my former printer. I replied, through the medium of those friends, that at present I had nothing to print. But behold! not long after, he comes forth as the author (the suppositious one indeed) of a production full of the grossest abuse against the very man to whom lately he had so officiously offered his services. My friends express their indignation. The fellow, unrivalled in impudence, writes in answer, that he is astonished at their simplicity and ignorance of the world, in expecting or even in desiring any regard to duty or honesty from him, seeing by what business he got his livelihood; that he had received the said letter, together with the book, from Salmasius himself, who asked him, as a favour, whether he would do what he has actually done; that if Milton, or any one else, should think proper to reply, and chose to make use of his labour, he had no scruple: that is, either against Salmasius, or against Charles: for in such reply, this was the only thing which he could expect to happen. I need say no more; you see the man. I now proceed to the rest: for there were more than one concerned in getting up this tragedy, as they would make it, of the royal cry. Here then in the beginning, according to custom, you have the dramatis personæ : The cry, by way of prologue; Vlaccus, a paltry rogue; or if you will, Salmasius, disguised as the rogue Vlaccus two poetasters, drunk with stale beer; More, adulterer and whore-master. Admirable set of tragedians, truly! the battle in array with which I have to encounter! But as our cause could hardly be expected to have diffe rent adversaries, let us now attack them, such as they are, one after another; only premising, that if any one should think our refutation deficient in gravity, he should consider, that we have not to do with a grave adversary, but with a herd of players; to which, while it was necessary to accommodate the nature of the refutation, we thought it proper to have in view not always what would be most suitable to decorum, but what would most suit them. The Cry of the Royal Blood to Heaven against the If, More, you had shown that blood to have been unjustly shed, your account might have worn an appearance of plausibility. But, as in the early periods of the reformation, the monks, from their weakness in argument, were used to have recourse to all manner of spectres and imaginary monsters; so you, after all other things have failed, resort to cries which were never heard, and to arts of despicable friars, which are grown out of date. You would be far enough from giving credit to any one of our party, who should affirm that he had heard voices from heaven; though I should have little difficulty in believing (with which you charge me) that you had heard cries from hell. But tell us, I beseech you, who heard this cry of the royal blood? You say that you heard it: trash! for in the first place, you are never favoured in what you hear; and the cry which ascends to heaven, if heard by any but God, is heard, as I must think, by the just and the upright alone; inasmuch as they being themselves void of offence, are authorized to denounce the wrath of God on the guilty. But to what end should you hear it?— That, lecher as you are, you might write a satyr? For It appears, that at the very time you were forging this ery to heaven, you were slyly playing the wanton with Pontia. You have many impediments, More, you have many things ringing within and without, which will not suffer you to hear things of that nature which have reached to heaven; and if you had nothing else to prevent you, the loud cry which is raised to heaven against yourself, would certainly be sufficient. That strumpet of yours of the garden, who has complained, that what most of all led to her seduction was the example of yourself her own pastor, is crying, whether you know it or not, against you; the husband whose bed you violated is crying against you; Pontia is crying, with whom you broke your nuptial compact; and if any one is crying, that little infant is crying, whom you begot in shame, and abandoned a helpless babe. If you hear not all these cries to heaven against yourself, you never could have heard the cry of the royal blood. At the same time, this libel, instead of being called the cry of the royal blood to heaven, may be more properly inscribed-More's lascivious neighing for his Pontia. The prolix and stale epistle which follows is devoted in part to Charles, in part to Milton, to extol the one, and to vilify the other. From the very beginning, you may form your judgment of the author. "The dominions of Charles (says he) have fallen into the sacrile gious hands of parricides, and (because proper words could not be found, we are abused in a word from Tertullian) of deicides." Whether this rant is to be referred to Salmasius, to More, or to Vlaccus, let us pass it by. But what he says a little after" That there lives not the man who is more studious to promote the happiness of Charles," though only ridiculous to others, must rouse the indignation of Charles. And is there no one alive more studious of his happiness than you, who have offered to the enemies of Charles, your services in the very same way-that is, to write a letter, and afterwards to print it? Well might you call the king miserable, in being thus deserted by his friends, when a rascally printer can presume to rank himself among the few more intimate friends which remain : miserable indeed, when his most faithful friends do not surpass in faith and studious regard the perfidious Vlaccus. What could he say more arrogant, as it respects himself, or more contemptuous, as it regards the king and his friends the royalists? Nor is it less ridiculous to introduce an illiterate mechanic philosophizing on the weightiest subjects, and on the virtues of kings; uttering sentiments, such as they are, which could not have been bettered either by Salmasius or More. To tell the truth, I have discovered Salmasius, here, as often elsewhere, and by no obscure signs, to be a man, though of great reading, of an unexercised and puerile judgment. Though he must have read-that the chief magistrates in the excellently modelled commonwealth of Sparta, if any wise saying happened to fall from a worthless character, ordered it to be taken from him, and conferred by lot upon some man of virtue and prudence he was yet so ignorant of every thing that is called decorum, as to do quite the reverse-as to suffer opinions, which he thought becoming in an honest and prudent person, to be put into the mouth of a man who is an arrant scoundrel. Be of good cheer, Charles: the scoundrel Vlaccus," from his trust in God," bids you be of good cheer. "Don't throw so many sufferings away:" Vlaccus, the most prodigal of spendthrifts, who has thrown away his whole substance, if he ever had any, counsels you not to throw away your sufferings. "Make use of fortune, who is thus acting towards you as a stepmother." And can you avoid making use of her, especially when you have such an adviser, who, for so many years, has been in the habit, right or wrong, of using other people's fortunes? "You have drunk deep of wisdom; drink on:" so counsels, so directs the drunken Vlaccus, the unrivalled preceptor of kings, who, amidst his fellow-workmen and pot-companions, seizing the leathern flaggon with his inky hands, drinks a mighty draught to your wisdom. Such are the goodly counsels, to which your Vlaccus ventures to put his name, and which Salmasius and More, with the rest of your champions, are either too timid, or too proud to acknowledge: that is, whenever you require to be advised or defended, they are always wise or brave, not in their own name, but in the name of another, and at another's hazard. Whoever this personage may be, therefore, let him cease idly to vaunt his "bold and manly eloquence," when the man, who is eininent (please the gods) for the elegance of his genius, was afraid to give up his very celebrated name." The book, in which he has avenged, as he says, the royal blood, he dared not even dedicate to Charles, but through his confident and deputy Vlaccus; meanly content to signify, in the words of his printer, "that, with your permission, O king, he was going," without a name, "to dedicate the book to your name." Having thus dispatched Charles, he is now preparing, with no little blustering, his attack upon me: "After these preludes, Javμdeos, the wonderful Salmasius will blow the terrible trumpet." You prognosticate health, and give us notice of a new kind of musical harmony: for when that terrible trumpet shall be blown, we can think of no fitter accompaniment for it than |