on, through Hartlib, to publish any reply Milton might make.
He had been surprised at the long delay of this reply, and also at
the extraordinary ignorance of business shown by Milton and his
friends in their resentment of _his_ part in the matter. It was
for a tradesman to be neutral in his dealings; he had relations with
both the Parliamentarians and the Royalists, and would publish for
either side; and, as to his lending his name to the Dedicatory
Preface to Charles II., everybody knew that printers did such things
every day. However, here now is Mr. Milton's _Defensio Secunda_
in an edition for the foreign market, printed with the same good will
as if Milton had himself given the commission. It contains, he finds,
a most unjustifiable attack on M. Morus, with abuse also of
Salmasius, who is now in his grave; but that is other people's
business, not Ulac's. He cannot pass, however, the defamation of
himself inserted in Milton's book.--Ulac then quotes the substance of
Milton's account of him as once a swindler and bankrupt in London,
then the same in Paris, &c. (Vol. IV. p. 588). This information, Ulac
has little doubt, Milton has received from a particular London
bookseller, whom Ulac believes also to have been the real publisher
of Milton's book, though Newcome's name appears on it. It is all a
tissue of lies, however, and Ulac will meet it by a sketch of his own
life since he first dealt in books. This takes him twenty-six years
back. It was at that time that, being in Holland, which is his native
country, and having till then not been in trade at all, he received
from England a copy of the _Arithmetica Logarithmica_ of the
famous mathematician Henry Briggs [published 1624]. Greatly
enamoured with this work and with the whole new science of
Logarithms, and observing that Briggs had given the Logarithms for
numbers only from 1 to 20,000, and then from 90,000 to 100,000, he
had set himself to fill up the gap by finding the Logarithms for
numbers from 20,000 to 90,000, and had had the satisfaction, in an
incredibly short space of time, of bringing out the result [in an
extended edition of Briggs's book published at Gouda, 1628]. Briggs
and the English mathematicians were highly gratified, and Ulac was
asked to publish also Briggs's _Trigonometria Britannica_. This
also he had done [at Gouda in 1633, Briggs having died in 1630, and
left the work in charge of his friend Henry Gellibrand]; after which
he had engaged in