xix. 8), as only a Permissive Bill on this subject to the hard-hearted

Jews. To continue it in modern times would be to open the door to license: it would be abused; everybody would be putting away his wife; there must therefore be no longer any such Permissive Bill, but a strict Law of indissoluble marriage. Well then, by the same reasoning, Milton argues, there ought to be a great many more strict laws, that nobody had ever thought of. "What more foul and common sin among us than drunkenness; and who can be ignorant that, if the importation of wine, and the use of all strong drink, were forbid, it would both clean rid the possibility of committing that odious vice, and men might afterwards live happily and healthfully without the use of those intoxicating liquors? Yet who is there, the severest of them all, that ever propounded to lose his sack, his ale, toward the certain abolishing of so great a sin; who is there of them, the holiest, that less loves his rich canary at meals, though it be fetched from places that hazard the religion of them who fetch it, and though it make his neighbour drunk out of the same tun? While they forbid not, therefore, the use of that liquid marchandise, which forbidden would utterly remove a most loathsome sin, and not impair either the health or the refreshment of mankind, supplied many other ways, why do they forbid a Law of God, the forbidding whereof brings into an excessive bondage oft-times the best of men, and betters not the worse? He, to remove a national vice, will not pardon his cups, nor think it concerns him to forbear the quaffing of that outlandish grape in his unnecessary fulness, though other men abuse it never so much; nor is he so abstemious as to intercede with the magistrate that all manner of drunkenness be banished the Commonwealth: and yet, for the fear of a less inconvenience, unpardonably requires of his brethren in their extreme necessity to debar themselves the use of God's Permissive Law, though it might be their saving, and no man's endangering the more! Thus, this peremptory strictness, we may discern of what sort it is, how unequal and how unjust." Lest the meaning of this passage should be mistaken, we may point out that the Permissive Bill in the matter of drinking which it defends by implication is a Permissive Bill to drink and not a Permissive Bill to prevent drinking. The passage, therefore, cannot be quoted as Milton's testimony in favour of the so-called modern Permissive Bill. It is dead the reverse. And yet there is a lurking kindness in the passage towards a Permissive Bill of that sort, contemplated as possible, though yet unheard of; and, though Milton's principle of Liberty would have bound him to oppose it, he would perhaps have done so reluctantly. The idea of a country cleared of all its apparatus of Bacchus, and in which wine, or ale, or any other form of intoxicating fluid, ruby, amber, or crystal at its purest, should be unattainable by any mortal breathing on its surface, had, so far as his personal tastes and habits were concerned, no terrors for Milton. Had it been a matter of personal preference, instead of principle, he would gladly, I doubt not, have consented to a Permissive Bill in England to prevent absolutely the drinking of intoxicating liquors, if it had been accompanied by a ratification of Moses's Permissive Bill in quite the contrary sense, by which the sobered nation should have the right of divorcing.

Nothing has been said yet about the few pages prefixed to the _Tetrachordon_, in which Milton dedicates the treatise, as he had done three already (the _Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce_, the _Buear Tract_, and the _Areopagitica_), to the Parliament of England. These pages, though put first, were doubtless written last. They are signed with the writer's name in full. In respect of biographical information, of the external kind at least, they are more interesting than the treatise itself. Most of the information, however, will now be sufficiently intelligible, if given in the form of mere extracts, without more of explanation than may be supplied by Italic headings:--

_Thanks to Parliament for Past Favour and Protection_:--"Although it be generally known how and by whom ye have been instigated to a hard censure of that former Book entitled _The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce_--an opinion held by some of the best among Reformed writers without scandal or confinement, though now thought new and dangerous by some of our severe Gnostics, whose little reading and less meditating holds ever with hardest obstinacy that which it took up with easiest credulity--I do not find yet that aught, for the furious incitements that have been used, hath issued by your appointment that might give the least interruption or disrepute either to the Author or the Book. Which he who will be better advised than to call your neglect, or connivance at a thing imagined so perilous, can attribute it to nothing more justly than to the deep and quiet stream of your direct and calm deliberations, that gave not way either to the fervent rashness or the immaterial gravity of those who ceased not to exasperate without cause. For which uprightness, and incorrupt refusal of what ye were incensed to, Lords and Commons-- though it were done to justice, not to me, and was a peculiar demonstration how far your ways are different from the rash vulgar-- besides those allegiance of oath and duty which are my public debt to your public labours, I have yet a store of gratitude laid up which cannot be exhausted; and such thanks perhaps they may live to be as shall more than whisper them to the next ages."

