But the reviler in Milton is too far ahead of the reasoner.

He seems to set more store by his personalities than by his principles.

On the question of the legality of Charles's execution he has indeed little argument to offer; and his views on the wider question of the general responsibility of kings, sound and noble in themselves, suffer from the mass of irrelevant quotation with which it was in that age necessary to prop them up.

The great success of his reply ("Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio") arose mainly from the general satisfaction that Salmasius should at length have met with his match.

The book, published in or about March, 1651, instantly won over European public opinion, so far as the question was a literary one.