carry on controversies decently even in those days; and we might have hoped that a man distinguished above all men for lofty self-respect would have set a good example instead of sanctioning a bad practice. Milton might have taken a lesson from Hooker, who wrote in the spirit of his famous saying: 'Your next argument consists of railing and of reasons; to your railing I say nothing; to your reasons I say what follows.' Milton never perceives the immense advantage which railing gives to the man who can reply by ignoring it. Therefore he allows a controversy about the rights of Englishmen to degenerate into a squabble about Morus's behaviour to a cookmaid. He is, as Pattison says, like a blind Ajax castigating sheep instead of the Achæans. It is quite true that we still see the Ajax, though his blows might be better directed. Milton invariably convinces us of his absolute fidelity to his lofty vocation, and his noblest utterances of scorn for base motives are wrung from him by his passionate indignation. Still his irascibility perverts his reasoning, though it does not degrade his character.
In Milton the personal element is always present. It disfigures his first controversy upon Church government. He writes upon divorce
