Chapter 6

MILTON'S LIFE AND SECRETARYSHIP THROUGH THE FIRST PROTECTORATE CONTINUED: SEPTEMBER 1654--JUNE 1657.

For more than reasons of mere mechanical symmetry, it will be well to divide this Chapter of Milton's Biography into Sections corresponding with those of Oliver's Continued Protectorate in the preceding Chapter.

SECTION I: FROM SEPTEMBER 1654 TO JANUARY 1654-5, OR THROUGH OLIVER'S FIRST PARLIAMENT.

ULAC'S HAGUE EDITION OF MILTON'S _DEFENSIO SECUNDA_, WITH THE _FIDES PUBLICA_ OF MORUS ANNEXED: PREFACE BY DR. CRANTZIUS TO THE REPRINT: ULAC'S OWN PREFACE OF SELF-DEFENCE: ACCOUNT OF MORUS'S _FIDES PUBLICA_, WITH EXTRACTS: HIS CITATION OF TESTIMONIES TO HIS CHARACTER: TESTIMONY OF DIODATI OF GENEVA: ABRUPT ENDING OF THE BOOK AT THIS POINT, WITH ULAC'S EXPLANATION OF THE CAUSE.--PARTICULARS OF THE ARREST AND IMPRISONMENT OF MILTON'S FRIEND OVERTON.--THREE MORE LATIN STATE-LETTERS BY MILTON FOR OLIVER (NOS. XLIX.--LI.): NO STATE-LETTERS BY MILTON FOR THE NEXT THREE MONTHS: MILTON THEN BUSY ON A REPLY TO THE _FIDES PUBLICA_ OF MORUS.

In October 1654 there was out at the Hague, from Ulac's press, a volume in two parts, with this title: "_Joannis Miltoni Defensio Secunda pro Populo Anglicano contra infamem Libellum, cujus titulus 'Regii Sanguinis Clamor adversus Parricidas Anglicanos.' Accessit Alexandri Mori, Ecclesiastæ, Sacrarumque Litterarum Professoris, Fides Publica contra calumnias Joannis Miltoni, Scurræ. Hagæ-Comitum, ex Typographia Adriani Ulac_, MDCLIV." ("John Milton's Second Defence for the English People in reply to an infamous Book entitled 'Cry of the King's Blood against the English Parricides.' To which is added A Public Testimony of Alexander Morus, Churchman, and Professor of Sacred Literature, in reply to the Calumnies of John Milton, Buffoon. Printed at the Hague by Adrian Ulac, 1654.") The reprint of Milton's _Defensio Secunda_ fills 128 pages of the volume; More's appended _Fides Publica_, or Public Testimony, in reply, is in larger type and fills 129 pages separately numbered. Morus, after all, it will be seen, had been obliged to acquiesce in Ulac's arrangement (Vol. IV. p. 634). Instead of trying vainly any longer to suppress Milton's book on the Continent, he had exerted himself to the utmost in preparing a Reply to it, to go forth with that reprint of it for the foreign market which Ulac had been pushing through the press and would not keep back.

Although Milton complains that Ulac's edition of his book for the foreign market was not only a piracy, but also slovenly in itself, with printer's errors vitiating the sense and arrangement in some cases,[1] it was substantially a reprint of the original. Its interest for us, therefore, lies wholly in the preliminary matter. This consists of a short Preface headed "_Lectori_" ("To the Reader") and signed "GEORGIUS CRANTZIUS, _S.S. Theol. D._," and a longer statement headed "_Typographus pro Se-ipso_" ("The Printer in his own behalf") and signed "A. ULACQ."

[Footnote 1: Pro Se Def. (1655).]

The Rev. Dr. Crantzius, who does not give his exact address, writes in an authoritative clerical manner. Though in bad health, he says, he cannot refrain from penning a few lines, to say how much he is shocked at the length to which personalities in controversy are going. He really thinks Governments ought to interfere to put such things down. Readers will find in the following book of Milton's a lamentable specimen. He knows nothing of Milton himself; but Milton's writings show him to be a man of a most damnable disposition, and Salmasius had once shown him (Dr. Crantzius) an English book of Milton's propounding the blasphemy "that the doctrine of the Gospel, and of our Lord Jesus Christ, concerning Divorce is devilish." Dr. Crantzius had known Salmasius very well; and O what a man _he_ was! Nothing amiss in him, except perhaps a hasty temper, and too great subjection to a peculiar connubial fate! There was a posthumous book of Salmasius against Milton; and, should it ever appear, Milton would feel that even the dead could bite. Dr. Crantzius had seen a portion of it; and, "Good Heavens! what a blackguard is Milton, if Salmasius may be trusted." Dr. Crantzius had known Morus both at Geneva and in Holland. He was certainly a man often at feud with enemies and rivals, and giving them too great opportunities by his irascibility and freedom of speech. But he was a man of high aspirations; and the late Rev. Dr. Spanheim had once told Dr. Crantzius that Morus's only fault was that he was _altier_, as the French say, i.e. haughty. As for Milton's special accusations against Morus, Dr. Crantzius knew them for a certainty to be false. Even after the Bontia scandal had got abroad and the lawsuit of Morus with the Salmasian household was running its course, Dr. Crantzius had heard Salmasius, who was not in the habit of praising people, speak highly of Morus. Salmasius had admitted at the same time that his wife had injured Morus, though he could not afford to destroy his "domestic peace" by opposing her in the matter. On the Bontia affair specifically, Salmasius's express words, not only to Dr. Crantzius, but to others whom he names, had been, "If Morus is guilty, then I am the pimp, and my wife the procuress." As to the sequel of the case Dr. Crantzius is ignorant; and he furnishes Ulac with this preface to the Book only in the interests of truth. But what a quarrelsome fellow Milton must be, who had not kept his hands off even the "innocent printer"!

The "innocent printer's" own preface to the Reprint shows him to have been a very shrewd person indeed. He keeps his temper better than any of them. Two years had elapsed., he says, since he printed the _Regii Sanguinis Clamor_. Who the real author of the book was he did not even yet know. All he knew was that some one, who wanted to be anonymous, had sent the manuscript to Salmasius, and that, after some delay and hesitation, he had obliged Salmasius by putting the book to press. Ulac then relates the circumstances, already known to us, of his correspondence with Hartlib about the book, and his offers to Milton, through Hartlib, to publish any reply Milton might make. He had been surprised at the long delay of this reply, and also at the extraordinary ignorance of business shown by Milton and his friends in their resentment of _his_ part in the matter. It was for a tradesman to be neutral in his dealings; he had relations with both the Parliamentarians and the Royalists, and would publish for either side; and, as to his lending his name to the Dedicatory Preface to Charles II., everybody knew that printers did such things every day. However, here now is Mr. Milton's _Defensio Secunda_ in an edition for the foreign market, printed with the same good will as if Milton had himself given the commission. It contains, he finds, a most unjustifiable attack on M. Morus, with abuse also of Salmasius, who is now in his grave; but that is other people's business, not Ulac's. He cannot pass, however, the defamation of himself inserted in Milton's book.--Ulac then quotes the substance of Milton's account of him as once a swindler and bankrupt in London, then the same in Paris, &c. (Vol. IV. p. 588). This information, Ulac has little doubt, Milton has received from a particular London bookseller, whom Ulac believes also to have been the real publisher of Milton's book, though Newcome's name appears on it. It is all a tissue of lies, however, and Ulac will meet it by a sketch of his own life since he first dealt in books. This takes him twenty-six years back. It was at that time that, being in Holland, which is his native country, and having till then not been in trade at all, he received from England a copy of the _Arithmetica Logarithmica_ of the famous mathematician Henry Briggs [published 1624]. Greatly enamoured with this work and with the whole new science of Logarithms, and observing that Briggs had given the Logarithms for numbers only from 1 to 20,000, and then from 90,000 to 100,000, he had set himself to fill up the gap by finding the Logarithms for numbers from 20,000 to 90,000, and had had the satisfaction, in an incredibly short space of time, of bringing out the result [in an extended edition of Briggs's book published at Gouda, 1628]. Briggs and the English mathematicians were highly gratified, and Ulac was asked to publish also Briggs's _Trigonometria Britannica_. This also he had done [at Gouda in 1633, Briggs having died in 1630, and left the work in charge of his friend Henry Gellibrand]; after which he had engaged in the heavy labour of converting into Logarithms the Sines and Tangents to a Radius of 10,000,000,000 given in the _Opus Palatinum_, and had issued the same under the title _Trigonometria Artificialis_. These labours of Ulac's were not unknown to the mathematical world; and it was somewhat surprising that Milton had not heard of them, especially as, in his sketch of his own life in the _Defensio Secunda_, he professed his interest in Mathematics, and spoke of his visits to London from Horton for the purpose of picking up any novelties in that science. At any rate, it was zeal for the dissemination of the mathematical books above-mentioned that had turned Ulac into a printer and bookseller. In that capacity he certainly had been in London, trading in books generally, and he had been in difficulties there, though not of a kind discreditable to himself. After he had been some years in London, trading peaceably, some London booksellers, jealous for their monopoly, had conspired against him, and tried to obtain an order from Archbishop Laud for the confiscation of his whole stock in trade. Through the kind offices of Dr. Juxon, Bishop of London, this had been prevented, and he had been empowered to sell off his existing stock. Nay, a little while afterwards, he had had a prospect, through the Royal Printers, of a full trading licence from the Archbishop, on condition of his buying from them copies of two heavy works they had printed by the Archbishop's desire--viz. _Theophylact on St. Paul's Epistles_ and the _Catena of the Greek Fathers on Job_. He had actually obtained such a licence for two years, and had hopes of its renewal, when the Civil War broke out. On that account only, and not in any disgrace, as Milton said, he had, after having been about ten years in all in London, transferred himself to Paris.[1] He had been there about six years, dealing honestly, and publishing important theological and other books, the titles of some of which he gives; but here also he had been the victim of trade jealousy. He had found it impossible to get on in Paris, though it was utterly false that he dared not now show his face there. He _had_ shown his face there, since he had returned to his native Holland and made the Hague his head-quarters; and he could show his face there again without any inconvenience. Meanwhile he was in the Hague, comfortable enough; and his character there might easily be ascertained.--To return to Milton's present book. Though Ulac had reprinted it, he had done so in doubt whether, now that there was peace between the United Provinces and the Protector, such irritating books between the two nations ought not to be mutually suppressed. His own leanings had always been rather to the English Parliamentarians than to the Royalists, and hence he had been disposed to think well of Milton. Though he cannot think so well of him now, he will not retaliate by any abuse of Milton. "If Milton is acknowledged in his own country to be a good man, let him be glad of it; but I hear that many Englishmen who know him are of another opinion. I would decide nothing on mere rumour; nay, if I had ascertained anything scandalous about him with positive certainty, I should think it better to hold my tongue than to blazon it about publicly." How strange, however, that Milton had fallen foul of Morus at such a violent rate! Had he not been told two years ago, through Hartlib, that Morus was not the author of the book for which he made him suffer? It was the more inexcusable inasmuch as in the _Joannis Philippi, Angli, Responsio ad Apologiam Anonymi Cujusdam_--which work Milton had superintended, if he had not written it--there had been the same mistake of attributing a work to the wrong person. It would be for Morus himself, however, to take cognisance of that.

[Footnote 1: Long ago, foreseeing the interest I should have in ULAC, I made notes in the State-Paper Office of some documents appertaining to him when he was a Bookseller in London. They do not quite correspond with Ulac's account of his reasons for leaving London. The documents, here arranged in what seems to be their chronological order, are as follows:--(1) Petition of Ulac, undated, to Sir John Lambe, Dean of the Arches, that he would intercede with Laud in Ulac's favour. His two years' licence for importing hooks is now almost expired; but many of the Greek books he had bought from the Royal Printers are still on his hands unsold, besides the whole impression of a _Vita Christi_ which he had also bought from them after the London stationers would not look at it. It would be a great thing for him therefore to have his licence extended for a time; and, if this favour is obtained from his Grace, he promises to do all he can for the importation of learned Greek and Latin books of the kind his Grace likes. (2) Humble Petition to Laud by Richard Whittaker, Humphrey Robinson, George Thomason, and other London Booksellers, dated April 15, 1640, representing to his Grace that, contrary to decree in Star-Chamber, "one Adrian Ulacke, a Hollander, hath now lately imported and landed at the Custom House divers bales or packs of books, printed beyond seas, with purpose to vent them in this kingdom," and praying for the attachment of the said bales and the apprehension of Ulac. (3) Of the same date, Laud's order, or suggestion to the Lord Treasurer to join him in an order, to attach the goods in the Custom House accordingly. (4) Humble Petition of Ulac to Juxon, Bishop of London, of date April 1640, explaining the transaction for which he is in trouble. He had gone to Paris "upon the 5th of Dec. last," and had there sold a great many copies of _Theophylact on Paul's Epistles_, the _Catena Patrum Græcorum in Jobum_, Bishop Montague's _De Vita Christi_, _Spelman's British Councils_, &c., at the same time buying a number of books to be imported into England. Although these last had been sent off from Paris before January, "yet, by want of ships and winds, they could come no sooner"--i.e. not till after the 13th of April, 1640, when his two years' licence for importing had expired. He humbly beseeches Juxon that he may be allowed to "receive and dispose of the said books so sent freely without any trouble." (5) A note of Laud's, written by his secretary, but signed by himself, as follows:--"Had not the Petitioner offended in a high matter against the State in transporting bullion of the kingdom, I should have been willing to have given time as is here [i.e. in the last document] expressed. However, I desire Sir John Lambe to consider of his Petition, and do further therein as he shall find to be just and fitting, unless he find that the sentence in the Star-Chamber hath disabled him.--W. CANT. _Apr._ 21, 1640." (6) Humble Petition, undated, of Ulac, now "prisoner in the Fleet," to Sir John Lambe. The prisoner "was, the 24th of May last, censured by the Lords in the High Court of Star-Chamber in £1000 to his Majesty and imprisonment." He is in very great straits, owing above £500 to his Majesty's Printers for books, "much hindered by the deadness of trading," and by the return of many books on his hands. He is "a stranger, without any friends," and unless the fine of £1000 is mitigated "to a very low rate," he will be in "utter ruin and misery." He therefore prays Lambe's good word with Laud.--My only doubt is whether the document I have put here as No. 6, ought not to _precede_ the others: i.e. whether Ulac's offence in the matter of the "bullion," with his fine and imprisonment, was not an affair of older date than his importation of books after time in April 1640, though then remembered against him. All the documents were together in the same bundle in the S. P. 0. when I examined them, and the published Calendars have not yet overtaken them.]

And now for More's own _Fides Publica_ or Public Testimony for Himself. It is a most painful book on the whole. Gradually it impresses you with considerable respect for the ability of the author, and especially for his skill both in logical and pathetic pleading; and throughout you cannot but pity him, and remember that he was placed in about the most terrible position that a human being, and especially a clergyman of wide celebrity, could occupy--placed there too by what would now be called an act of literary savagery, outraging all the modern proprieties of personal controversy. Still the impression left finally is not satisfactory. It is but fair, however, that he should speak for himself. The book opens thus:--

"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:--

I neither wrote it, nor ever pretended to have done so,--this I here solemnly declare, and make God my witness,--nor did I contribute anything to the writing of it.... The real author is alive and well, unknown to me by face, but very well known to several good men, on the strength of whose joint knowledge of the fact I challenge with righteous detestation the public lie which wriggles everywhere through your whole book.... Let the author answer for himself: I neither take up his quarrel, nor thrust my sickle into his corn.... But I wish the anonymous author would come forth some time or other openly in his own name.... What then would Milton think? He might have reason to fame and detest the light of life, being manifestly convicted of lying before the world. He might say, indeed, "I had not thought of it: I have been under a mistake" ... But what if I prove by clear evidence that you knew well enough already that the author of this book was another person, not I? ... [Morus then goes on to say that Milton might have learnt the fact in various ways, even from a comparison of the style of the book with that of Morus's acknowledged writings; but he lays stress chiefly on the information actually sent to Milton in 1652 by Ulac, and on the subsequent communications to him, through Durie and the Dutch Ambassador Nieuport, before the _Defensio Secunda_ had left the press] ... Will you hear a word of truth? You had certainly learnt the fact, and cannot for two whole years have been ignorant of it. But, as you perceived it would not suit your convenience to vent your spleen against an anonymous opponent, that is a nobody, and some definite person must be pitched upon as an adversary to bear your rage expressly, no one else seemed to you more opportune than I as an object of calumny, whether because you heard that I had many enemies, though (what proves their savageness) without any cause, who would hold up both thumbs in applause of your jocosities, or because you knew that, by the arts of a Juno, I was involved in a lawsuit, more troublesome in reality than dangerous, and you did not believe that I should be, as I have been, the winner before all the tribunals.... Your book once written, Morus must of necessity stand for your opponent, or Milton, the Defender of the People, would have done nothing in two years! He would have lost all the laborious compilation of his days and nights, all his punnings upon my name, all his sarcasms on my sacred office and profession.... For, if you had taken out of your book all the reproaches thrown at me, how little would there have been, certainly not more than a few pages, remaining for your "People"! What fine things would have perished, what flowery, I had almost said Floralian, expressions! What would have become of your "gardens of Alcinous and Adonis," of your little story about "Hortensius"; what of the "syca_more_," what of "Pyramus and Thisbe," what of the "Mulberry tree"? [All these are phrases in Milton's book, introduced whenever he refers circumstantially to the naughty particulars of the scandals against Morus, whether in Geneva or in Leyden. The name _Morus_, which means "mulberry tree" and "fool" in Latin and Greek, and may be taken also for "Moor" or "Ethiop," and in still other meanings, had yielded to the Dutch wits, as well as to Milton, no end of metaphors and punning etymologies in their squibs against the poor man] ... The real author of the _Regii Sanguinis Clamor_ neither lives among the Dutch,--is not "stabled" among them, to use your own expression--nor has he, I believe, anything in common with them ... Vehemently and almost tragically you complain that I have upbraided you with your blindness. I can positively affirm that I did not know till I read it in your own book that you had lost your eyesight. For, if anything occurred to me that might seem to look that way, I referred to the mind [Note this sentence: the Latin is "_Nam, si quid fortè se dabat quod eò spectare videretur, ad animum referebam_"] ... Could I then upbraid you with blindness who did not know that you were blind,--with personal deformity who believed you even good-looking, chiefly in consequence of having seen the rather neat likeness of you prefixed to your Poems [Marshall's ludicrous botch of 1645 which Milton had disowned] ... Nor did I know any more that you had written on Divorce. I have never read that book of yours; I have never seen it ... I will have done with this subject. That book is not mine. I have published, and shall yet publish, other books, not one letter of which shall you, while I am alive and aware of it, attack with impunity. Some _Sermons_ of mine are in men's hands; my books _On Grace and Free Will_ are to be had; there are in print my _Exercitations on the Holy Scripture, or on the Cause of God_, which I know have passed into England, so that you have no excuse,--as well as my _Apology for Calvin_, dedicated to the illustrious Usher of Armagh, your countryman, my very great friend, whose highly honourable opinion of me, if the golden old man would permit, I would put against a thousand Miltons. With God's help others will appear, some of which, as but partly finished, I am keeping back, while others are ready for issue. [A list of some of these, including _Orationes Argumenti Sacri, cum Poematiis_: the list closed with a statement that he has mentioned only his Latin works, and not his French Sermons].

Every now and then there is a passage of retaliation on Milton. Here are two specimens:

MILTON'S OWN CHARACTER AND REPUTATION:--"Do not think, obscurely though you live, that, because you have had the first innings in this game in the art of slander, you therefore stand aloft beyond the reach of darts. You have not the ring of Gyges to make you invisible. Your virtues are taken note of. You are not such a person, my friend, that Fame should fear to tell lies even about _you_; and, unless Fame lies, there is not a meaner or more worthless man going, and nothing is clearer than that you estimate by your own morals the characters of other people. But I hope Fame lies in this. For who could hear without the greatest pain--what I for my part hardly, nay not to the extent of hardly, bring my mind to credit--that there is a man living among Christians who, being himself a concrete of every form of outrageous iniquity, could so censure others?"

MILTON'S PRODIGIOUS SELF-ESTEEM:--"All which has so elated you that you would be reckoned next after the very first man in England, and sometimes put yourself higher than the supreme Cromwell himself; whom you name familiarly, without giving him any title of rank, whom you lecture under the guise of praising him, to whom you dictate laws, assign boundaries to his rights, prescribe duties, suggest counsels, and even hold out threats if he shall not behave accordingly. You grant him arms and rule; you claim genius and the gown for yourself. '_He only is to be called great_,' you say, '_who has either done great things_'--Cromwell, to wit!---'_or teaches great things_'--Milton on Divorce, to wit!--'_or writes of them worthily_'--the same twice-great Milton, I suppose, in his Defence of the English People!"

How does Morus proceed in the main business of clearing his own character from Milton's charges? His plan was to produce a dated and authenticated series of testimonials from others, extending over the period of his life which had been attacked, and to interweave these with explanations and an autobiographic memoir. He has reached the eightieth page of his book before he properly begins this enterprise. He gives first a testimonial from the Genevan Church, dated Jan. 25, 1648, and signed by seventeen ministers, of whom Diodati is one; then another from the Genevan Senate or Town Council, dated Jan. 26, 1648; then two more, one from the Church again, and one from the Senate again, both dated April 1648; then, among others, a special testimonial from Diodati, in the form of a long letter to Salmasius, dated "Geneva, 9th May, 1648." Diodati's testimonial, which is given both in French and in Latin, is the most interesting in itself, and will represent the others. "As to his morals," says Diodati, writing of Morus to Salmasius, "I can speak from intimate knowledge, and do so with, strict conscientiousness. His natural disposition is good and without deceit or reservation, frank and noble, such as ought to put him in very harmonious relations with all persons of honour and virtue, of whatsoever condition,--quick and very sensible to indignities, but easily coming to himself again: not one to provoke others, but yet one who has terrible spurs for his own defence. I have hardly seen any who have done themselves credit by attacking him. _Conscia virtus_, and you may add what belongs to the _genus irritabile vatum_, make him well armed against his assailants. For the rest, piety, honesty, temperance, freedom from all avarice or meanness, are found in him in a degree suitable to his profession."

