e out of breath,
and then refer it to our wooden oracle, the Box, and seldom anything,
how slight soever, hath appeared without some person or other to
defend it, I must confess I never saw bowling-stones run so unluckily
against any boy, when his hand has been out, as the ballots did
against you when anything was put to the question from the beginning
of your book to the end." First, one gentleman had objected to the
very name of the book, _The Ready and Easy Way_, &c., and had
remarked that Mr. Milton was generally unlucky in his titles to his
pamphlets, most of them having been absurd or fantastic. A second
gentleman had been even more impolite. "He wondered you did not give
over writing, since you have always done it to little or no purpose;
for, though you have scribbled your eyes out, your works have never
been printed but for the company of chandlers and tobaccomen, who are
your stationers, and the only men that vend your labours. He said
that he himself reprieved the whole _Defence of the People of
England_ for a groat,... though it cost you much oil and labour
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