But in general his
sentences are long and involved, full of inversions and latinized
constructions. Controversy at that day was conducted on scholastic
lines. Each disputant, instead of appealing at once to the arguments of
expediency and common sense, began with a formidable display of
learning, ransacking Greek and Latin authors and the Fathers of the
Church for opinions in support of his own position. These authorities he
deployed at tedious length, and followed them up with heavy scurrilities
and "excusations," by way of attack and defense. The dispute between
Milton and Salmasius over the execution of Charles I. was like a duel
between two knights in full armor striking at each other with ponderous
maces. The very titles of these pamphlets are enough to frighten off a
modern reader: _A Confutation of the Animadversions upon a Defense of a
Humble Remonstrance against a Treatise, entitled Of Reformation_. The
most interesting of Milton's prose tracts is his _Areopagitica: A Speech
for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing_, 1644. The arguments in this are
of permanent force; but if the reader will compare it, or Jeremy
Taylor's _Liberty of Prophesying_, with Locke's _Letters on Toleration_,
he will see how much clearer and more convincing is the modern method of
discussion, introduced by writers like Hobbes and Locke and Dryden.
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