Suddenly, just when we have read this, and seen Morus self-described as far as to the year 1648, when he was about to leave Geneva for Holland, the book comes to a dead stop. Diodati's letter ends on page 129; and when we turn over the leaf we find a Latin note from Ulac, headed "_The Printer to the Reader_" and expressed as follows:--

"Our labours towards finishing this Treatise had come to this point, when lo! M. Morus, who had been staying for some time here at the Hague with the intention of completing it, called away by I know not what occasion to France, and with a favourable wind hastening his journey, was prevented from bringing all to an end, and so gratifying with every possible speed the desire of many curious persons to read both Treatises at once, Milton's and More's. What to do I was for some days uncertain; but some gentlemen, not of small condition, at length persuaded me that I should not defer longer the publication of what of his I had already in print,--alleging that the remaining and still wanting testimonies of eminent men, and of the Senates and Churches of Middleburg, Amsterdam, &c., given for the vindication of M. Morus, and which were here to have been subjoined, might be afterwards printed separately when they reached me. Wishing to comply with their request, and my own inclination too, I now therefore do publish, Reader, what I am confident will please your curiosity, if not in full measure, at least a good deal. Let whosoever desires to see the sequel expect it as soon as possible."

Was there ever such an unfortunate as Morus? Everything everywhere seems to go wrong with him. Here, at the Hague, having absented himself from Amsterdam for the purpose, he has been writing his Defence of Himself against Milton, doing it cleverly and in a way likely to make some impression, when, suddenly, for some reason unknown even to his printer, he is obliged to break off for a journey into France, just as he was approaching the heart of his subject. Had he absconded? This seems actually to have been the construction, abroad. "Morus is gone into France," writes a Hague correspondent of Thurloe, Nov. 3, 1654; "it is believed that he has a calling, _et quidem a Castris_, and that he will not return to Amsterdam. They love well his renown and learning, but not his conversation; for they do not desire that he should come to visit the daughters of condition as he was used to do. He promised Ulac to finish his Apology; but he went away without taking his leave of him: so that you see that Ulac hath finished abrupt." Morus, as we shall find, did finish the book; but the _Fides Publica_, as it was first circulated in Holland towards the end of 1654, and as it first reached Milton, was the book abruptly broken off as above, at page 130, with the testimonials and the autobiography coming no farther down than the year 1648, when Morus had not yet left Geneva.

In January, 1654-5, when Milton had read Morus's _Fides Publica_ in its imperfect state, and was considering in what form he should reply to it, his thoughts on the subject must have been interrupted by the new misfortune of his friend Overton. What that was has already been explained generally (ante pp. 32-33); but the details of the incident belong to Milton's biography.

Overton's former misunderstanding with the Protector having been made up, he had been sent back to Scotland, as we saw, in September, 1654, to be Major-General there under Monk, and pledged to be faithful in his trust until he should himself give the Protector notice of his desire to withdraw from it. For a month or two, accordingly, all had gone well, Monk in the main charge of Scotland, with his head-quarters at Dalkeith, near Edinburgh, and Overton in special charge of the North of Scotland, with his head-quarters at Aberdeen. Meanwhile, as Oliver's First Parliament had been incessantly opposing him, questioning his Protectorship, and labouring to subvert it, the anti-Oliverian temper had again been strongly roused throughout the country, and not least among the officers and soldiers of the army in Scotland. There had been meetings and consultations among them, and secret correspondence with scattered Republicans in England and with some of the Parliamentary Oppositionists, till at length, if Thurloe's informations were true, the design was nothing less than to depose Monk, put Overton in supreme command, and march into England under an anti-Oliverian banner. The Levellers, on the one side, and the Royalists, on the other, were to be drawn into the movement, if indeed there had not been actual communications already with agents of Charles II. It may be a question how far Overton himself was a party to the design; but it is certain that he had relapsed into his former anti-Oliverian humour, and was very uneasy in his post at Aberdeen. "I bless the Lord," he writes mysteriously from that town, Dec. 26, in answer to a letter of condolence from some friend--"I bless the Lord I do remember you and yours (by whom I am much remembered) so far as I am able in everything. I know right well you and others do it much for me; and, pray, dear Sir, do it still. Heave me up upon the wings of your prayers to Him who is a God hearing prayers and granting requests. Entreat Him to enable me to stand to his Truth; which I shall not do if He deject or forsake me." This letter, as well as several letters _to_ Overton, had been intercepted by Monk's vigilance; and hardly had it been written when Overton was arrested by Monk's orders, and brought to Leith. At Leith his papers were searched, and there was found in his letter-case this copy of verses in his own hand:--

"A Protector! What's that? 'Tis a stately thing That confesseth itself but the ape of a King; A tragical Cæsar acted by a clown, Or a brass farthing stamped with a kind of crown; A bauble that shines, a loud cry without wool; Not Perillus nor Phalaris, but the bull; The echo of Monarchy till it come; The butt-end of a barrel in the shape of a drum; A counterfeit piece that woodenly shows; A golden effigies with a copper nose; The fantastic shadow of a sovereign head; The arms-royal reversed, and disloyal instead; In fine, he is one we may Protector call,-- From whom the King of Kings protect us all!"

With this piece of doggrel, the intercepted letters, and the other informations, Overton was shipped off by Monk from Leith to London on the 4th of January, 1654-5; and on the 16th of that month he was committed to the Tower. Thence the next day he wrote a long letter to a private friend, in which he enumerates the charges against him, and replies to them one by one. He denies that he has broken trust with the Protector; he denies that he is a Leveller; and, what pleases us best of all, he denies the authorship of the doggrel lines just quoted. His exact words about these may be given. "But, say some, you made a copy of scandalous verses upon the Lord Protector, whereby his Highness and divers others were offended and displeased ... I must acknowledge I copied a paper of verses called _The Character of a Protector_; but I did neither compose them, nor (to the best of my remembrance) show them to any after I had writ them forth. They were taken out of my letter-case at Leith, where they had been a long time by me, neglected and forgotten. I had them from a friend, who wished my Lord [Cromwell] well, and who told me that his Lordship had seen them, and, I believe, laughed at them, as, to my knowledge, he hath done at papers and pamphlets of more personal and particular import and abuse." It is really a relief to know that Overton, who is still credited with these lines by Godwin, Guizot, and others, was not the author of them, and this not because of their peculiar political import, but because of their utter vulgarity. How else could we have retained our faith in Milton's character of Overton--"you, Overton, bound to me these many years past in a friendship of more than brotherly closeness and affection, both by the similarity of our tastes, and the sweetness of your manners"? Still to have copied and kept such lines implied some sympathy with their political meaning; and, Thurloe's investigations having made it credible otherwise that Overton was implicated, more than he would admit, in the design of a general rising against the Protector's Government, there was an end to the promising career of Milton's friend under the Protectorate. He remained from that time a close prisoner while Oliver lived. On the 3rd of July, 1656, I find, his wife, "Mrs. Anne Overton," had liberty from the Council "to abide with her husband in the Tower, if she shall so think fit."[1]

[Footnote 1: Thurloe, III. 75-77, and 110-112; Council Order Book, July 3, 1656. Godwin, whose accuracy can very seldom be impeached, had not turned to the last-cited pages of Thurloe; and hence he leaves the doggrel lines as indubitably Overton's own (_Hist. of Commonwealth_, IV. 163). Guizot and others simply follow Godwin in this, as in most things else.--That Overton's disaffection was very serious indeed, and that Cromwell had had good reason for his suspicions of him even on the former occasion, appears from the fact that among the Clarendon Papers in the Bodleian there is a draft, in Hyde's hand, of a letter, dated April 1654, either actually sent, or meant to be sent, by Charles II. to Overton. The substance of the letter, as in Mr. Macray's abstract of it for the Calendar of the Clarendon Papers (II. 344), is as follows:--"_The King to Col. Ov[erton]._ Has received such information of his affection that he does not doubt it, and believes that he abhors those who, after all their pretences for the public, do now manifest that they have wholly intended to satisfy their own ambition. He has it in his power to redeem what he has heretofore done amiss; and the King is very willing to receive such a service as may make him a principal instrument of his restoration, for which whatsoever he or his family shall wish they shall receive, and what he shall promise to any of his friends who may concur with him shall be made good." If this letter was among those found among Overton's papers at Leith (which is not very likely), little wonder that Cromwell would not trust him at large a second time.]

At the date of Overton's imprisonment the Protector was making up his mind to dismiss his troublesome First Parliament after his four months and a half of experience of its temper; and six days after that date he did dismiss it, to its own surprise, before it had sent him up a single Bill. How many Latin letters had Overton's friend Milton written for the Protector in his official capacity during the four months and a half of that troublesome Parliament? So far as the records show, only three. They were as follows:--

(XLIX.) "To THE MOST ILLUSTRIOUS LORD, LUIS MENDEZ DE HARO," _Sept._ 4, 1654:[1]--The Spanish Prime Minister, Luis de Haro, had recently, in the Protector's apparent indecision between the Spanish alliance and the French alliance, resolved to try to secure him for Spain by sending over a new Ambassador, to supersede Cardenas, or to co-operate with him. He had announced the same in letters to Cromwell; who now thanks him, professes his desire to be in friendship with Spain, and promises every attention to the new Ambassador when he may arrive, Cromwell pays a compliment to the minister himself. "To have your affection and approbation," he says, "who by your worth and prudence have acquired such authority with the King of Spain that you preside, with a mind to match, over the greatest affairs of that kingdom, ought truly to be a pleasure to me corresponding with my apprehension of the honour I shall have from the good opinion of a man of excellence." Milton is dexterous in wording his documents.

[Footnote 1: No. 29 in Skinner Transcript (where exact date is given); No. 47 in Printed Collection and in Phillips (where month only is given).]

(L.) TO THE CONSULS AND SENATE OF THE CITY OF BREMEN, _Oct. 25_, 1654:--There has come to be a conflict between the City of Bremen and the new King of Sweden, arising from military designs of that King on the southern shores of the North Sea and the Baltic, Bremen is in great straits; and the authorities have represented this to Cromwell through their agent, Milton's friend, Henry Oldenburg, and have requested Cromwell's good offices with the Swedish King. Cromwell answers that he has done what they want. He has great respect for Bremen as a thoroughly Protestant city, and he regrets that there should he a quarrel between it and the powerful Protestant Kingdom of Sweden, having no stronger desire than that "the whole Protestant denomination should at length coalesce in one by fraternal agreement and concord."

(LI.) To CHARLES X., KING OF SWEDEN, _Oct._ 28, 1654:--As announced to the Bremeners in the last letter, Cromwell did write on their behalf to the Swedish King. He had hoped that the great Peace of Munster or Westphalia (1648) had left all continental Protestants united, and he regrets to hear that a dispute between Sweden and the Bremeners has arisen out of that Treaty. How dreadful that Protestant Swedes and Protestant Bremeners, once in league against the common foe, should now be slaughtering each other! Can nothing be done? Could not advantage be taken of the present truce? He will himself do anything in his power to bring about a permanent reconciliation.

These three letters, it will be observed, belong to the first two months of that cramped and exasperated condition in which Oliver found himself when he had his First Parliament by his side; and there is not a single preserved letter of Milton for Oliver between Oct. 26, 1654, the date of the last of the three, and Jan. 22, 1654-5, the date of the sudden dissolution of the Parliament. The reason of this idleness of Milton, in his Secretaryship during those three months, leaving all the work to Meadows, must have been, I believe, that he was then engaged on a Reply to More's _Fides Publica_ in the imperfect state in which it had just come forth. All along, as we have seen, the Literary Defence of the Commonwealth on every occasion of importance had been regarded as the special charge of Milton in his Secretaryship, to which routine duty must give way; and, as his _Defensio Secunda_ in reply to the _Regii Sanguinis Clamor_ had been, like several of his preceding writings, a task performed by him on actual commission from the Rump Government, though not finished till the Protectorate had begun, Oliver and his Council may have thought it but fair that another pamphlet of the same series in reply to the _Fides Publica_ of Morus should count also to the credit of Milton's official services, even though it must necessarily be more a pamphlet of mere personal concern than any of its predecessors. But, indeed, by this time, Mr. Milton was a privileged man, who might regulate matters very much for himself, and drop in on Thurloe and Meadows at the office only when he liked.

SECTION II: FROM JANUARY 1654-5 TO SEPTEMBER 1656, OR THROUGH THE PERIOD OF ARBITRARINESS.

LETTER TO MILTON FROM LEO DE AITZEMA: MILTON'S REPLY: LETTER TO EZEKIEL SPANHEIM AT GENEVA: MILTON'S GENEVESE RECOLLECTIONS AND ACQUAINTANCES: TWO MORE OF MILTON'S LATIN STATE-LETTERS (NOS. LII., LIII.): SMALL AMOUNT OF MILTON'S DESPATCH-WRITING FOR CROMWELL HITHERTO.--REDUCTION OF OFFICIAL SALARIES, AND PROPOSAL TO REDUCE MILTON'S TO £150 A YEAR: ACTUAL COMMUTATION OF HIS £288 A YEAR AT PLEASURE INTO £200 FOR LIFE: ORDERS OF THE PROTECTOR AND COUNCIL RELATING TO THE PIEDMONTESE MASSACRE, MAY 1655: SUDDEN DEMAND ON MILTON'S PEN IN THAT BUSINESS: HIS LETTER OF REMONSTRANCE FROM THE PROTECTOR TO THE DUKE OF SAVOY, WITH TEN OTHER LETTERS TO FOREIGN STATES AND PRINCES ON THE SAME SUBJECT (NOS. LIV.--LXIV.): HIS SONNET ON THE SUBJECT.--PUBLICATION OF THE SUPPLEMENTUM TO MORE'S _FIDES PUBLICA_: ACCOUNT OF THE SUPPLEMENTUM, WITH EXTRACTS: MILTON'S ANSWER TO THE _FIDES PUBLICA_ AND THE SUPPLEMENTUM TOGETHER IN HIS _PRO SE DEFENSIO_, AUG. 1655: ACCOUNT OF THAT BOOK, WITH SPECIMENS: MILTON'S DISBELIEF IN MORUS'S DENIALS OF THE AUTHORSHIP OF THE _REGII SANGUINIS CLAMOR_: HIS REASONS, AND HIS REASSERTIONS OF THE CHARGE IN A MODIFIED FORM: HIS NOTICES OF DR. CRANTZIUS AND ULAC: HIS RENEWED ONSLAUGHTS ON MORUS: HIS REPETITION OF THE BONTIA ACCUSATION AND OTHERS: HIS EXAMINATION OF MORUS'S PRINTED TESTIMONIALS: FEROCITY OF THE BOOK TO THE LAST: ITS EFFECTS ON MORUS.--QUESTION OF THE REAL AUTHORSHIP OF THE _REGII SANGUINIS CLAMOR_ AND OF THE AMOUNT OF MORUS'S CONCERN IN IT: THE DU MOULIN FAMILY: DR. PETER DU MOULIN THE YOUNGER THE REAL AUTHOR OF THE _REGII SANGUINIS CLAMOR_, BUT MORUS THE ACTIVE EDITOR AND THE WRITER OF THE DEDICATORY EPISTLE: DU MOULIN'S OWN ACCOUNT OF THE WHOLE AFFAIR: HIS CLOSE CONTACT WITH MILTON ALL THE WHILE, AND DREAD OF BEING FOUND OUT.--CALM IN MILTON'S LIFE AFTER THE CESSATION OF THE MORUS-SALMASIUS CONTROVERSY: HOME-LIFE IN PETTY FRANCE: DABBLINGS OF THE TWO NEPHEWS IN LITERATURE: JOHN PHILLIPS'S _SATYR AGAINST HYPOCRITES_: FREQUENT VISITORS AT PETTY FRANCE: MARVELL, NEEDHAM, CYRIACK SKINNER, &C.: THE VISCOUNTESS RANELAGH, MR. RICHARD JONES, AND THE BOYLE CONNEXION: DR. PETER DU MOULIN IN THAT CONNEXION: MILTON'S PRIVATE SONNET ON HIS BLINDNESS. HIS TWO SONNETS TO CYRIACK SKINNER, AND HIS SONNET TO YOUNG LAWRENCE: EXPLANATION OF THESE FOUR SONNETS.--_SCRIPTUM DOMINI PROTECTORIS CONTRA HISPANOS_: THIRTEEN MORE LATIN STATE-LETTERS OF MILTON FOR THE PROTECTOR (NOS. LXV.--LXXVII.), WITH SPECIAL ACCOUNT OF COUNT BUNDT AND THE SWEDISH EMBASSY IN LONDON: COUNT BUNDT AND MR. MILTON.--INCREASE OF LIGHT LITERATURE IN LONDON: EROTIC PUBLICATIONS: JOHN PHILLIPS IN TROUBLE FOR SUCH: EDWARD PHILLIPS'S LONDON EDITION OF THE POEMS OF DRUMMOND OF HAWTHORNDEN: MILTON'S COGNISANCE OF THE SAME.--HENRY OLDENBURG AND MR. RICHARD JONES AT OXFORD: LETTERS OF MILTON TO JONES AND OLDENBURG.--THIRTEEN MORE STATE-LETTERS OF THE MILTON SERIES (NOS. LXXVIII.--XC.): IMPORTANCE OF SOME OF THEM.

Oliver had just entered on his period of Arbitrariness, or Government without a Parliament, when Milton received the following letter in Latin from Leo de Aitzema, or Lieuwe van Aitzema, formerly known to him as agent for Hamburg and the Hanse Towns in London, but now residing at the Hague in the same capacity (IV. 378-379). Aitzema, we may now mention, was a Frieslander by birth, eight years older than Milton, and is remembered still, it is said, for a voluminous and valuable _History of the United Provinces_, consisting of a great collection of documents, with commentaries by himself in Dutch.[1] This had not yet been published.

[Footnote 1: See Article _Aitzema_ in Bayle's Dictionary.]

"To the honourable and highly esteemed Mr. John Milton, Secretary to the Council of State, London.

"Partly because Morus, in his book, has made some aspersions on you for your English Book on Divorce, partly because many have been inquiring eagerly about the arguments with which you support your opinion, I have, most honoured and esteemed Sir, given your little work entire to a friend of mine to be translated into Dutch, with a desire to have it printed soon. Not knowing, however, whether you would like anything corrected therein or added, I take the liberty to give you this notice, and to request you to let me know your mind on the subject. Best wishes and greetings from

"Your very obedient

"LEO AITZEMA[1]

"Hague: Jan. 29, 1654-5."

[Footnote 1: Communicated by the late Mr. Thomas Watts of the British Museum, and published by the late Rev. John Mitford in Appendix to Life of Milton prefixed to Pickering's Edition of Milton's Works (1851).]

Milton's answer, rather unusually for him, was immediate.

TO LEO VAN AITZEMA.

It is very gratifying to me that you retain the same amount of recollection of me as you very politely showed of good will by once and again visiting me while you resided among us. As regards the Book on Divorce which you tell me you have given to some one to be turned into Dutch, I would rather you had given it to be turned into Latin. For my experience in those books of mine has now been that the vulgar still receive according to their wont opinions not already common. I wrote a good while ago, I may mention, _three_ treatises on the subject:--the first, in two books, in which _The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce_ (for that is the title of the book) is contained at large; a second, which is called _Tetrachordon_, and in which the four chief passages of Scripture concerning that doctrine are explicated; the third called _Colasterion_, in which answer is made to a certain sciolist. [The _Bucer Tract_ omitted in the enumeration.] Which of these Treatises you have given to be translated, or what edition, I do not know: the first of them was twice issued, and was much enlarged in the second edition. Should you not have been made aware of this already, or should I understand that you desire anything else on my part, such as sending you the more correct edition or the rest of the Treatises, I shall attend to the matter carefully and with pleasure. For there is not anything at present that I should wish changed in them or added. Therefore, should you keep to your intention, I earnestly hope for myself a faithful translator, and for you all prosperity.

Westminster: Feb. 5, 1654-5.[1]

[Footnote 1: Epist. Fam. 16.]

The next letter, written in the following month, also connects itself, but still more closely, with the Morus controversy. It is addressed to Ezekiel Spanheim, the eldest son of that Frederick Spanheim, by birth a German, of whom we have heard as Professor of Theology successively at Geneva (1631-1642) and at Leyden (1642-1649). This elder Spanheim, it will be remembered, had been implicated in the opposition to Morus in both places--the story being that he had contracted a bad opinion of Morus during his colleagueship with him in Geneva, and that, when Salmasius, partly to spite Spanheim, of whose popularity at Leyden he was jealous, had negotiated for bringing Morus to Holland, Spanheim "moved heaven and earth to prevent his coming." It is added that Spanheim's death (May 1649) was caused by the news that Morus was on his way, and that he had said on his death-bed that "Salmasius had killed him and Morus had been the dagger."[1] On the other hand, we have had recently the assurance of Dr. Crantzius that Spanheim had once told him that the only fault in Morus was that he was _altier_, or self-confident. That the stronger story is the truer one substantially, if not to its last detail, appears from the fact that an antipathy to Morus was hereditary in the Spanheim family, or at least in the eldest son, Ezekiel. As a scholar, an antiquarian, and a diplomatist, this Ezekiel Spanheim was to attain to even greater celebrity than his father, and his varied career in different parts of Europe was not to close till 1710. At present he was only in his twenty-fifth year, and was living at Geneva, where he had been born, and whither he had returned from Leyden in 1651, to accept a kind of honorary Professorship that had been offered him, in compliment partly to his father's memory, partly to his own extraordinary promise. As one who had lived the first thirteen years of his age in Geneva, and the next nine in Leyden (1642-1651), and who was now back in Geneva, he had been amply and closely on the track of Morus; and how little he liked him will now appear:--

[Footnote 1: Bayle, both in Article _Spanheim_ and in Article _Morus_.]

TO EZEKIEL SPANHEIM OF GENEVA.

I know not by what accident it has happened that your letter has reached me little less than three months after date. There is clearly extreme need of a speedier conveyance of mine to you; for, though from day to day I was resolving to write it, I now perceive that, hindered by some constant occupations, I have put it off nearly another three months. I would not have you understand from this my tardiness in replying that my grateful sense of your kindness to me has cooled, but rather that the remembrance has sunk deeper from my longer and more frequent daily thinking of my duty to you in return. Late performance of duty has at least this excuse for itself, that there is a clearer confession of obligation to do a thing when it is done so long after than if it had been done immediately.

