“I... Steer Right Onward” 1654–1658properly serve as peroration to the whole if Milton had had time or inclination to
rework it – he argues that the judicious assignment of both praise and blame is vital to
a commonwealth, and that the learned who practiced such rhetoric in school on
classical subjects should apply it appropriately to their own contemporaries:
To defame the villainous and to praise the good... constitute almost the sum of
justice; and truly we see that for the right management of life they are of almost equal
moment... no one but the upright alone has the power and the courage to accuse
freely and intrepidly. We who as youths under so many masters are accustomed to toil
at imaginary eloquence, and think that its rhetorical force lies in invective no less than
in praise, do at the desk bravely strike down, to be sure, the names of ancient tyrants.
If chance allows, we kill Mezentius over and over again in stale antitheta.... [I]t were
proper... when the Commonwealth requires it, casting exercise-shafts aside, now to
venture into the sun, and dust, and field of battle, now to exert real brawn, brandish
real arms, seek a real enemy. (794–5)When such as More are revealed as “inwardly vile, nay, openly and patently crimi-
nal,” the use of learning in private reproof is a public service:
If I have now, impelled by all possible reasons, prosecuted in a most just vituperation
not merely my personal adversary but the common enemy of almost all mankind, an
execrable man, a disgrace to the reformed religion and especially to the sacred order,
a dishonor to learning, a most pernicious preceptor of youth, a preacher impure in
sacred matters... I do indeed hope (for why should I distrust?) that herein I have
discharged an office neither displeasing to God, unsalutary to the church, nor unuseful
to the state. (796)Milton takes up first the weakest part of his case, his mistaken claim that More
wrote the Clamor. Milton flatly denies bad faith, appealing to the “common report,
unanimous, invariable” (704) of More’s authorship and quoting a few examples,
mostly without attribution. The few countervailing reports he not unreasonably
dismissed, he claims, since they originated either from More himself or from sus-
pect royalists.^22 But at last, reluctantly, he has to withdraw his claim that More
wrote the tract itself. He deals with that uncomfortable fact by applying to More a
conception of authorship very different from the individualistic model he has been
forging for himself throughout his polemic, involving originality of thought, denial
of substantive influence from others, transformation of borrowings and conven-
tions so as to make them his own, and emulation of models with the intention of
surpassing them.^23 The Clamor he now deals with as an example of an older mode of
collaborative authorship, allowing that More, Vlacq, Crantz, Salmasius, and various
other unknowns may be involved with it and thereby responsible for it. Throwing
down the gauntlet to More, he declares he will admit himself vanquished if he does
not prove either that More is the actual author of Clamor or has given “sufficient