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eagerly read, except by those who were anxious to learn, who had the inconfiderate audacity to enter the lists with Salmafius. But the work foon excited general approba tion and delight; the author was loft fight of in the blaze of truth; and Salmafius, who had fo lately been towering on the pinnacle of diftinction, stripped of the mask which he had worn, foon dwindled into infignificance and contempt; from which, as long as he lived, he could never afterwards emerge or recover his former confequence. But your penetrating mind, O! Serene queen of Sweden, foon detected his impofture; and, with a magnanimity almost above human, you taught fovereigns and the world to prefer truth to the interested clamours of faction. For, though the splendor of his erudition, and the celebrity which he had acquired in the defence of the royal cause, had induced you to honour him with many marks of diftinction, yet, when my anfwer appeared, which you perused with fingular equanimity, you perceived that he had been convicted of the most palpable effrontery and misrepresentation; that he had betrayed the utmost indifcretion and intemperance, that he had uttered many falfehoods, many inconfiftencies and contradictions. On this account, as it is faid, you had him called into your prefence; but, when he was unable to vindicate himfelf, you were fo vifibly offended, that from that time, you neither showed him the fame attentions, nor held his talents nor his learning in the same esteem; and, what was entirely unexpected, you manifested a dispofition to favour his adverfary. You denied that what I had written against tyrants, could have any reference to you; whence, in your own breast, you enjoyed the fweets, and among others the fame of a good conscience. For, fince the whole tenor of your conduct fufficiently proves, that you are no tyrant, this unreferved expreffion of your fentiments makes it ftill more clear, that you are not even confcious to yourself of being one. How happy am I beyond my utmost expectations! (for to the praife of eloquence, except as far as eloquence confifts in the force of truth, I lay no claim,) that, when the critical exigencies of my country demanded that I fhould undertake the arduous and invidious task of impugning

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the rights of kings, I fhould meet with fo illustrious, fo truly a royal evidence to my integrity, and to this truth, that I had not written a word against kings,. but only againft tyrants, the fpots and the pefts of royalty! But you, O Augufta, poffeffed not only fo much magnanimity, but were fo irradiated by the glorious beams of wisdom and of virtue, that you not only read with patience, with incredible impartiality, with a ferene complacency of countenance, what might feem to be levelled against your rights and dignity; but expreffed fuch an opinion of the defender of thofe rights, as may well be confidered an adjudication of the palm of victory to his opponent. You, O queen! will for ever be the object of my homage, my veneration and my love; for it was your greatness of foul, fo honourable to yourself and fo aufpicious to me, which ferved to efface the unfavourable impreffion against me at other courts, and to refcue me from the evil furmifes of other fovereigns. What a high and favourable opinion must foreigners conceive, and your own fubjects for ever entertain, of your impartiality and justice, when in a matter, which fo nearly interested the fate of fovereigns and the rights of your crown; they faw you fit down to the difcuffion, with as much equanimity and compofure, as you would to determine a dispute between two private individuals. It was not in vain that you made fuch large collections of books, and so many monuments of learning; not indeed, that they could contribute much to your instruction, but because they fo well teach your fubjects to appreciate the merits of your reign, and the rare excellence of your virtue and your wifdom. For the divinity himself feems to have infpired you with a love of wisdom, and a thirst for improvement, beyond what any books ever could have produced. It excites our astonishment to fee a force of intellect fo truly divine, a particle of celeftial flame fo refplendently pure in a region fo remote; of which an atmosphere, fo darkened with clouds, and so chilled with frofts, could not extinguish the light, nor reprefs the operations. The rocky and barren foil, which is often as unfavourable to the growth of genius as of plants, has not impeded the maturation of your fa culties and that country, fo rich in metallic ore, which

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appears like a cruel ftep-mother to others, feems to have been a foftering parent to you; and after the most strenuous attempts to have at last produced a progeny of pure gold. I would invoke you, Chriftina! as the only child of the renowned and victorious Adolphus, if your merit did not as much eclipfe his, as wifdom excels ftrength, and the arts of peace the havoc of war. Henceforth, the queen of the fouth will not be alone renowned in hiftory; for there is a queen of the north, who would not only be worthy to appear in the court of the wife king of the Jews, or any king of equal wifdom; but to whofe court others may from all parts repair to behold fo fair a heroine, fo bright a pattern of all the royal virtues; and to the crown of whofe praife this may well be added, that neither in her conduct nor her appearance, is there any of the forbidding reserve, or the oftentatious parade of royalty. She herself feems the leaft confcious of her own attributes of fovereignty; and her thoughts are always fixed on fomething greater and more fublime, than the glitter of a crown. In this refpect, her example may well make innumerable kings hide their diminished heads. She may, if fuch is the fatality of the Swedish nation, abdicate the fovereignty, but fhe can never lay afide the queen; for her reign has proved, that fhe is fit to govern, not only Sweden, but the world.g

