Select Prose Works - 2 Author:John Milton Volume: 2 General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1836 Original Publisher: Hatchard Subjects: Literary Criticism / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh Literary Criticism / Poetry Poetry / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations... more » and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: CHAPTER III. Upon his going to the House of Commons. 46. Concerning his inexcusable and hostile march from the court to the House of Commons, there needs not much be said ; for he confesses it to be an act, which most men, whom he calls " his enemies," cried shame upon, " indifferent men grew jealous of and fearful, and many of his friends resented, as a motion arising rather from passion than reason." He himself, in one of his answers to both houses, made profession to be convinced, that it was a plain breach of their privilege ; yet here, like a rotten building newly trimmed over, he represents it speciously and fraudulently, to impose upon the simple reader; and seeks by smooth and supple words, not here only, but through his whole book, to make some beneficial use or other even of his worst miscarriages. 47. " These men," saith he, meaning his friends, " knew not the just motives and pregnant grounds with which I thought myself furnished;" to wit, against the five members, whom he came to drag out of the house. His best friends indeed knew not, nor could ever know, his motives to such a riotous act ; and had he himself known any just grounds, he was not ignorant how much it might have tended to his justifying, had he named themin this place, and not concealed them. But suppose them real, suppose them known, what was this to that violation and dishonour put upon the whole house, whose very door forcibly kept open, a...« less