[5] Here is an excerpt from the beginning of Chapter VIII,[6] where Milton sarcastically asks Salmasius what concern the latter has with what the English do among themselves: ...It were better for you to return to those illustrious titles of yours in France: first to that hungerstarved Seigneurie of St. Loup, and next to that sacré Council of the Most Christian King; you are too far abroad from your own country for a counsellor.
She is right, by my troth, she is right, and can willingly allow you, you French capon, with your mankind wife and your desks chock-full of emptiness, to wander about, till somewhere in creation you light upon a dole bountiful enough for a grammarian-cavalier or illustrious hippo-critic,--always supposing any king or state has a mind to bid highest for a vagabond pedant that is on sale....
[7] As John Alvis notes, Milton "ridicule[s] his adversary for having changed sides in a controversy, for meddling in the affairs of a nation foreign to him, and for having written in the pay of the son of the king he champions.
"[8] At the same time, some critics such as George Saintsbury in the Cambridge History of English and American Literature have condemned this work and Milton's later Defensio Secunda, asserting that they show, in Saintbury's words, "a good deal of bandying of authority and of wearisome rebutting on particular points.
[10] A long anonymous reply, Pro Rege et Populo Anglicano, appeared later, in 1651 at Antwerp; this was authored by a royalist clergyman, John Rowland.