THE SECOND BOOK.

govern well is to train up a nation in true wisdom and virtue, and that which springs from thence, magnanimity, and that which is our beginning, regeneration, and happiest end, likeness to God, which in one word we call godliness; this is the true flourishing of a land-other things follow as the shadow does the substance. A commonwealth ought to be but as one huge Christian personage, one mighty growth and stature of an honest man, as big and compact in virtue as in body; for look what the grounds and causes are of single happiness to one man, the same ye shall find them to a whole state."

On the quotation which follows from Chaucer's Ploughman, we may observe that Tyrwhitt does not admit that tale into his edition. He says, 'I cannot understand that there is the least ground of evidence, either external or internal, for believing it to be a work of Chaucer's.' It has not the least resemblance to Chaucer's manner either of writing or thinking, in his other works. It is not at all probable that a Roman Catholic would be likely to rail and inveigh against the whole government of the Church in the style of this Ploughman's Tale. Nevertheless, we here see

Milton pressing him into the service of Protestantism.

We must not omit the Fable of the Wen, an imitation of the well-known Fable of the Stomach and the Members, with which "pretty tale " Menenius Agrippa pacified the insurrection of the Roman plebeians against the patricians, and obtained the appointment of the tribunes of the people, as beautifully related in Shakespeare's Coriolanus, act i., scene i.; also in Camden's Remains.

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Upon a time the body summoned all the members to meet in the guild, for the common good: the head by right takes the first seat, and next to it a huge and monstrous wen, little less than the head itself, growing to it by a narrower excrescency. The members, amazed, began to ask one another what he was that took place next their chief? None could resolve. Whereat the wen, though unwieldly, with much ado gets up, and bespeaks the assembly to this purpose: "That as in place he was second to the head, so by due of merit, that he was to it an ornament, and strength, and of special near relation; and that if the head should fail, none were fitter than himself to step into his place: therefore he thought it for the honour of the body that such dignities and rich endowments should be decreed him, as did adorn and set out the noblest members." that it should be consulted.

To this was answered,

Then was a wise and

learned philosopher sent for, that knew all the charters, laws, and tenures of the body. On him it is imposed by all, as chief committee, to examine, and discuss the claim and petition of right put in by the wen; who soon perceiving the matter, and wondering at the boldness of such a swoln tumour, "Wilt thou," quoth he, "that are but a bottle of vicious and hardened excrements, contend with the lawful and freeborn members, whose certain number is set by ancient and unrepealable statute? Head thou art none, though thou receive this huge substance from it. What office bearest thou? What good canst thou show by thee done to the commonweal? The wen,

not easily dashed, replies that his office was his glory; for so oft as the soul would retire out of the head from over the steaming vapours of the lower parts to divine contemplation, with him she found the purest and quietest retreat, as being most remote from soil and disturbance. "Lourdan," (or Lurdan, an old word for blockhead) quoth the philosopher, "thy folly is as great as thy filth: know that all the faculties of the soul are confined of old to their several vessels and ventricles, from which they cannot part without dissolution of the whole body; and that thou containest no good thing in thee, but a heap of hard and loathsome uncleanness, and art to the head a foul disfigurement and burden, when I have cut thee off, and opened thee, as by the help of these implements I will do, all men shall see."

"The prelates took the ready way to despoil us both of manhood and grace at once, and that in the shamefullest and ungodliest manner, upon that day which God's law, and even our own reason hath consecrated, that we might have one day at least of seven set apart wherein to examine and increase our knowledge of God, to meditate and commune of our faith, our hope, our eternal city in heaven, and to quicken withal the study and exercise of charity; at such a time that men should be plucked from the soberest and saddest thoughts, and by bishops instigated and pushed forward to gaming, jigging, wassailing, and mixed dancing, is a horror to think!"

Milton here alludes to the celebrated Book of Sports put forth by James I., 1618, and republished with additions by Charles I., 1633, at the instigation of Archbishop Laud; and the bishops were ordered to take care of its publication in all parish churches. The Long Parliament, to their credit, ordered it to be burnt by the hands of the common hangman 1643, two years after Milton wrote this.

"Now I appeal to all wise men, what an excessive waste of treasure hath been within these few years in this land, not in the expedient, but in the idolatrous erection of temples beautified exquisitely to outvie the Papists, the costly and dear bought scandals and snares of images, pictures, rich copes, gorgeous altar-cloths. What can we suppose this will come to? If the

splendour of gold and silver begin to lord it once again in the Church of England, we shall see Antichrist shortly wallow here, though his chief kennel be at Rome. If they had but one thought on God's glory, and the advancement of Christian faith, they would be a means that with these expenses, thus profusely thrown away in trash, rather churches and schools might be built, where they cry out for want, and more added where too few are; a moderate maintenance to every painful minister, that now scarce sustains his family with bread; which (I hope) the worthy men of our land will consider."

The word "painful" here means taking pains. Thus Fuller, O the holiness of their living, and the painfulness of their preaching.' 'Many things,' Archbishop French well observes would not be so painful in the present sense of the word, if they had been more painful in the earlier, as perhaps some sermons.' They would rouse us up to a war fit for Cain to be the leader of, an abhorred, a cursed, a fraternal war. England and Scotland, dearest brothers both in nature and in Christ, must be set to wade in one another's blood; and Ireland, our free denizen, upon the back of us both, as occasion should serve : a piece of service that the pope and all his factors have been compassing to do ever since the Reformation.

"But ever-blessed be He, and ever glorified, that