This, of course, was not possible. The efficiency of a controversialist
in the seventeenth century was almost estimated in the ratio of his
scurrility, especially when he wrote Latin. From this point of view
Milton had got his opponent at a tremendous disadvantage. With the best
will in the world, Salmasius had come short in personal abuse, for, as
the initiator of the dispute, he had no personal antagonist. In
denouncing the general herd of regicides and parricides he had hurt
nobody in particular, while concentrating all Milton's lightnings on his
own unlucky head. They seared and scathed a literary dictator whom
jealous enemies had long sighed to behold insulted and humiliated, while
surprise equalled delight at seeing the blow dealt from a quarter so
utterly unexpected. There is no comparison between the invective of
Milton and of Salmasius; not so much from Milton's superiority as a
controversialist, though this is very evident, as because he writes
under the inspiration of a true passion. His scorn of the presumptuous
intermeddler who has dared to libel the people of England is ten
thousand times more real than Salmasius's official indignation at the
execution of Charles. His contempt for Salmasius's pedantry is quite
genuine; and he revels in ecstasies of savage glee when taunting the
apologist of tyranny with his own notorious subjection to a tyrannical
wife. But the reviler in Milton is too far ahead of the reasoner. He
seems to set more store by his personalities than by his principles. On
the question of the legality of Charles's execution he has indeed little
argument to offer; and his views on the wider question of the general
responsibility of kings, sound and noble in themselves, suffer from the
mass of irrelevant quotation with which it was in that age necessary to
prop them up. The great success of his reply ("Pro Populo Anglicano
Defensio") arose mainly from the general satisfaction that Salmasius
should at length have met with his match. The book, published in or
about March, 1651, instantly won over European public opinion, so far as