1654 he produced the most interesting, if not the most striking of all his prose compositions, "A second Defence of the People of England." To repel that flood of slanders, with which his barbarian adversary had attempted to overwhelm him, it became necessary for the author to insist on many parts of his own history, and to disclose the springs within his bosom which had uniformly actuated his conduct. In the execution of this delicate task, he speaks with so much of the unfaltering dignity of truth, and respecting facts so immediately under the correction of numbers who must have been acquainted with them, that it is impossible for us to refuse him our assent. This production has copiously supplied his biographers with materials of peculiar value, as they cannot be obtained in any other place, and as their authenticity cannot be doubted. The defensive part therefore of this work constitutes at present its principal interest: but, at the time of its publication, its active hostility was the immediate and chief cause of its celebrity The proper and full title of the work is "Johannis Miltonii Angli, pro Populo Anglicano Defensio secunda contra infamem libellum Anonymum cui titulus," "Regii sanguinis clamor ad cœlum adversus parricidas Anglicanos." London. and effect. The moral character of Morus was unhappily not proof against attack. With a quarrelsome and overbearing temper, he has been represented by some of his contemporaries as the cause of war, like another Helen, wherever he came, or, like an Ishmael, with his hand lifted against every body while every body's hand was lifted against him; and his uncontrolled attachment to women was productive of adventures, not calculated to reflect honour upon a minister of the Gospel. Enabled to possess himself of the most correct information and with talents to improve it into the means of the most wounding offence, Milton pursues his adversary through the opprobrious privacies of his immorality; and exacts a severe revenge for those savage insults,' in the guilt of which, as We have already cited a passage from the Regii Sanguinis Clamor, in which Milton is charged with having been expelled from Cambridge, and forced to fly, from punishment and disgrace, into Italy. [See note, p. 70.] To convey some idea to our readers of the spirit and style of those men to whom Milton in his replies has been accused of immoderate severity, and to show that Du Moulin did not unsuccessfully copy the great controversial model which he had studied in Salmasius, we will defile our page with another short extract from the virulent production now published by Morus. Unus inventus est, post eruditionem extra fines suos relegatam, qui Latinè scribere auderet, magnus scilicet heros quem Salmasio opponerent, Johannes Miltonus. Quis et unde dubium: homone? an vermis heri e sterquilinio editus?" their publisher and prefacer, Morus was beyond any question a party and accomplice. Among other licentious amours of which Morus stood accused, his connexion with a servant girl, whom he was said to have corrupted with a promise of marriage and afterward, in her pregnancy, to have deserted, had been made the subject of a legal prosecution by Madame de Saumaise, the girl's mistress, and had consequently be come a topic of very general conversation. With reference to this piece of scandalous history, an unlucky epigram, commonly at and a little after-" Miltonum arripuerunt, et illud ignobile lutum in Salmasium jaculati sunt"-[Reg. San. Clam. p. 8.] In this work Milton is styled "Tartareus furcifer-teterrimus carnifextale hominis monstrum, &c. &c. Is it surprising that to an opponent with such language the answer should not be mild? But Du Moulin's scurrility, gross as it is, is scarcely equal to his profaneness. Not satisfied with making the sufferings of Charles and those of our blessed Lord precisely similar and parallel cases, he does not hesitate to affirm that the crime of the Jews, when they crucified Jesus Christ, was incomparably less than that of the English, when they brought their king to the scaffold!!!" Præ isto,' (says this Christian divine and dignitary of the English Church,) "nihil fuit Judæorum scelus Christum cruci figentium, sive hominum mentem, sive sceleris effectus compares," &c. [p. 4.] and his reasoning on the subject is curious. The comparison between the sufferings of the deposed monarch and those of " the Lord of Life," is to be found further in the volume, at p. 54, 55 of the first edition: for a second edition of this execrable work was published in 1659, that it's author might not lose his reward at the glorious harvest of the Restoration. tributed to Milton, had already appeared in Nedham's "Mercurius Politicus;" and it was now again published in the work of which we are speaking. Depending altogether on a verbal conceit, its poignancy is not transferable to our language; and, as it is not remarkable for its delicacy, it may be left without regret under the veil of its original Latin. Galli ex concubitu gravidam te, Pontia, Mori On this point of attack Morus, in his reply, gave his antagonist an advantage by inadvertently correcting the orthography of the girl's name, and affirming that it ought to be written Bontia and not Pontia. After all however, the fact seems to be disputable, at least in the atrocity which has been imputed to it: for the issue of Madame de Saumaise's prosecution was favourable to Morus; and the charge against him has been ascribed, by some of his contemporaries, rather to his neglect of the mistress than to his affection for the maid. * The English reader however may accept the following substitute for the punning point of the original. Though Pontia's big, cease, dames, to call her whore; You bear a spotless name, but she bears MORE. 'Madame de Saumaise's character was not of such immaculate purity as to be exempt from suspicion and censure. In A threat having been suggested, in the Regii sanguinis Clamor,' &c. of a second edition of Salmasius's work, or rather of the publication of a new production by that celebrated scholar, Milton derides the menace with the contempt which might have been expected, "Tu igitur, ut pisciculus ille anteambulo, præcurris balænam Salmasium, impressiones in hæc littora minitantem," &c. You," says he to Morus, "like some little pilot fish, precede the great whale Salmasius, and menace us with his incursions on our shore:" and then, pursuing the idea which had been thus accidentally presented to him, he ridicules the threatened publication in the following light sally: 66 "Gaudete Scombri, et quicquid est piscium salo, Qui frigidâ hyeme incolitis algentes freta, Vestrum misertus ille Salmasius eques Bonus amicire nuditatem cogitat; Burman's Sylloge Epist. we find some curious anecdotes respecting her, which were in circulation among her contemporaries. She was accustomed to whip with her own hands, as N. Heinsius mentions, a boy of seventeen, who was one of her servants; and Morus's mistress, who is called an English or a Scotch girl, (Hebe Caledonia,) is said to have been her lady's assistant at the infliction of the punishment. Madame de Saumaise's violent prosecution of Morus seems to have been prompted by that resentment which results from disappointed love, and the rather than by a calm regard to virtue and its interests. The |