This tribute of praife, to fo highly meritorious a queen, there is I truft, no one who will not applaud; and which if others did not pay, I could not have withheld, without the imputation of the moft heinous ingratitude. For, whether it be owing to the benign aspects of the planets, or to the fecret fympathies and affinities of things, I cannot too much extol my good fortune, in having found, in a region fo remote, a patron so impartial and fo kind, whom of all I least expected, but of all the most desired. But now we will return, from this digreffion, to a quite different theme. You fay, that "we were thrown inte the most furious commotion on hearing of the royal defence, and that we looked around for some servile pedagogue, who might employ his venal pen in the vindication of the parricides." This is the mere effufion of your spite; for you must recollect, that, when the royalists

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were in fearch of a hawker for their lies, and a retailer of their malice, they applied to the grammarian Salmafius, who if he were not a menial, could never refift a bribe; who not only readily fold them his present work, but his good intentions for the future. And you must remember, that when Salmafius was anxiously ruminating, how he might re-establish his ruined character, and obliterate his fhame, he was, by a certain retributive fatality, directed to you, who were then not officiating as a minifter at Geneva, from which place you had been expelled, but as a worshipper of Priapus, of whofe lafcivious rites you made his house the fhrine. Hence, naufeating those praises, which you had bestowed with fo much extravagance, and which he had purchased with fo much dif grace, his friendship was converted into the most inve terate hoftility, and he curfed his panegyrist even in his dying hour. "They fixed upon one John Milton, a great hero truly, to oppofe Salmafius." I did not know that I was a hero, though you perchance may be the progeny of fome frail heroine, for you are nothing but a compound of iniquity. When I confider the good of the commonwealth, I may indeed lament, that I alone was felected to defend the people of England, though I could not readily have endured an affociate in the fame. You fay, that it is a matter of uncertainty who, and whence I am. The fame uncertainty attached to Homer and Demoftenes. Indeed, I had been early taught to hold my tongue and to fay nothing; which Salmafius never could; and I accordingly buried thofe things within my breast, which if I had pleased to disclose, I could then have obtained as much celebrity as I now poffefs. But I was not eager to haften the tardy steps of fame; nor willing to appear in public till a proper opportunity offered. For I did not regard the fame of any thing fo much, as the proper time for the execution. Hence it happened, that I had not long been known to many, before Salmafius begun to know himself. "Whether he

be a man or a worm !" Truly, I would rather be worm in the way that David expreffes it, ("I am a worm and no man,") than that my bofom, like yours, fhould be the feat of a never-dying worm. You fay, that "the fellow, having been expelled from the univerfity of Cam

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bridge, on account of his atrocities, had fled his country in disgrace and travelled into Italy.' Hence we may dif cern what little reliance can be placed on the veracity of thofe, from whom you derived your information; for all, who know me, know, that in this place, both you and they have uttered the most abominable falfehoods; as I fhall foon make more fully appear. But, when I was expelLed from Cambridge, why fhould I rather travel into Italy, than into France or Holland? where you, though a minifter of the Gospel, and yet so vile a mifcreant, not only enjoy impunity, but, to the great scandal of the church, pollute the pulpit and the altar by your presence. But why, Sir, into Italy? Was it that, like another Saturn, I might find a hiding-place in Latium? No, it was because I well knew, and have fince experienced, that Italy, instead of being, as you fuppofe, the general receptacle of vice, was the feat of civilization and the hofpitable domicile of every fpecies of erudition. "When he returned, he wrote his book on divorce." I wrote nothing more than what Bucer on the Kingdom of Christ, Fagius on Deuteronomy, and Erafmus on the First Epistle to the Corinthians, which was more particularly defigned for the instruction of the English, had written before me, for the most useful purposes and with the most difinterested views. Why, what was not reprehenfible in them, fhould constitute a charge of criminality against me, I cannot understand though I regret that I published this work in English; for then it would not have been exposed to the view of those common readers, who are wont to be as ignorant of their own bleffings, as they are infenfible to others fufferings. But fhall you, bafe mifcreant fet up a cry about divorce, who, having debauched Portia, under the most folemn affurances of marriage, afterwards divorced her in a manner the most unprincipled and inhuman? And yet this fervant of Salmafius is faid to have been an English woman, and a ftaunch royalist; fo that seem to have wooed her as a piece of royalty, and to have deferted her as the image of a republic (res republica), though you were the author of her degradation to that state of publicity, and, after having allured her from the fervice of Salmafius, reduced her to the condition of a

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