_Punishment for Mr. Herbert Palmer_:--"I shall here briefly single one of them [his detractors], because he hath obliged me to it--who, I persuade me, having scarce read the book, nor knowing him who writ it, or at least feigning the latter [!], hath not forborne to scandalize him, unconferred with, unadmonished, undealt with by any pastorly or brotherly convincement, in the most open and invective manner, and at the most bitter opportunity that drift or set design could have invented. And this, whenas the Canon Law, though commonly most favouring the boldness of their priests, punishes the naming or traducing of any person in the Pulpit, was by him made no scruple. If I shall therefore take licence by the right of nature, and that liberty wherein I was born, to defend myself publicly against a printed calumny, and do willingly appeal to those Judges to whom I am accused, it can be no immoderate or unallowable course of seeking so just and needful reparations. Which I had done long since, had not these employments which are now visible deferred me.--It was preached before ye, Lords and Commons, in August last, upon a special Day of Humiliation, that 'there was a wicked book abroad;' and ye were taxed of sin. that it was yet 'uncensured, the book deserving to be burnt;' and 'impudence' also was charged upon the Author, who durst 'set his name to it, and dedicate it to yourselves.' First, Lords and Commons, I pray to that God before whom ye then were prostrate so to forgive ye those omissions and trespasses which ye desire most should find forgiveness, as I shall soon show to the world how easily ye absolve yourselves of that which this man calls your sin, and is indeed your wisdom and your nobleness, whereof to this day ye have done well not to repent. He terms it 'a wicked book,' and why but 'for allowing other causes of Divorce than Christ and his Apostles mention;' and with the same censure condemns of wickedness not only Martin Bucer, that elect instrument of Reformation, highly honoured and had in reverence by Edward the Sixth and his whole Parliament--whom also I had published in English, by a good providence, about a week before this calumnious digression was preached, so that, if he knew not Bucer then, as he ought to have known, he might at least have known him some months after, ere the Sermon came in print; wherein, notwithstanding, he persists in his former sentence, and condemns again of wickedness, either ignorantly or wilfully, not only Martin Bucer, and all the choicest and holiest of our Reformers, but the whole Parliament and Church of England in those best and purest times of Edward the Sixth. All which I shall prove with good evidence at the end of these Explanations. And then let it be judged and seriously considered with what hope the affairs of our Religion are committed to one among others [the Westminster Assembly] who hath now only left him which of the twain he will choose--whether this shall be his palpable ignorance, or the same 'wickedness' of his own Book which he so lavishly imputes to the writings of other men; and whether this of his, that thus peremptorily defames and attaints of wickedness unspotted Churches, unblemished Parliaments, and the most eminent Restorers of Christian Doctrine, deserve not to be 'burnt' first. And, if his heat had burst out only against the _opinion_, his wonted passion had no doubt been silently borne with wonted patience. Eut, since, against the charity of that solemn place and meeting, it served him further to inveigh opprobriously against the _person_, traducing him with no less than 'impudence,' only for setting his name to what he had written, I must be excused not to be so wanting to the defence of an honest name, or to the reputation of those good men who afford me their society, but to be sensible of such a foul endeavoured disgrace--not knowing aught, either in mine own deserts or the laws of this land, why I should be subject, in such a notorious and illegal manner, to the intemperancies of this man's preaching choler. ... But, if only to have writ my name must be accounted 'impudence' how doth this but justify another, who might affirm, with as good warrant, that the late Discourse of _Scripture and Reason_, which is certain to be chiefly his [Palmer's] own draft, was published without a name out of base fear, and the sly avoidance of what might follow if the party at Court should hap to reach him! And I, to have set my name where he accuses me to have set it, am so far from recanting that I offer my hand also, if need be, to make good the same opinion which I there maintain by inevitable consequences drawn parallel from his own principal arguments in that of _Scripture and Reason_; which I shall pardon him if he can deny without shaking his own composition to pieces. The 'impudence,' therefore, since he weighed so little what a gross revile that was to give his equal, I send him back again for a phylactery to stitch upon his arrogance, that censures not only before conviction so bitterly without so much as one reason given, but censures the Congregation of his Governors to their faces, for not being so hasty as himself to censure." [Footnote: The discourse _Scripture and Reason_, which Milton here ascribes to Palmer, charging him with cowardice in having published it anonymously, was a quarto pamphlet of 80 pages, published in April 1643, and purporting to be "by divers Reverend and Learned Divines." More fully its title was _Scripture and Reason Pleaded for Defensive Armes: or the whole Controversie about Subjects taking up Armes_. It was, in fact, an elaborate proof, from Scripture and Reason, of the right of the English Parliament and People to make war upon the King. Doubtless Milton had ascertained that Palmer was its chief author: hence, rather unnecessarily, his taunt. Palmer had also published more recently (Dec. 1644), but _with_ his name, the First Part of a Book called _Memorials of Godliness and Christianity_. It was afterwards completed by two additional Parts, also with his name, Part II. containing, among other things, a set of aphorisms entitled "The character of a Christian in Paradoxes and seeming Contradictions." It had so chanced, however, that, before he had published this Part II. of his _Memorials_, a surreptitious edition of the aforesaid Aphorisms had found its way into print, with no author's name attached (July 1645). Hence a strange result. Palmer died in 1647, _ætat _. 46; and in the following year--though his _Memorials_, containing the "Christian Paradoxes," were in circulation with his name--the "Christian Paradoxes" by themselves, as they had been published anonymously in the surreptitious edition of July 1645, were published as Lord Bacon's in a quarto volume of Bacon's "Remaines." The blunder was probably then detected; but it was again committed in 1730, when the "Paradoxes" were included in Blackburn's Edition of Bacon's works. From that date till 1864 the "Paradoxes" were printed as Bacon's, and, though suspected by some, yet often written about as Bacon's; but in the last-mentioned year the mistake was rectified, and Herbert Palmer reinstated in the authorship of the "Paradoxes," by the Rev. Alexander B. Grosart (See his little volume _Lord Bacon not the Author of "The Christian Paradoxes:"_ see also Spedding's _Bacon_, VII. 289 _et seq._).]

