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But, as he had given up the public prosecution of the Divorce argument, his punishment for Edwards and Baillie came in a different form from that which he had administered in the Tetrachordon and Colasterion to Herbert Palmer, Dr. Featley, Mr. Caryl, Mr. Prynne, and the anonymous attorney. It came in verse, thus
The COLASTERION, expressly so called, published by Milton on the same day with the TETRACHORDON, settled accounts with these gentlemen. It is a short tract of twenty-seven pages, without preface.
None of his writings hitherto had been in such popular demand; and as, besides the three editions of the original Divorce treatise, there were also in circulation his Bucer Tract, his Tetrachordon, and his Colasterion, he had identified himself with the Divorce subject by a total mass of writing larger than he had yet devoted to any other.
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. April 1645-August 1646.
Moseley's precious little volume, with the engraver Marshall thus grimly immortalized in it, brings Milton to the beginning of 1646, or twelve months beyond his Tetrachordon and Colasterion. His wife having been for some months back with him, for better or worse, in the house at Barbican, he had dropped the Divorce argument, or at least its public prosecution.
Its full title was as follows; "Colasterion: A Reply to a Nameles Answer against 'The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, Wherein the trivial Author of that Answer is discovver'd, the licenser conferr'd with, and the Opinion which they traduce defended. By the former author, J. M. Prov. xxvi. 5. Answer a Fool according to his folly, lest hee bee wise in his own conceit. Printed in the year 1645."
He seems to be giving warning what he means to do without leave of the Law if the Law will not give him leave, COLASTERION is Greek for "Punishment." Now Mr. Herbert Palmer and Dr. Featley had each had his colasterion in the Dedication prefixed to the TETRACHORDON. Three other persons were waiting for their turn of the lash. Mr. Joseph Caryl, the licenser of that Answer; and the famous Mr. Prynne.
As Milton had already, in his Colasterion, said enough about Prynne and the heavy margins of his many pamphlets, and as the circumstances in which Prynne had lost his ears made the subject hardly a proper one for a public joke, it was but good taste in Milton to make the change. The draft of it among the Milton MSS. at Cambridge has the simpler title On the Forcers of Conscience.
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.
Prynne is milder, and it comes in incidentally at the very beginning of the Colasterion: Punishment for Mr.
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