Indeed that horrible message must either have had a much longer sword than that which Peter drew, or those ears must have been of a wonderful length, that it could wound at such a distance; for it could not so much as in the least offend any ears but those of an ass. For what harm is it to you, that are foreigners? are any of you hurt by it, if we amongst ourselves put our own enemies, our own traitors to death, be they commoners, noblemen, or kings? Do you, Salmasius, let alone what does not concern you: for I have a horrible message to bring of you too; which I am mistaken if it strike not a more heinous wound into the ears of all grammarians and critics, provided they have any learning and delicacy in them, to wit, your crowding so many barbarous expressions together in one period in the person of (Aristarchus) of (Aristarchus) a grammarian; and that so great a critic as you, hired at the king's charge to write a defence of the king his father, should not only set so fulsome a preface before it, much like those lamentable ditties that used to be sung at funerals, and which can move compassion in none but a coxcomb; but in the very first sentence should provoke your readers to laughter with so many barbarisms all at once. "Persona regis," you cry. Where do you find any such Latin? or are you telling us some tale or other of a Perkin Warbec, who, taking upon him the person* of a king, has, forsooth, committed some * On the various meanings of the word person, the dispute between Locke and Dr. Stillingfleet, bishop of Worcester, comprehends nearly all that can be said. The doctor, unaccustomed to metaphysical disquisition, puts forward his opinions with intrepid precipitation, and falls accordingly into strange errors and confusion. He has some dim preception of what constitutes individuality, and distinguishes one man from another; but when he comes to clothe his ideas in words, he experiences the difficulty which most men used to rhetorical declamation encounter when they endeavour to write with logical accuracy. The whole passage is much too long to be quoted here; but it may be worth while to introduce a part of it by way of illustration. It will immediately be remarked, that Locke is a very different adversary from Milton, since, instead of arguing with fiery vehemence, he puts down his opponent with a quiet ease which occasionally assumes the form of humour.-"Let us now read what his lordship has said concerning person, that I may, since you desire it of me, let you see how far I have got any clear and distinct apprehensions of person from his lordship's explication of that. His lordship's words are:- Let us now come to the idea of a person. For although the common nature of mankind be the same, yet we see a difference in the several horrible parricide in England? which expression, though dropping carelessly from your pen, has more truth in it individuals from one another: So that Peter and James and John are all of the same kind, yet Peter is not James, and James is not John. But what is their distinction founded upon? They may be distinguished from each other by our senses, as to difference of features, distance of place; but that is not all; for supposing there were no external difference, yet there is a difference in them, as several individuals in the same common nature. And here lies the true idea of a person, which arises from the manner of subsistence which is in one individual and is not communicable to another. An individual intelligent substance is rather supposed to the making of a person, than the proper definition of it; for a person relates to something which doth distinguish it from another intelligent substance in the same nature; and therefore the foundation of it lies in the peculiar manner of subsistence, which agrees to one, and to none else, of the kind; and this is it which is called personality.' "In these words, this I understand very well, that supposing Peter, James and John to be all three men, and man being a name of one kind of animal, they are all of the same kind. I understand too, that Peter is not James, and James is not John; but that there is a difference in the several individuals. I understand also, that they may be distinguished from each other by our senses, as to different features, and distance of place. But what follows? I confess I do not understand where his lordship says,- But that is not all; for supposing there were no external difference, yet there is a difference between them, as several individuals in the same nature.' For, first, whatever willingness I have to gratify his lordship in whatever he would have me suppose; yet I cannot, I find, suppose a contradiction; and it seems to me to imply a contradiction, to say, Peter and James are not in different places. The next thing I do not understand, is what his lordship says in these words,-' For supposing there were no external difference, yet there is a difference between them, as several individuals in the same nature.' For these words being here to show what the distinction of Peter, James, and John is founded upon, I do not understand how they at all do it.' "His lordship says,- Peter is not James, and James not John.' He then asks," But what is their distinction founded upon?' And to resolve that, he answers,- Not by difference of features, or distance of place,' with an &c. Because, 'supposing there were no such external difference, yet there is a difference between them.' In which passage, by the words' such external difference,' must be meant, all other difference but what his lordship, in the next words, is going to name; or else I do not see how his lordship shows what this distinction is founded upon. For if, supposing such external difference away, there may be other differences on which to found their distinctions, besides that other which his lordship subjoins, viz. the difference that is between them, as several individuals in the same nature,' I cannot say that his lordship has said anything to show what the distinction between these individuals is founded on; because if he has not, under the term external difference, comprised all the difference besides that, his chief and fundamental are, viz-the difference between them as several individuals in the same common nature, it may be than you are aware of. For a tyrant is but like a king upon a stage, a man in a vizor, and acting the part of a king in a play; he is not really a king. But