He calmly accepted his duty along with its penalty, without complaint or reluctance.

If he could have performed his task in the spirit with which he undertook it, he would have produced a work more sublime than "Paradise Lost." This, of course, was not possible.

The efficiency of a controversialist in the seventeenth century was almost estimated in the ratio of his scurrility, especially when he wrote Latin.

From this point of view Milton had got his opponent at a tremendous disadvantage.

With the best will in the world, Salmasius had come short in personal abuse, for, as the initiator of the dispute, he had no personal antagonist.