d to me that might seem to look
that way, I referred to the mind [Note this sentence: the Latin is
"_Nam, si quid forte se dabat quod eo spectare videretur, ad
animum referebam_"] ... Could I then upbraid you with blindness
who did not know that you were blind,--with personal deformity who
believed you even good-looking, chiefly in consequence of having
seen the rather neat likeness of you prefixed to your Poems
[Marshall's ludicrous botch of 1645 which Milton had disowned] ...
Nor did I know any more that you had written on Divorce. I have
never read that book of yours; I have never seen it ... I will have
done with this subject. That book is not mine. I have published,
and shall yet publish, other books, not one letter of which shall
you, while I am alive and aware of it, attack with impunity. Some
_Sermons_ of mine are in men's hands; my books _On Grace and
Free Will_ are to be had; there are in print my _Exercitations
on the Holy Scripture, or on the Cause of God_, which I know
have passed into England, so that you have no excuse,--as well as
my _Apology for Calvin_, dedicated to the illustrious Usher of
Armagh, your countryman, my very great friend, whose highly
honourable opinion of me, if the golden old man would permit, I
would put against a thousand Miltons. With God's help others will
appear, some of which, as but partly finished, I am keeping back,
while others are ready for issue. [A list of some of these,
including _Orationes Argumenti Sacri, cum Poematiis_: the list
closed with a statement that he has mentioned only his Latin works,
and not his French Sermons].

Every now and then there is a passage of retaliation on Milton. Here
are two specimens:

MILTON'S OWN CHARACTER AND REPUTATION:--"Do not think, obscurely
though you live, that, because you have had the first innings in
this game in the art of slander, you therefore stand aloft beyond
the reach of darts. You have not the ring of Gyges to make you
invisible. Your virtues are taken note of. You are not such a
person, my friend, that Fame should fear to tell lies even about
_you_; and, unless Fame lies, there is not a meaner or more
worthless man going, and nothing is clearer than that you estimate
by your own morals the characters of other people. But I hope Fame
lies in this. For who could hear without the greatest pain--what I
for my part hardly, nay not to the extent of hard