counsels have purchased us, liberty, which is the nurse of all great wits. Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience above all liberties. And though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth, so Truth be in the field, we do injuriously, by licensing and prohibiting, to misdoubt her strength. Let her and Falsehood grapple. Whoever knew Truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter? For who knows not that Truth is strong, next to the Almighty? She needs no policies, nor stratagems, nor licensing to make her victorious. Those are the shifts and defences that error uses against her power. Give her but room, and do not bind her when she sleeps.
Little is known of the life of Plutarch, greatest of biographers. He was born about 50 A.D., at Chæronea, in Boeotia, Greece, the son of a learned and virtuous father. He studied philosophy under Ammonius at Delphi, and on his return to his native city became a priest of Apollo, and archon, or chief magistrate. Plutarch wrote many philosophical works, which are enumerated by his son Lamprias, but are no longer extant. We have about fifty biographies, which are called "parallel" because of the method by which Plutarch, after giving separately the lives of two or more people, proceeds to compare them with one another. The "Lives" were translated into French in Henry II.'s reign, and into English in the time of Elizabeth. They have been exceedingly popular at every period, and many authors, including Shakespeare, have owed much to them. Plutarch died about 120 A.D.