“I... Steer Right Onward” 1654–1658More. They allow the contagion to creep “from the pastor into the flock, from the
doctor into the school.” As for scandal, it can only be removed by demonstrating
“that there is no place for pests of this kind to abide in the reformed church” (793).
To defend himself against More’s attacks, Milton revisits some episodes in his
past life. He again asserts his moral probity during his travels, underscoring the
contrast to More: “in all those places where so much license is allowed I lived
upright and undefiled by any flagitious or immodest conduct” (772). He objects to
More’s statement that he represented himself as “a candidate for martyrdom” at
Rome for defending the Protestant religion (More did exaggerate, though Milton
certainly suggested that he might be in some danger).^27 He gives both a public and
a private reason for answering the Clamor: “because I was so ordered, I say, publicly
by those whose authority ought to have weight with me.... Then because I was
expressly injured” (767). And to More’s query as to why he did not also answer
other attacks on the regicide he responds with asperity, betraying his weariness with
these polemics: “because I go not to public business uncalled... because I was not
injured.... Because I am my own master; because I had not leisure; in fine, be-
cause I am a man, possessed of a human nature, not an iron one” (767–8). To
More’s description of him as an upstart “mushroom,” he asserts, revealingly, “To
me it was always preferable to grow slowly, and as if by the silent lapse of time”
(819). And, answering More’s charge that he disparaged Greek letters in disparag-
ing More as a professor of Greek, he proudly asserts his knowledge of and love of
that literature: “Since I am not unlearned in Greek, and since, if anyone does, I
value it highly, you were able to fabricate nothing more foolish.... For I had said,
not that they were a disgrace to you, but that you were a disgrace to them” (822–3).
Milton was irate over More’s ironic reference to the Marshall engraving, insist-
ing that he acceded to the bookseller’s arrangement only “because there was no
other [engraver] in the city at that time” (751).^28 And he responds with special fury
to More’s jibes about his blindness even as he denied knowing about it: “You
reproach me with Cyclopean blindness, and, what is more impudent, in the very
act of denying that you did this, you do it again,” by alluding to his eyes as “remov-
able” like those of witches (750). Milton here reveals a keen sensitivity about his
physical appearance, though perhaps not the deep-seated psychic need for self-
purification through violent destruction of enemies that Michael Lieb discerns at
the core of Milton’s last two Defences.^29 Milton takes a fierce but yet comic re-
venge in his portrait of More and Pontia engaged in a mock-epic battle that leaves
More as a grotesque figure with face “engraved” by Pontia. They meet at Salmasius’s
house, Pontia to make wedding plans, More to renege on his promise; she flies
furiously at his face and eyes with “nails unpared”; he defends himself in womanish
combat with his own “dreadful nails”; but she triumphs, leaving More “with face
in tatters,” forced “to hide from the world” (747–50).
Milton found little occasion for direct political comment in this work, but he
emphasized his admiration and affection for the two Protestant republics with which