You are not wrong, in the first place, in the opinion of me expressed in the beginning of your letter--to wit, that I am not likely to be surprised at being addressed by a foreigner; nor could you, indeed, have a more correct impression of me than precisely by thinking that I regard no good man in the character of a foreigner or a stranger. That you are such I am readily persuaded by your being the son of a most learned and most saintly father, also by your being well esteemed by good men, and also finally by the fact that you hate the bad. With which kind of cattle as I too happen to have a warfare, Calandrini has but acted with his usual courtesy, and in accordance with my own sentiment, in signifying to you that it would be very gratifying to me if you lent me your help against a common adversary. This you have most obligingly done in this very letter, part of which, with the author's name not mentioned, I have not hesitated, trusting in your regard for me, to insert by way of evidence in my forthcoming _Defensio_ [in reply to More's _Fides Publica_]. This book, as soon as it is published, I will direct to be sent to you, if there is any one to whose care I may rightly entrust it. Any letters you may intend for me, meanwhile, you will not, I think, be unsafe if you send under cover to Turretin of Geneva, now staying in London, whose brother in Geneva you know; through whom as this of mine will reach you most conveniently, so will yours reach me. For the rest I would assure you that you have won a high place in my esteem, and that I particularly wish to be loved by you yet more.

Westminster: March 24, 1654-5.[1]

[Footnote 1: Epist. Fam. 17.]

In writing this letter Milton must have had brought back to his recollection his visit to Geneva fifteen years before (June 1639) on his way home from Italy. The venerable Diodati, the uncle of his friend Charles, was the person in Geneva of whom he had seen most, and who dwelt most in his memory; but the elder Spanheim had then been in the same city, and Morus too, and the present Ezekiel Spanheim, as a boy in his tenth year, and others, still alive, who had then known Morus, and had since that time had him in view. Milton had certainly not then himself seen Morus, though he must have heard of him; but it is possible he may have seen the elder Spanheim, and may now, in writing to Spanheim's son, have remembered the fact. In any case there were links of acquaintanceship still connecting Milton with Geneva and its gossip. The "Calandrini," for example, who is mentioned in Milton's letter, and who may be identified with a Genevese merchant named "Jean Louis Calandrin," heard of in Thurloe's correspondence, must in some way have been known to Milton personally, and interested in serving him.[1] It had been in in consequence of a suggestion of this Calandrini, "acting-with his usual courtesy," that young Spanheim had, in October 1654, when Morus's fragmentary _Fides Publica_ was just out or nearly so, addressed a polite letter to Milton, sending him some additional information about the Genevese portion of Morus's career. The letter had not readied Milton till the end of December or the beginning of January 1654-5; and for nearly three months after that he had left it unacknowledged. That he had been moved to acknowledge it at last was, doubtless, as his letter itself suggests, and as we shall see yet more precisely, because he had then nearly ready his Reply to the _Fides Publica_, and had used Spanheim's information there, only suppressing the name of his informant. But that Milton had already had no lack of private informants about Morus's career, whether in Geneva or in Holland, has appeared abundantly. The Hartlib-Durie-Haak-Oldenburg connexion about him in London was a perfect sponge for all kinds of gossip from, abroad. We hear now, however, of another person in particular who may have supplied Milton with his earlier information as to the Genevese part of Morus's life, A family long of note in Geneva had been that of the Turretins, originally from Italy, and indeed from Lucca, whence they had been driven, as the Diodatis had been, by their Protestantism, One of this family, Benedict Turretin, born in Geneva, had been a distinguished Theology Professor there, and at his death in 1631 had left at least two sons. One of these, Francis Turretin, born at Geneva in 1623, had, after the usual wanderings of Continental scholars in those days, just returned to Geneva (1653), and settled there in what may be called the family-business, i.e. the profession of Theology. In this he was to attain extraordinary celebrity, his _Institutio Theologiæ Elencticæ_ ranking to this day among Calvinistic Theologians as a master-work of its kind. Well, this Francis Turretin, rising into fame at Geneva, just as Ezekiel Spanheim was, and seeing Spanheim daily, had, it seems from Milton's letter, a brother in London, on intimate terms with Milton; and Milton's proposition to young Spanheim was that they should correspond in future through the two Turretins. Who would have thought to find the future author of the _Institutio Theologiæ Elencticæ_ used by Milton for postal purposes? Is it not clear too that the London Turretin must have been one of Milton's informants about Morus's reasons for leaving Geneva? Respectability everywhere, at our present date at least, seems adverse to Morus.[2]

[Footnote 1: For mention of Jean Louis Calandrin, the Genevese merchant, see Letters between Pell and Thurloe in _Vaughan's Protectorate_ (I. 302, 308, 354). He died at Geneva, in Feb. 1655-6, about a year after this mention of him by Milton. It is possible he may have been a relative of a "Cæsar Calandrinus" mentioned by Wood as one of the many foreigners who had studied at Exeter College, Oxford, during the Rectorship of Dr. Prideaux (1612-1641), and who was afterwards "a Puritanical Theologist," intimate with Usher, a Rector in Essex, and finally minister of the parish of Peter le Poor in London, where he died in 1665, leaving a son named John. Wood speaks of him as a German (Wood, Ath. III. 269, and Fasti, I. 393-4); but the name is evidently Italian. Indeed I find that there had been an intermarriage in Italy between the Diodati family and a family of Calandrinis, bringing some of the Calandrinis also to Geneva about the year 1575. (Reprint, for private circulation, of a Paper on the Italian ancestry of Mr. William Diodate of New Haven, U.S., read before the New Haven Colony Historical Society, June 28, 1875, by Edward E. Salisbury, p. 13). By the kindness of Colonel Chester, whose genealogical researches are all-inclusive, I have a copy of the will of the above-named Cæsar Calandrini of St. Peter le Poor, London. It is dated Aug. 4, 1665, when he was "three score and ten," and mentions two sons, Lewis and John, two daughters living, one of them married to a Giles Archer, and grandchildren by these children, besides nephews and nieces of the names of Papillon and Burlamachi. The son "John" in this will proved it in October 1665, and cannot have been the Calandrini of Milton's letter; but that Calandrini may have been of the same connexion.]

[Footnote 2: Bayle, Art. _Francois Turretin_.]

Busy over his reply to the _Fides Publica_, Milton had stretched his dispensation from routine duty in his Secretaryship not only through November and December 1654 and January 1654-5, as was noted in last section, but as far as to April 1655 in the present section. Through these five months there is, so far as the records show, a total blank, at all events, in his official letter-writing. In April 1655, however, as if his reply to the _Fides Publica_ were then off his mind, and lying in the house in Petty France complete or nearly complete in manuscript, we do come upon two more of his Latin State-letters, as follows:--

(LII.) TO THE PRINCE OF TARENTE, _April_ 4, 1655[1]:--This Prince, one of the chiefs of the French nobility, but connected with Germany by marriage, was a Protestant by education, had been mixed up with the wars of the Fronde, and was altogether a very stirring man abroad. He had written to Cromwell invoking his interest in behalf of foreign, and especially of French, Protestantism. Cromwell expresses his satisfaction in having had such an address from so eminent a representative of the Reformed faith in a kingdom in which so many have lapsed from it, and declares that nothing would please him more than "to be able to promote the enlargement, the safety, or, what is most important, the peace, of the Reformed Church." Meanwhile he exhorts the Prince to be himself firm and faithful to his creed to the very last.--The Prince of Tarente, it may be mentioned, had interested himself much in the lawsuit between Morus and Salmasius. He had tried to act as mediator and induce Morus to withdraw his action--a condescension which Morus acknowledges, though he felt himself obliged, he says, to go on.

[Footnote 1: No. 32 in Skinner Transcript (which gives the exact date); also in Printed Collection and in Phillips.]

(LIII.) To ARCHDUKE LEOPOLD of AUSTRIA, GOVERNOR OF THE SPANISH NETHERLANDS (_undated_):--Sir Charles Harbord, an Englishman, has had certain goods and household stuff violently seized at Bruges by Sir Richard Grenville. The goods had originally been sent from England to Holland in 1643 by the then Earl of Suffolk, in pledge for a debt owing to Harbord; and Grenville's pretext was that he also was a creditor of the Earl, and had obtained a decree of the English Chancery in his favour. Now, by the English law, neither was the present Earl of Suffolk bound by that decree nor could the goods be distrained under it. The decision of the Court to that effect is herewith transmitted; and His Serenity is requested to cause Grenville to restore the goods, inasmuch as it is against the comity of nations that any one should be allowed an action in foreign jurisdiction which he would not be allowed in the country where the cause of the action first arose. "The justice of the case itself and the universal reputation of your Serenity for fair dealing have moved us to commend the matter to your attention; and, if at any time there shall be occasion to discuss the rights or convenience of your subjects with as, I promise that you shall find our diligence in the same not remiss, but at all times most ready."[1]

[Footnote 1: Undated in Printed Collection and in Phillips; dated "Aug. 1658" in the Skinner Transcript, but surely by mistake. Such a letter can hardly have been sent to the Archduke after Oct. 1655, when the war with Spain broke out. I have inserted it at this point by conjecture only, and may be wrong.]

In April 1655, when these two letters were written, Oliver was in the sixteenth month of his Protectorship. His first nine months of personal sovereignty without a Parliament, and his next four months and a half of unsatisfactory experience with his First Parliaments were left behind, and he had advanced two months and more into his period of compulsory Arbitrariness, when he had to govern, with the help of his Council only, by any means he could. Count all the Latin State-Letters registered by Milton himself as having been written by him for Cromwell during those first fifteen months and more of the Protectorate, and they number only nine (Nos. XLV.-XLVIII in Vol. IV. pp. 635-636, and Nos. XLIX.-LIII. in the present volume). These nine Letters, with the completion and publication of his _Defensio Secunda_, and now the preparation of a Reply to More's _Fides Publica_, and also perhaps occasional calls at Thurloe's office and occasional presences at interviews with ambassadors and envoys in Whitehall, were all he had been doing for fifteen months for his salary of £288 a year. The fact cannot have escaped notice. He had himself called attention to it, as if by anticipation, in that passage of his _Defensio Secunda_ in which he spoke of the kind indulgence of the State-authorities in retaining him honourably in full office, and not abridging his emoluments on account of his disability by blindness. The passage may have touched Cromwell and some of the Councillors, and there was doubtless a general feeling among them of the worth, beyond estimate in money, of Milton's name to the Commonwealth, and of his past acts of literary championship for her. Economy, however, is a virtue easily recommended to statesmen by any pinch of necessity, and it so chanced that at the very time we have now reached, April 1655, the Protector and his Council, being in money straits, were in a very economical mood (see ante p. 35). Here, accordingly, is what we find in the Council Order Books under date April 17, 1655.

_Tuesday, April_ 17, 1655:--Present the Lord President Lawrence, Lord Lambert (styled so in the minute), Colonel Montague, Colonel Sydenham, Sir Charles Wolseley, Sir Gilbert Pickering, Major-General Skippon.

"The Council resumed the debate upon the Report made from the Committee of the Council to whom it was referred to consider of the Establishment of the Council's Contingencies.

"_Ordered:_--

"That the salary of £400 _per annum_ granted to MR. GUALTER FROST as Treasurer for the Council's Contingencies be reduced to £300 _per annum_, and be continued to be paid after that proportion till further order.

"That the former yearly salary of MR. JOHN MILTON, of £288, &c., formerly charged on the Council's Contingencies, be reduced to £150 _per annum_, and paid to him during his life out of his Highness's Exchequer.

"That the yearly salaries hereafter mentioned, being formerly paid out of the Council's Contingencies,--that is to say £45 12_s._ 6_d._ _per annum_ to Mr. Henry Giffard, Mr. Gualter Frost's assistant,--_per annum_ to Mr. John Hall,--_per annum_ to Mr. Marchamont Needham,--_per annum_ to Mr. George Vaux, the house-keeper at Whitehall,--_per annum_ for the rent of Sir Abraham Williams's house [for the entertainment of Ambassadors], and--_per annum_ to M. René Angler,--be for the future retrenched and taken away.

"That some convenient rooms at Somerset House be set apart for the entertainment of Foreign Ambassadors upon their address to his Highness.

"That it be referred to Mr. Secretary Thurloe to put that part of the Intelligence [from abroad] which is managed by M. René Augier into the common charge of Intelligence, and to order it for the future by M, Augier or otherwise, as he shall see most for the Commonwealth's service.

* * * * *

"That it be offered to his Highness as the advice of the Council that several warrants be issued under the great seal for authorizing and requiring the Commissioners of his Highness's Treasury to pay, by quarterly payments, at the receipt of his Highness's Exchequer, to the several officers, clerks, and other persons after-named, according to the proportions allowed them for their salary in respect of their several respective offices and employments during their continuance or till his Highness or the Council shall give other order: that is to say:--

"To John Thurloe, Esq., Secretary of State:--For his own office, after the proportion of £800 _per annum_; for the office of Mr. Philip Meadows, Secretary for the Latin Tongue, after the rate of £200 per annum; for the salaries of--clerks attending his [Thurloe's] office at 6_s._ 8_d._ _per diem_, a piece (which together amount to----); for the salaries of eleven messengers at 5_s._ _per diem_, apiece (which together amount to £1003 15_s._): amounting in the whole to ----

"To Mr. Henry Scobell and Mr. William Jessop, Clerks to the Council, or to either of them:--For their own offices, viz. Mr. Scobell £500 _per annum_, Mr. Jessop £500 _per annum_; for the salaries of--clerks attending their office at 6_s._ 8_d._ _per diem_ (which together amount to ----): amounting in the whole to ----

"To Mr, Edward Dendy, Serjeant at Arms attending the Council:--For his own office after the proportion of £365 _per annum_; for the salaries of his _ten_ deputies at 3_s._ 4_d._ _per diem_ a piece (which together amount to £608 6_s._ 8_d._); amounting in the whole to £973 6 8

"To Richard Scutt, Usher of the Council Chamber:--For himself and his assistants at 13_s._ _per diem_, (being £237 5_s_, _per annum_); for Thomas Bennett's salary, keeper of the back-door of the Council Chamber, at 4_s. per diem_ (being £73 _per annum_); for the salary of Robert Stebbin, fire-maker to the clerks, at 2_s. per diem_ (being £36 10_s. per annum_): amounting in the whole to £346 15 0

"The first payment of the said several and respective sums before-mentioned to commence from the 1st of April instant.

"To Richard Nutt, master of his Highness's barge:--For his own office after £80 _per annum;_ for Thomas Washborne, his assistant, for his salary, after £20 _per annum;_ for the salaries of 25 watermen to attend his Highness's barge, at £4 _per annum_ to each (amounting together to £100 _per annum_): amounting in the whole to £200 _per ann._

"The same to commence from 25th March, 1655."

Clearly the Council were in a mood of economy. Not only were certain salaries to be reduced, but a good many outlays were to be stopped altogether, including Needham's subsidy or pension for his journalistic services. But more appears from the document. In spite of the general tendency to retrenchment, the salaries of Scobell and Jessop, the two clerks of the Council, are to be raised from £365 a year to £500 a year. This alone would suggest that not retrenchment only, but an improvement also in the system of the Council's business, was intended. The document as a whole confirms that idea. It maps out the service of the Council more definitely than hitherto into departments. Thurloe, of course, is general head, styled now "Secretary of State"; but it will be observed that the department of Foreign Affairs, including the management of Intelligence from abroad, is spoken of as now wholly and especially his, and that Meadows, with the designation of "Secretary for the Latin Tongue," ranks distinctly under him in that department. Scobell and Jessop, as "Clerks to the Council," though under Thurloe too, are now important enough to be jointly at the head of a separate staff; the Bailiff or Constable department is separate from theirs, and under the charge of Mr. Sergeant-at-Arms Dendy; and minor divisions of service, nameable as Ushership and Barge-attendance, are under the charge of Messrs. Scutt and Nutt respectively. The payments of salaries are henceforward not to be vaguely through Mr. Gualter Frost, as Treasurer for the Council's Contingencies, but by warrants to the Treasury to pay regularly to the several heads the definite sums-total in their departments, their own salaries included.

Milton's case was evidently treated as a peculiar one. It was certainly proposed that his allowance should be reduced from £288 18_s._ 6_d._ a year, which had hitherto been its rate, to £150 a year--i.e. by nearly one half. Most of us perhaps are disappointed by this, and would have preferred to hear that Milton's allowance had been doubled or tripled under the Protectorate,--made equal, say, to Thurloe's. Records must stand as they are, however, and must be construed coolly. Milton's £288 a year for _his_ lighter and more occasional duties had doubtless been all along in fair proportion to the elder Frost's £600 a year, or Thurloe's £800, for _their_ more vast and miscellaneous drudgery. Nor, if Milton had ceased to be able to perform the duties, and another salaried officer had been required in consequence, was there anything extraordinary, in a time of general revision of salaries, that the fact should come into consideration. The question was precisely as if now a high official under government, who had been in receipt of a salary of over £1000 a year, was struggling on in blindness after six years of service, and an extra officer at £700 a year had been for some time employed for his relief. In such a case, the official being a man of great public celebrity and having rendered extraordinary services in his post, would not superannuation on a pension or retiring-allowance be considered the proper course? But this was exactly the course proposed in Milton's case. The reduction from £288 to £150 a year was, it ought to be noted, only part of the proposition; for, whereas the £288 a year had been at the Council's pleasure, it was now proposed that the £150 a year should be for life. In short, what was proposed was the conversion of a terminable salary of £288 a year, payable out of the Council's contingencies, into a life-pension of £150 a year, payable out of the Protector's Exchequer: which was as if in a corresponding modern case a terminable salary of over £1000 a year were converted into a life-pension of between £500 and £600. On studying the document, I have no doubt that the intention was to relieve Milton from that moment from all duty whatsoever, putting an end to that anomalous _Latin Secretaryship Extraordinary_, into which his connexion with the Council had shaped itself since his blindness, and remitting him, as _Ex-Secretary_ Milton, a perfectly free and highly-honoured man, to pensioned leisure in his house in Petty France. For it is impossible that the Council could have intended to retain. Milton in any way in the working Secretaryship at a reduced salary of £150 a year while Meadows, his former assistant, had the title of "Secretary for the Latin Tongue," with a higher salary of £200 a year. Perhaps one may detect Thurloe's notions of official symmetry in the proposed change. Milton's _Latin Secretaryship Extraordinary_ or _Foreign Secretaryship Extraordinary_ may have begun to seem to Thurloe an excrescence upon his own general _Secretaryship of State_, and he may have desired that Milton should retire altogether, and leave the Latin Secretaryship complete to Meadows as his own special subordinate in the foreign department.

The document, however, we have to add farther, though it purports to be an Order of Council, did not actually or fully take effect. I find, for example, that Needham's pension or subsidy of £100 a year, which is one of the outlays the document proposed to "retrench and take away," did not suffer a whit. He went on drawing his salary, sometimes quarterly and sometimes half-yearly, just as before, and precisely in the same form, viz. by warrant from President Lawrence and six others of the Council to Mr. Frost to pay Mr. Needham so much out of the Council's Contingencies. Thus on May 24, 1655, or five weeks after the date of the present Order, there was a warrant to Frost to pay Needham £50, "being for half a year's salary due unto him from the 15th of Nov. last to the 15th of this instant May"; and the subsequent series of warrants in Needham's favour is complete to the end of the Protectorate.[1] Again, Mr. George Vaux, whom our present order seems to discharge from his house-keepership of Whitehall, is found alive in that post and in receipt of his salary of £150 a year for it to as late as Oct. 1659.[2] There must, therefore, have been a reconsideration of the Order by the Council, or between the Council and the Protector, with modifications of the several proposals. The proposal to raise the salaries of Scobell and Jessop from £365 a year to £500 a year each must, indeed, have been made good,--for Scobell and Jessop's successor in the colleagueship to Scobell are found afterwards in receipt of £500 a year.[3] But, on the same evidence, we have to conclude that the reductions proposed in the cases of Mr. Gualter Frost and Milton were _not_ confirmed, or were confirmed only _partially_. Frost is found afterwards distinctly in receipt of £365 a year,[4] The actual reduction, in his case, therefore, was not from £400 to £300, as had been proposed, but only from £400 to £365, or back to what his salary had been formerly (Vol. IV. 575-578). Milton again is found at the end of the Protectorate in receipt of £200 a year, and not of £150 only, as had been proposed In the Order.[5] The inference must be, therefore, that there had been a reconsideration and modification of the Order in his case also, ratifying the proposal of a reduction, but diminishing considerably the proposed _amount_ of the reduction. One would like to know to what influence the modification was owing, and how far Cromwell himself may have interfered in the matter. On the whole, while one infers that the reconsideration of the Order generally may have been owing to direct remonstrances from those whom it affected injuriously, such as Frost, Vaux, and Needham, there is little difficulty in seeing what must have happened in Milton's particular. My belief is that he signified, or caused it to be signified, that he had no desire to retire on a life-pension, that it would be much more agreeable to him to continue in active employment for the State, that for certain kinds of such employment he found his blindness less and less a disqualification, that the arrangement as to salary might be as the Council pleased, but that his own suggestion would be that his salary should be reduced to £200, so that he and Mr. Meadows should henceforth be on an equality in that respect. Such, at all events, was the arrangement adopted; and we may now dismiss this whole incident in Milton's biography by saying that, though in April 1655 there was a proposal to superannuate him entirely on a life-pension of £150 a year, the proposal did not take effect, but he went on from that date, just as before, in the Latin Secretaryship Extraordinary, though at the reduced salary of £200 a year instead of his original £288.

[Footnote 1: My notes from the Money Warrant Books of the Council.]

[Footnote 2: Money Warrants of Feb. 15, 1658-9 and Oct. 25, 1659.]

[Footnote 3: Money Warrant of Oct. 25, 1659.]

[Footnote 4: Ibid.]

[Footnote 5: Ibid.]

As if to prove that the arrangement was a perfectly suitable one, and that Milton's retirement into ex-Secretaryship would have been a loss, there came from him, immediately after the arrangement had been made, that burst of Latin State-letters which is now the most famous of his official performances for Cromwell. It was in the second week of May, 1655, that the news of the Massacre of the Piedmontese Protestants reached England; and from the 17th of that month, onwards for weeks and weeks, the attention of the Protector and the Council was all but engrossed, as we have seen (ante pp. 38-44), by that dreadful topic. Here are a few of the first Minutes of Council relating to it:--

_Thursday, May_ 17, 1655:--Present: HIS HIGHNESS THE LORD PROTECTOR, Lord President Lawrence, the Earl of Mulgrave, Colonel Fiennes, Lord Lambert, Mr. Rous, Major-General Skippon, Lord Viscount Lisle, Sir Gilbert Pickering, Colonel Montague, Colonel Jones, General Desborough, Colonel Sydenham, Sir Charles Wolseley, Mr. Strickland. _Ordered_, "That it be referred to the Earl of Mulgrave, Sir Gilbert Pickering, Mr. Rous, and Colonel Jones, or any--of them to consider of the Petition [a Petition from London ministers and others], and also of the papers of intelligence already come touching the Protestants under the Duke of Savoy, and such other intelligence as shall come to Mr. Secretary Thurloe, and to offer to the Council what they shall think fit, as well _touching writing of letters_, collections, or otherwise, in order to their relief ... That it be referred to Colonel Fiennes, Mr. Strickland, Sir Gilbert Pickering, and Mr. Secretary Thurloe, to prepare the draft of a letter to the French King upon this day's debate touching the Protestants suffering in the Dukedom of Savoy, and to bring in the same to-morrow morning."