_Punishment for Dr. Featley_:--"Some whose necessary shifts have long inured them to cloak the defects of their unstudied years and hatred now to learn under the appearance of a grave solidity--which estimation they have gained among weak perceivers--find the ease of slighting what they cannot refute, and are determined, as I hear, to hold it not worth the answering. In which number I must be forced to reckon that Doctor who, in a late equivocating Treatise plausibly set afloat against the _Dippers_, diving the while himself with a more deep prelatical malignance against the present State and Church Government, mentions with ignominy the 'Tractate of Divorce;' yet answers nothing, but instead thereof (for which I do not commend his _marshalling_), sets Moses also among the crew of his Anabaptists, as one who to a holy nation, the Commonwealth of Israel, gave laws 'breaking the bonds of marriage to inordinate lost' These are no mean surges of blasphemy--not only 'dipping' Moses the Divine Lawgiver, but dashing with a high hand against the justice and purity of God Himself; as these ensuing Scriptures, plainly and freely handled, shall verify to the lancing of that old apostemated error. Him, therefore, I leave now to his repentance." [Footnote: Poor Dr. Featley died April 17, 1645 (_ætat_ 65), only six weeks after this punishment of him was published. He had then been restored to liberty, for he died in his house at Chelsea. Milton knew him perfectly when he characterized him as one of those who had gained among "weak perceivers" a reputation for "grave solidity." And yet it is touching to have before me, as I now have in a copy of the Sixth Edition of the _Dippers Dipt_ (1651), not only an elaborate portrait of Featley by the engraver Marshall, done in the ordinary way, but also an engraving representing the old man most painfully as he looked when lying in his winding-sheet before they put him into his coffin. Over the corpse are these words, "I have fought a good fight; I have finished my course; I have kept the faith;" and underneath is Featley's Latin Epitaph, telling that he was "Impugnator Papismi, Propugnator Reformationis," and "Theologus Insignis, Disputator Strenuus, Conscionator Egregius."--The word "_marshalling_" which I have italicised in the extract from Milton about Featley is, no doubt, a punning allusion to an engraving by Marshall in the _Dippers Dipt_, giving caricatures of different kinds of Sectaries, with a representation of men and women bathing in the centre (see _antè_, p. 188, Note). ]

