Milton's Italian friend of friends (Vol. III. pp. 551-654 and
680-683) had been charitable to poor Morus, whom he knew to be a
fugitive from Milton's wrath, and who could name Milton, if at all,
only with tears and cursing.]

It is now high time, however, to answer a question which must have
suggested itself again and again in the course of our narrative of
the Milton and Morus controversy. Who was the real author of the book
for which Morus had been so dreadfully punished, and what was the
real amount of Morus's responsibility in it?

That Milton's original belief on this subject had been shaken has
been already evident. He had written his _Defensio Secunda_, in
firm reliance on the universal report that Morus was the one proper
author of the _Regii Sanguinis Clamor_, or that it had been
concocted between him and Salmasius; and, though Morus's denial of
the authorship had been formally conveyed to him before the
_Defensio Secunda_ left the press, he had let it go forth as it
was, in the conviction that he was still not wrong in the main. The
more express and reiterated denials of Morus in the _Fides
Publica_, however, with the references there to another person as
the real author, though Morus was not at liberty to divulge his name,
had produced an effect. The authorship of the _Regii Sanguinis
Clamor_ was then indeed a secondary question, inasmuch as in the
_Fides Publica_ Morus had interposed himself personally,--not
only in self-defence, but also for counter-attack on Milton. Still,
as the _Fides Publica_ would never have been written had not
Milton assumed Morus to be the author of the _Regii Sanguinis
Clamor_ and dragged him before the world solely on that account,
Milton had necessarily, in replying to the _Fides Publica_,
adverted to the secondary question. His assertion now, i.e, in the
_Pro Se Defensio_, was a modified one. It was that, whatever
facts had yet to be revealed respecting the authorship of the four or
five parts of the compound book severally, he yet knew for certain
that Morus had been the editor of the whole book, the corrector of
the press for the whole, the busy and ostentatious agent in the
circulation of early copies, and the writer at least of the
Dedicatory Preface to Charles II., put forth in Ulac's name. The
question for us now is how far this modified assertion of Milton was
correct.

Almost to a tittle, it _was_. That Morus was the editor of the
book, the corrector of the press,