'With my scanty pocket-money, high-priced books were beyond my reach; but I was lucky enough, when hunting, as was my want, among the second-hand bookstalls in Newcastle market-place, to light upon some off volumes of Milton?s prose works, which I bought for a few shillings. I read them all ? politics, theology, travels, with touches of autobiography- nothing came amiss to my voracious appetite. Over and over again did I read the Areopagitica, ?that sublime treatise? which, Macaulay tells us, ?every statesman should wear as a sign upon his hand and as frontlets between his eyes?.?