But it is the anonymous author of the pamphlet which Mr. Caryl had licensed that comes in for the most ferocious and protracted punishment. On the evidence of the pamphlet itself one can see that he was some very insignificant person, not worth Milton's while on his own account, but only because Milton wanted to toss and gore somebody publicly for a whole hour, by way of deterring others.
The Answerer begins by announcing that he is first to show what the Doctrine or Discipline of Divorce really is, then to give some reasons "why a man may not put away his wife for indisposition, unfitness, or contrariety of mind, although manifested in much sharpness," and finally to reply to the arguments to the contrary brought forward in Milton's book. Nine pages having sufficed for the first two divisions, the remaining thirty-five are devoted to Milton. They are dull and plodding, the punctuation and expression showing that the author was ill-educated and little accustomed to write; and, from the frequent use of scrivener- like or attorney-like phrases and illustrations, one soon comes to conjecture the pamphlet to have been written by some one in a small way of law-business. Occasionally there is a little hit of personal reference, proving that the writer knew something about Milton and his reputed habits. Thus, speaking of Milton's complaint of a wife "to all due conversation inaccessible," he says, "It is true, if every man were of your breeding and capacity, there were some colour for this plea; for we believe you to count no woman to due conversation accessible as to you, except she can speak Hebrew, Greek, Latin and French, and dispute against the Canon Law as well as you, or at least be able to hold discourse with you. But other gentlemen of good quality are content with fewer and meaner endowments, as you know well enough." Sometimes he criticises Milton's phraseology. "The rankest politician," Milton had said in one of his sentences; on which this is the comment: "Is this the fine language that your book is commended for? Good your worship, look a little more upon your rhetoric in this one piece, shall I say of nonsense? However, I am sure it is contrary to all laws and customs of speaking. 'Rankest politician!' Wonderful!" Milton's phrase describing a dull woman as "an image of earth and phlegm" likewise attracts notice. "We confess," he says, "this is something of a sad case; but yet I believe you speak but hyperbolically (as they use to say): for women are usually more than earth and phlegm; they have many times spirit enough to wear the breeches, if they meet not with a rare wit to order them. I wonder you should use such phrases: I know nor hear of maids or women that are all earth and phlegm, much less images of earth and phlegm. If there be any such, yet you need take no thought for them; there are enough dull enough to own them; and, for yourself or any other who desire them, there are spirited dames enough who are something besides mere images of earth and phlegm." Here is a specimen of the argumentation:— "Suppose you should covenant with a man at Hackney that he should dwell in your house at Aldersgate Street, and you in requital should dwell in his house at Hackney, for a time: I doubt not but your main end in this your covenant was your own solace, peace, refreshing. Well, but suppose, when you came there, the Cavaliers or other soldiers should trouble you, and should be quartered there; who, peradventure, if they did not quite put you out, yet would lie in your most pleasant chamber, best situate for your solace, peace, and refreshing, and divers other ways would annoy you, by means whereof you could not enjoy that pleasure and delight which you intended in your covenant when you changed houses with the other. Think you in this case it would be lawful or accepted on by the other party if now you should come to him and say 'Sir, I covenanted for your house at Hackney for my own refreshing, comfort, and solace; but I am disturbed of it, I do not enjoy the end of my covenant: give me my own house again, and go you and live there.' He would tell you, and so he might justly, 'Stay, Sir; take your own fortune; a bargain is a bargain; you must even stand to it.'" Sometimes the writer thinks he will rebuke sharply. Thus:—"This is a wild, mad, and frantic Divinity, just like to the opinions of the maids of Aldgate [some Antinomian young women that had been making themselves notorious]. 'Oh,' say they, 'we live in Christ and Christ doth all for us: we are Christed in Christ and Godded in God, and at the same time that we sin here we, joined to Christ, do justice in him.' … Fie, fie, blush for shame, and publish no more of this loose Divinity." But the choicest bit shall come last. Criticising the conclusion of a passage in Milton's treatise, the language of the first portion of which is pronounced "too sublime and angelical for mortal creatures to comprehend it," the Answerer declares, "This frothy discourse, were it not sugared over with a little neat language, would appear so immeritous, so contrary to all humane learning, yea truth and common experience itself, that all that read it must needs count it worthy to be burnt by the hangman."
