assertion of Toland, coinciding with the general character of the republican government.

But Milton experienced a reward of much higher value in his estimation than any pecuniary remuneration. While his opponent's production lingered on the vender's shelves or crept languidly through a very confined circulation, his own passed rapidly through a variety of impressions, and occupied a large space in the public mind. It made its author, says Bayle, the subject of conversation over the world; and the distinction, with which it was branded at Paris and Toulouse, in which cities it was burnt by the common hangman, contributed to increase rather than to lessen the extent of its fame.

Proportioned to the triumph of Milton were the humiliation and chagrin of his

z In a letter from Leyden, dated on the 8th of May 1651, to his friend J. Vossius, then at Stockholm, N. Heinsius says that

of Milton's work five editions had been already published-that it had been translated into Dutch, and was then translating, as he heard, into French. Virulentum Miltoni librum jamdudum ad vos perlatum confido. Ejus editiones quinque jam hîc vidimus: Belgicam etiam versionem, Gallicam nunc adornari ferunt. Burm. Syll. iii. 600. The Defensio Regia, it is true, was not without its readers; and, favoured by a numerous and strong party, it passed more than once and in more than one form through the press: but, with reference to the sale and the circulation of the "Defence of the People of England," those of the "Royal Defence" were certainly very languid and confined.

adversary. Elated and inflamed by habitual superiority, his arrogant and assuming spirit was ill formed to acquiesce in defeat; and in defeat by a man with whose name, till the moment of the encounter, he was probably unacquainted. The result indeed of this unfortunate contest was peculiarly afflicting to the feelings, and unpropitious to the interests of Salmasius." The numerous enemies, whom his want of moderation had excited, now exulted on his fall: his work was suppressed in Holland by an order of the States General, and Christina, the capricious sovereign of Sweden, who had previously entertained him with the most honourable distinction and in whose court he was residing when Milton's reply reached Stockholm, now averted her countenance and treated him with studied neglect. She had almost compelled his visit by the importunity of her invitations; and her attentions to him had been of so marked and peculiar

May it be noticed as remarkable that in his " Eloge funebrè," which I have already mentioned, (p. 350 in the note,) the Dutch professor, Vorstius, studiously avoids every allusion to this memorable controversy? By no process of art or strain of ingenuity could it be forced to yield any materials adapted to his friendly purposes. To convert the basest mineral into gold would be as easy an exploit as to form the dirty substance of the "Defensio Regia," and the posthumous "Responsio" into wreath of glory for the brow of their author.

C

a nature as to awaken, according to common report, the jealousies of Madame de Saumaise." On the discovery however of his inferiority as a writer to his English antagonist, the Queen is stated, in some of the newspapers of that day, to have "cashiered him her favour as a pernicious parasite and a promoter of tyranny." She certainly mortified him by her liberal praises of Milton's composition, and discovered in her manner a degree of coldness of which he was acutely sensible. It has been asserted that the various afflictions of his pride on this occasion proved eventually fatal to his life; and it cannot surely be regarded as improbable that the pains arising from such a cause should, in their intensity, be injurious to health and accelerate the crisis of dissolution. Let this, however, be decided according to the reader's fancy:-Salmasius retired from the court of

b When he was indisposed, or confined to his room by the cold of the climate, the Queen would visit him in his chamber, and, locking the door, would light his fire, make his breakfast, and stay with him for some hours. This was the report of the day, and if it be true, we cannot reasonably be surprised at his wife's jealousy.

с

as

< The expressions, which I have copied, are from Nedham's "Mercurius Politicus." But Nedham was a great crony, Wood tells us, of Milton's, and might therefore be suspected of exaggerating the fact in question.

d

Stockholm in September 1651, and died at Spa in Germany, in the following September, when he had just completed a most virulent reply to sting if he could not mortally wound his successful adversary. But this last product of the mind of the great Salmasius, which was published with happy malignity in the year of the Restoration, and dedicated by his son to Charles II, was of a character to hurt only the memory of its author. On the devoted head of Milton, it accumulated every crime which can debase our poor nature, and every opprobrious epithet which from the most copious vocabulary the most curious and zealous ran

Of the gout, to which he had been subject, as his biographer Clement assures us: but few complaints are more exasperated by the disorders of the mind than the gout.

The violent agitation of his spirits, in consequence of the power of Milton's reply to him, is attested by all the contem*porary scholars who had access to him at the time; and the conflict of so much strong and bad passion was more than sufficient to overthrow a frame, not naturally vigorous and then enfeebled by disease. An idle story, of his ghost's appearing to terrify his widow, was in popular circulation. N. Heinsius alludes to it very jocularly, in a letter to his friend, Gronovius. De spectro res faceta est. Conjux vivum exagitarat, nunc ille conjugem mortuus. [Burm. Syll. iii. 329.]

It is certain that at the crisis of this controversy the mind of Salmasius was so strongly affected as to induce the paroxysm of a fever. The fact is ascertained in another letter from N. Heinsius to Gronovius. Interim ne nihil agat, (speaking of Salmasius, Heinsius says,) ex febriculâ decumbit, quam illi studium illud ardens conciliasse visum, sic ultimi ferebant nuncii The latter is dated on the 4th of June, 1651. [Ibid. 270.]

cour could extort. As I am not possessed of this paltry work, to which the passions of an eminent man could induce him to condescend, I am compelled to rest my report of it on the testimony of Vossius who saw it in manuscript, of Bayle, and of Dr. Birch. From the last of these writers, I shall insert a further account of it in a note.

e

• His reply to Milton did not appear till the year of the Restoration, when it was printed at London in 24to, under the following title; "Claudii Salmasii ad Joannem Miltonum Responsio, Opus posthunum," with a dedication to Charles II, by Salmasius's son Claudius, dated at Dijon, Sept. 1, 1660. This Book is written with unexampled virulence. He treats Milton as an ordinary schoolmaster; "Qui Ludimagister in scholâ triviali Londinensi fuit;" and charges him with having divorced his wife after a year's marriage, for reasons best known to himself, and defending the lawfulness of divorce for any causes whatsoever. He stiles him "impura bellua, quæ nihil hominis sibi reliqui fecit præter lippientes oculos ;" and charges him with some false quantities in his Latin juvenile poems; and throughout the whole book gives him the titles of Bellua, fanaticus latro, Homunculus, Lippulus, Cæculus, Homo perditissimus, Nebulo impurus, scelestus audax & nefarius Alastor, infandus Impostor, &c. and declares, that he would have him tortured with burning pitch or scalding oil till he expired: "Pro cæteris autem tuis factis dictisque dignum dicam videri, qui pice ardenti, vel oleo fervente perfundaris, usque dum animam effles nocentem et carnifici jam pridem debitam." [Account of Life and Writings of Milton, p. xxxvi.]

The virulence of this work is frequently made the subject of allusion by the learned correspondents of that age. Speaking of this Responsio by Salmasius, Heinsius says in a letter to his friend Gronovius-Salmasius Miltonum suum defricare pergit; in edendo horribili isto scripto graviter desudant operæ typographica in Suecia,