disfigured by personal abuse of Salmasius, whose relations with his wife had surely as little to do with the head of Charles I. as had poor Mr. Dick’s memorial.  Salmasius, it appears, was henpecked, and to allow yourself to be henpecked was, in Milton’s opinion, a high crime and misdemeanour against humanity, and one which rendered a man infamous, and disqualified him from taking part in debate.

It has always been reported that Salmasius, who was getting on in years, and had many things to trouble him besides his own wife, perished in the effort of writing a reply to Milton, in which he made use of language

quite as bad as any of his opponent’s; but it now appears that this is not so.  Indeed, it is generally rash to attribute a man’s death to a pamphlet, or an article, either of his own or anybody else’s.

Salmasius, however, died, though from natural causes, and his reply was not published till after the Restoration, when the question had become, what it has ever since remained, academical.

Other pens were quicker, and to their productions Milton, in 1654, replied with his Second Defence of the English People, a tract containing autobiographical details of immense interest and charm.  By this time he was totally blind, though, with a touch of that personal sensitiveness ever characteristic of him, he is careful to tell Europe, in the Second Defence, that externally his eyes were uninjured, and shone with an unclouded light.

Milton’s Defences of the English People are rendered provoking by his extraordinary language concerning his opponents.  ‘Numskull,’ ‘beast,’ ‘fool,’ ‘puppy,’ ‘knave,’ ‘ass,’ ‘mongrel-cur,’ are but a few of the epithets employed.  This is doubtless mere matter of pleading, a rule of the forum where controversies between

scholars are conducted; but for that very reason it makes the pamphlets as provoking to an ordinary reader as an old bill of complaint in Chancery must have been to an impatient suitor who wanted his money.  The main issues, when cleared of personalities, are important enough, and are stated by Milton with great clearness.  ‘Our king made not us, but we him.  Nature has given fathers to us all, but we ourselves appointed our own king; so that the people is not for the king, but the king for them.’  It was made a matter of great offence amongst monarchs and monarchical persons that Charles was subject to the indignity of a trial.  With murders and poisonings kings were long familiar.  These were part of the perils of the voyage, for which they were prepared, but, as Salmasius put it, ‘for a king to be arraigned in a court of judicature, to be put to plead for his life, to have sentence of death pronounced against him, and that sentence executed,’—oh! horrible impiety.  To this Milton replies: ‘Tell me, thou superlative fool, whether it be not more just, more agreeable to the rules of humanity and the laws of all human societies, to bring a criminal, be his offence what it will, before a court of justice, to give him leave to speak

for himself, and if the law condemns him, then to put him to death as he has deserved, so as he may have time to repent or to recollect himself; than presently, as soon as ever he is taken, to butcher him without more ado?’

But a king of any spirit would probably answer that he preferred to have his despotism tempered by assassination than by the mercy of a court of John Miltons.  To which answer Milton would have rejoined, ‘Despotism, I know you not, since we are as free as any people under heaven.’

The weakest part in Milton’s case is his having to admit that the Parliament was overawed by the army, which he says was wiser than the senators.

Milton’s address to his countrymen, with which he concludes the first defence, is veritably in his grand style:

‘He has gloriously delivered you, the first of nations, from the two greatest mischiefs of this life—tyranny and superstition.  He has endued you with greatness of mind to be First of Mankind, who after having confined their own king and having had him delivered into their hands, have not scrupled to condemn

him judicially, and pursuant to that sentence of condemnation to put him to death.  After performing so glorious an action as this, you ought to do nothing that’s mean and little; you ought not to think of, much less do, anything but what is great and sublime.  Which to attain to, this is your only way: as you have subdued your enemies in the field, so to make it appear that you of all mankind are best able to subdue Ambition, Avarice, the love of Riches, and can best avoid the corruptions that prosperity is apt to introduce.  These are the only arguments by which you will be able to evince that you are not such persons as this fellow represents you, traitors, robbers, murderers, parricides, madmen, that you did not put your king to death out of any ambitious design—that it was not an act of fury or madness, but that it was wholly out of love to your liberty, your religion, to justice, virtue, and your country, that you punished a tyrant.  But if it should fall out otherwise (which God forbid), if, as you have been valiant in war, you should grow debauched in peace, and that you should not have learnt, by so eminent, so remarkable an example before your eyes, to fear God, and

work righteousness; for my part I shall easily grant and confess (for I cannot deny it), whatever ill men may speak or think of you, to be very true.  And you will find in time that God’s displeasure against you will be greater than it has been against your adversaries—greater than His grace and favour have been to yourseves, which you have had larger experience of than any other nation under heaven.’

This controversy naturally excited greater interest abroad, where Latin was familiarly known, than ever it did here at home.  Though it cost Milton his sight, or at all events accelerated the hour of his blindness, he appears greatly to have enjoyed conducting a high dispute in the face of Europe.  ‘I am,’ so he says, ‘spreading abroad amongst the cities, the kingdoms, and nations, the restored culture of civility and freedom of life.’  We certainly managed in this affair of the execution of Charles to get rid of that note of insularity which renders our politics uninviting to the stranger.

Milton, despite his blindness, remained in the public service until after the death of Cromwell; in fact, he did not formally resign

until after the Restoration.  He played no part, having none to play, in the performances that occurred between those events.  He poured forth pamphlets, but there is no reason to believe that they were read otherwise than carelessly and by few.  His ideas were his own, and never had a chance of becoming fruitful.  There seemed to him to be a ready and an easy way to establish a free Commonwealth, but on the whole it turned out that the easiest thing to do was to invite Charles Stuart to reascend the throne of his ancestors, which he did, and Milton went into hiding.

It is terrible to think how risky the situation was.  Milton was undoubtedly in danger of his life, and Paradise Lost was unwritten.  He was for a time under arrest.  But after all he was not one of the regicides—he was only a scribe who had defended regicide.  Neither was he a man well associated.  He was a solitary, and, for the most part, an