Poor Pontia alone found it no joke: but all her complaints proved ineffectual. The Cry of the

troduced below." De Ethiope (More) et Anglâ," says Is, Vossius to Nic. Heinsius, in a letter dated 'Amst. 1652,' lepida sunt et festiva, quæ reponis; sed nunc negant ea vera esse, et sparsa esse ab malevolis quibusdam. Sanè constat mihi Anglam istam omnes Æthiopi reddidisse amatorias suas. Inter ipsum et Salmasium lis forsan orietur (quænam, enim, inter tales possit esse diuturna concordia?) propter librum quendam hìc excusam, cui titulus CLAMOR SANGUINIS REGII IN COLUM.' Scriptus ille videtur à quodam anonymo Anglo, transmissus verò Salmasio, divulgatus verò ab Æthiope. Propter sexaginta exemplaria, quæ promisit typographus, inter ipsos est contentio. Ethiops ea sibi vult vindicare, decrevitque sex exemplaria inscribere Reginæ nostræ, totidem verò Regi Angliæ; alia item sex Galliæ Regi, &c. &c.

Vossius seems to have known the secret History of this celebrated Tract very correctly; as the anonymous Author,' Du Moulin, in his Reply to a Person of Honour,' &c. 4to. Lond. 1675, actually owns the work; as well as in the Prefatory Epistle, intended to accompany his furious Iambics against Milton in their second edition with the Regii Sanguinis Clamor. His illiberal sneers at Milton's blindness, and his mean exultation at beholding another smarting in his stead, display at once as Dr. Symmons has observed, the most selfish cowardice, and the most egregious want of principle. And yet his loyalty raised him, in those times, to a high station in our church! Compared with him, More was, indeed, a liberal and honourable antagonist. From the Pro Se Defensio' however of Milton it appears, that the latter wrote the Prefatory Epistle to Charles II., and even subscribed his name to it in many of the copies instead of that of A. Ulack.

More afterward prosecuted the young woman, and her master Salmasius with his whole family. His resentment, fully proportionate to his preceding intimacy, led him meanly to disclose

Royal Blood easily drowned those of a weak ruined girl, complaining of her seduction. Saumaise too, shocked at the injury and disgrace inflicted upon himself and his whole family, finding himself duped by his dear friend and encomiast and a second time laid at the mercy of his enemy, and perhaps likewise considering the event as a misfortune super-added to what he had already incurred in the royal cause, sunk shortly afterward into the grave. But I antici

numerous little incidents relative to his old patron and his Xanthippe during an occasional dinner (perhaps given for the purpose) to Saumaise's bitter enemy, Isaac Vossius. A disgusting recital of one of them is contained in a subsequent Letter from Heinsius dated Venice, 1653;' where the whipping referred to by Warton in his Note, the crime, and the confederate (Hebe Caledonia) are introduced in minute detail. See also a Letter from Vossius to Heinsius, stating Saumaise's wish that More would marry his wife's light-charactered attendant,' with More's sturdy refusal, and a consequent squab ble between him and his Dulcinea, Burm. Syll. iii. 651. More had not scrupled to represent the lady as unfaithful to her hus band's bed; and as Saumaise had triumphantly disarmed of all it's virulence the name Alastor' bestowed upon him, by discovering that it had somewhere been given to Jupiter, they quaintly agree to bestow upon him the latter title, with it's Lybian adjunct of Ammon." In the legal investigation of the quarrel, it seems to have been the great object of Madame Saumaise and her advocates, to establish by testimony the incontinence of More; and their good fortune to find, as they supposed, proof unius alteriusve ancillæ quibus vim inferre voluerit. It is amusing to read these classical scurrilities of the animæ cælestes of literature.

pate. Previously to his death, like Salmacis of old (for their stories, as well as their names,* have a strong resemblance) unconscious that he had clasped in his arms an hermaphrodite competent to the functions of both sexes, and not knowing what More had begotten in his house, Saumaise fondles what he brought forth by the press-I mean the volume, in which he finds himself so often denominated 'the Great,' and peruses with so much complacency + compli

* Here the pun upon the names is more obvious in the original, Salmasius and Salmacis.

