"He wondered you did not give over writing, since you have always done it to little or no purpose; for, though you have scribbled your eyes out, your works have never been printed but for the company of chandlers and tobaccomen, who are your stationers, and the only men that vend your labours.

He said that he himself reprieved the whole _Defence of the People of England_ for a groat,...

though it cost you much oil and labour and the Rump L300 a year." Then a third gentleman, a member of the Long Robe, had been very severe and sarcastic on Mr.Milton's knowledge of Law; and a fourth, who had travelled much abroad, had followed with an equally severe criticism on Mr.Milton's knowledge of European history.

This last speaker was beginning to be prosy, when fortunately some one came into the Club with news that Sir Arthur Hasilrig, "the Brutus of our Republic," had been nearly torn in pieces by a rabble of boys in Westminster Hall, just outside the Club, and had saved himself by taking to his heels.

The laughter over this made the last gentleman forget what he was saying; which gave opportunity to a fifth gentleman to rise and discourse at some length on the sophistical and abominable character of Mr.Milton's Political Philosophy:-- "He was of opinion that you did not believe yourself, nor those reasons you give in defence of Commonwealth, but that you are swayed by something else, as either by a stork-like fate (as a modern Protector-Poet calls it, because that fowl is observed to live nowhere but in Commonwealths), or because you have unadvisedly scribbled yourself obnoxious, or else you fear such admirable eloquence as yours would be thrown away under a Monarchy....