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JOHN MILTON
AN ENGLISHMAN HIS
Defence of the People of England
AGAINST
CLAUDIUS ANONYMOUS, ALIAS SALMASIUS
his Defence of the King
PREFACE.
IF I be as copious of words and empty of matter in my
Defence of the People of England as most men think
Salmasius has been in his Defence of the King, I fear that
I shall apparently have deserved to be called a defender at
5 once wordy and silly. Yet no man thinks he must make such
haste, even in handling any ordinary subject, as not to employ
an opening worthy of its importance. In handling well-nigh
the greatest of all subjects, then, if I neither omit an introduction,
nor overdo it, I am in hopes of attaining two things,
10 both of which I earnestly desire: the one, that I be nowise
wanting, as far as in me lies, to this cause, most renowned and
most worth the remembrance of all the generations of men;
the other, that I myself be yet deemed to have avoided the
silliness and verbosity which I blame in my antagonist.
15 For I shall relate no common things, or mean; but how a
most puissant king, when he had trampled upon the laws, and