+ This instance of vanity was too gross, to be lightly dismissed: it is again brought forward in a subsequent page. And yet Saumaise, in a letter to J. F. Gronovius (dated, it is true, fifteen years before, in 1637) says, "Suffercti suflatique quantùm volent emendicatis laudibus ambulent, dum ego vix ferre queo-non dico, meritas, quid enim mereor? sed ne modicas quidem et à benevolentibus ultrò tributas ;" and goes on to request his friend to abstain from compliments, that they may deal with one another after the old Roman fashion, "et hujusmodi ineptias ex animo nostro primùm, deinde ex scriptis deleamus!" (Salm. Epist. lxxvii.)

But Colomesius, in his Recueil de Particularités,' has preserved an anecdote (quoted, with too many others of a similar kind by the amusing Menckenius, in his De Charlataneria Eruditorum,' p. 52, n.) which deposes strongly against the sincerity of this deprecatory language: Messieurs Gaulmin, Saumaise, et Maussac se rencontrans un jour à la Bibliotheque Royale, le premier dit aux deux autres; "Je pense que nous pourrions bien tous trois tenir tête à tous les Savans de l' Europe. A quoi M. de Saumaise répondit; "Joignez à tout ce qu'il y a de Savans au monde, et vous et M. de Maussac, je vous tiendrai tête tout seul." (Opuscul., Ultraj. 1669, p. 98.)

'ments, by the world pronounced ridiculous and absurd. He, therefore, instantly sets out to the printer's; and, in his fruitless effort to preserve the fame that has long been slipping through his fingers, descends to play the humble midwife's part in obstetricating to those praises, or rather those fulsome adulations, for which he miserably cringes to such sycophants as this. For this labour, one Ulack seemed a most commodious accomplice. Him he easily persuades, not only to undertake the printing of the book in question, for which he would have incurred no censure; but also to subscribe his name, as the author, to an Epistle addressed indeed to Charles (II.), but crammed with abuse and scurrilities against me, who had never set my eyes upon the fellow. To prevent any surprise at his pliability in thus consenting most impudently to assault me without provocation, and taking another's extravagances so readily upon his own shoulders, I will here give some account of his treatment of others, so far as I have been able to make it out.

Ulack-whence he sprung, heaven knowsis a sort of itinerant pamphlet-vender, a notorious scoundrel and spendthrift. For some time he sold books clandestinely in London, whence after innumerable shifts he was obliged precipitately to decamp, over head and ears in debt. At Paris, he quickly revived his old character for dishonesty and profligacy, in the Rue

St. Jacques; of which likewise he was presently constrained to take a French leave, without daring ever to come near it again: and now, if any one wants an unprincipled and venal blackguard, he is to be found white-washed as a printer at the Hague. To prove how little stress is to be laid upon any thing he says or does, how promptly for the least pittance of money he will profane things the most sacred, and how little connexion public feeling (as might have been supposed) had with his tirade against myself, I will produce evidence out of his own mouth. Having observed that my Reply to Saumaise' had been a profitable concern to the booksellers engaged in it, he writes to some of my friends to request that they would prevail upon me, if I had any thing ready for the press, to entrust it to his management; and he would take care, it should be executed with much greater correctness than my former tract.' I answered, through the same channel, that I had nothing at that time in hand, which required the exercise of his art.' When lo! within a short period he makes his appearance as not only the printer, but the author too by

* Hartlib, to whom Milton's Tractate on Education' is addressed; as appears from his relation of the same story, in his subsequent Pro Se Defensio:' in which, by the bye, occurs a host of puns, founded upon Ulack's Tables of Sines, Tangents, and Secants,' setting all translation and even paraphrase at defiance.