tore him to pieces for his tyranny. From stories of this nature both ancient and modern which abound, the poets also, and some English, have been in this point so mindful of decorum, as to put never more pious words in the mouth of any person, than of a tyrant. I shall not instance an abstruse author, wherein the king might be less conversant, but one whom we well know was the closet companion of these his solitudes, William Shakespeare; who introduces the person of Richard the Third, speaking in as high a strain of piety and mortification as is uttered in any passage of this book, and sometimes to the same sense and purpose with some words in this place: 'I intended,' saith he, 'not only to oblige my friends, but my enemies.' The like saith Richard, ii. 1.

'I do not know that Englishman alive
With whom my soul is any jot at odds,
More than the infant that is born to-night;
I thank my God for my humility.'

Other stuff of this sort may be read throughout the whole tragedy, wherein the poet used not much licence in departing from the truth of history, which delivers him a deep dissembler, not of his affections only, but of religion."

Warton and others have supposed that Milton is here reproaching Charles with being familiar with Shakespeare. Nothing can be farther from the fact, as well might we say that he censures Comnenus for studying St. Paul's Epistles. Milton himself was familiar with and greatly admired the bard of Avon.

To

prove this assertion we need only quote his beautiful "Epitaph on the admirable Dramatic Poet, William Shakespeare," written in his twenty-first year, in 1630, and a passage from the L'Allegro, written a few years afterwards.

"What needs my Shakespeare for his honour'd bones,

The labour of an age in piled stones?

Or that his hallow'd relics should be hid
Under a star-ypointing pyramid ?

Dear son of memory, great heir of fame,

What need'st thou such weak witness of thy name?
Thou, in our wonder and astonishment,

Hast built thyself a live-long monument.

For whilst, to the shame of slow-endeavouring art,
Thy easy numbers flow; and that each heart
Hath, from the leaves of thy unvalued book,
Those Delphic lines with deep impression took;
Then thou, our fancy of itself bereaving,
Dost make us marble with too much conceiving;
And so sepulchred, in such pomp dost lie,
That kings, for such a tomb, would wish to die."

"Then to the well-trod stage anon,

If Jonson's learned sock be on,

Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child,
Warble his native wood-notes wild."

There can be no doubt that Milton both admired and appreciated Shakespeare. The word "stuff" is not used in a disparaging sense, but simply means that this and similar passages prove that tyrants have often counterfeited a religious character. Shakespeare frequently uses it in the sense of material, matter, or essence of anything; thus in Othello, 'stuff o' the conscience,' in Macbeth, 'that perilous stuff that weighs upon the heart,' and in Julius Cæsar, 'ambition should be made of sterner stuff.'

A DEFENCE OF THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND,

IN ANSWER TO

SALMASIUS'S DEFENCE OF THE KING.-DEFENSIO PRO POPULO ANGLICANO, CONTRA CLAUDII SALMASII DEFENSIONEM REGIAM.

TH

HE First Defence was probably published in the same year as the Iconoclastes, and the Second Defence in 1654. Both were undertaken at the request of Parliament; the one in reply to Salmasius, the other to an anonymous writer, who appears to have been Alexander More. Both were written in Latin,

and therefore in a translation can afford no just criterion of Milton's real and unique style. We must here be 'delighted with ideas rather than words;' and indeed they are mainly interesting from the personal details of his own life, habits, and travels, the references to his blindness and personal appearance, and the motives and occasions of his various works, which they contain. The autobiography of any great man or notoriety must ever be invaluable, and we should treasure up any chance sentence in which he may speak of himself, and be thankful for the egotism in which circumstances may have caused him to indulge.

From his Second Defence, the Apology for Smectymnuus, and his Familiar Letters, an Apologia pro vitâ suâ might easily be constructed in Milton's own words, as interesting as that of the great heresiarch Newman; and must always afford valuable material to any one who undertakes to write the life, or illustrate the works, or who would really understand the grand and colossal character and genius of our immortal Poet.

From this time we notice that Milton begins to indulge in coarse and intemperate language, and in acrimonious vituperations against his opponents. We shall here cite, as a fitting introduction to this Treatise and some that followed, the observations of Isaac Disraeli on the acrimony which the most eminent scholars have infused frequently in their controversial writings.

'The celebrated controversy of Salmasius continued by Morus with Milton-the first the pleader of King Charles, the latter the advocate of the people-was of that magnitude, that all Europe took a part in the paper-war of these two great men. The answer of Milton, who perfectly massacred Salmasius, is now read but by the few.

Whatever is addressed to the times, however great may be its merit, is doomed to perish with the times; yet on these pages the philosopher will not contemplate in vain.

'It will form no uninteresting article to gather a few of the rhetorical weeds, for flowers we cannot well call

them, with which they mutually presented each other. Their rancour was at least equal to their erudition, the two most learned antagonists of a learned age! Salmasius was a man of vast erudition, but no taste. His writings are learned; but sometimes ridiculous. He called his work Defensio Regia, Defence of Kings. The opening of this work provokes a laugh. "Englishmen who toss the heads of kings as so many tennis-balls; who play with crowns as if they were bowls; who look upon sceptres as so many crooks."

"That the deformity of the body is an idea we attach to the deformity of the mind, the vulgar must acknowledge; but surely it is unpardonable in the enlightened philosopher thus to compare the crookedness of corporeal matter with the rectitude of the intellect. Salmasius seems also to have entertained this idea, though his spies in England gave him wrong information; or, possibly, he only drew the figure of his own distempered imagination.

Salmasius sometimes reproaches Milton as being but a puny piece of man; an homunculous, a dwarf deprived of the human figure, a bloodless being, composed of nothing but skin and bone; a contemptible pedagogue, fit only to flog his boys; and sometimes elevating the ardour of his mind into a poetic frenzy, he applies to him the words of Virgil, "Monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens, cui lumen ademptum." Our great poet thought this senseless declama