of this Church--Gothofrid Hotton, Henry Blanche-Tete, and Nicolas
de la Bassecour--certify, "in the name of the whole convocation of
the Gallo-Belgie Church of Amsterdam," that Morus discharges his
Professorship with high credit; also "that, as regards his life and
conversation, they are so far from knowing or acknowledging him to
be guilty of those things of which he is accused by one Milton, an
Englishman, in his lately published book, that, on the contrary,
they have frequently requested sermons from him, and he has
delivered such in the church, excellent in quality and perfectly
orthodox,--which could not have occurred if anything of the alleged
kind had been known to his brethren (_quod heud factum fuisset si
hujusmodi quioquam nobis innotuisset_)."

_From the Curators of the Amsterdam School, July 29,
1654_:--To the same effect, with the story of the circumstances
of the appointment of Morus to the Professorship. They had been
very anxious to get him, and he had justified their choice. "We
think the calumnies with which he is undeservedly loaded arise from
nothing else than the ill-will which is the inseparable
accompaniment of especially distinguished virtue." Signed, for the
Curators, by "C. de Graef" and "Simon van Hoorne."

After asking Milton how he can face these flat contradictions of his
charges, not from mere individuals, but from important public bodies,
and saying that "one favourable nod from any one of the persons
concerned would be worth more than the vociferations of a thousand
Miltons to all eternity," Morus corrects Milton's mistake as to the
nature of his Professorship. It is not a Professorship of Greek, but
of Sacred History, involving Greek only in so far as one might refer
in one's lectures to Josephus or the Greek Fathers. But he _had_
been a Professor of Greek--in Geneva, to wit, when little over twenty
years of age. Nor, in spite of all Milton's facetiousness on the
subject of Greek, and his puns on _Morus_ in Greek, was he
ashamed of the fact. "For all learning whatever is Greek, so that
whoever despises Greek Literature, or professors of the same, must
necessarily be a sciolist." And here he detects the reason of
Milton's incessant onslaughts on Salmasius. Milton was evidently
most ambitious of the fame of scholarship, as appeared from his
anticipations of immortality in his Latin poems; and, though he might
be a fair Latinist--not immaculate in La