_Friday, May_ 18:--At a second, or afternoon sitting (_present_: Lord President Lawrence, Lord Lambert, General Desborough, the Earl of Mulgrave, Colonel Fiennes, Colonel Jones, Colonel Sydenham, Colonel Montague), "Colonel Fiennes reports from the Committee of the Council to whom the same was referred the draft of a Letter to be sent from his Highness to the King of France concerning the Protestants in the Dukedom of Savoy; which, after some amendments, was approved and ordered to be offered to his Highness as the advice of the Council."

_Tuesday, May_ 22:--_Present_: Lord President Lawrence, Colonel Sydenham, Mr. Rous, Colonel Montague, Colonel Jones, General Desborough, Mr. Strickland, Colonel Fiennes, Lord Viscount Lisle, Sir Gilbert Pickering, Lord Lambert. "The Latin draft of a Letter to the Duke of Savoy in behalf of the Protestants in his Territory was this day read. _Ordered_, That it be offered to his Highness as the advice of the Council that his Highness will please to sign the said Letter and cause it to be sent to the said Duke."

_Wednesday, May_ 23:--"Colonel Fiennes reports from the Committee of the Council the draft of two letters in reference to the sufferings of the Protestants in the territories of the Duke of Savoy, the one to the States-General of the United Provinces, the other to the Cantons of the Swisses professing the Protestant Religion; which were read, and, after several amendments, agreed. _Ordered_, That it be offered to his Highness the Lord Protector as the advice of the Council that he will please to send the said letters in his Highness's name to the said States-General and the Cantons respectively."

Though Milton's name is not mentioned in these minutes, it was he, and no other, that penned, or at least turned into Latin, for the Committee, and so for the Council and the Protector, the particular letters minuted, and indeed all the other documents required by the occasion. The following is a list of them:--

(LIV.) TO THE DUKE OF SAVOY, _May_ 25, 1655:[1]--This Letter may be translated entire. It is superscribed "OLIVER, Protector of the Commonwealth of England, &c., to the Most Serene Prince, EMANUEL, Duke of Savoy, Prince of Piedmont, Greeting "; and it is worded as follows:--"Most Serene Prince,--Letters have reached us from Geneva, and also from the Dauphinate and many other places bordering upon your dominion, by which we are informed that the subjects of your Royal Highness professing the Reformed Religion were recently commanded by your edict and authority, within three days after the promulgation of the said edict, to depart from their habitations and properties under pain of death and forfeiture of all their estates, unless they should give security that, abandoning their own religion, they would within twenty days embrace the Roman Catholic one, and that, though they applied as suppliants to your Royal Highness, begging that the edict might be revoked, and that they might be taken into their ancient favour and restored to the liberty granted them by your Most Serene ancestors, yet part of your army attacked them, butchered many most cruelly, threw others into chains, and drove the rest into the deserts and snow-covered mountains, where some hundreds of families are reduced to such extremities that it is to be feared that all will soon perish miserably by cold and hunger. When such news was brought us, we could not possibly, in hearing of so great a calamity to that sorely afflicted people, but be moved with extreme grief and compassion. But, confessing ourselves bound up with them not by common humanity only, but also by community of Religion, and so by an altogether brotherly relationship, we have thought that we should not be discharging sufficiently either our duty to God, or the obligations of brotherly love and the profession of the same religion, if we were merely affected with feelings of grief over this disaster and misery of our brethren, and did not exert ourselves to the very utmost of our strength and ability for their rescue from so many unexpected misfortunes. Wherefore the more we most earnestly beseech and adjure your Royal Highness that you will bethink yourself again of the maxims of your Most Serene ancestors and of the liberty granted and confirmed by them time after time to their Vaudois subjects. In granting and confirming which, as they performed what in itself was doubtless most agreeable to God, who has pleased to reserve the inviolable jurisdiction and power over Conscience for Himself alone, so there is no doubt either that they had a due regard for their subjects, whom they found hardy and faithful in war and obedient always in peace. And, as your Royal Serenity most laudably treads in the footsteps of your forefathers in all their other kindly and glorious actions, so it is our prayer to you again and again not to depart from them in this matter either, but to repeal this edict, and any other measure that may have been passed for the molestation of your subjects of the Reformed Religion, restoring them to their habitations and goods, ratifying the rights and liberty anciently granted them, and ordering their losses to be repaired and an end to be put to their troubles. If your Royal Highness shall do this, you will have done a deed most acceptable to God, you will have raised up and comforted those miserable and distressed sufferers, and you will have highly obliged all your neighbours that profess the Reformed Religion,--ourselves most of all, who shall then regard your kindness and clemency to those poor people as the fruit of our solicitation. Which will moreover tie us to the performance of all good offices in return, and lay the firmest foundations not only for the establishment but even for the increase of the relationship and friendship between this Commonwealth and your Dominion. Nor do we less promise this to ourselves from your justice and moderation. We beg Almighty God to bend your mind and thoughts in this direction, and we heartily pray for you and for your people peace and truth and prosperity in all your affairs."[2]--The bearer of this letter to the Duke, as we know, was Mr. Samuel Morland, who had been selected as the Protector's special Commissioner for the purpose. He left London on the 26th of May. He took with him, also, a copy of the Latin speech which he was to deliver to the Duke in presenting the letter. As there is much probability that this Latin speech is also in part of Milton's composition, and as it is in even a bolder and more indignant strain than the letter, it may be well to translate it too:--"Your Serene and Royal Highnesses [the Duke and his mother both addressed?],--The Most Serene Lord, Oliver, Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland, and Ireland, has sent me to your Royal Highnesses; whom he salutes very heartily, and to whom, with a very high affection and peculiar regard for your Serenities, he wishes a long life and reign, and a prosperous issue of all your affairs, amid the applauses and respect of your people. And this is due to you, whether in consideration of the excellent character and royal descent of your Highnesses, and the great expectation of the world from so many eminent good qualities, or in recollection, after reference to records, of the ancient friendship of our Kings with the Royal house of Savoy. Though I am, I confess, but a young man, and not very ripe in experience of affairs, yet it has pleased my Most Serene and Gracious Master to send me, as one much devoted to your Royal Highnesses and ardently attached to all bearing the Italian name, on what is really a great mission.--The ancient legend is that the son of Croesus was completely dumb from his birth. When, however, he saw a soldier aiming a wound at his father, straightway he had the use of his tongue. No other is my predicament, feeling as I do my tongue loosened by those very recent and bloody wounds of Mother Church. A great mission surely that is to be called wherein all the safety and hope of many poor people is comprehended--their sole hope lying in the chance that they shall be able, by all their loyalty, obedience, and most humble prayers, to mollify and appease the minds of your Royal Highnesses, now irritated against them. In behalf of these poor people, whose cause pity itself may seem to make its own, the Most Serene Protector of England also comes as an intercessor, and most earnestly requests and beseeches your Royal Highnesses to deign to extend your mercy to these your very poor and most outcast subjects--those, I mean, who, inhabiting the roots of the Alps and certain valleys in your dominion, have professed nominally the Religion of the Protestants. For he has heard (what no one can say has been done by the will of your Royal Highnesses) that those wretched creatures have been partly killed by your forces, partly expelled by violence and driven from their home and country, so that they are now wandering, with their wives and children, houseless, roofless, poor, and destitute of all resource, through rugged and inhospitable spots and over snow-covered mountains. And, through the days of this transaction, if only the things are true that fame at present reports everywhere (would that Fame were proved a liar!), what was not dared and attempted against them? Houses smoking everywhere, torn limbs, the ground bloody! Ay, and virgins, ravished and hideously abused, breathed their last miserably; and old men and persons labouring under illness were committed to the flames; and some infants were dashed against the rocks, and the brains of others were cooked and eaten. Atrocity horrible and before unheard of, savagery such that, good God, were all the Neros of all times and ages to come to life again, what a shame they would feel at having contrived nothing equally inhuman! Verily, verily, Angels are horrorstruck, men are amazed; heaven itself seems to be astounded by these cries, and the earth itself to blush with the shed blood of so many innocent men. Do not, great God, do not seek the revenge due to this iniquity. May thy blood, Christ, wash away this stain!--But it is not for me to relate these things in order as they happened, or to dwell longer upon them; and what my Most Serene Master requests from your Royal Highnesses you will understand better from his own Letter. Which letter I am ordered to deliver to your Royal Highnesses with all observance and due respect; and, should your Royal Highnesses, as we greatly hope, grant a favourable and speedy answer, you will both do an act most gratifying to the Lord Protector, who has taken this business deeply to heart, and to the whole Commonwealth of England, and also restore, by an exercise of mercy very worthy of your Royal Highnesses, life, safety, spirit, country, and estates to many thousands of most afflicted people who depend on your pleasure; and me you will send back to my native country as the happy messenger of your conspicuous clemency, with great joy and report of your exalted virtues, the deeply obliged servant of your Royal Highnesses for evermore."[3]

[Footnote 1: So dated in the official copy preserved in the Record Office (Hamilton's _Milton Papers_, p. 15) and in the copy actually delivered to the Duke (Morland, pp. 572-574)--the phrase in both being "_Dabantur ex aula nostra Westmonasterii_, 25 _Maii_, _anno_ 1654." In the Skinner Transcript, however, the dating is "_Westmonsterio, May_ 10, 1655;" which again is changed into "_Alba Aula, May_ 1655," i.e. "Whitehall, May 1655" (month only given) in the Printed Collections and in Phillips.]

[Footnote 2: There are one or two slight verbal differences between Milton's original draft, here translated, and the official copy as actually delivered to the Duke, and as printed by Morland. Thus, in the first sentence, instead of _"Redditæ sunt nobis e Geneva, necnon ex Delphinatu aliisque multis ex locis ditioni vestræ finitimis, literæ,"_ the official copy has simply _"Redditæ sunt nobis multis ex locis ditioni vestæ finitimis literæ."_]

[Footnote 3: I have translated the speech from the official Latin draft, as preserved in the Record Office, and as printed by Mr. Hamilton, _Milton Papers_, pp. 18-20. Mr. Hamilton has no doubt that the composition is Milton's. He founds his opinion partly on the style, and partly on the fact that the draft is "written in the same hand as the other official copies of Milton's letters." I agree with Mr. Hamilton, though the matter does not seem to be absolutely beyond controversy. The style is generally like Milton's; there are phrases repeated from Milton's Latin elsewhere--e.g. "_montesque nivibus coopertos_," repeated from the Letter to the Duke of Savoy, and "_totius nominis Italici studiosissimum_" which almost repeats the "_toiius Græci nominis ... cultor_" of the second Letter to Philaras; and there are also phrases identical with some used in Milton's other letters on the subject of the Massacre which have yet to be noted in this list. On the other hand, there are passages and expressions in the Speech that strike one as hardly Miltonic, while the purport in some places would favour the idea that Morland wrote the speech himself. What seems to negative this idea most strongly, and therefore to point most distinctly to Milton as the author, is the existence of the MS. official copy in the Record Office. The speech, that copy proves, must have been prepared before Morland left London, and must have been taken with him. For that it cannot have been merely deposited in the State Paper Office afterwards, as a record of what he did say at Turin, is proved by the fact that his actual speech at Turin, as printed by himself in his book, with an English Translation (pp. 558-561), though in substance identical with the draft-copy, differs in some particulars. In the actual speech the plural, "Your Royal Highnesses," is changed into the singular, "Your Royal Highness," for address to the Duke only, though the Duchess-mother was present; the parenthetical comparison of Morland to the Son of Croesus is entirely omitted; and there are other verbal changes, apparently suggested by Morland's closer information as he approached Turin, or by his sense of fitness at the moment--in illustration of which the reader may compare the very strong passage about "the Neros of all times and ages" as we have just rendered it from the draft with the same passage as we have previously rendered it from Morland's actual speech (ante p. 42). But, if Morland took the speech with him, unless he wrote it himself and had it approved before his departure, who so likely to have furnished it as Milton? All in all, that is the most probable conclusion; and anything un-Miltonic in the speech may be accounted for by supposing that, though the Latin was Milton's, the substance was not entirely his. Morland, though he does not say in his book that the speech was furnished him, does not positively claim it as his own. He, at all events, used the liberty of deviating from the original draft.]

(LV.) TO THE EVANGELICAL SWISS CANTONS, _May 25, 1655_[1]:--His Highness in this letter recapitulates the facts at some length, and expresses his conviction that the Cantons, so much nearer the scene of the horrors, are already duly roused. He informs them that he has written to the Duke of Savoy and hopes the intercession may have effect; but adds, "If, however, he should determine otherwise, we are prepared to exchange counsels with you on the subject of the means by which we may be able most effectively to relieve, re-establish, and save from certain and undeserved ruin, an innocent people oppressed and tormented by so many injuries, they being also our dearest brothers in Christ."[2]

[Footnote 1: So dated in the official copy as dispatched, and as printed in Morland's book, pp. 581-562; but draft dated "_Westmonasterio, May 19, 1655_" in the Skinner Transcript, the Printed Collection, and Phillips.]

[Footnote 2: One of the phrases in this letter about the poor Piedmontese Protestants is "_nunc sine tare, sine teoto, ... per monies desertos atque nives, cum conjugibus ac liberis, miserrime vagantur_." The phrase occurs almost verbatim in Morland's speech to the Duke of Savoy--"_sine lare, sine tecto ... cum suis conjugibus ac liberis vagari_."]

(LVI.) TO CHARLES GUSTAVUS, KING OF SWEDEN, _May_ 25, 1655:--To the same effect as the last, _mutatis mutandis_. What sovereign can be more ready to stir in such a cause than his Swedish majesty, the successor of those who have been champions of the Protestantism of Europe? Gladly will the Protector form a league with him and with other powers to do whatever may be necessary.

(LVII.) TO THE KING OF DENMARK, May 25, 1655:[1]--An appeal in the same strain to his Danish Majesty: phraseology varied a little, But matter the same.

[Footnote 1: This and the last both so dated in official copy as printed in Morland's book, pp. 554-557; dated only "May 1655" in Skinner Transcript, Printed Collection, and Phillips.]

(LVIII.) TO LOUIS XIV., KING OF FRANCE, May 25, 1655:[1]--The story recapitulated for the benefit of his French Majesty, with the addition that it is reported that some troops of his Majesty had assisted the Piedmontese soldiery in the attack on the Vaudois. This the Protector can hardly believe: it would be so much against that policy of Toleration which the Kings of France have found essential for the peace of their own dominions. The Protector cannot doubt, at all events, that his Majesty will use his powerful influence with the Duke of Savoy to induce him at once, as far as may be possible, to repair the outrageous wrong already done.

[Footnote 1: This Letter is omitted in the Printed Collection and in Phillips; but it is given in the Skinner Transcript (No. 38 there), and Mr. Hamilton has printed it in his Milton Papers (p. 2). It had already been printed in Morland's book (pp. 564-565).]

(LIX.) TO THE MOST EMINENT LORD, CARDINAL MAZARIN, _May_ 25, 1625:[1]--Not content with writing to Louis XIV., Cromwell addressed also the great French Minister. After mentioning the dreadful occasion, the letter proceeds--"There is clearly nothing which has obtained for the French nation greater esteem with all their neighbours professing the Reformed Religion than the liberty and privileges permitted and granted to Protestants by edicts and public acts. It is for this reason chiefly, though for others as well, that this Commonwealth has sought for the friendship and alliance of the French to a greater degree than before. For the settlement of this there have now for a good while been dealings here with the King's Ambassador, and his Treaty is now almost brought to a conclusion. Moreover, the singular benignity and moderation of your Eminence, always manifest hitherto in the most important transactions of the Kingdom relating to the French Protestants, causes me to hope much from your own prudence and magnanimity."

[Footnote 1: Utterly undated in Printed Collection and in Phillips, and quite misplaced in both; properly dated "May 25, 1655" in Skinner Transcript.]

(LX.) TO THE STATES-GENERAL OF THE UNITED PROVINCES, _May_ 25, 1655:[1]--To the same effect as the letters to the Swiss Cantons and the Kings of Sweden and Denmark, but with emphatic expression of his Highness's peculiar confidence In the Dutch Republic in such a crisis. He offers in the close to act in concert with the States-General and other Protestant powers for any interference that may be necessary.

[Footnote 1: So dated in official copy, as printed in Morland's book, pp. 558-560; but undated in Printed Collection and in Phillips, and dated "_West., Junii_--1655" in Skinner Transcript (No. 41 there). This last is a mistake; for Thurloe speaks of the letter as already written May 25 (Thurloe to Pell, _Vaughan's Protectorate_, I. 185). The official copy, as given in Morland, differs somewhat from Milton's draft. "_Ego_" for Cromwell, in one sentence, is changed into "_Nos;_" and the closing words of the draft, "_et is demum, sentiet orthodoxnon injurias atque miserias tam graves non posse nos negligere_" are omitted in the official copy, possibly as too strong. These may be among the amendments made in Council, May 23.]

(LXI.) TO THE PRINCE OF TRANSYLVANIA, _May_, 1655:[1]--Transylvania, now included in the Austrian Empire, was then an independent Principality of Eastern Europe, in precarious and variable relations with Austria, Poland, Russia, and the Ottoman Empire. The population, a mixture of Wallachs, Magyars. Germans, and Slavs, was largely Protestant; and the present Prince, George Ragotzki, was an energetic supporter of the Protestant interest in that part of Europe, and a man generally of much political and military activity. He had written, it appears, to Cromwell on the 16th of November, 1654, and had sent an Envoy to England with the letter. It had expressed his earnest desire for friendship and alliance with the Protector, and for co-operation with him in the defence of the Reformed Religion. Cromwell now acknowledges the letter and embassy, with high compliments to the Prince personally, of whose merits and labours there had been so much fame. This leads him at once to the Piedmontese business. Is not that an opportunity for the co-operation his Serenity had mentioned? At any rate, it behoves all Protestant princes to be on the alert; for who knows how far the Duke of Savoy's example may spread?

[Footnote 1: Dated so in Skinner Transcript, Printed Collection, and Phillips--with the addition "Westminster" in the first, and "Whitehall" in the two last: no copy given in Morland's book.]

(LXII.) TO THE CITY OF GENEVA, _June_ 8, 1655:--This letter announces the collection in progress in England for the relief of the Piedmontese Protestants. It will take some time to complete the collection; but meanwhile the first instalment of £2000 [Cromwell's personal contribution] is remitted for immediate use. His Highness is quite sure that the City authorities of Geneva will cheerfully take charge of the money, and see it distributed among those most in need. A postscript bids the Genevese expect £1500 of the sum through Gerard Hensch of Paris, and the remaining £500 through Mr. Stoupe, a well known travelling agent of Cromwell and Thurloe.

(LXIII.) TO THE KING OF FRANCE, _July_ 29, 1655:--The Protector here acknowledges an answer received to his previous letter of May 25. [The answer had been delivered to Morland early in June, when he was on his way through Paris, and transmitted by him to the Protector. A translation of it is given in Morland's book, pp. 566-567.] He is glad to be confirmed in his belief that the French officers who lent their troops to assist the Piedmontese soldiery in that bloody business did so without his Majesty's order and against his will--glad also to learn that these officers have been rebuked, and that his Majesty has, of his own accord, remonstrated with the Duke of Savoy, and advised him to stop his persecution of the Vaudois. As no effect has yet been produced however, [Morland has by this time delivered his speech at Turin, and reported the dubious answer given by the Duke of Savoy: ante pp. 42-43], the Protector is now despatching a special envoy [i.e. Mr. George Downing] to Turin, to make farther remonstrances. This envoy will pass through Paris, and his mission will have the greater chance of success if his Majesty will take the opportunity of again impressing his views upon the Duke. By so doing, by punishing those French officers who employed his Majesty's troops so disgracefully, and by sheltering such of the poor Vaudois as may have sought refuge in France, his Majesty will earn the respect of other Powers, and will strengthen the loyalty of his own Protestant subjects.

(LXIV.) To CARDINAL MAZARIN, _July_ 29, 1655:--This is a special note, accompanying the foregoing letter, and introducing and recommending Mr. Downing to his Eminence.

Besides these official documents for Cromwell on the Piedmontese business, there came from Milton his memorable Sonnet on the same, expressing his own feelings, and Cromwell's too, with less restraint. It may have been in private circulation at the Protector's Court at the date of the last two of the ten letters:

ON THE LATE MASSACRE IN PIEDMONT.

Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold; Even them who kept thy truth so pure of old, When all our fathers worshipped stocks and stones, Forget not: in thy book record their groans Who were thy sheep, and in their ancient fold Slain by the bloody Piedmontese, that rolled Mother with infant down the rocks. Their moans The vales redoubled to the hills, and they To heaven. Their martyred blood and ashes sow O'er all the Italian fields, where still doth sway The triple Tyrant; that from these may grow A hundredfold, who, having learnt thy way, Early may fly the Babylonian woe.[1]

[Footnote 1: If Morland's speech at Turin was of Milton's composition, as we have found probable, the contrast between one phrase in that speech and the opening of this Sonnet is curious. "Do not, great God, do not seek the revenge due to this iniquity," says the Speech; "Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints," says the Sonnet.]

From the Piedmontese Massacre we have now to revert to Morus. His _Fides Publica_, in reply to Milton's _Defensio Secunda_, had been published in an incomplete state, as we have seen, by Ulac at the Hague in August or September 1654; and Milton had a rejoinder to this publication ready or nearly ready, as we have also seen, by the end of March 1655. The reason why this Rejoinder had not already appeared has now to be stated.