as for these gallicisms, that are so frequent in your book, I won't lash you for them myself, for I am not at leisure; but shall deliver you over to your fellow-grammarians, to be laughed to scorn and whipped by them. What follows is much more heinous, that what was decreed by our supreme magistracy to be done to the king, should be said by you to have been done "by a wicked conspiracy of sacrilegious persons." Have you the impudence, you rogue, to talk at this rate of the acts and decrees of the chief magistrates of a nation, that lately was a most potent kingdom, and is now a more potent commonwealth? Whose proceedings no king ever took upon him by word of mouth, or otherwise, to vilify and set at nought. The illustrious states of Holland therefore, the genuine offspring of those deliverers of their country, have deservedly by their edict condemned to utter darkness this defence of tyrants, so pernicious to the liberty of all nations; the author of which every free state ought to forbid their country, or to banish out of it; and that state particularly that feeds with a stipend so ungrateful and so savage an enemy to their commonwealth, whose very fundamentals, and the causes of their becoming a free state, this fellow endeavours to undermine as well as ours, and at one and the same time to subvert both; loading with calumnies the most worthy asserters of liberty there, under our names. Consider with yourselves, ye most illustrious states of the United Netherlands, who it was that put this asserter of kingly power upon setting pen to paper? who it was, that but lately began to play Rex in your country? what counsels were taken, what endeavours used, and what disturbances ensued thereupon in Holland? and to what pass things might have been brought by this time? How slavery and a new master were ready prepared for you; and how near expiring that founded on what his lordship has not mentioned. I conclude, then, it is his lordship's meaning, (or else I can see no meaning in his words,) that supposing no difference between them, of features, or distance of place, &c. i.e., no other difference between them, yet there would be the true ground of distinction in the difference between, as several individuals and the same common nature."-ED. liberty of yours, asserted and vindicated by so many years war and toil, would have been ere now, if it had not taken breath again by the timely death of a certain rash young gentleman. But our author begins to strut again, and to feign wonderful tragedies: "Whomsoever this dreadful news reached, (to wit, the news of Salmasius's parricidial barbarisms,) all of a sudden, as if they had been struck with lightning, their hair stood an end, and their tongues clove to the roof of their mouth." Which let natural philosophers take notice of, (for this secret in nature was never discovered before,) that lightning makes men's hair stand on end. But who knows not that little effeminate minds are apt to be amazed at the news of any extraordinary great action; and that then they shew themselves to be, what they really were before, no better than so many stocks? "Some could not refrain from tears;" some little women at court, I suppose; or if there be any more effeminate than they, of whose number Salmasius himself being one, is by a new metamorphosis become a fountain near akin to his name, (Salmacis,) and with his counterfeit flood of tears prepared over night, endeavours to emasculate generous minds: I advise therefore, and wish them to have a care; -Infamis ne quem malè fortibus undis -Ne, si vir cum venerit, exeat indè Disgracing both, a loath'd hermaphrodite." "They that had more courage" (which yet he expresses in miserable bald Latin, as if he could not so much as speak of men of courage and magnanimity in words) "were set on fire with indignation to that degree, that they could hardly contain themselves." Those furious Hectors we value not of a rush. We have been accustomed to rout such bullies in the field with a true sober courage; a courage becoming men that can contain themselves, and are in their right wits. "There were none that did not our curse the authors of so horrible a villany." But yet, you say, their tongues clove to the roof of their mouths; and if you mean this of our fugitives only, I wish they had clove there to this day; for we know very well, that there is nothing more common with them, than to have their mouths full of curses and imprecations, which indeed all good men abominate, but withal despise. As for others, it is hardly credible, that when they heard the news of having inflicted a capital punishment upon the king, there should any be found, especially in a free state, so naturally adapted to slavery as either to speak ill of us, or so much as to censure what we had done. Nay, it is highly probable, that all good men applauded us, and gave God thanks for so illustrious, so exalted a piece of justice; and for a caution so very useful to other princes. In the mean time, as for those fierce, those steel-hearted men, that, you say, take on for, and bewail so pitifully, the lamentable and wonderful death I know not who; them I say, together with their tinkling advocate, the dullest that ever appeared since the name of a king was born and known in the world, we shall even let whine on, till they cry their eyes out. But in the mean time, what schoolboy, what little insignificant monk, could not have made a more elegant speech for the king, and in better Latin, than this royal advocate has done? But it would be folly in me to make such particular animadversions upon his childishness and frenzies throughout his book, as I do here upon a few in the beginning of it; which yet I would be willing enough to do, (for we hear that he is swelled with pride and conceit to the utmost degree imaginable,) if the undigested and immethodical bulk of his book did not protect him. He was resolved to take a course like the soldier in Terence, to save his bacon; and it was very cunning in him, to stuff his book with so much puerility, and so many silly whimsies, that it might nauseate the smartest man in the world to death to take notice of them all. Only I thought it might not be amiss to give a specimen of him in the preface; and to let the serious reader have a taste of him at first, that he might guess by the first dish that is served up, how noble an entertainment the rest are like to make; and that he may imagine with |