have derived from Salmasius' fabulous account of it, though he had actually procured Latin extracts from Toland's Life of the English Poet for the use of his Dictionary! What, it may well be asked, would he himself have said, if he had detected any other person in a similar offence? He proceeds to characterise him as one of those satirical wits who delight in stimulating, accumulating, and propagating calumnious reports,* unsuccessfully indeed (he asserts), in his Iconoclastes;' as every body abroad remained convinced, that Charles I. himself wrote the book which bore his name!!'

With the view of supplying, to the best of

Bishop Newton's Apology for his method of writing controversy is somewhat more liberal. "With more candid and ingenuous disputants, he would have preferred civility and fair argument to wit and satire: to do so was my choice, and to have done thus was my choice,' is his own language. Besides, contests of every kind were then waged in a rougher and more barbarous manner." (Life, p. lxx.) Of Saumaise in particular, we are told by Sorbiere, it was impossible to dispute the opinions, in the smallest degree, without being called 'a blockhead, ́ an idiot,' and perhaps a rascal.' "He has constructed no work (he adds) with lime and sand, by which posterity will be benefited. He cannot live without illustrious enemies, and without some quarrel upon his hands, and it does not suffice him to have disarmed his man, and obtained from him the usual satisfaction: he must trample him in the dirt, and disfigure him. His Latinity runs away with him. He is unwilling, that all the foul language he has learnt should be lost; and he finds it more easy to produce from the stores of his memory the vituperative terms, which he has collected from ancient authors, than delicate raillery and sound argument from any other source."

my power, such misrepresentations or defects, I had made copious abstracts from Burman's valuable Sylloge, the Letters of Gudius and Sarravius, Vossius' Correspondence edited by Colomesius, &c. &c. &c., to say nothing of a host of minor writers. I had even submitted, in hours of greater leisure than I now possess, to the task of analysing the arguments employed upon the occasion; and hoped to have presented to the public a memoir not wholly unworthy of it's acceptance. But the combining and revising due to such a subject and such combatants, which would always have been arduous to me, I now, alas! find to be impracticable; and I must console myself with the idea, that enough is probably known, both of Salmasius* and his royal patroness, the extravagant Christina (whom Milton must be admitted, in his sublime apostrophe, to have raised far above her desert†) to

* See Dr. Symmons' Life of Milton, 2d Edit. pp. 350, 351, &c. &c. My obligations indeed to this work, and to it's author, are innumerable. The first will be copiously traced in the following pages: the latter I am happy to seize this, and every opportunity of acknowledging, however inadequately. To the Rev. Dr. Disney also, of the Hyde, I gladly return my thanks for many kind attentions connected with this little work.

Yet the great Condé, as well as Milton, panegyrised her magnanimity. The feelings of these two encomiasts however, on the subject of the royalty which she renounced, may be presumed to have been not quite in unison. But sometimes, we are told, Idem fit ex diversis: this seems to prove, that adversis may be substituted in the Thesis. Her conduct, after her abdication and abjuration of Protestantism, must surely be regarded

render any thing in the way of elucidation beyond what is subjoined in the following notes, unnecessary. Even the notes are, generally, so little essential to the mere understanding of the text, that I have usually left the quotations, which they contain, untranslated.

The Version itself, made on the suggestion of an eminent Bookseller many years ago, as circumstances intercepted it's appearance at the time, was thrown aside with numerous other still more imperfect undertakings, to perish. A valued friend, by his intercession, drew it from the devoted heap. It communicates respectability of size at least to the volume, to which it is prefixed: and if by contributing to revive, or to extend, a conviction of the integrity, magnanimity, consistency, and erudition of Milton-for of the erroneousness of several of his opinions is, here, no question-it should polish or replace one leaf of his laurel crown, which Malignity has breathed upon or Time has broken off, I shall be abundantly satisfied.

Such as it is, I inscribe it, with the most unfeigned respect, to

THE RIGHT HON. EARL SPENCER.

as indefensible. Her strange caprices of dress and association might be forgiven; but the murther of Monaldeschi must close the mouth of her defenders. Dr. Symmons correctly confines his vindication to the period when she praised Milton, and Milton praised her!

MILTON'S

SECOND DEFENCE, &c.

THAT first and greatest of human duties, constant gratitude to God, with a faithful remembrance, and (whenever we have been blessed beyond our hopes and expectations) an express and devout acknowledgement of his favours, I feel now strongly incumbent upon me, in the very outset of my work, on three several accounts. First, because I am fallen upon those days, in which the eminent virtues and unprecedented magnanimity and perseverance of my fellow-citizens, after due invocation of the Deity and under his most obvious guidance, by a series of unparallelled actions and exertions have rescued the state from grievous tyranny and religion from a most ignominious slavery: Next, because when many suddenly sprung up with low-born malice to criminate their great achievements, and one more particularly (elated with a pedant's pride, and puffed up by the adulations of his followers) in an