A fact which might have been guessed independently, but which it is interesting to have told us by Milton himself, is that there were some persons who were particularly courteous in acknowledging the ability shown in the Divorce treatise, the "wit and parts" of the author, his "elocution," and the more than ordinary "industry, exactness, and labour" he had expended on the subject, but who made all this only an excuse for not discussing his proposition seriously. On this class of his critics Milton is very severe. They were like those, he said, who used to get off from Socrates, when they could not resist the force of his truths, by saying that Socrates could at any time make the worse cause seem the better. To what would the world, to what would England, come, if this habit of regarding all novelty as sophistry, of making the very ability and learning bestowed upon a doctrine an objection to the receipt of that doctrine, were to become general? "Ignorance and illiterate presumption," he says, "which is yet but our disease, will turn at length into our very constitution, and prove the hectic evil of this age." He hoped better of the Parliament; he hoped that they would not overlook the necessity of a change of the Law in this matter of Divorce. At all events he had done his part. "Henceforth, except new cause be given, I shall say less and less. For, if the Law make not a timely provision, let the Law, as reason is, bear the censure of those consequences which her own default now more evidently produces. And, if men want manliness to expostulate the right of their due ransom, and to second their own occasions, they may sit hereafter and bemoan themselves to have neglected, through faintness, the only remedy of their sufferings, which a seasonable and well-grounded speaking might have purchased them. And perhaps in time to come others will know how to esteem what is not every day put into their hands, when they have marked events, and better weighed how hurtful and unwise it is to hide a secret and pernicious rupture under the ill counsel of a bashful silence." Here Milton seems to be speaking for himself. He seems to be giving warning what he means to do without leave of the Law if the Law will not give him leave,

COLASTERION.

COLASTERION is Greek for "Punishment." Now Mr. Herbert Palmer and Dr. Featley had each had his _colasterion_ in the Dedication prefixed to the TETRACHORDON. Three other persons were waiting for their turn of the lash. These were the anonymous author of that Answer to Milton's Treatise which had been published in the preceding November; [Footnote: See its full title, _antè_, pp. 299-300.] the Rev. Mr. Joseph Caryl, the licenser of that Answer; and the famous Mr. Prynne. The COLASTERION, expressly so called, published by Milton on the same day with the TETRACHORDON, settled accounts with these gentlemen. It is a short tract of twenty-seven pages, without preface. Its full title was as follows;-- "_Colasterion: A Reply to a Nameles Answer against 'The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce,' Wherein the trivial Author of that Answer is discovver'd, the licenser conferr'd with, and the Opinion which they traduce defended. By the former author, J. M._ Prov. xxvi. 5. Answer a Fool according to his folly, lest hee bee wise in his own conceit. _Printed in the year_ 1645."

First for Mr. Caryl. What was _his_ offence? It was that, not content with merely licensing the anonymous answer to Milton, he had become godfather to it by expressing the license thus:--

"To preserve the strength of the Marriage-bond and the Honour of that estate against those sad breaches and dangerous abuses of it which common discontents (on this side Adultery) are likely to make in unstaid minds and men given to change, by taking in or grounding themselves upon the opinion answered and with good reason confuted in this Treatise, I have approved the printing and publishing of it.--November 14, 1644. Joseph Caryl."

Now Caryl was not a nobody. He was one of the Assembly of Divines, and in that Assembly was tending by this time to the side of the Independents. He was also Lincoln's Inn preacher, had published some sermons, and was known to be engaged on an exposition of the Book of Job; which attained at length, when it was published (1648-66), the vast dimensions of twelve quarto volumes. [Footnote: Lowndes's Bibliographer's Manual, by Bohn: Art. _Caryl_; and Wood's Athenæ, III. 979--983.] He was about four years older than Milton; who thus "confers with" him:--

