well allow it to avoid the same consequence from the likeli hood of natural causes.

First, he denies that the canon so decrees.

I answer, that it decrees for danger of life, as much as for adultery, Decret. Gregor. l. 4, tit. 19, and in other places: and the best civilians, who cite the canon law, so collect, as Schneidewin in Instit. tit. 10, p. 4, de divort. And indeed, who would have denied it, but one of a reprobate ignorance in all he meddles with?

Secondly, he saith the case alters; for there the offender, "who seeks the life, doth implicitly at least act a divorce."

And I answer, that here nature, though no offender, doth the same. But if an offender, by acting a divorce, shall release the offended, this is an ample grant against himself. He saith, Nature teaches to save life from one who seeks it. And I say, she teaches no less to save it from any other cause that endangers it. He saith, that here they are both actors. Admit they were, it would not be uncharitable to part them; yet sometimes they are not both actors, but the one of them most lamentedly passive. So he concludes, we must not take advantage of our own faults and corruptions, to release us from our duties. But shall we take no advantage to save ourselves from the faults of another, who hath annulled his right to our duty? "No," says he; "let them die of the sullens, and try who will pity them.' Barbarian, the shame of all honest attorneys! why do they not hoist him over the bar and blanket him?

Against the eighth argument, that they who are destitute of all marriageable gifts, except a body not plainly unfit, have not the calling to marry, and consequently married and so found, may be divorced : this, he saith, is nothing to the purpose, and not fit to be answered. I leave it therefore to the judgment of his masters.

Against the ninth argument, that marriage is a human society, and so chiefly seated in agreement and unity of mind if therefore the mind cannot have that due society by marriage, that it may reasonably and humanely desire, it can be no human society, and so not without reason divorcible here he falsifies, and turns what the position required of a reasonable agreement in the main matters of

society, into an agreement in all things, which makes the opinion not mine, and so he leaves it.

At last, and in good hour, we are come to his farewell, which is to be a concluding taste of his jabberment in law, the flashiest and the fustiest that ever corrupted in such an unswilled hogshead.

Against my tenth argument, as he calls it, but as I intended it, my other position, "That divorce is not a thing determinable by a compulsive law, for that all law is for some good that may be frequently attained without the admixture of a worse inconvenience; but the law forbidding divorce never attains to any good end of such prohibition, but rather multiplies evil; therefore the prohibition of divorce is no good law." Now for his attorney's prize: but first, like a right cunning and sturdy logician, he denies my argument, not mattering whether in the major or minor: and saith, "there are many laws made for good, and yet that good is not attained, through the default sof the party, but a greater inconvenience follows."

But I reply, that this answer builds upon a shallow foundation, and nost unjustly supposes every one in default, who seeks divorce from the most injurious wedlock. The default therefore will be found in the law itself; which is neither able to punish the offender, but the innocent must withal suffer: nor can right the innocent in what is chiefly sought, the obtainment of love or quietness. His instances out of the common law are all so quiet beside the matter which he would prove, as may be a warning to all clients how they venture their business with such a cock brained solicitor. For being to shew some law of England, attaining to no good end, and yet through no default of the party, who is thereby debarred all remedy, he shews us only how some do lose the benefit of good laws through their own default. His first example saith, "It is a just law that every one shall peaceably enjoy his estate in lands or otherwise.' Does this law attain to no good end? The bar will blush at this most incogitant woodcock. But see if a draught of Littleton will recover him to his senses. "If this man, having fee-simple in his lands, yet will take a lease of his own lands from anoter, this shall be an estopple to him in an assize from the recovering of his own land.”

Mark now and register him! How many are there of ten thousand who have such a fee-simple in their sconce, as to take a lease of their own lands from another? So that this inconvenience lights upon scarce one in an age, and by his own default; and the law of enjoying each man his own is good to all others. But on the contrary, this prohibition of divorce is good to none, and brings inconvenience to numbers, who lie under intolerable grievances without their own default, through the wickedness or folly of another; and all this iniquity the law remedies not, but in a manner maintains. His other cases are directly to the same purpose, and might have been spared, but that he is a tradesman of the law, and must be borne with at his first setting up, to lay forth his best ware, which is only gibberish.

