be in “utter ruin and misery.”  He therefore prays Lambe’s good word with Laud.—­My only doubt is whether the document I have put here as No. 6, ought not to precede the others:  i.e. whether Ulac’s offence in the matter of the “bullion,” with his fine and imprisonment, was not an affair of older date than his importation of books after time in April 1640, though then remembered against him.  All the documents were together in the same bundle in the S. P. 0. when I examined them, and the published Calendars have not yet overtaken them.]

And now for More’s own Fides Publica or Public Testimony for Himself.  It is a most painful book on the whole.  Gradually it impresses you with considerable respect for the ability of the author, and especially for his skill both in logical and pathetic pleading; and throughout you cannot but pity him, and remember that he was placed in about the most terrible position that a human being, and especially a clergyman of wide celebrity, could occupy—­placed there too by what would now be called an act of literary savagery, outraging all the modern proprieties of personal controversy.  Still the impression left finally is not satisfactory.  It is but fair, however, that he should speak for himself.  The book opens thus:—­

“If I could acknowledge as true of me any of those things which you, by a wild and unbridled licence, have not only attributed to me, but have even, to your eternal disgrace, dared to publish, I should be angry with you to a greater degree than I am, you most foolish Milton:  for let that be your not unfitting, though mild, designation in the outset, while that of liar and others will fashion themselves out of the sequel.  But, as the charges are such that there is no one of those to whom I am a little more closely known, however unfavourable to me, but could convict them of falsehood from beginning to end, I might afford, strong in the sole consciousness of my rectitude, to despise them, and perhaps this is what I ought to do.  Still, with a mind as calm as a sense of the indignity of the occasion will permit, I have resolved to expostulate with you.  Yet I confess myself to be somewhat moved; not by anger, but by another feeling.  I am sorry, let me tell you, for your own case, and shall be sorry until you prove penitent, and this whether it is from sheer mental derangement that you have assailed with mad and impotent fury a man who had done you no harm, and who was, as you cannot deny, entirely unknown to you, or whether you have let out the empty house of your ears, as those good masters of yours say, to foul whisperings going about, and, with your ears, put your hand and pen too, for I know not what wages, but certainly little honourable, at the disposal of other people’s malicious humour.  Choose which you please.  I pray God Almighty to be merciful to you, and I beg Him also in my own behalf that, as I proceed to the just defence of my reputation, He may suggest