In denouncing the general herd of regicides and parricides he had hurt nobody in particular, while concentrating all Milton's lightnings on his own unlucky head.

They seared and scathed a literary dictator whom jealous enemies had long sighed to behold insulted and humiliated, while surprise equalled delight at seeing the blow dealt from a quarter so utterly unexpected.

There is no comparison between the invective of Milton and of Salmasius; not so much from Milton's superiority as a controversialist, though this is very evident, as because he writes under the inspiration of a true passion.

His scorn of the presumptuous intermeddler who has dared to libel the people of England is ten thousand times more real than Salmasius's official indignation at the execution of Charles.

His contempt for Salmasius's pedantry is quite genuine; and he revels in ecstasies of savage glee when taunting the apologist of tyranny with his own notorious subjection to a tyrannical wife.