The Bishop's Stinking Foot: Milton and Antiprelatical Satire

In the first independently published biography of John Milton, John Toland, a deist and controversialist active toward the end of the seventeenth century, reports that his subject was a person 'of wonderful parts, of a very sharp, biting, and satirical wit'. Having no illusions about the good taste of Milton's derisory insults, Toland jokingly admires 'flowers' of satirical wit in An Apology Against a Pamphlet Called A Modest Confutation of the Animadversions upon the Remonstrant against Smectymnuus (April r642). Condoning Milton's direction of ironic wordplay against the prelatical abuses, Toland facetiously cites the 'mark of his good will to the prelates' in the following 'unpardonable simile': '''A bishop's foot", says he, "that has all its toes (maugre the gout) and a linen sock over it, is the aptest emblem of the prelate himself; who being a pluralist, may under one surplice hide four benefices besides the great metropolitan toe, which sends a foul stench to heaven. "'I