_Punishment for Mr. Caryl_:-"A Licenser is not contented now to give his single "Imprimatur," but brings his chair into the title-leaf; there sits and judges up or judges down what book he pleases. If this be suffered, what worthless author, or what cunning printer, will not be ambitious of such a stale to put off the heaviest gear?--which may in time bring in round fees to the Licenser, and wretched mis-leading to the people. But to the matter. He approves 'the publishing of this Book, to preserve the strength and honour of Marriage against those sad breaches and dangerous abuses of it.' Belike then the wrongful suffering of all these sad breaches and abuses in marriage to a remediless thraldom is 'the strength and honour of Marriage!' A boisterous and bestial strength, a dishonourable honour, an infatuated doctrine, worse than the _salvo jure_ of tyrannizing which we all fight against! Next he saith that 'common discontents make these breaches in unstaid minds and men given to change.' His words may be apprehended as if they disallowed only divorce for 'common discontents in unstaid minds,' having no cause but a 'desire for change;' and then we agree. But, if he take all discontents 'on this side adultery' to be common, that is to say, not difficult to endure, and to affect only 'unstaid minds,' it might administer just cause to think him the unfittest man that could be to offer at a comment upon Job, as seeming by this to have no more true sense of a good man in his afflictions than those Edomitish friends had, of whom Job complains, and against whom God testifies his anger. Shall a man of your coat, who hath espoused his flock, and represents Christ more in being the true husband of his congregation than an ordinary man doth in being the husband of his wife--and yet this representment is thought a chief cause why marriage must be inseparable--shall this spiritual man, ordinarily for the increase of his maintenance, or any slight cause, forsake that wedded cure of souls that should be dearest to him, and marry another and another; and shall not a person wrongfully afflicted, and persecuted even to extremity, forsake an unfit, injurious, and pestilent mate, tied only by a civil and fleshly covenant? If you be a man so much hating change, hate that other change; if yourself be not guilty, counsel your brethren to hate it; and leave to be the supercilious judge of other men's miseries and changes, that your own be not judged. The reasons of your licensed pamphlet, you say, 'are good.' They must be better than your own then . ... Mr. Licenser ... you are reputed a man discreet enough, religious enough, honest enough--that is, to an ordinary competence in all these. But now your turn is to hear what your own hand hath earned ye, that when you suffered this nameless hangman to cast into public such a despiteful contumely upon a name and person deserving of the Church and State equally to yourself, and one who hath done more to the present advancement of your own tribe than you or many of them have done for themselves, you forgot to be either honest, religious, or discreet." [Footnote: In 1645, according to Wood (Ath. III. 979), Mr. Caryl was appointed to the living of St. Magnus near London Bridge. It is probably with this readiness of his to leave one congregation and wed another that Milton twits him. Evidently Milton would not spare an Independent, any more than a Presbyterian or Prelatist, who had given him offense.]

The punishment for Mr. Prynne is milder, and it comes in incidentally at the very beginning of the _Colasterion:_--

_Punishment for Mr. Prynne_:--"After many rumours of confutations and convictions forthcoming against _The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce_, and now and then a bye-blow from the Pulpit, feathered with a censure, strict indeed, but how true more beholding to the authority of that devout place which it borrowed to be uttered in than to any sound reason which it could oracle,--while I still hoped, as for a blessing, to see some piece of diligence or learned discretion come from them--it was my hap at length, lighting on a certain parcel of _Queries_ that seek and find not, to find not seeking, at the tail of 'Anabaptistical,' 'Antinomian,' 'Heretical,' 'Atheistical' epithets, a jolly slander called '_Divorce at Pleasure_.' [Footnote: See the quotation from Prynne's "Queries" antè, pp. 298-9.] I stood a while and wondered what we might do to a man's heart, or what anatomy use, to find in it sincerity; for all our wonted marks every day fail us, and where we thought it was we see it is not--for alter and change residence it cannot sure. And yet I see no good of body or of mind secure to a man for all his past labours, without perpetual watchfulness and perseverance, whenas one above others [_i.e._ Prynne] who hath suffered much and long in the defence of Truth shall, after all this, give her cause to leave him so destitute, and so vacant of her defence, as to yield his mouth to be the common road of Truth and Falsehood, and such falsehood as is joined with the rash and heedless calumny of his neighbour. For what book hath he ever met with, as his complaint is, 'printed in the city,' maintaining, either in the title or in the whole persuance, '_Divorce at Pleasure?_' 'Tis true that to divorce upon extreme necessity, when, through the perverseness or the apparent unaptness of either, the continuance can be to both no good at all, but an intolerable injury and temptation to the wronged and the defrauded, to divorce then there is a book that writes it lawful. And that this law is a pure and wholesome national law, not to be withheld from good men because others likely enough may abuse it to their pleasure, cannot be charged upon that book, but must be entered a bold and impious accusation against God himself, who did not for this abuse withhold it from his own people. It will be just, therefore, and best for the reputation of him who in his _Subitanes_ hath thus censured, to recall his sentence. And if, out of the abundance of his volumes, and the readiness of his quill, and the vastness of his other employments, especially in the great Audit for Accounts, he can spare us aught to the better understanding of this point, he shall be thanked in public, and what hath offended in the book shall willingly submit to his correction-- provided he be sure not to come with those old and stale suppositions, unless he can take away clearly what that discourse hath urged against them, by one who will expect other arguments to be persuaded the good health of a sound answer than the gout and dropsy of a big margent, littered and overlaid with crude and huddled quotations."

