have been more properly passed over with disdain, I should be of their opinion, were it's circulation confined to such as are well acquainted with our characters: but how shall others be prevented from admitting the lies of our adversaries as facts? When however we shall have taken all due pains to despatch truth in our vindication wherever falsehood has gone before, they will undoubtedly be undeceived in their conclusions, and he will be ashamed of his calumnies-or, if not ashamed, contemned with greater propriety. He would indeed have sooner received the castigation he deserves, had he not hitherto screened himself by false reports; industriously giving out that 'Saumaise was again at work, fabricating new volumes against me, which were on the point of making their appearance.' Of this artifice the only result has been, that he has procured a temporary respite of the execution of his sentence as a calumniator; as I thought it right to wait awhile, and reserve myself fresh and vigorous for a stouter foe. But with Saumaise, I conceive, my warfare is concluded, since he is now dead-how dead, I will not say for I will not make his loss of life matter of reproach to him, as he did my loss of sight to me. Though there are some, who lay his death at my door:* and assert that while by

* "Salmasius died at the Spa, September 3, 1653; and, as controvertists are commonly said to be killed by their last dispute, Milton was flattered with the credit of destroying him."

struggling with my keen shafts he infixed them still more deeply, and saw his difficulties thickening round him-the season for reply elapsed, the popularity of the work annihilated, his reputation and character ruined, and his credit with sovereigns (on account of his wretched defence of royalty) upon the decline-he lingered through three years of mortification, and died at last rather of chagrin, than of bodily ailment. Be that as it may, if I am again to engage an enemy so thoroughly known, and to wage with him a posthumous war, I can feel no apprehension, after having so easily sustained his fiercer and more vehement attacks, of sinking under the efforts of his debility and his deathbed.

And now, to come at last to this thing, that cries to us; for I hear the cry-not indeed of the royal blood, as the title of the book pretends-but of some lurking blockhead: the crier himself I no where descry.* Ho there!

(Johnson's Life of Milton.') The title of the Book, to which Milton was now replying, it must be remembered was Regii Sanguinis Clamor adversus Parricidas Anglicanos, or, The Cry of the Royal Blood to Heaven against the English Parricides.'

* In almost every long work (however grave and methodical) passages occur, which a translator will find, from incongruity of idiom &c., nearly if not wholly untranslateable. These are usually multiplied, when any thing of vivacity or scurrility mingles in the composition. In that case puns, equivoques, and allusions frequently abound; more particularly, if the

Who are you? Any body, or no body? Even the meanest of mankind, the very slaves, have their names. Am I doomed always to contend with anonymous foes?* And yet these are your great king's men: I should be surprised, if kings could be persuaded to think them so.

writer have a mind stored with classical images and expressions. This, Milton had in an eminent degree: and not this only, but a turn for what his Italian friends would have denominated concetti-improved certainly, if not formed, in their society. To compensate for the loss of those which I have been constrained to omit, though many I have sought, perhaps unsuc cessfully, to retain (and that rather to present the reader with a tolerable fac simile of Milton's Latin composition, then out of regard to the trifles themselves) I have occasionally introduced a jeu de mot, where there is no precise warrant for it in the original: e. g. the jingle of cry and descry, &c. In the note, p. 23, an instance occurs of the kind alluded to.

* Saumaise, it appears both from this passage, and from one immediately following-Cùm vester ille Claudius de Jure Regio, materiâ sanè gratiosissima, sine nomine tamen orsus esset scribere—as well as from the title of Milton's reply, ' Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio contra Claudii Anonymi, aliàs Salmasii, &c.,' and from some parts of his preface to it, issued his first publication without a name. This double-named Anonymous, as solecistical, is treated by Saumaise in his Responsio' with great severity: where however he inconsistently exonerates our author of part of the Defence, insinuating that it was written à ludimagistro quodam Gallo de trivio (Could he here blunderingly inean Gill, who died in 1642 ?) and clumsily retaliates the aliàs by a Johannis Asini, aliàs Multonis (nam multo' vervez est etiam Anglis) which he immediately changes into Tygridis aliàs Leopardi, and Lupi aliàs Molossi; as the first, he says, are too meek a pair of animals for the parallel.

The followers and friends of kings are not ashamed of their principals. How then can these be such? They bestow no presents, but rather receive them: they contribute nothing, not even their names, to the royal cause. What then! They give words;* and yet even these they have not the generosity to give for nothing, or the spirit to sanction by the addition of their signatures. Whereas I, Messieurs Les Anonymes (for I must address you by a foreign name, as you do not allow me to do it in plain English) though your great Saumaise first published upon his most courtly subject, the Royal Prerogative, without his name, and left me at full liberty to follow his example; I was so far from being ashamed of myself or of my cause, that I should have deemed it infamous to undertake a work of such importance without an open acknowledgement of myself. What I then openly acknowledge, writing in a republic against kings, why do you, writing in the dominions or under the patronage of kings against a republic, studiously conceal? Why do you tremble, in a place of safety? Why shrink, as in the night, amidst full day-light; and by your invidious and suspicious cowardice throw a slur upon the high power and favour, by which you are pro

* Dant verba, every school-boy knows, is an equivoque, which admits of no parallel version into English, so as to imply deception' in terms compatible with the gratis dare, which follows.

tected? Do you doubt, whether or not they are able to protect you? So masked and disguised, truly, you resemble rather a band of thieves collected to "rob the exchequer," than a cohort of warriors marshalled to defend the rights of kings. I publicly state, what I am; and the power, which I now withhold from kings, I would still in any legitimate kingdom continue rigorously to withhold from them: neither could any monarch condemn me as a criminal, without first condemning himself as a tyrant. IN INVEIGHING INDEED AGAINST TYRANTS, HOW DO I INJURE KINGS, WHOM I PLACE AT THe farTHEST DISTANCE FROM TYRANTS? Good men and bad do not, in fact, more widely differ. Whence it follows, that a tyrant is not only not a king, but a character universally most hostile to a king; and, if we refer to the annals of antiquity, we shall find that more kings have been dethroned and destroyed by tyrants, than by the people. To affirm, then, that tyrants ought to be cut off is to affirm, not that kings, but that their worst and deadliest enemies ought to be cut off. What you, on the other hand, con

*" I am a plain man, and on my first appearance in this way I told my name, and who I belonged to." (Preface to the Defence of the Divine Legation.') Such was Warburton's principle. The practice of his followers appears, occasionally, to have been somewhat less honest. See, in Parr's Dedication of Two Tracts of a Warburtonian' to Bishop Hurd, his comment upon these "deeds without a name," p. 158.