One of Morus's reasons for hurrying into France so unexpectedly, and leaving his unfinished book in Ulac's hands, seems to have been the chance of a professorship or pastorship there that would enable him to quit Holland permanently, and settle at length in his own country. "Some speak of calling Morus, against whom Mr. Milton writes so sharply, to be Professor of Divinity at Nismes; but most men say it will ruin that church," is a piece of Parisian news sent by Pell to Thurloe in a letter from Zurich dated Oct. 28, 1654;[1] and, with that prospect, or some other, Morus seems to have remained in France for some time after that date. When copies of his incomplete _Fides Publica_ reached him there, he may not have thanked Ulac for issuing the book in such a state without leave given. All the more, however, he must have felt himself obliged to complete the book. Accordingly he did, from France, forward the rest of the MS. to Ulac, with the result of the appearance at last from Ulac's press of a supplementary volume with this title: "_Alexandri Mori, Ecclesiastæ et Sacrarum Litterum Professoris, Supplementum Fidei Publicæ contra calumnias Joannis Miltoni. Hagae-Comitum, Typis Adriani Ulacq, 1655._" ("Supplement to the Public Testimony of Alexander Morus, Churchman and Professor of Sacred Literature, in reply to the Calumnies of John Milton. Hague: Printed by Adrian Ulac, 1655.") Ulac prefixes, under the heading "_The Printer to the Reader_," a brief explanatory Preface. "You have here, good Reader," he says, "the missing remainder of the edition of a Treatise which we lately printed and published under the title _Aleaxandri Mori Fides Publica contra calumnias Joannis Miltoni_. This remainder that Reverend gentleman has sent me from France. Of the whole matter judge as may seem fair and just to you. Let it suffice for me to have satisfied your curiosity. Farewell." It must have been this _Supplementum_ of Morus, reaching London perhaps in April 1655, or perhaps during the first busy correspondence about the Piedmontese massacre, that delayed the appearance of Milton's already written Rejoinder to the imperfect _Fides Publica_. He would notice this "Supplement" as well as the volume already published, and so have done with Morus altogether.

[Footnote 1: Vaughan's _Protectorate_, I. 73; where "Mr. Miton" appears as "Mr. Hulton."]

Morus's _Supplementum_ consists of 105 pages, added to the original _Fides Publica_, but numbered onwards from the last page there, so as to admit of the binding of the two volumes into one volume consecutively paged, though with two title-pages, differently dated. The matter also proceeds continuously from the point at which the _Fides Publica_, broke off. Referring to the testimony borne to his character in the venerable Diodati's Letter from Geneva to Salmasius, dated May 9, 1648, and connecting it with Milton's mention of his personal acquaintance with Diodati formed in his visit to Geneva in 1639, Morus addresses Milton thus:

"This is that John Diodati upon whom you cast no small stain by your praise, and who truly, if he were alive, would prefer to be in the number of those who are vituperated by you. Would he _were_ alive! How he would beat back your pride, not indeed with other pride, but with the gravest smile of contempt! How he would despise in his great mind your thoughts, sayings, acts, all in one! How he would anticipate your fine satire, and, moved with holy loathing, spit upon it! '_With him_,' you say, '_I had daily society at Geneva_.' But what did you learn from him? What of desirable contagion did you carry away from his acquaintance? Often have we heard him enumerating those friends he had in your country whom he commended on the score of either learning or goodness. Of _you_ we never heard a syllable from him."

Then, after telling of his affectionate parting with Diodati at Geneva, when both, were in tears and the old man blessed him, he proceeds to quote other Testimonials, either in French or in Latin. Four more are still from former Swiss friends:--viz. an extract from another letter of Diodati, addressed to M. L'Empereur; a letter from M. Sartoris to Salmasius, dated Geneva, April 5, 1648; a testimonial from the lawyer Gothofridius, dated Geneva, May 24, 1648; and a subsequent letter from the same, dated Basel, April 23, 1651. All are very complimentary. Passing then to his life in Holland after leaving Switzerland, Morus continues the series of his testimonials. We have first, in French or Latin, or both, a letter from the Church at Middleburg to the Church at Geneva, dated Nov. 2, 1649, an extract from a letter of the Synod of the Walloon Churches of the United Provinces to the Pastors and Professors of Geneva, dated May 6, 1650, and a testimonial from the Church of Middleburg, on the occasion of sending M. Morus as deputy to the said Synod, dated April 19, 1650. More documents of the same kind follow, chiefly for the purpose of disproving the assertion that M. Morus had been condemned and ejected by the Middleburg Church. They include an extract from the Acts of the Consistory of the Walloon Church of Middleburg, dated July 10, 1652, a testimonial from the Middleburg Church of the same date, and an extract from the Articles of the Synod of the Walloon Churches held at Groede, Aug. 21-23, 1652. Having thus brought himself, with ample testimonials of character, to the date of his removal from the Middleburg Church to the Professorship in Amsterdam, he takes up more expressly the _Accusatio de Bontid_ or Bontia scandal. He gives what he calls the true and exact version of that story, with those details about Madame de Saumaise and her quarrel with him on Bontia's account which have already appeared in our narrative. He lays stress on the fact that it was himself that had instituted the law-process, and persevered in it to the end; and he dwells at some length on the successful issue of the case both in the Walloon Synod and in the Supreme Court of Holland. He has evidence, he says, that Salmasius, to his dying day, spoke in high terms of him, and admitted that Madame de Saumaise was in the wrong. "This statement has been made," he says, "not solely in reply to your insolence, but also out of regard for the weakness and ignorance of those at a distance who have imbibed the venom of the calumny and heard of the spiteful revenge to which I was subject, but not of the unusual sequel of its judicial discomfiture. All of whom, but especially my friends and countrymen, amid whom there has happened to me the same that happened to Basil among _his_ neighbours, I request and beseech by all that is sacred not rashly to credit mere report, much less the letters which my adversaries have sent hither and thither through all nations, especially after they perceived that they were driven from all their defences at home, judging that they would more easily invest their lie with belief and authority in distant parts. Fair critics, I doubt not, will at least suspend their judgment, and not incline to either side, until there shall have reached them a just narrative of the facts, truly and freely written by a friend, the publication of which has hitherto been kept back at my desire." Three additional testimonials are then appended to show that his reputation had not suffered in Amsterdam on account of the Saumaise-Bontia scandal, and especially that the rumour that he had been suspended from ministerial functions there was utterly untrue. These Amsterdam testimonials, as being the latest in date, and the most important in Morus's favour, may be given in abstract:--

_From the Magistrates of Amsterdam, July 11, 1654_:--"Whereas the Reverend and very learned Mr. Alexander Morus, Professor of Sacred History in our illustrious School, has complained to us that one John Milton, in a lately published book, has attacked his reputation with atrocious calumnies, and has added moreover that the Magistrates of Amsterdam have interdicted him the pulpit, and that only his Professorship of Greek remains,... We, &c., testify." What they testify is that, since Morus had come to Amsterdam, "not only had he done nothing which could afford ground for such calumnies, or was unworthy of a Christian and Theologian," but he had also discharged the duties of his Professorship with extraordinary learning, eloquence and acceptance. So far, therefore, were the Magistrates from censuring M. Morus that, on the contrary, they were ready still, on any occasion, to afford him all the protection and show him all the good will in their power. The certificate is sealed with the City seal, and signed by "N. Nicolai," the City clerk.

_From the Amsterdam Church (about same date)_:--Three Pastors of this Church--Gothofrid Hotton, Henry Blanche-Tete, and Nicolas de la Bassecour--certify, "in the name of the whole convocation of the Gallo-Belgie Church of Amsterdam," that Morus discharges his Professorship with high credit; also "that, as regards his life and conversation, they are so far from knowing or acknowledging him to be guilty of those things of which he is accused by one Milton, an Englishman, in his lately published book, that, on the contrary, they have frequently requested sermons from him, and he has delivered such in the church, excellent in quality and perfectly orthodox,--which could not have occurred if anything of the alleged kind had been known to his brethren (_quod heud factum fuisset si hujusmodi quioquam nobis innotuisset_)."

_From the Curators of the Amsterdam School, July 29, 1654_:--To the same effect, with the story of the circumstances of the appointment of Morus to the Professorship. They had been very anxious to get him, and he had justified their choice. "We think the calumnies with which he is undeservedly loaded arise from nothing else than the ill-will which is the inseparable accompaniment of especially distinguished virtue." Signed, for the Curators, by "C. de Graef" and "Simon van Hoorne."

After asking Milton how he can face these flat contradictions of his charges, not from mere individuals, but from important public bodies, and saying that "one favourable nod from any one of the persons concerned would be worth more than the vociferations of a thousand Miltons to all eternity," Morus corrects Milton's mistake as to the nature of his Professorship. It is not a Professorship of Greek, but of Sacred History, involving Greek only in so far as one might refer in one's lectures to Josephus or the Greek Fathers. But he _had_ been a Professor of Greek--in Geneva, to wit, when little over twenty years of age. Nor, in spite of all Milton's facetiousness on the subject of Greek, and his puns on _Morus_ in Greek, was he ashamed of the fact. "For all learning whatever is Greek, so that whoever despises Greek Literature, or professors of the same, must necessarily be a sciolist." And here he detects the reason of Milton's incessant onslaughts on Salmasius. Milton was evidently most ambitious of the fame of scholarship, as appeared from his anticipations of immortality in his Latin poems; and, though he might be a fair Latinist--not immaculate in Latin either, as he might hear some time or other from Salmasius himself, though that was a secret yet--he knew that he could never snatch away from Salmasius the palm of the highest, i.e. of Greek, scholarship. Morus does not claim for himself the title of a perfect classic; he is content with his present position and its duties. Admirable lessons in life are to be obtained from the study of Church History. Of these not the least is the verification of the words in the Gospel, "Woe unto you when all men shall speak well of you." What calumnies had been borne by Jerome, Nazianzen, Chrysostom, Athanasius, and others of the best of men! With such examples before one, why should an insignificant person, like the writer, conscious too of many faults and weaknesses, take calumny too much to heart? This pathetic strain, attained towards the close of the book, is maintained most skilfully in the peroration.

"But, if credit enough is not given to my own solemn affirmation, nor to this Public Testimony, Thee, Lord God, I make finally my witness, who explorest the inmost recesses of the spirit, who triest the reins, and knowest the secret motives of the breast, a Searcher of hearts to whom, as if by thorough dissection, all things are bare. Thee, God, Thee I call as my witness, who shalt one day be my Judge and the Judge of all, whether it is not the case that men see in this heart of mine what Thou seest not. Would that Thou didst not also see in the same heart what they do not see! But ah me! I am far baser in reality than they feign. Suppliantly I adore the will of Thy Providence that permits me to be falsely accused among men on account of so many hidden faults of which I am truly guilty in Thy sight. Thou, Lord, saidst to Shimei, 'Curse David.' Glory be to Thy name that hast chosen to preserve me, exercised with so many griefs, that I may serve Thyself. There is one great sin discernible in my soul, which I confess before the whole world. I have never served Thee in proportion to my strength; that little talent of Thy grace which Thou hast deigned to grant me I have not yet turned to full account--whether because I have followed too much the pleasures of mere study, or whether I have consumed too much time and labour in refuting the invectives of the evil-disposed, to whom, such has been Thy pleasure, I have been constantly an object of attack. Cover the past for me, regulate the future. Cleared before men, before Thee I shall be cleared never, unless Thy mercy shall be my succour. I confess I have sinned against Thee, nor shall I do so more. Thou seest how this paper on which I write is now all wet with my tears: pardon me, Redeemer mine, and grant that the vow I now take to Thee I may sacredly perform. Let a thousand dogs bark at me, a thousand bulls of Bashan rush upon me, as many lions war against my soul, and threaten me with destruction, I will reply no more, defended enough if only I feel Thee propitious. I will no more waste the time due to Thee, sacred to Thee, in mere trifles, or lose it in beating off the importunity of moths. Whatever extent of life it shall please Thee to appoint me still, I vow, I dedicate, all to Thee, all to Thy Church. So shall we be revenged on our enemies. Convert us all, Thou who only canst. Forgive us, forgive them also; nor to us, nor to them, but to Thy name, be the glory!"

Milton read this, but was not moved. On the 8th of August, 1655, there was published his Rejoinder to the original _Fides Publica_, with his notice of the _Supplementum_ appended. It is a small volume of 204 pages, entitled _Joannis Miltoni_, _Angli_, _Pro Se Defensio contra Alexandrum Morum_, _Ecclesiasten_, _Libelli famosi_, _cui titulus 'Regii Sanguinis Clamor ad Cælum adversus Parricidas Anglicanus'_, _authorem recte dictum. Londini_, _Typis Newcomianis_, 1655 ("The English, John Milton's Defence for Himself, in reply to Alexander Morus, Churchman, rightly called the author of the notorious book entitled 'Cry of the King's Blood to Heaven against the English Parricides,' London, from Newcome's Press, 1655"). This is perhaps the least known now of all Milton's writings. It has never been translated, even in the wretched fashion in which his _Defensio Prima_ and _Defensio Secunda_ have been; and it is omitted altogether in some professed editions of Milton's whole works.[1]

[Footnote 1: The date of publication is from the Thomason copy in the British Museum.]

After a brief Introduction, in which Milton remarks that the quarrel, which was originally for Liberty and the English People, has now dwindled into a poor personal one, he discusses afresh, as the first real point in dispute, the question of the authorship of the _Regii Sanguinis Clamor_. Morus's denials, or seeming denials, go for nothing. Any man may deny anything; there are various ways of denial; and he still maintains that Morus is, to all legal intents and purposes, responsible for the book. "Unless I show this." he says, "unless I make it plain either that you are the author of that most notorious book against us, or that you have given sufficient occasion for justly regarding you as the author, I do not object to the conclusion that I have been beaten by you in this controversy, and come out of it ignominiously, with disgrace and shame." How is this strong statement supported? In the first place, there is reproduced the evidence of original, universal, and persistent rumour. "This I say religiously, that through two whole years I met no one, whether a countryman of my own or a foreigner, with whom there could be talk about that book, but they all agreed unanimously that you were called its author, and they named no one for the author but you." To Morus's assertion that he had openly, loudly, and energetically disowned the book, where suspected of the authorship, Milton returns a complex answer. Partly he does not believe the assertion, on the ground that there were many who had heard Morus confessing to the book and boasting of it. Partly he asks why such energetic repudiations were necessary, and why, in spite of them, intimate friends of Morus retained their former opinion. Partly he admits that there may latterly have been such repudiations, but not till there was danger in being thought the author. Any criminal will deny his crime in sight of the axe; and, apart from the punishment which Morus had reason to expect when he knew that Milton's reply to the _Regii Sanguinis Clamor_ was forthcoming, what had not the author of that book to dread after the Peace between the Dutch and the Commonwealth had been concluded? By articles IX., X., and XI. of the Peace it was provided that no public enemy of the Commonwealth should have residence, shelter, living, or commerce, within the bounds of the United Provinces; and who more a public enemy of the Commonwealth than the author of the _Regii Sanguinis Clamor_? No wonder that, after that Peace, Morus had trembled for the consequences of his handiwork. The loss of his Amsterdam Professorship, instant ejection from Holland, and prohibition of return under pain of death, were what he had to fear. Were not these powerful enough motives for denial to a man like Morus? Had not Milton, when he learnt by letters from Durie in May 1654 that Morus was disowning--the book, been entitled to remember these motives? For what other evidence had been produced besides Morus's own word? His friend Hotton's only; and that was no independent testimony, but only Morus's at second hand. And even now, after Morus's repeated and studiously-worded denials in his _Fides Publica_, how did the case stand?

"That book [the _Regii Sanguinis Clamor_] consists of various prooemia and epilogues [i.e. addition to the central text]--to wit, _An Epistle to Charles_, another _To the Reader_, and two sets of verses at the close, one eulogistic of Salmasius, the other in defamation of me. Now, if I find that you wrote or contributed any page of this whole book, even a single verse, or that you published it, or procured it, or advised it, or superintended the publishing, or even lent the smallest particle of aid therein, you alone, since no one else is to the fore, shall be to me responsible for the whole, the author, the 'Crier'. Nor can you call this merely my severity or vehemence; for this is the procedure established among almost all nations by right and laws of equity. I will adduce, as universally accepted, the Imperial Civil Law. Read _Institut. Justiniani l. IV. De Injuriis, Tit. 4_: 'If any one shall write, compose, or publish, or with evil design cause the writing, composing, or publishing, of a book or poem (or story) for the defamation of any one,' &c. Other laws add 'Even should he publish in the name of another, or without name;' and all decree that the person is to be taken for the author and punished as such. I ask you now, not whether you wrote the text of the _Regii Sanguinis Clamor_, but whether you made, wrote, published, or caused to be published, the Epistle Dedicatory to Charles prefixed to the _Clamor_, or any particle thereof; I ask whether you composed or caused to be published the other Epistle to the Reader, or finally that Defamatory Poem, You have replied nothing yet to these precise questions. By merely disowning the _Clamor_ itself and strenuously swearing that you wrote no portion of it, you thought to escape with safe credit, and make game of us, inasmuch as the Epistle to Charles the Son, or that to the Reader, or the set of Iambic verses, is not the _Regii Sanguinis Clamor_. Take now this in brief, therefore, that you may not be able so to wheel about or prevaricate in future, or hope for any escape or concealment, and that all may know how far from mendacious, how veritable on the contrary, or at least not unfounded, was that report which arose about you: take, I say, this in brief,--that I have ascertained, not by report alone, but by testimony than which none can be surer, that you managed the bringing out of the whole book entitled _Regii Sanguinis Clamor_, and corrected the printer's proofs, and composed, either alone, or in association with one or two others, the Epistle to Charles II. which bears Ulac's name. Of this your own name 'ALEXANDER MORUS,' subscribed to some copies of that Epistle, has been too clear and ocular proof to many witnesses of the fact for you to be able to deny the charge or to get rid of it.... There are several who have heard yourself either admit, on interrogation, that that Epistle is yours, or declare the fact spontaneously.... If you ask on what evidence I, at such a distance, make these statements, and how they can have become so certain to myself, I reply that it is not on the evidence of rumour merely, but partly on that of most scrupulous witnesses who have most solemnly made the assertions to myself personally, partly on that of letters written either to myself or to others. I will quote the very words of the letters, but will not give the names of the writers, considering that unnecessary in matters of such notoriety independently. Here you have first an extract from a letter to me from the Hague, the writer of which is a man of probity and had no common means of investigating this affair:--'I have ascertained beyond doubt (_exploratissimum mihi est_) that Morus himself offered the copy of the _Clamor Regii Sanguinis_ to some other printers before Ulac received it, that he superintended the correction of the errors of the press, and that, as soon as the book was finished, copies were given and distributed by him to not a few.'... Take again the following, which a highly honourable and intelligent man in Amsterdam writes as certainly known to himself and as abundantly witnessed there:--'It is most certain that almost all through these parts have regarded Morus as the author of the book called _Regii Sanguinis Clamor_; for he corrected the sheets as they came from the press, and some copies bore the name of Morus subscribed to the Dedicatory Epistle, of which also he was the author. He himself told a certain friend of mine that he was the author of that Epistle: nay there is nothing more certain than that Morus either assumed or acknowledged the authorship of the same.' ... I add yet a third extract. It is from another letter from the Hague:--'A man of the first rank in the Hague has told me that he has in his possession a copy of the _Regii Sanguinis Clamor_ with Morus's own letter.'"

Farther on Milton re-adverts to the same topic, in a passage which it is also well to quote:

"You say you 'will produce not rumours merely, not conversations merely, but letters, in proof that I had been warned not to assail an innocent man.' Let us then inspect the letter you publish, which was written to you by 'that highly distinguished man, Lord Nieuport, ambassador of the Dutch Confederation,'--a letter, it is evident, which you bring forward to be read, not for any force of proof in it, for it has none, but merely in ostentation. He--and it shows the singular kindliness of 'the highly distinguished man' (for what but goodness in him should make him take so much trouble on your most unworthy account?)--goes to Mr. Secretary Thurloe. He communicates your letter to Mr. Secretary. When he saw that he had no success, he sends to me two honourable persons, friends of mine, with that same letter of yours. What do they do? They read me that letter of Morus, and they request, and say that Ambassador Nieuport also requests, that I will trust to your letter in which you deny being the author of the _Clamor Regii Sanguinis_. I answered that what they asked was not fair--that neither was Morus's word worth so much, nor was it customary to believe, in contradiction to common report and other ascertained evidence, the mere letter of an accused person and an adversary denying what was alleged against him. They, having nothing more to say on the other side, give up the debate.... When afterwards the Ambassador wanted to persuade Mr. Secretary Thurloe, he had still no argument to produce but the same copy of your letter; whence it is quite clear that those 'reasons' brought to me 'for which he desired' me to be so good as not to publish my book had nothing to do with reasons of State. Do not then corrupt the Ambassador's letter. Nothing there of 'hostile spirit,' nothing of the 'inopportune time;' all he writes is that he 'is sorry I had chosen, notwithstanding his request, to show so little moderation'--sorry, that is, that I had not chosen, at his private request, to oblige you, a public adversary, and to recall and completely rewrite a work already printed and all but out. Let 'the highly distinguished man,' especially as an Ambassador, hold me excused if I would not, and really could not, condone public injuries on private intercessions."

Before Milton passes to the review of Morus's vindication of his character and past career, he disposes of Dr. Crantzius and Ulac, as objects intervening between him and that main task. For the _Fides Publica_, it will be remembered, had been bound up with that Hague edition of Milton's _Defensio Secunda_ to which the Rev. Dr. Crantzius had prefixed a preface in rebuke of Milton and in defence of Morus, and to which Ulac had also prefixed a statement replying to Milton's charges against him of dishonesty and bankruptcy. Several pages are given to Dr. Crantzius, who is called "a certain I know not what sort of a bed-ridden little Doctor," then taxed with ignorance, garrulity, and general imbecility, and at last kicked out of the way with the phrase "But I do marvellously delight in Doctors." Ulac, as having been reckoned with before, receives briefer notice. "_You are a swindler, Ulac_, said I; _I am a good Arithmetician_, says Ulac:" so the notice begins; and then follow some sentences to the effect that Ulac's creditors had been very ill satisfied with his _counting_, that the rule of probity is not the _Logarithmic canon_, that correct accounts are different things from _Tables of Sines_ or _Tables of Tangents and Secants_, and that acting on the square is not necessarily taught by _Trigonometry_. After which Milton reverts to Ulac's double-dealings with himself, first in his fathering the abusive Dedication of the _Regii Sanguinis Clamor_ while he was corresponding with Milton's friends in London and making kind inquiries about Milton's health, and next in bringing out a pirated edition of the _Defensio Secunda_, printing the same inaccurately, and actually binding it up with the _Fides Publica_ of Morus, so as to compel a united sale of the two books for his own profit. How a man could have published so coolly a book in which he was himself held up as a rogue and swindler passes Milton's comprehension; but Ulac, he seems to admit, was no ordinary tradesman.

