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of Edinburgh, Session 1880 - 81 . 
secretary, was selected to prepare a reply. He performed his task, 
although delayed, as he himself explains, by the state of his health ; 
and in 1651 he published his “Defensio pro populo Anglicano,” in 
reply to Salmasius. Whatever were the intrinsic merits of his 
work, or whatever the temper of the times in 1649, when the 
tragedy was recent, two years had elapsed, and Milton’s essay was 
by universal consent admitted to have the best of it. Bayle says of 
it that it made Milton spoken of throughout the whole world by 
everyone. Europe was probably unconvinced, but it was amused. 
It laughed, if it did not assent. Queen Christina herself joined in 
the general enjoyment of the pungent and effective retort, and 
looked coldly on her discomfited protege. The book is now unread 
and forgotten, but, as I pointed out the other evening, Bayle in his 
“Dictionary” mentions Milton as the opponent of Salmasius, as if 
that were his chief and almost his only title to a place in his work. 
Nevertheless, had we been to pronounce judgment now on this 
celebrated tract, putting aside the political views maintained and 
defended in it, I am not sure that our verdict would be the same. 
In point of reasoning on the principles of government it follows 
the lines, up to a certain point, of Buchanan and Ilutherford, 
borrowing largely from both. In this part of the subject there is 
nothing in his views which would ever have acquired for him the 
celebrity which followed him. The real characteristic of the treatise, 
such as it is, consists in the hearty, unrestrained, and amusing 
abuse which the author, from beginning to end, showers on his 
antagonist and his book, and the diverting use which he makes of 
the sonorous and dignified language in which his thoughts are 
clothed, as the vehicle for an unremitting volley of gibes, sarcasms, 
grim jokes, and even puns, at the author’s expense. 
One or two specimens of his style will serve to illustrate this 
estimate, and place both the majestic poet and the powers of the 
Latin language in a novel point of view. I quote, for the most part, 
Walsingham’s translation. 
In his preface he starts with the strain which he sustains, with 
unabated spirit, to the end. After quoting the title of his enemy’s 
book, which I have read, he says : — “ You undertake a wonderful 
piece of work, whoever you are, to plead the father’s cause before his 
own son ; a hundred to one but you carry it, But I summon you, 
