espects ten years younger. And very pathetically he adds,
"that even his eyes, blind as they are, are unblemished in their
appearance; in this instance alone, and much against my inclination, I
am a deceiver!"

Morus, in his Epistle dedicatory of his _Regii Sanguinis Clamor_,
compares Milton to a hangman; his disordered vision to the blindness of
his soul, and so vomits forth his venom.

When Salmasius found that his strictures on the person of Milton were
false, and that, on the contrary, it was uncommonly beautiful, he then
turned his battery against those graces with which Nature had so
liberally adorned his adversary: and it is now that he seems to have
laid no restrictions on his pen; but, raging with the irritation of
Milton's success, he throws out the blackest calumnies, and the most
infamous aspersions.

It must be observed, when Milton first proposed to answer Salmasius, he
had lost the use of one of his eyes; and his physicians declared that,
if he applied himself to the controversy, the other would likewise close
for ever! His patriotism was not to be baffled, but with life itself.
Unhappily, the prediction of his physicians took place! Thus a learned
man in the occupations of study falls blind--a circumstance even now not
read without sympathy. Salmasius considers it as one from which he may
draw caustic ridicule and satiric severity.

Salmasius glories that Milton lost his health and his eyes in answering
his apology for King Charles! He does not now reproach him with natural
deformities; but he malignantly sympathises with him, that he now no
more is in possession of that beauty which rendered him so amiable
during his residence in _Italy_. He speaks more plainly in a following
page; and, in a word, would blacken the austere virtue of Milton with a
crime infamous to name.

Impartiality of criticism obliges us to confess that Milton was not
destitute of rancour. When he was told that his adversary boasted he had
occasioned the loss of his eyes, he answered, with ferocity--"_And I
shall cost him his life!_" A prediction which was soon after verified;
for Christina, Queen of Sweden, withdrew her patronage from Salmasius,
and sided with Milton. The universal neglect the proud scholar felt
hastened his death in the course of a twelve-month.

The greatness of Milton's mind was degraded! He actually condescended to
enter into a correspondence in Holland, to obtain little scandalous
anecdotes of his misera