appear, Milton would feel that even the dead could bite.  Dr. Crantzius had seen a portion of it; and, “Good Heavens! what a blackguard is Milton, if Salmasius may be trusted.”  Dr. Crantzius had known Morus both at Geneva and in Holland.  He was certainly a man often at feud with enemies and rivals, and giving them too great opportunities by his irascibility and freedom of speech.  But he was a man of high aspirations; and the late Rev. Dr. Spanheim had once told Dr. Crantzius that Morus’s only fault was that he was altier, as the French say, i.e. haughty.  As for Milton’s special accusations against Morus, Dr. Crantzius knew them for a certainty to be false.  Even after the Bontia scandal had got abroad and the lawsuit of Morus with the Salmasian household was running its course, Dr. Crantzius had heard Salmasius, who was not in the habit of praising people, speak highly of Morus.  Salmasius had admitted at the same time that his wife had injured Morus, though he could not afford to destroy his “domestic peace” by opposing her in the matter.  On the Bontia affair specifically, Salmasius’s express words, not only to Dr. Crantzius, but to others whom he names, had been, “If Morus is guilty, then I am the pimp, and my wife the procuress.”  As to the sequel of the case Dr. Crantzius is ignorant; and he furnishes Ulac with this preface to the Book only in the interests of truth.  But what a quarrelsome fellow Milton must be, who had not kept his hands off even the “innocent printer”!

The “innocent printer’s” own preface to the Reprint shows him to have been a very shrewd person indeed.  He keeps his temper better than any of them.  Two years had elapsed., he says, since he printed the Regii Sanguinis Clamor.  Who the real author of the book was he did not even yet know.  All he knew was that some one, who wanted to be anonymous, had sent the manuscript to Salmasius, and that, after some delay and hesitation, he had obliged Salmasius by putting the book to press.  Ulac then relates the circumstances, already known to us, of his correspondence with Hartlib about the book, and his offers to Milton, through Hartlib, to publish any reply Milton might make.  He had been surprised at the long delay of this reply, and also at the extraordinary ignorance of business shown by Milton and his friends in their resentment of his part in the matter.  It was for a tradesman to be neutral in his dealings; he had relations with both the Parliamentarians and the Royalists, and would publish for either side; and, as to his lending his name to the Dedicatory Preface to Charles II., everybody knew that printers did such things every day.  However, here now is Mr. Milton’s Defensio Secunda in an edition for the foreign market, printed with the same good will as if Milton had himself given the commission.  It contains, he finds, a most unjustifiable attack on M. Morus, with abuse also of Salmasius, who is now in his grave; but that