For poor Morus himself there is not an atom of mercy yet. All his dexterous pleading, all his declarations of innocence, all his pathetic appeals, all his citations of the decisions in his favour in the Bontia case by the Walloon Synod and the Supreme Court of Holland, are simply trampled under foot, and the charges formerly made against him are ruthlessly reiterated as true nevertheless. There are even additional details, and fresh charges of the same kind, derived from more recent information. The plan adopted by Milton is to go over the _Fides Publica_, extracting phrases and sentences from it, and commenting on each extract; but the general effect of the book is that of the ruthless chasing round and round of the poor ecclesiastic in a biographical ellipse, the two foci of which are Geneva and Leyden.

Distinct evidence is produced that both at Geneva and in Holland the _fama_ against Morus was still as strong as ever. The evidence takes the form of extracts from two letters received by Milton since the _Fides Publica_ had appeared;--

_From a Letter from Geneva, dated Oct. 14, 1654_ (i.e. from that letter of Ezekiel Spanheim of which Milton had told Spanheim that he meant to avail himself, though without mentioning the writer's name: sec ante pp. 172-173). "Our people here cannot sufficiently express their wonder that you are so thoroughly acquainted with the private history of a man unknown to you personally, and that you have painted him so in his native colours that not even by those with whom he has been on the most familiar terms could the whole play-acting career of the man (_tota, hominis histrionia_) have been more accurately or happily set forth; whence they are at a loss, and I with them, to understand with what face, shameless though he is and impudent-mouthed, he is on the point of daring again to appear in the public theatre. For it is the consummation and completeness of your success in this part of the business that you have not brought forward either imagined or otherwise unknown charges against the man, but charges of common repetition in the mouths of all his greatest friends even, and which can be clearly corroborated by the authority and vote of the whole assembly, and even by the accession of farther criminations to the same effect... I would assure you that hardly any one can now longer be found here, where for many years he discharged a public-office, but greatly to the disgrace of this Church, who would dare or undertake longer to lend his countenance to the man's prostituted character."

_From a Letter from Durie at Basel, Oct. 3, 1654_:--"As regards Morus's vices and profligacy, Hotton does not seem to entertain that opinion of him; I know, however, that others speak very ill of him, that his hands are against nearly everybody and everybody's hands against him, and that many ministers even of the Walloon Synod are doing their best to have him deprived of the pastoral office. Nor here in Basel do I find men's opinion of him different from that in Holland of those who like him least."

The fresh, particulars of information that Milton had received about Morus and his alleged misdeeds are unsparingly brought out. The name of the woman of bad character at Geneva with whom Morus was said to have been implicated there, and the scandal about whom had driven him from Geneva, has now been ascertained by Milton. It was Claudia Pelletta; and of her name, and all the topographical details of Morus's alleged meetings with her, there is enough and more than enough. Claudia Pelletta at Geneva, and Bontia at Leyden, pull Morus between them page after page: not that they only have claims, for in one sentence we hear of an insulted widow somewhere in Holland, and in another of a dubious female figure seen one rainy night with Morus in a street in Amsterdam. But Bontia is still Milton's favourite. He repeats the Latin epigram about her and Morus; he apologizes for having hitherto called her Pontia, attributes the error to a misreading of the MS. of that epigram when it first came from Holland, but says he still thinks Pontia the prettier name; and, using information that had recently reached him, though we have been in prior possession of something equivalent (Vol. IV. p. 465), he thus reminds Morus of his most memorable meeting with that brave damsel:--

"You remember perhaps that day, nay I am sure you remember the day, and the hour and the place too, when, as I think, you and Pontia [he still keeps to the form 'Pontia'] last met in the house of Salmasius--you to renounce the marriage-bond, she to make you name the day for the nuptials. When she saw, on the contrary, that it was your intention to dissolve the marriage-engagement made in the seduction, then lo! your unmarried bride, for I will not call her Tisiphone, not able to bear such a wrong, flew furiously at your face and eyes with uncut nails. You who, on the testimony of Crantzius (for it is right that so great a contest should not begin without quotation from your own _Fides Publica_)--you who, on the testimony of Crantzius, were _altier_ in French, or _fiercish_ in Latin, and on the testimony of Diodati had _terrible spurs for self-defence_, prepare to do your manly utmost in this feminine kind of fight. Madame de Saumaise stands by as Juno, arbiter of the contest, Salmasius himself, lying in the next room ill with the gout, when he heard the battle begun, almost dies with laughing. But alas! and O fie! our unwarlike Alexander, no match for his Amazon, falls down vanquished. She, getting her man underneath, then first, from her position of vantage, goes at his forehead, his eye-brows, his nose; with wonderful arabesques, and in a Phrygian style of execution, she runs her finger-points over the whole countenace of her prostrate subject: never were you less pleased, Morus, with Pontia's lines of beauty. At last, with difficulty, either margin of his cheeks fully written on, but the chin not yet finished, up he rises, a man, by your leave, absolutely nail-perfect, no mere Professor now but a Pontifical Doctor,--for you might have inscribed upon him, as on a painting, _Pontia fecit_. [We see now the reason for keeping to the form 'Pontia.'] Doctor? Nay rather a codex in which his vengeful critic had scraped her adverse comments with a new stilus. You felt then, I think, Ulac's Tables of Tangents and Secants, to a radius of I know not how many painful ciphers, printed on your skin."

How does Milton meet Morus's protestations of his innocence both at Geneva and in Leyden, and the evidence he adduces in his behalf? Respecting the protestations, he notes that they are merely general and that, like his denials of the authorship of the _Regii Sanguinis Clamor_, they are worded equivocally or indistinctly. Why does he not deny the Pelletta charge and the Bontia charge, and the other charges, one by one specifically, and in a downright manner? Why does he not go back to Geneva, face the living witnesses and the documentary evidence there waiting him, and abide the issue? As for the decisions in his favour in the Bontia case by the Walloon Synod and the Supreme Court of Holland, of what worth are they? One could see, one had even been informed, that there had been influences at work with both tribunals to procure the result, such as it was. Many good, but easy, men had thought it best, for the reputation of the Christian ministry, not to rake too deeply into such an unpleasant business. Especially in the Synod the proceedings had been a farce. When Riverius, the moderator of the Synod, at the close of the proceedings, had said to Morus, "_Never was a Moor so whitewashed as you have been to-day_," could not everybody, with any sense of humour, perceive that the Reverend gentleman had been joking? Then, what had been the formal decision of the Synod? "_That nothing had been found in the papers of weight to take away from the Churches their wonted liberty of inviting M. Morus to preach when there was occasion_." Was that a whitewashing with which to be content? No wonder that Morus had taken refuge among his paper testimonials. About the whole system of Testimonials Milton is considerably dubious. He does not deny that a public testimonial may be an honour, and that there may be proper occasion for such things; but, real discernment of merit being rare, and those who give and those who seek testimonials being but a jumble of the good and the bad together, the abuses of the system bring it into discredit. "The man of highest quality needs another's testimonial the least; nor does any good man ever do anything merely to make himself known." Waiving that general question, however, one may _examine_ Morus's testimonials.

This examination of the testimonials is begun in the first or main part of Milton's _Pro Se Defensio_; but, as Morus had only entered on his testimonials in the _Fides Publica_ as originally published, and presented most of them in his _Supplementum_ to that book, so Milton prolongs this branch of his criticism into an appendix entitled separately _Authoris ad Aleasandri Mori Supplementum Responsio_ ("The Author's Answer to Alexander More's Supplement.") Prom the first sentences of this Appendix we learn that the preceding part of Milton's book had been written two months before the _Supplementum_ had come into his hands.

Morus's published Testimonials divide themselves chronologically, it may have been observed, into three sets--(1) those given him at Geneva early in the year 1648, and brought by him into Holland on his removal thither, (2) those given him at Middleburg between Nov. 1649 and Aug. 1652, and (3) the three given him at Amsterdam in July 1654, after Milton's _Defensio Secunda_ had appeared, and in contradiction of statements made in that book.--On the Genevese set of Testimonials, including that from the venerable Diodati, Milton's criticism, in substance, is that they were vitiated by their date. They had been given, or obtained by hard begging, not perhaps before the Pelletta scandal had been heard of, but before it had been sufficiently notorious, and while it still seemed credible to many that Morus was innocent, and others were good-naturedly willing to stop the investigation by speeding him off to another scene, Theodore Tronchin, pastor and Professor of Theology, and Mermilliod and Pittet, two other pastors, had been the first movers, among the Genevese clergy, for an inquiry into Morus's conduct; the elder Spanheim had, as Milton believed, been one of those that even then would have nothing to do with the Testimonials; the aged Diodati had then for some time ceased to attend the meetings of his brethren, and might not know all. But, in any case, nearly a year had elapsed between the date of the last of those Genevese Testimonials which Morus had published and Morus's actual departure from Geneva. During that interval there had been a progress of Genevese opinion on the subject of his character and conduct, and he had been furnished with fresh papers in the nature of farewell Testimonials. Morus had suppressed those. Would he venture to produce them?--On the Middleburg Testimonials the criticism is that they do not matter much one way or another, but that they show Morus on the whole to have soon been found a troublesome person in Holland also, some business about whom was always coming up in the Walloon Synods. In Middleburg too there had been a progress of opinion about him with farther experience. His co-pastor there. M. Jean Long, who had been his firm friend for a while, and had signed some of the testimonials, was now understood to speak of him with absolute detestation. Morus having produced some of these testimonials to disprove Milton's assertion that he had been ejected by the Middleburg church, Milton explains that he had not said _ejected_, but only _turned adrift_, and that this was substantially the fact. Now, however, if Durie's report is correct, not only would the single Middleburg church, but nearly the whole Walloon Synod also, willingly _eject_ him.--Milton's greatest difficulty is with the three Amsterdam testimonials of July 1654. He has to admit that they prove him to have been misinformed when he said that the Amsterdam authorities had interdicted Morus from the pulpit, just as he had been wrong in calling Morus's Amsterdam professorship that of Greek. That admission made (and it was hard for Milton ever to admit he was wrong, even in a trifle), he contents himself with quoting sentences from the Amsterdam testimonials to show how merely formal they were, how little hearty, and with this characteristic observation about the Amsterdam dignitaries, tossing their testimony aside in any case: "_Et id nescio_, [Greek: aristindên] _an_ [Greek: ploutindên], _virtute an censu, magistratum ilium in civitate suâ obtineant_: And I know not, moreover, whether it is by merit or by wealth that the gentlemen hold that magistracy in their city." This is, doubtless, Milton's return for the slighting mention of himself in the Amsterdam testimonials.[1]

[Footnote 1: A Hague correspondent of Thurloe, commenting on the appearance of the first part of Morus's _Fides Publica_ and its abrupt ending had written, Nov. 3, 1654, thus: "The truth is Morus durst not add the sentence [text of the judicial finding] against Pontia; for the charges are recompensed [costs allowed her], and where there is payment of charges that is to say that the action of Pontia is good, but that the proofs fail.... The attestations of his life at Amsterdam and at the Hague, he could not get them to his fancy" (Thurloe, 11.708).]

While we have thus given, with tolerable completeness, an abstract of Milton's extraordinary _Pro Se Defensio contra Alexandrum Morum_, we have by no means noticed everything in it that might be of interest in the study of Milton's character. There is, for example, one very curious passage in which Milton, in reply to a criticism of Morus, defends his use of very gross words (_verba nuda et prætextata_) in speaking of very gross things. He makes two daring quotations, one from Piso's Annals and the other from Sallust, to show that he had good precedent; and he cites Herodotus, Seneca, Suetonius, Plutarch, Erasmus, Thomas More, Clement of Alexandria, Arnobius, Lactantlas, Eusebius, and the Bible itself, as examples occasionally of the very reverse of a squeamish euphemism. Of even greater interest is a passage in which he foresees the charges of cruelty, ruthlessness, and breach of literary etiquette, likely to be brought against him on account of his treatment of Morus, and expounds his theory on that subject. The passage may fitly conclude our account of the _Pro Se Defensio_:--

"To defame the bad and to praise the good, the one on the principle of severe punishment and the other on that of high reward, are equally just, and make up together almost the sum of justice; and we see in fact that the two are of nearly equal efficacy for the right management of life. The two things, in short, are so interrelated, and so involved in one and the same act, that the vituperation of the bad may in a sense be called the praising of the good. But, though right, reason, and use are equal on both sides, the acceptability is not the same likewise; for whoever vituperates another bears the burden and imputation of two very heavy things at once,--accusing another, and thinking well of himself. Accordingly, all are ready enough with praise, good and bad alike, and the objects of their praise worthy and unworthy together; but no one either dares or is able to accuse freely and intrepidly but the man of integrity alone. Accustomed in our youth, under so many masters, to make laborious displays of imaginary eloquence, and taught to think that the demonstrative force of the same lies no less in invective than in praise, we certainly do at the desk hack to pieces bravely the traditional tyrants of antiquity. Mezentius, if such is the chance, we slay over again with unsavoury antitheta; or we roast to perfection Phalaris of Agrigentum, as in his own bull, with lamentable bellowing of enthymemes. In the debating room or lecture-room, I mean; for in the State for the most part we rather adore and worship such, and call them most powerful, most great, most august. The proper thing would be either not to have spent our first years in sport as imaginary declaimers, or else, when our country or the State needs, to leave our mere fencing-foils, and venture sometimes into the sun, and dust, and field of battle, to exert real brawn, shake real arms, seek a real foe. The Suffeni and Sophists of the past, on the one hand, the Pharisees and Simons and Hymenæi and Alexanders of the past on the other, we go at with many a weapon: those of the present day, and come to life again in the Church, we praise with studied eulogies, we honour with professorships, and stipends, and chairs, the incomparable men that they are, the highly-learned and saintly. If it comes to the censuring of one of them, if the mask and specious skin of one of them are dragged off, if he is shown to be base within, or even publicly and openly criminal, there are some who, for what purpose or through what timidity I know not, would have him publicly defended by testimonies in his favour rather than marked with due animadversion. My principle, I confess, and as the fact has several times proved, is far enough apart from theirs, inasmuch as, if I have made any profit when young in the literary leisure I then had, whether by the instructions of learned men or by my own lucubrations, I would employ the whole of it to the advantage of life and of the human race, could I range so far, to the utmost of my weak ability. And, if sometimes even out of private enmities public delinquencies come to be exposed and corrected, and I have now, impelled by all possible reasons, prosecuted with most just invective, nor yet without proper result, not an adversary of my own merely, but one who is the common adversary of almost all, a nefarious man, a disgrace to the Reformed Religion and to the sacred order especially, a dishonour to learning, a most pernicious teacher of youth, an unclean ecclesiastic, it will be seen, I hope, by those who are chiefly interested in making an example of him (for why should I not so trust?), that herein I have performed an action neither displeasing to God, nor unwholesome to the Church, nor unuseful to the State."

What a blast this to pursue poor Morus over the Continent! It would seem as if, in expectation of it, he had put himself as far as he could out of hearing. When Milton's _Pro Se Defensio_ appeared, Morus was no longer in France, but in Italy; and it was not till May, 1656, or nine months after, that he reappeared in Holland. Then, as he had outrun by more than a year his formal leave of absence from his Amsterdam professorship, granted Dec, 20, 1654, there seem to have been strict inquiries as to the causes of his long absence. It was explained that he had fallen ill at Florence; it also came out that he had had a very distinguished reception from the Grand Duke of Tuscany, and that the Venetian Senate had presented him with a chain of gold for a Latin poem he had written on a recent defeat of the Turks at sea by the Venetian navy; and, what was most to the point, it appeared, by addresses of his own at Amsterdam, and at a meeting of the Walloon Synod at Leyden, that he had found in Italy great opportunities "for advancing the glory of God by the preaching of the Gospel." We know independently that, while in Italy, he had made acquaintance with some of those wits and scholars among whom Milton had moved so delightfully in his visit of 1638-9, and among whom Heinsius had been back in 1652-3, to find that they still remembered Milton, and could talk about him (Vol. IV. pp. 475-476); and it is even startling to have evidence from Moms himself that he exchanged especial compliments at Rome with Milton's old friend Holstenius, the Vatican librarian, and became so very intimate at Florence with Milton's beloved Carlo Dati as to receive from Dati the most affectionate attention and nursing through his illness. And so, all seeming fully satisfied at Amsterdam, he resumed his duties in the Amsterdam School. Not to be long at peace, however. Hardly had he returned when, either on the old charges, now so terrifically reblazoned through Holland by Milton's perseverance for his ruin, or on new charges arising from new incidents, he and the Walloon church-authorities were again at feud. In this uncomfortable state we must leave him for the present.[1]

[Footnote 1: Bayle's Dict, Art. _Morus_, and Bruce's Life of Morus, pp. 142-145 and 204-205. This last book is a curiosity. One hardly sees why the life and character of Morus should have so fascinated the Rev. Archibald Bruce, who was minister of the Associate Congregation at Whitburn, in Linlithgowshire, from 1768 to 1816, and Professor of Theology there for the Associate Presbyterian Synod for nearly all that time. He was a worthy and learned man, for whom Dr. McCrie, the author of the Life of John Knox, and of the same Presbyterian denomination, entertained a more "profound veneration" than for any other man on earth (see Life of McCrie by his son, edit. 1840, pp. 52-57). He was "a Whig of the Old School," with liberal political opinions in the main, but strongly opposed to Roman Catholic emancipation; which brought him into connexion with Lord George Gordon, of the "No Popery Riots" of 1780. He wrote many books and pamphlets, and kept a printer at Whitburn for his own use. He may have been drawn to Morus by his interest in the history of Presbyterianism abroad, especially as Morus was of Scottish parentage, or by his interest in the proceedings of Presbyterian Church Courts in such cases of scandal as that of Morus. At any rate, he defends Morus throughout most resolutely, and with a good deal of scholarly painstaking. Milton, on the other hand, he thoroughly dislikes, and represents as a most malicious and un-Christian man, consciously untruthful, and of most lax theology to boot. To be sure, he was the author of _Paradise Lost_; but that much-praised poem had serious religious defects too! There is something actually refreshing in the _naïveté_ and courage with which the sturdy Professor of the Associate Synod propounds his own dissent from the common Milton-worship.--The authority for Morus's acquaintanceship in Italy with Holstenius and Dati is the collection of his Latin Poems, a thin quarto, published at Paris in 1669, under the title of _Alexandri Mori Poemata_. It contains his poem, a longish one in Hexameters, on the victory of the Venetians over the Turks; also verses to the Grand-Duke of Tuscany; also obituary elegiacs to Diodati of Geneva, and several pieces to or on Salmasius. One piece, in elegiacs, is addressed "_Ad Franciscum Turretinum, raræ indolis ac summæ spei juvenem_." This Francis Turretin (so addressed, I suppose, long ago, when he and Morus were in Geneva together) was, if I mistake not, the famous Turretin of Milton's letter about Morus to Ezekiel Spanheim (ante pp. 173-176). Among the other pieces are one to Holstenius and one to Carlo Dati. In the first Morus, speaking of his introduction to Holstenius and to the Vatican library together, says he does not know which seemed to him the greater library. The poem to Dati is of considerable length, in Hexameters, and entitled "_Ægri Somnium: ad præstantem virum Carolum Dati_" ("An Invalid's Dream: To the excellent Carlo Dati"). It represents Morus as very ill in Florence and thinking himself dying. Should he die in Florence and be buried there, he would have a poetic inscription over his grave to the effect that while alive he also had cultivated the Muses, and begging the passer-by to remember his name ("_Qui legis hæc obiter, Morique morique memento_"). How kind Dati had been to him--Dati, "than whom there is not a better man, the beloved of all the sister Muses, the ornament of his country, having the reputation of being all but unique in Florence for learning in the vanished arts, siren at once in Tuscan, Latin, and Greek! ... This Dati soothed my fever-fits with the music of his liquid singing, and sat by my bed-side, and spoke words of sweetness, which inhere yet in my very marrow." And so Milton's Italian friend of friends (Vol. III. pp. 551-654 and 680-683) had been charitable to poor Morus, whom he knew to be a fugitive from Milton's wrath, and who could name Milton, if at all, only with tears and cursing.]

It is now high time, however, to answer a question which must have suggested itself again and again in the course of our narrative of the Milton and Morus controversy. Who was the real author of the book for which Morus had been so dreadfully punished, and what was the real amount of Morus's responsibility in it?

That Milton's original belief on this subject had been shaken has been already evident. He had written his _Defensio Secunda_, in firm reliance on the universal report that Morus was the one proper author of the _Regii Sanguinis Clamor_, or that it had been concocted between him and Salmasius; and, though Morus's denial of the authorship had been formally conveyed to him before the _Defensio Secunda_ left the press, he had let it go forth as it was, in the conviction that he was still not wrong in the main. The more express and reiterated denials of Morus in the _Fides Publica_, however, with the references there to another person as the real author, though Morus was not at liberty to divulge his name, had produced an effect. The authorship of the _Regii Sanguinis Clamor_ was then indeed a secondary question, inasmuch as in the _Fides Publica_ Morus had interposed himself personally,--not only in self-defence, but also for counter-attack on Milton. Still, as the _Fides Publica_ would never have been written had not Milton assumed Morus to be the author of the _Regii Sanguinis Clamor_ and dragged him before the world solely on that account, Milton had necessarily, in replying to the _Fides Publica_, adverted to the secondary question. His assertion now, i.e, in the _Pro Se Defensio_, was a modified one. It was that, whatever facts had yet to be revealed respecting the authorship of the four or five parts of the compound book severally, he yet knew for certain that Morus had been the editor of the whole book, the corrector of the press for the whole, the busy and ostentatious agent in the circulation of early copies, and the writer at least of the Dedicatory Preface to Charles II., put forth in Ulac's name. The question for us now is how far this modified assertion of Milton was correct.

