Fish 2001

"In short, the argument against licensing, which has always been read as an argument for books, is really an argument that renders books beside the point: books are no more going to save you than they are going to corrupt you; by denying their potency in one direction, Milton necessary denies their potency in the other and undercuts the extravagant claims he himself makes in the passage with which we began. Whatever books are, they cannot be what he says they are in those ringing sentences -- the preservers of truth, the life-blood of a master spirit, the image of God." (195)