Milton's first glance at the anonymous pamphlet, he tells us, had shown him the sort of person he had to deal with. He could be no educated man, for in the very first page of his pamphlet, where he quotes Greek and Hebrew words, he misspells them. This was no serious crime in itself; only a man falsely pretending to know a language would do worse! "Nor did I find this his want of the pretended languages alone, but accompanied with such a low and homespun expression of his mother-English all along, without joint or frame, as made me, ere I knew further of him, often stop and conclude that this author could for certain be no other than some mechanic." It was singular also that, while the Second Edition of the Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce had been out for months before the publication of this Answer, only the First Edition was referred to in the Answer. This, indeed, had enabled Milton to find out who the Answerer was, and the whole history of his pamphlet. For, in the course of the preceding summer, he had been amused by hearing that there was in the press, half printed, an Answer to the First Edition of his Divorce Book, concocted by a committee of heads, in the centre of whom was—"let the reader hold his laughter," he says, and hear the story out—"an actual serving-man." At least, he had been a serving-man, waiting at table, cleaning trenchers, and the like; but he was ambitious of rising in the world, and had turned Solicitor. Zeal for public morality, or some farther ambition for literary distinction, had put it into his head to answer the First Edition of Milton's treatise; and, taking into his confidence one or two raw young Divines of his acquaintance, he had actually composed something, and sent it to the press. Milton had resolved that, if the thing did appear, he would leave it unnoticed. For some months, during which it had been lying unfinished in the press, he had quite dismissed it from his mind. But lo! here it was at length, stitched and published—this precious composition of the Serving-man turned Solicitor. Not quite as it had come from his pen, however! A Divine of note—no other, in fact, than Mr. Caryl himself, the Licenser— had looked over the thing, and "stuck it here and there with a clove of his own calligraphy to keep it from tainting." This, and Caryl's approbation prefixed, had rather altered the state of matters; and Milton had resolved that, when he had leisure for a little recreation, his man of law "should not altogether lose his soliciting."
Nor does he. Never was poor wretch so mauled, so tumbled and rolled, and kept on tumbling and rolling, in ignominious mire. Milton indeed pays him the compliment of following his reasonings, restating them in their order, and quoting his words; but it is only, as it were, to wrap up the reasoner in the rags of his own bringing, and then kick him along as a football through a mile of mud. We need not trouble ourselves with the reasonings, or with the incidental repetitions of Milton's doctrine to which they give rise; it will be enough to exhibit the emphasis of Milton's foot administered at intervals to the human bundle it is propelling. "I mean not to dispute Philosophy with this Pork." he says near the beginning; "this clod of an antagonist," he calls him at the next kick; "a serving-man both by nature and function, an idiot by breeding, and a solicitor by presumption," is the third propulsion; after which we lose reckoning of the number of the kicks, they come sometimes so ingeniously fast. "Basest and hungriest inditer," "groom," "rank pettifogger," "mere and arrant pettifogger," "no antic hobnail at a morris but is more handsomely facetious;" "a boar in a vineyard," "a snout in this pickle," "the serving-man at Addlegate" (suggested by 'the maids at Aldgate'), "this odious fool," "the noisome stench of his rude slot," "the hide of a varlet," "such an unswilled hogshead," "such a cock-brained solicitor;" "not a golden, but a brazen ass;" "barbarian, the shame of all honest attorneys, why do they not hoist him over the bar and blanket him?"—such are a few of the varied elegancies. Two or three of them break the bounds within which modern taste permits quotation. "I may be driven," he says in the end, "to curl up this gliding prose into a rough Sotadic, that shall rime him into such a condition as, instead of judging good books to be burnt by the executioner, he shall be readier to be his own hangman. So much for this nuisance." After which, as if feeling that he had gone too far, he begs any person dissenting from his Doctrine, and willing to argue it fairly, not to infer from this Colasterion that he was displeased at being contradicted in print, or that he did not know how to receive a fair antagonist with civility. Practically, however, I should fancy that, after the Colasterion, most people would be indisposed to try the experiment of knowing what Milton meant by being civil to an antagonist.
BOOK III.
April 1645-August 1646.