Almost to a tittle, it _was_. That Morus was the editor of the book, the corrector of the press, and the active agent in the circulation of early copies, may be taken as established by the documentary proofs furnished by Milton, and is corroborated by independent evidence known to ourselves long ago (Vol. IV. pp. 459-465). But was he also partially the author? Here too Milton's evidence may be taken as conclusive, so far as respects the Dedicatory Epistle to Charles II. That Epistle, with its enormous praises of Salmasius, and its extremely malignant notice of Milton, was undoubtedly by Morus, for copies of it signed by himself were still extant. So far, therefore, Milton was right in saying that Morus's denial of the authorship of the _Regii Sanguinis Clamor_ was an equivocation, resting on a tacit distinction between the body of the book and the additional or editorial matter. In several passages Morus himself had betrayed this equivocation, but in none so remarkably as in a sentence to the peculiar phrasing of which we called attention in quoting it (ante p. 159). Protesting that he had not so much as known the fact of Milton's blindness at the time of the publication of the _Regii Sanguinis Clamor_, and therefore could not have been guilty of the heartless allusion to it in the Dedicatory Epistle, he there said, "_If anything occurred to me that might seem to look that way, I referred to the mind_,"--a phrase which it is difficult to construe otherwise than as an admission that he had written the Dedicatory Epistle, but had employed the familiar quotation there ("_monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens, cui lumen ademptum_") only metaphorically. All in all, then, the authorship of the Dedicatory Epistle, as well as the editorship and adoption of the whole anonymous book, is fastened upon Morus. With this amount of responsibility fastened upon him, however, Morus must be dismissed, and another person brought to the bar. He was the Rev. DR. PETER DU MOULIN the younger.

The Du Moulins were a French family, well known in England. The father, Dr. Peter Du Moulin the elder (called _Molinæus_ in Latin), was a French Protestant theologian of great celebrity. He had resided for a good while in England in the reign of James I., officiating as French minister in London, and in much credit with the King and others; but, on the death of James, he had returned to France. At our present date he was still alive at the age of eighty-seven, and still not so much out of the world but that people in different countries continued to think of him as a contemporary and to quote his writings. There are references to him, far from disrespectful, in one of Milton's Anti-Episcopal Pamphlets in reply to Bishop Hall.[1] Two of his sons, both born in France, had settled permanently in England, and had become passionately interested in English public affairs, though in very different directions.--The younger of these, LEWIS DU MOULIN, born 1606, having taken the degree of Doctor of Physic at Leyden, had come to England when but a young man, and, after having been incorporated in the same degree at Cambridge (1684), had been in medical practice in London. At the beginning of the Long Parliament, he had taken the Parliamentarian side, and had written, under the name of "Irenæus Philalethes," two Latin pamphlets against Bishop Hall's _Episcopacy by Divine Right_--pamphlets very much in the same vein of root-and-branch Church Reform as those of the Smectymnuans and Milton at the same time. Since then, still adhering to the Parliament through the Civil War, he had become well known as an Independent--much, it is said, to the chagrin of his old father, who was a Presbyterian, with leanings to moderate Episcopacy; and in 1647, in the Parliamentary visitation of the University of Oxford, he had been rewarded with the Camden Professorship of History in that University. He had been made M.D. of Oxford in 1649. At least three publications had come from his pen since his appointment to the Professorship, one of them a Translation into Latin (1650) of the first chapter of Milton's _Eikonoklastes_. From this we should infer, what is independently likely, that he was acquainted with Milton personally.[2]--Very different from the Independent and Commonwealth's man Lewis Du Monlin. M.D. and History Professor of Oxford, was his elder brother PETER DU MOULIN, D.D. Born in 1600, he had been educated, like his brother, at Leyden, and had taken his D.D. degree there. He is first heard of in England in 1640, when he was incorporated in the same degree at Cambridge; and at the beginning of the Civil War he was so far a naturalised Englishman as to be Rector of Wheldrake, near York. From that time, though a zealous Calvinist theologically, he was as intensely Royalist and Episcopalian as his brother was Parliamentarian and Independent. So we learn most distinctly from a brief MS. sketch of his life through the Civil Wars and the Commonwealth, written by himself after the Restoration, for insertion into a copy of the second edition of one of his books, of date 1660, presented by him to the library of Canterbury Cathedral. "Our gracious King and now glorious Martyr, Charles the First, he there says, finding that his rebellious subjects, not content to make war against him in his kingdom, assaulted him with another war out of his kingdom with their tongues and pens, he set out a Declaration to invite all his loving subjects and friends that could use the tongues of the neighbouring states to represent with their pens the justice of his cause, especially to Protestant Churches abroad. That Declaration smote my heart, as particularly addressed to me; and I took it as a command laid upon me by God himself. Whereupon I made a solemn vow to God that, as far as Latin and French could go in the world, I would make the justice of the King's and the Church's cause to be known, especially to the Protestants of France and the Low Countries, whom the King's enemies did chiefly labour to seduce and misinform. To pay my vow, I first made this book" [entitled originally "_Apologie de la Religion Reformée, et de la Monarchie et de I'Église d'Angleterre, contre les Calomnies de la Ligue Rebelle de quelques Anglois et Écossois_"; but in an imperfect English translation the title was afterwards changed into "_History of the Presbyterians_", and in the second French edition, on a copy of which Du Moulin was now writing, it became "_Histoire des Nouveaux Presbytériens, Anglois et Écossois_"]--which was begun "at York, during the siege [i.e. June 1644, just before Marston Moor], in a room whose chimney was beaten down by the cannon while I was at my work; and, after the siege and my expulsion from my Rectory at Wheldrake, it was finished in an underground cellar, where I lay hid to avoid warrants that were out against me from committees to apprehend me and carry me prisoner to Hull. Having finished the book, I sent it to be printed in Holland by the means of an officer of the Master of the Posts at London, Mr. Pompeo Calandrini, who was doing great and good services to the King in that place. But, the King being dead, and the face of public businesses altered, I sent for my MS. out of Holland, and reformed it for the new King's service. And it was printed, but very negligently, by Samuel Browne at the Hague [1649?] ... Much about the same time I set out my Latin Poem, _Ecclesiæ Gemitus_ ('Groans of the Church'), with, a long Epistle to all Christians in the defence of the King and the Church of England; and, two years after [1652], _Clamor Regii Sanguinis ad Coelum_. God blessed these books, and gave them the intended effect, the disabusing of many misinformed persons. And it was so well resented by his Majesty, then at Breda, that, being showed my sister Mary among a great company of ladies, he brake the crowd to salute her, and tell her that he was very sensible of his obligations to her brother, and that, if ever God settled him in his kingdom, he would make him know that he was a grateful prince." Here, then, in Dr. Peter Du Moulin's own hand, though not till after the Restoration, we have the _Regii Sanguinis Clamor_ claimed as his, with the information that it was one of a series of books written by him with the special design of maintaining the cause of Charles II. and discrediting the Commonwealth among Continental Protestants.[3]

[Footnote 1: See close of _Animadversions on the Remonstrant's Defence_.]

[Footnote 2: Wood's Fasti, II. 125-126; Whitlocke, II. 290. The writings of Lewis Du Moulin I have here mentioned are known to me only by the titles and descriptions given by Wood and his annotator Dr. Bliss.]

[Footnote 3: Wood's Fasti, II. 195; and _Gentleman's Magazine_ for 1773, pp. 369-370. In the last is given the autobiographic sketch of Du Moulin, transcribed from the copy of his _Histoire des Nouveaux Presbytériens_ (edit. 1660) in the Canterbury Library.--The Mary du Moulin, the sister of Peter and Lewis, mentioned in the autobiographic sketch, died at the Hague in Feb. 1699, having, like most of the Du Moulins, attained a great age. The father, Dr. Peter the elder, died in 1658 at the age of ninety; Lewis died in 1683 at the age of seventy-seven; and Peter the younger, of the _Regii Sanguinis Clamor_, died in 1684 at the age of eighty-four.--The reader will have noted the Pompeo Calandrini mentioned as an official in the London Post Office in the time of the Civil War, and as secretly aiding Charles I. in his correspondence. He was, doubtless, of the Italian-Genevese family of Calandrinis already mentoned, _ante_ pp. 172-173 and footnote.]

Yet farther proof on the subject, also from Dr. Peter's own hand. In the Library of Canterbury Cathedral there is, or was, his own copy of the original edition of the _Regii Sanguinis Clamor_; and in that copy the preliminary Dedicatory Epistle in Ulac's name to Charles II. is marked for deletion, and has these words prefixed to it in Du Moulin's hand; "_Epistola, quam aiunt esse Alexandri Mori, quæ mihi valde non probatur_" ("Epistle which they say is by Alexander Morus, and which is not greatly to my taste"),[1] All the rest, therefore, was his own. But, to remove all possible doubt, we have the still more complete and exact information furnished by him in 1670, Milton then still alive and in the first fame of his _Paradise Lost_. In that year there appeared from the Cambridge University Press a volume entitled _Petri Molinæi P. F. [Greek: Parerga]: Poematum Libelli Tres_. It was a collection of Dr. Peter Du Moulin's Latin Poems, written at various times of his life, and now arranged by him in three divisions, separately title-paged, entitled respectively "Hymns to the Apostles' Creed," "Groans of the Church" (_Ecclesiæ Gemitus_), and "Varieties." In the second division were reprinted the two Latin Poems that had originally formed part of the _Regii Sanguinis Clamor_, with their full titles as at first: to wit, the "Eucharistic Ode," to the great Salmasius for his _Defensio Regia_, and the set of scurrilous Iambics "To the Bestial Blackguard John Milton, Parricide and Advocate of the Parricide." With reference to the last there are several explanations for the reader in Latin prose at different points in the volume. At one place the reader is assured that, though the Iambics against Milton, and some other things in the volume, may seem savage, zeal for Religion and the Church, in their hour of sore trial, had been a sufficient motive for writing them, and they must not be taken as indicating the private character of the author, as known well enough to his friends. At another place (pp. 141-2 of the volume) there is, by way of afterthought or extension, a larger and more express statement about the Iambics against Milton, which must here be translated in full: "Into what danger I was thrown," says Du Moulin, "by the first appearance of this Poem in the _Clamor Regii Sanguinis_ would not seem to me worthy of public notice now, were it not that the miracle of divine protection by which I was kept safe is most worthy of the common admiration of the good and the praise of the Supreme Deliverer. I had sent my manuscript sheets to the great Salmasius, who entrusted them to the care of that most learned man, Alexander Morus. This Morus delivered them to the printer, and prefixed to them an Epistle to the King, in the Printer's name, exceedingly eloquent and full of good matter. When that care of Morus over the business of printing the book had become known to Milton through the spies of the Regicides in Holland, Milton held it as an ascertained fact that Morus was the author of the _Clamor;_ whence that most virulent book of Milton's against Morus, entitled _Defensio Secunda pro Populo Anglicano_. It had the effect, moreover, of making enemies for Morus in Holland; for at that time the English Tyrants were very much feared in foreign parts. Meanwhile I looked on in silence, and not without a soft chuckle, at seeing my bantling laid at another man's door, and the blind and furious Milton fighting and slashing the air, like the hoodwinked horse-combatants in the old circus, not knowing by whom he was struck and whom he struck in return. But Morus, unable to stand out against so much ill-will, began to cool in the King's cause, and gave Milton to know who the author of the _Clamor_ really was (_Clamoris authorem Miltono indicavit_). For, in fact, in his Reply to Milton's attack he produced two witnesses, of the highest credit among the rebels, who might have well known the author, and could divulge him on being asked. Thus over me and my head there hung the most certain destruction. But that great Guardian of Justice, to whom I had willingly devoted both my labour and my life, wrought out my safety through Milton's own pride, as it is customary with His Wisdom to bring good out of evil, and light out of darkness. For Milton, who had gone full tilt at Morus with his canine eloquence, and who had made it almost the sole object of his _Defensio Secunda_ to cut up the life and reputation of Morus, never could be brought to confess that he had been so grossly mistaken: fearing, I suppose, that the public would make fun of his blindness, and that grammar-school boys would compare him to that blind Catullus in Juvenal who, meaning to praise the fish presented to Domitian,

"'Made a long speech, Facing the left, while on his right there lay The actual turbot.'

[Footnote 1: _Gentleman's Magazine_ for 1773, as in last note.]

"And so, Milton persisting in his blundering charge against Morus for that dangerous service to the King, the other Rebels could not, without great damage to their good patron, proceed against any other than Morus as guilty of so great a crime. And, as Milton preferred my getting off scatheless to being found in a ridiculous position himself, I had this reward for my pains, that Milton, whom I had treated so roughly, turned out my patron and sedulous body-guard. Don't laugh, reader; but give best thanks, with me, to God, the most good, the most great, and the most wise, deliverer."

This final version of the story of Du Moulin (in 1670, remember) seems to have become current among those who, after the Restoration, retained any interest in the subject. Thus, Aubrey, in his notes for Milton's life, written about 1680, has a memorandum to this effect, giving "Mr. Abr. Hill" as his authority: "His [Milton's] sharp writing against Alexander More of Holland, upon a mistake, notwithstanding he [Morus] had given him [Milton], by the ambassador, all satisfaction to the contrary, viz. that the book called _Clamor_ was writ by Peter Du Moulin. Well, that was all one [said Milton]; he having writ it [the _Defensio Secunda_], it should go into the world: one of them was as bad as the other.'"--_Bentrovato_; but there is at least one vital particular in which neither Du Moulin's amusing statement in 1670 nor Aubrey's subsequent anecdote seems to be consistent with the exact truth as already before us in the documents. The secret of the real authorship of the _Regii Sanguinis Clamor_ had been better and longer kept than Du Moulin's statement would lead us to suppose. Even Ulac in 1654, as we have seen, while declaring that Morus was not the author, could not tell who else he was. Morus himself did then know, having been admitted into the secret, probably from the first; and several others then knew, having been told in confidence by Salmasius, Morus, or Du Moulin. Charles II. himself seems to have been informed. But that Morus had refrained from divulging the secret generally, or communicating it in a precise manner to Milton, even at the moment when he was frantically trying to avert Milton's wrath and stop the publication of the _Defensio Secunda_, seems evident, and must go to his credit. In the remonstrance with Thurloe, in May 1654, through the Dutch ambassador Nieuport, intended to stop the publication when, it was just leaving the press, we hear only of the denial of Morus that he was the author--nothing of any information from him that Du Moulin was the real author; and, though Durie had about the same time informed Milton in a letter from the Hague that he had heard the book attributed, on private authority from Morus, to "a certain French minister," no name was given. Farther, in the _Fides Publica_, published some months afterwards, Morus was still almost chivalrously reticent. While declaring that the real author was "alive and well," and while describing him negatively so far as to say that he was not in Holland, nor within the circle of Morus's own acquaintances, he still avoids naming him, and only appeals to himself to come forward and own his performance. And so, as late as August 1655, when Milton replied to Morus in his _Pro Se Defensio_, the evidence still is that, though he had more correct ideas by that time as to the amount and nature of Morus's responsibility for the book, and was aware of some other author at the back of Morus, he had not yet ascertained who this other author was, and still thought that the defamatory Iambics against himself, as well as the Dedicatory Epistle to Charles II., might be Morus's own. It seems to me possible that not till after the Restoration did Milton know that the alleged "French Minister" at the back of Morus in the _Regii Sanguinis Clamor_ was Dr. Peter Du Moulin, or at all events that not till then did he know that the defamatory Iambics, as well as the main text, were that gentleman's. The only person who could have put an end to the mystery completely was Du Moulin himself, and not till after the Restoration, as we have seen, was it convenient, or even safe, for Du Moulin to avow his handiwork.

Yet all the while, as Du Moulin himself hints in his confession of 1670, he had been, if we may so express it, close at Milton's elbow. In 1652, when the _Regii Sanguinis Clamor_ appeared, Du Moulin, then fifty-two years of age, and knows as a semi-naturalized Frenchman, the brother of Professor Lewis Du Moulin of Oxford, had been going about in England as an ejected parson from Yorkshire, the very opposite of his brother in politics. He had necessarily known something of Milton already; and, indeed, in the book itself there is closer knowledge of Milton's position and antecedents than would have been easy for Salmasius, or Morus, or any other absolute foreigner. The author had evidently read Milton's _Tenure of Kings and Magistrates_ and his _Eikonoklastes_, as well as his _Defensio Prima_; he was aware of the significance given to the first of these treatises by the coincidence of its date with the King's Trial, and could represent it as actually a cause of the Regicide; he had gone back also upon Milton's Divorce Pamphlets and Anti-Episcopal Pamphlets, and had collected hints to Milton's detriment out of the attacks made upon him by Bishop Hall and others during the Smectymnuan controversy. All this acquaintance with Milton, the phrasing being kept sufficiently indefinite, Du Moulin could show in the book without betraying himself. That, as he has told us, would have been his ruin. The book, though shorter than the _Defensio Regia_ of Salmasius, was even a more impressive and successful vilification of the Commonwealth than that big performance; and not even to the son of the respected European theologian Molinaeus, and the brother of such a favourite of the Commonwealth as Dr. Lewis Du Moulin, could Parliament or the Council of State have shown mercy after such an offence. As for Milton, the attack on whom ran through the more general invective, not for "forty thousand brothers" would _he_ have kept his hands off Dr. Peter had he known. Providentially, however, Dr. Peter remained _incognito_, and it was Morus that was murdered, Dr. Peter looking on and "softly chuckling." Rather, I should say, getting more and more alarmed, and almost wishing that the book had never been written, or at all events praying more and more earnestly that he might not be found out, and that Morus, murdered irretrievably at any rate, would take his murdering quietly and hold his tongue. For the Commonwealth had firmly established itself meanwhile, and had passed into the Protectorate; and all rational men in Europe had given up the cause of the Stuarts, and come to regard pamphlets in their behalf as so much waste paper; and was it not within the British Islands after all, ruled over though they were by Lord Protector Cromwell, that a poor French divine of talent, tied to England already by various connexions, had the best chances and outlooks for the future? So, it appears, Du Moulin had reasoned with himself, and so he had acted. "After Ireland was reduced by the Parliamentary forces," we are informed by Wood, "he lived there, some time at Lismore, Youghal, and Dublin, under the patronage of Richard, Earl of Cork. Afterward, going into England, he settled in Oxon (where he was tutor or governor to Charles, Viscount Dungarvan, and Mr. Richard Boyle his brother); lived there two or more years, and preached constantly for a considerable time in the church of St. Peter in the East."[1] His settlement at Oxford, near his brother Dr. Lewis, dates itself, as I calculate, about 1654; and it must have been chiefly thence, accordingly, that he had watched Milton's misdirected attentions to poor Morus, knowing himself to be "the actual turbot." There is proof, however, as we shall find, that he was, from that date onwards, a good deal in London, and, what is almost startlingly strange, in a select family society there which must have brought him into relations with Milton, and perhaps now and then into his company. Du Moulin could believe in 1670 that Milton even then knew his secret, and that he owed his escape to Milton's pride and unwillingness to retract his blunder about Morus. We have seen reason to doubt that; and, indeed, Milton, had, in his second Morus publication, put himself substantially right with the public about the extent of Morus's concern in the _Regii Sanguinis Clamor_, and had scarcely anything to retract. What he could do in addition was Du Moulin's danger. He could drag a new culprit to light and immolate a second victim. That he refrained may have been owing, as we have supposed most likely, to his continued ignorance that the Dr. Du Moulin now going about in Oxford and in London, so near himself, was the original and principal culprit; or, if he did have any suspicions of the fact, there may have been other reasons, in and after 1655, for a dignified silence.

[Footnote 1: Wood's Fasti, II. 195.]

In proceeding from the month of August 1655, when Milton published his _Pro Se Defensio_, to his life through the rest of Oliver's Protectorate, it is as if we were leaving a cluster of large islands that had detained us long by their size and by the storms on their coasts, and were sailing on into a tract of calmer sea, where the islands, though numerous, are but specks in comparison. The reason of this is that we are now out of the main entanglement of the Salmasius and Morus controversy. Milton had taken leave of that subject, and indeed of controversy altogether for a good while.

In the original memoirs of Milton due note is taken of this calm in his life after his second castigation of Morus. "Being now quiet from state adversaries and public contests," says Phillips, "he had leisure again for his own studies and private designs"; and Wood's phrase is all but identical: "About the time that he had finished these things, he had more leisure and time at command." Both add that, in this new leisure, he turned again at once to those three labours which had been occupying him, at intervals, for so many years, and which were, in fact, always in reserve as his favourite hack-employments when he had nothing else to do--his compilations for his intended _Thesaurus Linguæ Latinæ_, his _History of Britain_, and his _Body of Biblical Theology_. The mere mention of such works as again in progress in the house in Petty France in the third or fourth year of Milton's blindness confirms conclusively the other evidences that he had by this time overcome in a remarkable manner the worst difficulties of his condition. One sees him in his room, daily for hours together, with his readers and amanuenses, directing them to this or that book on the shelves, listening as they read the passages wanted, interrupting and requiring another book, listening again, interrupting again, and so at length dictating his notes, and giving cautions as to the keeping of them. His different sets of papers, with the volumes most in use, are familiar now even to his own touch in their places on the table or the floor; and, when his amanuenses are gone, he can sit on by himself, revising the day's work mentally, and projecting the sequel. And so from day to day, with the variation of his afternoon exercise in the garden, or the walk beyond it in some one's company into the park or farther, or an occasional message from Thurloe on office-business, or calls from friends singly or two or three together, and always, of course, at intervals through the day, the pleased contact of the blind hands with the stops of the organ.

Among the inmates of the house in Petty France in the latter part of 1655, besides the blind widower himself, were his three little orphan girls, the eldest, Anne, but nine years of age, the second, Mary, but seven, and the youngest, Deborah, only three. How they were tended no one knows; but one fancies them seeing little of their father, and left very much to the charge of servants. Two women-servants, with perhaps a man or boy to wait on Milton personally, may have completed the household, unless Milton's two nephews are to be reckoned as also belonging to it.

