more readable because it was not classical or idiomatic. With all his
reading--and Isaac Casaubon had said of him when in his teens that he
had incredible erudition--he was still, at sixty, quite unacquainted
with public affairs, and had neither the politician's tact necessary
to draw a state paper as Clarendon would have drawn it, nor the
literary tact which had enabled Erasmus to command the ear of the
public. Salmasius undertook his task as a professional advocate,
though without pay, and Milton accepted the duty of replying as
advocate for the Parliament, also without reward; he was fighting for
a cause which was not another's but his own.

Salmasius' _Defensio regia_--that was the title of his book--reached
this country before the end of 1649. The Council of State, in very
unnecessary alarm, issued a prohibition. On 8th January, 1650, the
Council ordered "that Mr. Milton do prepare something in answer to the
book of Salmasius." Early in March, 1651, Milton's answer, entitled
_Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio_, was out.

Milton was as much above Salmasius in mental power as he was inferior
to him in extent of book knowledge. But the conditions of retort which
he had chosen to accept neutralised this superiority. His greater
power was spent in a greater force of invective. Instead of setting
out the case of the Parliament in all the strength of which it was
capable, Milton is intent upon tripping up Salmasius, contradicting
him, and making him odious or ridiculous. He called his book a
_Defence of the People of England_; but when he should have been
justifying his clients from the charges of rebellion and regicide
before the bar of Europe, Milton is bending all his invention upon
personalities. He exaggerates the foibles of Salmasius, his vanity,
and the vanity of Madame de Saumaise, her ascendancy over her husband,