Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 19.djvu/112

100 of stupidity and barbarism, except the marquisses of Ormond and Clanricard; who were still more cunning than Daniel O Neil, and not half so mad as Wogan. Yet if the privy council of king Charles the first had been as wise, or as honest, as the supreme council of Kilkenny, he had never been engaged to devest himself of his own will and prerogative, till he was forced to maintain his cause with the wretched remains: he had never been sold by one people, or beheaded by another, who had nothing but treason in their hearts and cant in their religion.

But, on the other hand, Clarendon so kindly recommends the persons, and mixes such shining colours in the talents and characters of the most notorious traitors, that one can hardly find in his heart to detest them for their villanies. The virtues of the bravest cavaliers are tarnished; and the vices of the blackest republicans brightened up in his hands. Milton engages our fancies, perhaps, too far in favour of the devils, by the lively and beautiful images he often mixes with their characters: but if he had dealt with the angels, as Clarendon has with the cavaliers, the devils had undoubtedly been the heroes of his poem. In short, he has left a legend to all posterity, the best lesson that has ever yet been given to wicked subjects, and the most encouraging, to dethrone or destroy their kings.

If justice had been done to that voluminous treatise, it should have had the same fate with the petition he left behind him in London, addressed to the house of lords, by way of justification, which was unanimously voted, by both houses, a malicious and scandalous