But it is the anonymous author of the pamphlet which Mr. Caryl had licensed that comes in for the most ferocious and protracted punishment. On the evidence of the pamphlet itself one can see that he was some very insignificant person, not worth Milton's while on his own account, but only because Milton wanted to toss and gore somebody publicly for a whole hour, by way of deterring others.

The Answerer begins by announcing that he is first to show what the Doctrine or Discipline of Divorce really is, then to give some reasons "why a man may not put away his wife for indisposition, unfitness, or contrariety of mind, although manifested in much sharpness," and finally to reply to the arguments to the contrary brought forward in Milton's book. Nine pages having sufficed for the first two divisions, the remaining thirty-five are devoted to Milton. They are dull and plodding, the punctuation and expression showing that the author was ill-educated and little accustomed to write; and, from the frequent use of scrivener- like or attorney-like phrases and illustrations, one soon comes to conjecture the pamphlet to have been written by some one in a small way of law-business. Occasionally there is a little hit of personal reference, proving that the writer knew something about Milton and his reputed habits. Thus, speaking of Milton's complaint of a wife "to all due conversation inaccessible," he says, "It is true, if every man were of your breeding and capacity, there were some colour for this plea; for we believe you to count no woman to due conversation accessible as to you, except she can speak Hebrew, Greek, Latin and French, and dispute against the Canon Law as well as you, or at least be able to hold discourse with you. But other gentlemen of good quality are content with fewer and meaner endowments, as you know well enough." Sometimes he criticises Milton's phraseology. "The rankest politician," Milton had said in one of his sentences; on which this is the comment: "Is this the fine language that your book is commended for? Good your worship, look a little more upon your rhetoric in this one piece, shall I say of nonsense? However, I am sure it is contrary to all laws and customs of speaking. 'Rankest politician!' Wonderful!" Milton's phrase describing a dull woman as "an image of earth and phlegm" likewise attracts notice. "We confess," he says, "this is something of a sad case; but yet I believe you speak but hyperbolically (as they use to say): for women are usually more than earth and phlegm; they have many times spirit enough to wear the breeches, if they meet not with a rare wit to order them. I wonder you should use such phrases: I know nor hear of maids or women that are all earth and phlegm, much less images of earth and phlegm. If there be any such, yet you need take no thought for them; there are enough dull enough to own them; and, for yourself or any other who desire them, there are spirited dames enough who are something besides mere images of earth and phlegm." Here is a specimen of the argumentation:-- "Suppose you should covenant with a man at Hackney that he should dwell in your house at Aldersgate Street, and you in requital should dwell in his house at Hackney, for a time: I doubt not but your main end in this your covenant was your own solace, peace, refreshing. Well, but suppose, when you came there, the Cavaliers or other soldiers should trouble you, and should be quartered there; who, peradventure, if they did not quite put you out, yet would lie in your most pleasant chamber, best situate for your solace, peace, and refreshing, and divers other ways would annoy you, by means whereof you could not enjoy that pleasure and delight which you intended in your covenant when you changed houses with the other. Think you in this case it would be lawful or accepted on by the other party if now you should come to him and say 'Sir, I covenanted for your house at Hackney for my own refreshing, comfort, and solace; but I am disturbed of it, I do not enjoy the end of my covenant: give me my own house again, and go you and live there.' He would tell you, and so he might justly, 'Stay, Sir; take your own fortune; a bargain is a bargain; you must even stand to it.'" Sometimes the writer thinks he will rebuke sharply. Thus:--"This is a wild, mad, and frantic Divinity, just like to the opinions of the maids of Aldgate [some Antinomian young women that had been making themselves notorious]. 'Oh,' say they, 'we live in Christ and Christ doth all for us: we are Christed in Christ and Godded in God, and at the same time that we sin here we, joined to Christ, do justice in him.' ... Fie, fie, blush for shame, and publish no more of this loose Divinity." But the choicest bit shall come last. Criticising the conclusion of a passage in Milton's treatise, the language of the first portion of which is pronounced "too sublime and angelical for mortal creatures to comprehend it," the Answerer declares, "This frothy discourse, were it not sugared over with a little neat language, would appear so immeritous, so contrary to all humane learning, yea truth and common experience itself, that all that read it must needs count it worthy to be burnt by the hangman."

