"supposititious offspring of some dozen epistles." This rude shock it
was which set Usher upon a more careful examination of the Ignatian
question. The result was his well-known edition of Ignatius, printed
1642, though not published till 1644, in which he acknowledged the
total spuriousness of nine epistles, and the partial interpolation of
the other six. I have not noticed in Usher's _Prolegomena_ that he
alludes to Milton's onslaught. Nor, indeed, was he called upon to
do so in a scientific investigation, as Milton had brought no
contribution to the solution of the question beyond sound and fury.

Of Milton's third pamphlet, entitled (3) _Animadversions on the
Remonstrants defence against Smectymnuus_, it need only be said that
it is a violent personal onfall upon Joseph Hall, bishop, first, of
Exeter and afterwards of Norwich. The bishop, by descending into the
arena of controversy, had deprived himself of the privilege which his
literary eminence should have secured to him. But nothing can excuse
or reconcile us to the indecent scurrility with which he is assailed
in Milton's pages, which reflect more discredit on him who wrote them,
than on him against whom they are written.

The fifth pamphlet, called (5) _An Apology against a Pamphlet called
"A Modest Confutation, &c."_ (1642), is chiefly remarkable for a
defence of his own Cambridge career. A man who throws dirt, as Milton
did, must not be surprised if some of it comes back to him. A son of
Bishop Hall, coming forward as his father's champion and avenger,
had raked up a garbled version of Milton's quarrel with his tutor
Chappell, and by a further distortion, had brought it out in the shape
that, "after an inordinate and violent youth spent at the university,"
Milton had been "vomited out thence." From the university this
"alchemist of slander" follows him to the city, and declares that