2"^ s. V. 122., MaV 1. '58,] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



363 



the practice here in England was for the men to 

 be quite apart from the women at church : — 



" The next morning (after giving up the chancellor- 

 ship) being holidaj', he went to Chelsey church with my 

 lady and his children and family; and after Mass was 

 done, because it was a custom that one of my Lord's 

 gentlemen should then go to my Lady's pew, and say 

 'his Lordship is gone;' then did ho himself come unto 

 her, and making a courtesy with his cap in his hand, 

 said: 'may it please your Ladyship, ray Lordship is 

 gone,' " &c. — Edit. Hunter, p. 200, 



All works of old English art remind us strongly 

 of this ritual separation : in the Coventry tapestry, 

 figured by Shaw, Dresses and Decorations (t. ii,), 

 King Henry VI. is kneeling at prayer on one side 

 with the gentlemen of his court behind him ; on 

 the other, Queen Margaret and her ladies in 

 waiting are shown. On our stained-glass windows 

 and grave-brasses, the children of a family stand 

 or kneel behind their parents, not according to 

 their age, but the boys are with their father, and 

 the girls with their mother. To this day the 

 separation of sexes is followed by us Catholics in 

 many country congregations ; and there is every 

 reason for believing that this has been, in such 

 places, the old English unbroken practice handed 

 down to us from times before the change in the 

 national faith. 



The separation of the sexes in church is, in 

 fact, one of the very oldest among the ritual ob- 

 servances of Christendom, and was insisted on 

 throughout both West and East. With the Puri- 

 tans it could neither have originated, nor from 

 them could it have anywhere been borrowed ; for 

 it^ use is shown to have existed more than a 

 thousand years before that sect arose ; and its ob- 

 servance can be pointed to in places where the 

 name itself of Puritan was never even so much as 

 spoken of or heard. D. Rock, 



Brook Green, Hammersmith. 



LIBELS ON THE CHASACTER OF MILTON. 

 (2°'l S. v. 173.) 



Your esteemed correspondent Mr. Offor ex- 

 presses his " unbounded surprise " at the scur- 

 rility of Winstanley, and may not therefore be 

 aware of the many other similar " testimonials," 

 equally just and candid, to the character of our 

 great poet. It may be interesting to congregate 

 a few of them for inspection, as evidences of the 

 bad taste and feeling of some, and, as in Win- 

 stanley's case, of the very indiflferent talent for 

 predicting future events of others. 



I)u Moulin, in his Regii Sanguinis Clamor ad 

 Ccelum, after applying to Milton the famous 

 line : — 



" Monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens, cui lumen 

 ademptum," 



— which he qualifies as follows, " quanquam nee 



ingens, quo nihil est exilius, exsanguius, contrac- 

 tius, de genere animalculorum, quas quo pungunt 

 acrius, eo nocent minus," — styles Milton a dis- 

 grace to humanity " (generis humani dehonesta- 

 mentum), " an infernal miscreant " (tartareus 

 furcifer), " an execrable butcher " (teterrimus 

 carnifex), " a monster of a man " (tale hominis 

 monstrum). 



Zeigler speaks of Milton as more successful 

 than the Jesuits, more daring than the devil 

 himself (Jesuitis felicior, ipso Diabolo audacior). 



Bishop Hacket, in his Life of Williams, thus 

 closes his subject: — "What a venomous spirit 

 is in that serpent Milton, that blackmouthed 

 Zoilus that blows his viper breath upon these 

 immortal devotions" (in the Eikon Basilike). 

 The worthy Bishop afterwards calls him " a petty 

 schoolboy scribbler," and " a canker-worm," and 

 thus energetically apostrophises him : — " Get 

 thee behind me, Milton ! thou savourest not the 

 things that be of truth and loyalty, but of- pride, 

 bitterness, and falsehood." 



That meek and gentle scribbler Roger V Es- 

 trange tells us (No Blind Guides), that Milton 

 had, in his " life and doctrine," resolved one great 

 question, " by evidencing that devils may indue 

 human shapes, and proving himself, even to his 

 own wife, an incubus ; " adding, that Milton had, 

 by his Defensio, given " every man a horror for 

 mankind, when he considered that you (Milton) 

 are of the race." 



The learned Dr. South, with equal good taste 

 and spirit, stigmatises Milton as a " blind adder." 



Dr. George Bate (in Elenchi Motuum Nupero- 

 rum) indulges himself in these terras : — 



" They (the Kegicides) employ the mercenary pen of 

 the son of a certain scrivener, one Milton, from a musty 

 pedant vampt into a new Secretary, whose chief talent 

 lay in Satires and libels, his tongue being dipped in the 

 blackest and basest venom." 



Dr. Skinner (Motus Compositi) calls Milton a 

 " bold orator, or rather bagpiper." 



In the estimation of Milton's enemies, his blind- 

 ness that followed immediately the publication of 

 his Defence of the People of England, was an 

 undoubted judgment of heaven on him for his 

 impiety; and he was taunted with it by Du Moulin, 

 L'Estrange, South, Elis, Tyffe,Higgons, and others, 

 who appeared to vie with each other in exhausting 

 the tolerably ample stores of our language for 

 foul and abusive terms. So that if it be true, as 

 Pope assures us, that " No man deserves a monu- 

 ment who could not be wrapped in a winding- 

 sheet of papers written against him," surely 

 Milton's monument ought to be more durable 

 than the pyramids, — as indeed it will be ! 



As a crowning gem in this collection of tributes 

 to genius, I will add the words of that illustrious 

 writer who discovered so ingeniously that all 

 Milton's verses were nothing but " second-hand 