I have now done that, which for many causes I might have thought could not likely have been my fortune, to be put to this underwork of scouring and unrubbishing the low and sordid ignorance of such a presumptuous lozel. Yet Hercules had the labour once imposed upon him to carry dung out of the Augean stable. At any hand I would be rid of him: for I had rather, since the life of man is likened to a scene, that all my entrances and exits might mix with such persons only, whose worth erects them and their actions to a grave and tragic deportment, and not to have to do with clowns and vices. But if a man cannot peaceably walk into the world, but must be infested, sometimes at his face with dorrs and horseflies, sometimes beneath with bawling whippets and shin-barkers, and these to be set on by plot and consultation with a junto of clergymen and licensers, commended also and rejoiced in by those whose partiality cannot yet forego old papistical principles; have I not cause to be in such a manner defensive, as may procure me freedem to pass more unmolested hereafter by those encumbrances, not so much regarded for themselves, as for those who incite them? And what defence can properly be used in such a despicable encounter as this, but either the slap or the spurn? If they can afford me none but a ridiculous adversary, the blame belongs not to me, though the whole dispute be strewed and scattered with ridiculous. And if he have such an ambition to know no better who are his mates, but among those needy thoughts, which

though his two faculties of serving-man and solicitor should compound into one mongrel, would be but thin and meagre, if in this penury of soul he can be possible to have the lustiness to think of fame, let him but send me how he calls himself, and I may chance not fail to endorse him on the backside of posterity, not a golden, but a brazen ass. Since my fate extorts from me a talent of sport, which I had thought to hide in a napkin, he shall be my Batrachomuomachia, my Bavius, my Calandrino, the common adagy of ignorance and overweening: nay, perhaps, as the provocation may be, I may be driven to curl up this gilding prose into a rough sotadic, that shall rhyme 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. Thus much to this nuisance.

But as for the subject itself, which I have writ and now defend, according as the opposition bears; if any man equal to the matter shall think it appertains him to take in hand this controversy, either excepting against aught written, or persuaded he can shew better how this question, of such moment to be thoroughly known, may receive a true determination, not leaning on the old and rotten suggestions whereon it yet leans; if his intents be sincere to the public, and shall carry him on without bitterness to the opinion, or to the person dissenting; let him not, I entreat him, guess by the handling, which meritoriously hath been bestowed on this object of contempt and laughter, that I account it any displeasure done me to be contradicted in print, but as it leads to the attainment of anything more true, shall esteem it a benefit; and shall know how to return his civility and fair argument in such a sort, as he shall confess that to do so is my choice, and to have done thus was my chance.

EDITOR'S PRELIMINARY REMARKS.

HAVING Completed his different works on Divorce, which led hirn deeply to investigate the subject of marriage, love, and whatever relates to the happiness of domestic life, Milton, in 1644, produced his brief treatise on Education. In addition to those high intellectual endowments which raised him above all the men of his age, he had here the advantage of experience, having been himself engaged in the instruction of youth. His opinions, therefore, are entitled to the greatest respect: for he had put in practice what he recommends. Johnson, and many others, who have treated his vast plan as visionary, scarcely comprehended its drift, which was not to impart scanty learning to vulgar or needy students, whom their necessities call away into the world before their minds are half furnished; but to create, from among the youth of ampler leisure and fortune, able and accomplished senators, judges, and generals. How much may be effected when the teacher's skill and knowledge are seconded by the industry and emulative ardour of ingenuous pupils, they are best able to judge who, having children of their own, have themselves undertaken the sacred duty of spreading before them the vast map of science. Most commonly they have to check or moderate the passion for labour, which, by exciting the mind to a preternatural activity, might undermine the health, or wholly destroy the body. Milton himself, while a boy, fell into this error. During several years he sat up reading until midnight; which, as he relates, debilitated the organs of sight, and thus laid the foundation of that calamity which constituted the chief source of bitterness in his old age.

TO MASTER SAMUEL HARTLIB.

I AM long since persuaded, Master Hartlib,* that to say or do aught worth memory and imitation, no purpose or respect should sooner move us than simply the love of God, and of mankind. Nevertheless to write now the reforming of education, though it be one of the greatest and noblest designs that can be thought on, and for the want whereof this nation perishes; I had not yet at this time been induced, but by your earnest entreaties and serious conjurements; as having my mind for the present half diverted in the pursuance of some other assertions, the knowledge and the use of which cannot but be a great furtherance both to the enlargement of

* Of Hartlib little more is known than that he was a friend of Milton, who had studied with peculiar diligence the science of education, and to whom Sir William Petty subsequently dedicated one of his earliest works. From several expressions in this and the following paragraphs, he would appear to have been a foreigner; for he is spoken of as one sent hither from a far country, and allusion is made to his labours beyond the seas.-Ed.