r the document I have put here as
No. 6, ought not to _precede_ the others: i.e. whether Ulac's
offence in the matter of the "bullion," with his fine and
imprisonment, was not an affair of older date than his importation of
books after time in April 1640, though then remembered against him.
All the documents were together in the same bundle in the S. P. 0.
when I examined them, and the published Calendars have not yet
overtaken them.]

And now for More's own _Fides Publica_ or Public Testimony for
Himself. It is a most painful book on the whole. Gradually it
impresses you with considerable respect for the ability of the
author, and especially for his skill both in logical and pathetic
pleading; and throughout you cannot but pity him, and remember that
he was placed in about the most terrible position that a human being,
and especially a clergyman of wide celebrity, could occupy--placed
there too by what would now be called an act of literary savagery,
outraging all the modern proprieties of personal controversy. Still
the impression left finally is not satisfactory. It is but fair,
however, that he should speak for himself. The book opens thus:--

"If I could acknowledge as true of me any of those things which
you, by a wild and unbridled licence, have not only attributed to
me, but have even, to your eternal disgrace, dared to publish, I
should be angry with you to a greater degree than I am, you most
foolish Milton: for let that be your not unfitting, though mild,
designation in the outset, while that of liar and others will
fashion themselves out of the sequel. But, as the charges are such
that there is no one of those to whom I am a little more closely
known, however unfavourable to me, but could convict them of
falsehood from beginning to end, I might afford, strong in the sole
consciousness of my rectitude, to despise them, and perhaps this is
what I ought to do. Still, with a mind as calm as a sense of the
indignity of the occasion will permit, I have resolved to
expostulate with you. Yet I confess myself to be somewhat moved;
not by anger, but by another feeling. I am sorry, let me tell you,
for your own case, and shall be sorry until you prove penitent, and
this whether it is from sheer mental derangement that you have
assailed with mad and impotent fury a man who had done you no harm,
and who was, as you cannot deny, entirely unknown to you, or
whether you have let ou