and the Rump L300 a year.”  Then a third gentleman, a member of the Long Robe, had been very severe and sarcastic on Mr. Milton’s knowledge of Law; and a fourth, who had travelled much abroad, had followed with an equally severe criticism on Mr. Milton’s knowledge of European history.  This last speaker was beginning to be prosy, when fortunately some one came into the Club with news that Sir Arthur Hasilrig, “the Brutus of our Republic,” had been nearly torn in pieces by a rabble of boys in Westminster Hall, just outside the Club, and had saved himself by taking to his heels.  The laughter over this made the last gentleman forget what he was saying; which gave opportunity to a fifth gentleman to rise and discourse at some length on the sophistical and abominable character of Mr. Milton’s Political Philosophy:—­

“He was of opinion that you did not believe yourself, nor those reasons you give in defence of Commonwealth, but that you are swayed by something else, as either by a stork-like fate (as a modern Protector-Poet calls it, because that fowl is observed to live nowhere but in Commonwealths), or because you have unadvisedly scribbled yourself obnoxious, or else you fear such admirable eloquence as yours would be thrown away under a Monarchy....  All your politics are derived from the works of Declaimers, with which sort of writers the ancient Commonwealths had the fortune to abound ...  All which you have outgone (according to your talent) in their several ways:  for you have done your feeble endeavour to rob the Church, of the little which the rapine of the most sacrilegious persons hath left, in your learned work against Tithes; you have slandered the dead worse than envy itself, and thrown your dirty outrage on the memory of a murdered Prince, as if the Hangman were but your usher.  These have been the attempts of your stiff formal eloquence, which you arm accordingly with anything that lies in your way, right or wrong,—­not only begging but stealing questions, and taking everything for granted that will serve your turn.  For you are not ashamed to rob O. Cromwell himself, and make use of his canting assurances from Heaven and answering condescensions:  the most impious Mahometan doctrine that ever was vented among Christians."...

This speaker having ended with a comment on Mr. Milton’s remark that Christ himself had put “the brand of Gentilism” upon Kingship, “a young gentleman made answer that your writings are best interpreted by themselves, and that be remembered, in that book wherein you fight with the King’s Picture, you call Sir Philip Sidney’s Princess Pamela, who was born and bred of Christian parents in England, ’a heathen woman,’ and therefore he thought that by Heathenish you meant English, and that in calling Kingship heathenish you inferred it was the only proper and natural government of the English nation, as it hath been proved in all ages.  To which another objected that such a sense was quite