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of Edinburgh, Session 1880-81. 
pecked at corn, as that honest plain cock that we read of in iEsop, 
but at gold, as that roguey cock in Plautus, though with a different 
event, for you found a hundred Jacobuses, and he was struck dead 
with Euclid’s club, which you deserve more than he did.” 
These hundred Jacobuses crop up perpetually. Salmasius says, 
“ Betwixt the two extremes of kingly power there are three more 
temperate species interposed, as there lie three zones betwixt the 
torrid and the frigid.” “ Pretty rogue !” says Milton, “ what 
ingenious comparisons he always makes us ; may you for ever he 
banished whither you condemn an absolute kingdom to he, that is 
to the frigid zone, which, when you are there, will be doubly cold.” 
And so he discusses these zones to the end of the chapter, which he 
ends thus : — “ You deny that there was any light in Moses’ 
heaven before the sun ; and in Aristotle’s you make three temperate 
zones. How many zones you observed in that golden and silken 
heaven of the king’s I know not, but I know you got one zone 
(punning on the Latin word) — a purse — well-tempered by a 
hundred golden stars, by your astronomy.” 
It is difficult in translation to give the full effect of these gibes 
as they appear in the Latin version, although Walsingham’s render- 
ing is very faithful and spirited ; what I have given may serve as 
a specimen. The book is full of them ; some more humorous, but 
less decorous ; and, in short, it is the last book one would have 
supposed to have been written by the author of the “ Paradise 
Lost.” Of course, by what I have said, it may be inferred Milton 
is not satisfied with refuting the theory of divine right, but justifies 
the action of the nation in abolishing, not the monarchy only, but 
the House of Lords also* But had he foreseen that his book would 
not be many years in print before the government of this country 
would be more absolutely in the hands of one man, and that man 
his own master, than it ever was in those of the monarchs he 
condemns, it might somewhat have tempered the profound admira- 
tion he expresses for the great, and, as he thought, permanent 
work which he attributes to the English people. 
One other passage he has worth my alluding to. Salmasius says 
that “ the Presbyterians may justly challenge the glory of its 
beginning and progress ” (referring to the execution of the king) s 
“ Hark ! ye Presbyterians,” says Milton, “ what good has it done 
