toleration for regicide, with which their enemies never failed to load
them, that no mode of abjuring it seemed sufficiently emphatic to them
hence it was that Addison, with a view to the interest of his party,
thought fit when in Switzerland, to offer a puny insult to the memory of
General Ludlow; hence it is that even in our own days, no writers have
insulted Milton with so much bitterness and shameless irreverence as the
Whigs; though it is true that some few Whigs, more however in their
literary than in their political character, have stepped forward in his
vindication. At this moment I recollect a passage in the writings of a
modern Whig bishop--in which, for the sake of creating a charge of
falsehood against Milton, the author has grossly mis-translated a passage
in the _Defensio pro Pop. Anglicano_: and, if that bishop were not
dead, I would here take the liberty of rapping his knuckles--were it only
for breaking Priscian's head. To return over to the clerical feud against
the Long Parliament,--it was a passage in a very pleasing work of this day
(_Ecclesiastical Biography_) which suggested to me the whole of what
I have now written. Its learned editor, who is incapable of uncandid
feelings except in what concerns the interests of his order, has adopted
the usual tone in regard to the men of 1640 throughout his otherwise
valuable annotations: and somewhere or other (in the Life of Hammond,
according to my remembrance) he has made a statement to this effect--That
the custom prevalent among children in that age of asking their parents'
blessing was probably first brought into disuse by the Puritans. Is it
possible to imagine a perversity of prejudice more unreasonable? The
unamiable side of the patriotic character in the seventeenth century was
unquestionably its religious bigotry; which, however, had its ground in a
real fervor of religious feeling and a real strength of religious
principle somewhat exceeding the ordinary standard of the 19th century.
But, however palliated, their bigotry is not to be denied; it was often
offensive from its excess; and ludicrous in its direction. Many harmless