Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 8, 2025
Salmasius, by the way, in commenting upon Tertullian, de Pallio, is quite wrong, where he says 'Palla nunquam de virili pallio dicitur. Tibullus, tom. iii. iv. 35, sufficiently contradicts that opinion. We have two ideas, which we are anxious to bring under public notice, with regard to Milton.
The Council of State, in very unnecessary alarm, issued a prohibition. On 8th January, 1650, the Council ordered "that Mr. Milton do prepare something in answer to the book of Salmasius." Early in March, 1651, Milton's answer, entitled Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio, was out. Milton was as much above Salmasius in mental power as he was inferior to him in extent of book knowledge.
Salmasius was regarded as a prodigy of learning; and various princes and powers entered into a competition who should be so fortunate as to secure his residence in their states.
As this was the first piece in which Burke hinted at a crusade, so it was the first in which he began to heap upon the heads, not of Hébert, Fouquier-Tinville, Billaud, nor even of Robespierre or Danton for none of these had yet been heard of but of able and conscientious men in the Constituent Assembly, language of a virulence which Fox once said seriously that Burke had picked, even to the phrases of it, out of the writings of Salmasius against Milton, but which is really only to be paralleled by the much worse language of Milton against Salmasius.
Grotius gave him the title of Most Eminent, which Pope Urbin VIII. had a very little time before attributed to the Cardinals. Salmasius answers him August 8, 1630. These two Princes of Literature, as they were styled, had at this time a great reciprocal esteem and friendship for each other.
Exiles are proverbially credulous, and it is likely enough that the gossip of the English refugees at the Hague was much employed in improving or inventing stories about the man, who had dared to answer the royalist champion in Latin as good as his own. Salmasius in his Defensio had employed these stories, distorting the events of Milton's life to discredit him.
Gibbon gives a splendid page on the 'education of silkworms, once considered as the labour of queens, and shows impatience with the learned Salmasius, who also wrote on the subject, because, unlike himself, he did not know everything.
The only question was whether Salmasius could beat the new champion, or the new man beat Salmasius, at a match of vituperation. Salmasius of course put in a rejoinder. His rapid pen found no difficulty in turning off 300 pages of fluent Latin. It was his last occupation.
It is but lost labour that they rise up so early, and so late take rest; not a Scaliger or Salmasius of them all will sooner solve the riddle of the simplest than of the subtlest melody. Least of all will the method of a scholiast be likely to serve him as a clue to the hidden things of Shakespeare.
And it is delightful to hear Selden and Grotius, and Pascal and Salmasius, whom I may be allowed to quote, without being suspected of professional prejudice, as none of them were clergymen, while they warmly recommended to others that learning of which they themselves were the most astonishing examples, at the same time dedicating their lives to the advancement of religion.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking