the rhetorical
_weeds_, for _flowers_ we cannot well call them, with which they
mutually presented each other. Their rancour was at least equal to their
erudition,--the two most learned antagonists of a learned age!

Salmasius was a man of vast erudition, but no taste. His writings are
learned, but sometimes ridiculous. He called his work _Defensio
Regia_, Defence of Kings. The opening of this work provokes a
laugh:--"Englishmen! who toss the heads of kings as so many
tennis-balls; who play with crowns as if they were bowls; who look upon
sceptres as so many crooks."

That the deformity of the body is an idea we attach to the deformity of
the mind, the vulgar must acknowledge; but surely it is unpardonable in
the enlightened philosopher thus to compare the crookedness of corporeal
matter with the rectitude of the intellect; yet Milbourne and Dennis,
the last a formidable critic, have frequently considered, that comparing
Dryden and Pope to whatever the eye turned from with displeasure, was
very good argument to lower their literary abilities. Salmasius seems
also to have entertained this idea, though his spies in England gave him
wrong information; or, possibly, he only drew the figure of his own
distempered imagination.

Salmasius sometimes reproaches Milton as being but a puny piece of man;
an homunculus, a dwarf deprived of the human figure, a bloodless being,
composed of nothing but skin and bone; a contemptible pedagogue, fit
only to flog his boys: and, rising into a poetic frenzy, applies to him
the words of Virgil, "_Monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens, cui lumen
ademptum_." Our great poet thought this senseless declamation merited a
serious refutation; perhaps he did not wish to appear despicable in the
eyes of the ladies; and he would not be silent on the subject, he says,
lest any one should consider him as the credulous Spaniards are made to
believe by their priests, that a heretic is a kind of rhinoceros or a
dog-headed monster. Milton says, that he does not think any one ever
considered him as unbeautiful; that his size rather approaches
mediocrity than, the diminutive; that he still felt the same courage and
the same strength which he possessed when young, when, with his sword,
he felt no difficulty to combat with men more robust than himself; that
his face, far from being pale, emaciated, and wrinkled, was sufficiently
creditable to him: for though he had passed his fortieth year, he was in
all other r