Milton's first glance at the anonymous pamphlet, he tells us, had shown him the sort of person he had to deal with. He could be no educated man, for in the very first page of his pamphlet, where he quotes Greek and Hebrew words, he misspells them. This was no serious crime in itself; only a man falsely pretending to know a language would do worse! "Nor did I find this his want of the pretended languages alone, but accompanied with such a low and homespun expression of his mother-English all along, without joint or frame, as made me, ere I knew further of him, often stop and conclude that this author could for certain be no other than some mechanic." It was singular also that, while the Second Edition of the _Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce_ had been out for months before the publication of this Answer, only the First Edition was referred to in the Answer. This, indeed, had enabled Milton to find out who the Answerer was, and the whole history of his pamphlet. For, in the course of the preceding summer, he had been amused by hearing that there was in the press, half printed, an Answer to the First Edition of his Divorce Book, concocted by a committee of heads, in the centre of whom was--"let the reader hold his laughter," he says, and hear the story out--"an actual serving-man." At least, he _had_ been a serving-man, waiting at table, cleaning trenchers, and the like; but he was ambitious of rising in the world, and had turned Solicitor. Zeal for public morality, or some farther ambition for literary distinction, had put it into his head to answer the First Edition of Milton's treatise; and, taking into his confidence one or two raw young Divines of his acquaintance, he had actually composed something, and sent it to the press. Milton had resolved that, if the thing did appear, he would leave it unnoticed. For some months, during which it had been lying unfinished in the press, he had quite dismissed it from his mind. But lo! here it was at length, stitched and published--this precious composition of the Serving-man turned Solicitor. Not quite as it had come from his pen, however! A Divine of note--no other, in fact, than Mr. Caryl himself, the Licenser-- had looked over the thing, and "stuck it here and there with a clove of his own calligraphy to keep it from tainting." This, and Caryl's approbation prefixed, had rather altered the state of matters; and Milton had resolved that, when he had leisure for a little recreation, his man of law "should not altogether lose his soliciting."

Nor does he. Never was poor wretch so mauled, so tumbled and rolled, and kept on tumbling and rolling, in ignominious mire. Milton indeed pays him the compliment of following his reasonings, restating them in their order, and quoting his words; but it is only, as it were, to wrap up the reasoner in the rags of his own bringing, and then kick him along as a football through a mile of mud. We need not trouble ourselves with the reasonings, or with the incidental repetitions of Milton's doctrine to which they give rise; it will be enough to exhibit the emphasis of Milton's foot administered at intervals to the human bundle it is propelling. "I mean not to dispute Philosophy with this Pork." he says near the beginning; "this clod of an antagonist," he calls him at the next kick; "a serving-man both by nature and function, an idiot by breeding, and a solicitor by presumption," is the third propulsion; after which we lose reckoning of the number of the kicks, they come sometimes so ingeniously fast. "Basest and hungriest inditer," "groom," "rank pettifogger," "mere and arrant pettifogger," "no antic hobnail at a morris but is more handsomely facetious;" "a boar in a vineyard," "a snout in this pickle," "the serving-man at Addlegate" (suggested by 'the maids at Aldgate'), "this odious fool," "the noisome stench of his rude slot," "the hide of a varlet," "such an unswilled hogshead," "such a cock-brained solicitor;" "not a golden, but a brazen ass;" "barbarian, the shame of all honest attorneys, why do they not hoist him over the bar and blanket him?"--such are a few of the varied elegancies. Two or three of them break the bounds within which modern taste permits quotation. "I may be driven," he says in the end, "to curl up this gliding prose into a rough Sotadic, that shall rime him into such a condition as, instead of judging good books to be burnt by the executioner, he shall be readier to be his own hangman. So much for this nuisance." After which, as if feeling that he had gone too far, he begs any person dissenting from his Doctrine, and willing to argue it fairly, not to infer from this _Colasterion_ that he was displeased at being contradicted in print, or that he did not know how to receive a fair antagonist with civility. Practically, however, I should fancy that, after the _Colasterion_, most people would be indisposed to try the experiment of knowing what Milton meant by being civil to an antagonist.