"If I could acknowledge as true of me any of those things which you, by a wild and unbridled licence, have not only attributed to me, but have even, to your eternal disgrace, dared to publish, I should be angry with you to a greater degree than I am, you most foolish Milton: for let that be your not unfitting, though mild, designation in the outset, while that of liar and others will fashion themselves out of the sequel. But, as the charges are such that there is no one of those to whom I am a little more closely known, however unfavourable to me, but could convict them of falsehood from beginning to end, I might afford, strong in the sole consciousness of my rectitude, to despise them, and perhaps this is what I ought to do. Still, with a mind as calm as a sense of the indignity of the occasion will permit, I have resolved to expostulate with you. Yet I confess myself to be somewhat moved; not by anger, but by another feeling. I am sorry, let me tell you, for your own case, and shall be sorry until you prove penitent, and this whether it is from sheer mental derangement that you have assailed with mad and impotent fury a man who had done you no harm, and who was, as you cannot deny, entirely unknown to you, or whether you have let out the empty house of your ears, as those good masters of yours say, to foul whisperings going about, and, with your ears, put your hand and pen too, for I know not what wages, but certainly little honourable, at the disposal of other people's malicious humour. Choose which you please. I pray God Almighty to be merciful to you, and I beg Him also in my own behalf that, as I proceed to the just defence of my reputation, He may suggest to me a true and modest oration, utterly free from all lying and obscenity,--that is, very unlike yours." On the point of the authorship of the _Regii Sanguinis Clamor_ Morus is emphatic enough. He declares over and over again that _he_ was not the author, and he declares that Milton knew this perfectly well,--might have known it for two years, but had beyond all doubt known it before he had published the _Defensio Secunda_. We shall bring together the passages that refer to this subject:--