That the nephews still hovered about Milton, and resided with him occasionally, together or by turn, giving him their services as amanuenses, appears to be certain. Edward Phillips was now twenty-five years of age, and John Phillips twenty-four; but neither of them had taken to any profession, or had any other means of subsistence than private pedagogy, with such work for the booksellers as could be obtained by their own ability or through their uncle's interest. The younger, as we know, had made some name for himself by his _Joannis Philippi, Angli, Responsio_ of 1652, written in behalf of his uncle, and under his uncle's superintendence; and it is probable that both the brothers had in the interval been doing odds and ends of literary work. There are verses by both among the commendatory poems prefixed to the first two parts of Henry Lawes's _Ayres and Dialogues for one, two, or three Voices_, published in 1653, as a sequel to that previous publication of 1648, entitled _Choice Psalmes put into musick for three Voices_, which had contained Milton's own sonnet to Lawes; and in the _Divine Poems_ of Thomas Washbourne, a Gloucestershire clergyman, published in 1654, there are "Verses to his friend Thomas Washbourne" by Edward Phillips. In this latter year, I find, John Phillips must have been away for some time in Scotland, for in a letter to Thurloe dated "Wood Street, Compter, 11th April, 1654", the writer--no other than Milton's interesting friend Andrew Sandelands, now back from Scotland himself--mentions Phillips as there instead. Sandelands had not ceased, under the Protectorate, to try to make himself useful to the Government, and so get restored to his Rectory; and, as nothing had come of his grand proposal about the woods of Scotland, he had interested himself in a new business: viz. "the prosecution of that information concerning the Crown Lands in Scotland which his Highness and the late Council of State did refer to the Commissioners at Leith." Assuring Thurloe that he had been diligent in the affair, he says, "I have employed Mr. John Phillips, Mr. Milton's kinsman, to solicit the business, both with the Judges at Edinburgh and with the Commissioners at Leith; who by _his last letter_ promiseth to give me a very good account very speedily." Whether this means that Sandelands had himself sent Phillips from London to Scotland on the business, or only that, knowing Phillips to be already in Scotland, he had put the business into his hands, in either case one discerns an attempt on Milton's part to find some public employment, other than clerkship under himself, for the unsteady Phillips. The attempt, however, must have failed; for in 1655 Phillips was back in London, still a Bohemian, and apparently in a mood that boded ill for his ever being anything else.[1]

[Footnote 1: Wood's Ath. IV. 760-769 and 212; Lawes's _Ayres and Dialogues_; Thurloe, II. 226-227.--At the date of the letter to Thurloe (April 11, 1654) Sandelands was still in great straits. He had been arrested for debt and was then in prison. He reminds Thurloe of his attempts to be useful for the last year or more, not forgetting his project, in the winter of 1652-3, of timber and tar from the Scottish woods. The "stirs in Scotland" since, it appears, had obstructed that design after it had been lodged, through Milton, with the Committee of the Admiralty; but Sandelands hopes it may be revived, and recommends a beginning that summer in the wood of Glenmoriston about Loch Ness, where the English soldiers are to be plentiful at any rate. "Sir," he adds, "if a winter journey into Scotland to do the State service, and my long attendance here, hath not deserved a small reward, or at least the taking off of the sequestration from my parsonage in Yorkshire, I hope ere long I shall merit a far greater, when by my means his Highness's revenues shall be increased."--Milton, I may mention, had, about this time, several old acquaintances in the Protector's service in Scotland. One was the ex-licencer of pamphlets, Gilbert Mabbot. I find him, in June 1653, in some official connexion with Leith (Council Order Book, June 3).]

On the 17th of August, 1655, or just nine days after the publication of Milton's _Pro Se Defensio_, there appeared anonymously in London, in the form of a small quarto pamphlet of twenty-two pages, a poem in rhyming heroics, entitled _A Satyr against Hypocrites_. In evidence that it was the work of a scholar, there were two mottoes from Juvenal on the title-page, one of them the well known "Si natura negat, facit indignatio versum." Of the performance itself there can be no more exact description than that of Godwin. "It is certainly written," he says, "with considerable talent; and the scenes which the author brings before us are painted in a very lively manner. He describes successively a Sunday, as it appeared in the time of Cromwell, a christening, a Wednesday, which agreeably to the custom of that period was a weekly fast, and the profuse and extravagant supper with which, according to him, the fast-day concluded. The christening, the bringing home the child to its mother, who is still in confinement, and the talk of the gossips, have a considerable resemblance to the broadest manner of Chaucer." This last remark Godwin at once qualifies. Whereas in Chaucer, he says, we have sheer natural humour, with no ulterior end, the _The Satyr against Hypocrites_ "is an undisguised attack upon the National Religion, upon everything that was then visible in this country and metropolis under the name of Religion." In other words, it is in a vein of anti-Puritanism, or even anti-Cromwellianism, quite as bitter as that of any of the contemporary Royalist writers, or as that of Butler and the post-Restoration wits, with a decided tendency also to indecency in ideas and expression, Of the more serious parts this is a specimen:--

"Oh, what will men not dare, if thus they dare Be impudent to Heaven, and play with prayer, Play with that fear, with that religious awe, Which keeps men free, and yet is man's great law! What can they but the worst of Atheists be Who, while they word it 'gainst impiety, Affront the throne of God with their false deeds? Alas! this wonder in the Atheist breeds. Are these the men that would the age reform, That _Down with Superstition_ cry, and swarm This painted glass, that sculpture, to deface, But worship pride and avarice in their place? _Religion_ they bawl out, yet know not what Religion is, unless it be to prate!"

That such "a smart thing," as Wood calls it, should have appeared in the middle of Cromwell's Protectorate, and that, its anti-Cromwellianism being implied in its general anti-Puritanism rather than explicitly avowed, it should have had a considerable circulation, need not surprise us. What is surprising is that the author should have been Milton's younger nephew, who had been brought up from his very childhood under his uncle's roof, and educated wholly and solely by his uncle's own care. It would add to the surprise if the thing had been actually written in Milton's house; and even for that there is, as we shall find, something like evidence. Altogether, I should say, Mr. John Phillips had, of late, got quite beyond his uncle's control, and had taken to courses of his own, not in very good company. Among new acquaintances he had forsworn his uncle's politics, and was no longer perfectly at ease with him.[1]

[Footnote 1: _A Satyr against Hypocrites_, 1655 (Thomason copy for date of publication); Godwin's _Lives of the Phillipses_, 49-51; Wood's Ath. IV. 764.--The _Satyr against Hypocrites_ is ascribed in some book-catalogues to Edward Phillips; nay, I have found it ascribed, by a singular absurdity, to Milton himself. That it passed at the time as Edward Phillips's seems proved by the entry of it in the Stationers' Registers under date March 14, 1654-5: "_A Satyr against Hypocrites by Edward Phillips, Gent_," the publisher's name being given as "Nathaniel Brooke." I cannot explain this; but John Phillips was certainly the author. Wood alone would be good authority; but it appears from one of Bliss's notes to Wood that the piece was afterwards claimed by John Phillips, and in Edward Phillips's _Theatrum Poetarum_, published in 1675, the piece is ascribed by name to his brother John, in evidence of his "vein of burlesque and facetious poetry" (Godwin, Lives of the Phillipses, p. 158). It was a rather popular piece when first published, and was twice reprinted after the Restoration.]

During the whole time of Milton's residence in Petty France, his elder nephew tells us, "he was frequently visited by persons of quality, particularly my lady Ranelagh (whose son for some time he instructed), all learned foreigners of note (who could not part out of this city without giving a visit to a person so eminent), and lastly by particular friends that had a high esteem for him: viz. Mr. Andrew Marvell, young Lawrence (the son of him that was President of Oliver's Council), ... Mr. Marchamont Needham, the writer of _Politicus_, but above all Mr. Cyriack Skinner." To these may be added Hartlib, Durie (when he was not abroad), Henry Oldenburg, and others of the Hartlib-Durie connexion. Altogether, the group is an interesting one, and it is precisely in and about 1655 that we have the means of seeing all the individuals of it in closest proximity to Milton and to each other. As one's curiosity is keenest, at this point, about Lady Ranelagh, she may have the precedence.

On her own account she deserves it. We have already seen (ante Vol. III. 658-660) who she was,--by marriage the Viscountess Ranelagh, wife of Arthur Jones, second Viscount Ranelagh in the Irish Peerage, but by birth Catharine Boyle, daughter of the great Richard Boyle, first Earl of Cork, with the four surviving sons of that Earl for her brothers, and his five other surviving daughters for her sisters.--Of her four brothers, the eldest, Richard Boyle, second Earl of Cork, lived generally in Ireland, looking after his great estates there; and indeed it was in Ireland that most of the family had their chief properties. But the second brother, Roger Boyle, Lord Broghhill, already known to us for his services in Ireland under Cromwell, and for his conspicuous fidelity to Cromwell ever since, was now in Scotland, as President of Cromwell's Council there. _He_ may be called the literary brother; for, though his chief activity hitherto had been in war and politics, he had found time to write and publish his long romance or novel called _Parthenissa_, and so to begin a literary reputation which was to be increased by poems, tragedies, comedies, &c., in no small profusion, in coming years. His age, at our present date, was about thirty-four. Two years younger was Francis Boyle, the third brother, afterwards Lord Shannon, and four years younger still was the philosophical and scientific brother, Mr. Boyle, or "the Honourable Mr. Robert Boyle." When we last saw this extraordinary young man, after his return from his travels, i.e. in 1645-48, he was in retirement at Stalbridge in Dorsetshire, absorbed in studies and in chemical experiments, but corresponding eagerly with Hartlib and others in London, and sometimes coming to town himself, when he would attend those meetings of the _Invisible College_, the germ of the future Royal Society, about the delights of which Hartlib was never tired of writing to him. This mode of life he had continued, with the interruption of a journey or two abroad, till 1652. "Nor am I here altogether idle," he says in one of his latest letters to Hartlib from Stalbridge; "for I can sometimes make a shift to snatch from the importunity of my affairs leisure to trace such plans, and frame such models, as, if my Irish fortune will afford me quarries and woods to draw competent materials from to construct after them, will fit me to build a pretty house in Athens, where I may live to Philosophy and Mr. Hartlib." The necessity of looking after the Irish fortune of which he here speaks had since then taken him to Ireland and kept him there for the greater part of two years. He found it, he says, "a barbarous country, where chemical spirits were so misunderstood, and chemical instruments so unprocurable, that it was hard to have any Hermetic thoughts in it;" and he had betaken himself to "anatomical dissections" as the only kind of scientific pastime that Irish conditions favoured. On returning to England, in 1654, he had settled in Oxford, to be in the society of Wilkins, Wallis, Goddard, Ward, Petty, Bathurst, Willis, and other kindred scientific spirits, most of them recently transferred from London to posts in the University, and so forming the Oxford offshoot of the _Invisible College_, as distinct from the London original. But still from Oxford, as formerly from Stalbridge, the young philosopher made occasional visits to London; and always, when there, he was to be found at the house of his sister, Lady Ranelagh.--What property belonged to Lady Ranelagh herself, or to her husband, lay also mainly in Ireland; but for many years, in consequence of the distracted state of that country, her residence had been in London. "In the Pall Mall, in the suburbs of Westminster," is the more exact designation. Her Irish property seems, for the present, to have yielded her but a dubious revenue; and though she had a Government pension of £4 a week on some account or other, she seems to have been dependent in some degree on subsidies from her wealthier relatives. It also appears, though hazily, that there was some deep-rooted disagreement between her and her husband, and that, if he was not generally away in Ireland, he was at least now seldom with her in London. She had her children with her, however. One of these was her only son, styled then simply Mr. Richard Jones, though modern custom would style him Lord Navan. In 1655 he was a boy of fifteen years of age, Lady Ranelagh herself being then just forty. The education of this boy, and of her two or three girls, was her main anxiety; but she took a deep interest as well in the affairs of all the members of the Boyle family, not one of whom would take any step of importance without consulting her. She corresponded with them all, but especially with Lord Broghill and the philosophical young Robert, both of them her juniors, and Robert peculiarly her _protegé_. In his letters to her, all written carefully and in a strain of stately and respectful affection, we see the most absolute confidence in her judgment; and it is from her letters to him, full of solicitude about his health, and of interest in his experiments and speculations, that we obtain perhaps the best idea of that combination of intellectual and moral excellencies to which her contemporaries felt they could not do justice except by calling her "the incomparable Lady Ranelagh." For that name, which was to be hers through an entire generation more, was already as common in talk about her beyond the circle of her own family as the affectionate one of "Sister Ranelagh" was within that circle. Partly it was because she was one of the best-educated women of her time, with the widest tastes and sympathies in matters literary and philosophical, and with much of that genius of the Boyles, though in feminine form, which was represented by Lord Broghill and Robert Boyle among her brothers. Just before our present date we find her taking lessons in Hebrew from a Scotch teacher of that language then in London, who afterwards dedicated his _Gate to the Holy Tongue_ to her, with much respect for her "proficiency in so short a time," and "amidst so many abstractions as she was surrounded with." And so in things of greater grasp. In writing to her brother Robert her satisfaction with the new Experimental Philosophy which he and others are trying to institute can express itself as a belief that it will "help the considering part of mankind to a clearer prospect into this great frame of the visible world, and therein of the power and wisdom of its great Maker, than the rough draft wherein it has hitherto been represented in the ignorant and wholesale philosophy that has so long, by the power of an implicit faith in the doctrine of Aristotle and the Schools, gone current in the world has ever been able to assist them towards." But it was not merely by variety of intellectual culture that Lady Ranelagh was distinguished. One cannot read her letters without discerning in them a deep foundation of piety in the best sense, real wisdom, a serious determination with herself to make her own life as actively useful as possible, and a disposition always to relate herself to what was sterling around her. "Though some particular opinions might shut her up in a divided communion," said Burnet of her long afterwards, "yet her soul was never of a party. She divided her charities and friendships, her esteem as well as her bounty, with the truest regard to merit and her own obligations, without any difference made upon the account of opinion." This was true even at our present date, when she was an Oliverian in politics, like her brother Broghill, though perhaps more moderately so, and in religious matters what may be called a very liberal Puritan.[1]

[Footnote 1: Birch's Life of Robert Boyle, prefixed to edition of Boyle's Works, pp. 27-33; Letters of Boyle to Lady Ranelagh and of Lady Ranelagh to Boyle in Vol. V. of his Works; Notes by Mr. Crossley to his edition of _Worthington's Diary and Correspondence_ for the Chetham Society, I. p. 164-165, and 366. Mrs. Green's Calendar of State-Papers for 1651, p. 574.]

How long Lady Ranelagh had known Milton is uncertain; but, as her nephew, the young Earl of Barrimore, had been one of Milton's pupils in his house in the Barbican, and as we had express information that he had been sent there by his aunt, the acquaintance must have begun as early as 1646 or 1647. And now, it appears, through all the intermediate eight years of Milton's changes of residence and fortune, including his six in the Latin Secretaryship, the acquaintanceship has been kept up, and has been growing more intimate, till, in 1655, in his widowerhood and blindness in his house in Petty France, there is no one, and certainly no lady, that more frequently calls upon him, or whose voice, on the staircase, announcing who the visitor is, he is more pleased to hear. They were close neighbours, only St. James's Park between their houses; and his having taught her nephew, the young Earl of Barrimore, was not now the only link of that kind between themselves. She had not been satisfied till she had contrived that her own son should, to some extent, be Milton's pupil too. "My Lady Ranelagh, whose son for some time he instructed" are Phillips's words on this point; and, though we included Lady Ranelagh's son, Mr. Richard Jones, afterwards third Viscount and first Earl of Ranelagh, in our general enumeration of Milton's pupils, given under the year 1647, when the Barbican establishment was complete, it was with the intimation that this particular pupil, then but seven years old, could hardly have been one of the Barbican boys, but must have had the benefit of lessons from Milton in some exceptional way afterwards. The fact, on the likeliest construction of the evidence, seems to have been that Milton, to oblige Lady Ranelagh, had quite recently allowed the boy to come daily, or every other day, from his mother's house in Pall Mall to Petty France, to sit with him for an hour or two, and read Greek and Latin. To the end of his life Milton found this easy kind of pedagogy a pleasant amusement in his blindness, and made it indeed one of his devices for help to himself in his readings and references to books; and Lady Ranelagh's son may have been his first experiment in the method. That he retained an interest in this young Ranelagh of a semi-tutorial kind, as well as on his mother's account, the sequel will prove.

Strange things do happen in real life; and actually it was possible that, on the day of one of Lady Ranelagh's visits to Milton, she might have had a call in her own house from Dr. Peter Du Moulin. For her ladyship's circle of acquaintance did include this gentleman. He had been tutor in Ireland to her two nephews, Viscount Dungarvan and Mr. Richard Boyle, sons of her eldest brother, the Earl of Cork, and he had come with them, still in that capacity, to Oxford (ante p. 224), and so had been introduced into the whole Boyle connexion.[1] What amount of awkwardness there may have been in a possible meeting between Du Moulin and Milton themselves through this common social connexion of theirs in London has been already discussed. The Ranelagh circle, for the rest, included all those, or most of them, that were Milton's friends independently, and could converse about him in her ladyship's own spirit. The family of Lord President Lawrence, for example, were in high esteem with Lady Ranelagh; and the President's son, Mr. Henry Lawrence, Milton's young friend, and presumably one of his former pupils of the Barbican days, seems to have been about this time much in the company of her ladyship's nephew, the Earl of Barrimore. That young nobleman, we may mention, had become a married man, shortly after he had ceased to be Milton's pupil in the Barbican, and was now leading a gallant and rather idle life about London, but not quite astray from his aunt's society, or perhaps from Milton's either.[2] Then there were Hartlib, Durie, Haak, and other lights of the London branch of the _Invisible College_, friends of Robert Boyle for years past, and corresponding with him and the other luminaries of the Oxford colony of the _College_. Hartlib, in particular, who now lived at Charing Gross, and who had found a new theme of interest in the wonderful abilities and wonderful experiments of Mr. Clodius, a German chemist, who had recently become his son-in-law, was still in constant correspondence with Boyle, and was often at Lady Ranelagh's on some occasion or other.[3] Nor must Milton's new German friend, Henry Oldenburg, the agent for Bremen, be forgotten. He also, as we shall find, had been drawn, in a special manner, into the Boyle and Ranelagh connexion, and was, in fact, entering, by means of this connexion, on that part of his interesting career for which he is remembered in the annals of English science. He was to marry Durie's only daughter, and be retained by that tie, as well as by others, in the Hartlib-Durie cluster of Milton's friends.

[Footnote 1: Dr. Peter Du Moulin was one of Robert Boyle's friends and correspondents both before and after the Restoration. It was at Boyle's request that Du Moulin translated and published in 1658 a little book called _The Devil of Mascon_, a French story of well-authenticated spirit-rapping; and the book was dedicated by Dumoulin to Boyle, and Boyle contributed an introductory letter to it. Moreover, it was to Boyle that Du Moulin in 1670 dedicated the first part of his _Parerga_ or Collection of Latin Poems, the second part of which contained his reprint of the Iambics against Milton from the _Regii Sanguinis Clamor_.--See Birch's Life of Boyle, p. 60, and four letters of Du Moulin to Boyle in Boyle's Works, Vol. V (pp 594-596). In three of these letters, all written after the Restoration, Du Moulin presents his respectful services to "My Honourable Lady Ranelagh" in terms implying long-established acquaintanceship. But there are other scattered proofs of Du Moulin's long intimacy with the whole Boyle family.]

[Footnote 2: The young Earl had married, hastily and against his mother's will, in 1649, shortly after he had been Milton's pupil. See a letter of condolence on the subject from Robert Boyle to his sister, the young Earl's mother (Boyle's Works, V. 240). For the intimacy between the young Earl of Barrimore and young Henry Lawrence see a letter of Hartlib's to Boyle. (Ibid. V. 279).]

[Footnote 3: Letters of Hartlib to Boyle in Vol. V. of Boyle's Works.]

Marvell, Needham, and Cyriack Skinner are not certainly known to have been among Lady Ranelagh's acquaintances. _Their_ visits to Milton, therefore, have to be imagined apart. Marvell's, if he were still domiciled at Eton, can have been but occasional, but must have been always welcome. Needham's cannot have been, as formerly, on business connected with the _Mercurius Politicus_; for Milton had ceased for some years to have anything to do with the editorship of that journal. The duty of licensing it and its weekly double, _The Public Intelligencer_, also edited by Needham and published by Newcome, was now performed regularly by the omnipotent Thurloe. Both journals would come to Milton's house, to be read to him; and Needham, in his visits, would bring other gossip of the town, and be altogether a very chatty companion. "Above all, Mr. Cyriack Skinner" is, however, Phillips's phrase in his enumeration of those of his uncle's friends who were most frequently with him about this time. The words imply that, since June 1654, when this old pupil of Milton's had again "got near" him (Vol. IV. pp. 621-623), his attention to Milton had been unremitting, so that Milton had come to depend upon it and to expect him almost daily. On that understanding it is that we may read most luminously four private Sonnets of Milton, all of the year 1655, two of them addressed to Cyriack Skinner, and one to young Lawrence. The remaining sonnet, standing first of the four in the printed editions, is addressed to no one in particular; but the four will be read best in connexion. In reading them Cyriack Skinner is to be pictured as about twenty-eight years of age, and Lawrence as a youth of two and twenty:--

(1)

When I consider how my light is spent Ere half my days in this dark world and wide, And that one talent which is death to hide Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent To serve therewith my Maker, and present My true account, lest He, returning, chide, "Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?" I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent That murmur, soon replies:--"God doth not need Either man's work or his own gifts. Who best Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state Is kingly; thousands at his bidding speed, And post o'er land and ocean without rest: They also serve who only stand and wait."

(2)

Cyriack, this three years' day these eyes, though clear, To outward view, of blemish or of spot, Bereft of light, their seeing have forgot; Nor to their idle orbs doth sight appear Of sun, or moon, or star, throughout the year, Or man, or woman. Yet I argue not Against Heaven's hand or will, nor bate a jot Of heart or hope, but still bear up and steer Right onward. What supports me, dost thou ask? The conscience, friend, to have lost them overplied In Liberty's defence, my noble task, Of which all Europe talks from side to side. This thought might lead me through the world's vain masque Content, though blind, had I no better guide.

(3)

Lawrence, of virtuous father virtuous son, Now that the fields are dank, and ways are mire, Where shall we sometimes meet, and by the fire Help waste a sullen day, what may be won From the hard season gaining? Time will run On smoother, till Favonius reinspire The frozen earth, and clothe in fresh attire The lily and rose, that neither sowed nor spun. What neat repast shall feast us, light and choice, Of Attic taste, with wine, whence we may rise To hear the lute well touched, or artful voice Warble immortal notes and Tuscan air? He who of those delights can judge, and spare To interpose them oft, is not unwise.

(4)

Cyriack, whose grandsire on the royal bench Of British Themis, with no mean applause, Pronounced, and in his volumes taught, our laws, Which others at their bar so often wrench, To-day deep thoughts resolve with me to drench In mirth that after no repenting draws; Let Euclid rest, and Archimedes pause, And what the Swede intend, and what the French. To measure life learn thou betimes, and know Toward solid good what leads the nearest way; For other things mild Heaven a time ordains, And disapproves that care, though wise in show, That with superfluous burden loads the day, And, when God sends a cheerful hour, refrains.

It has been argued that the last two of these Sonnets must be out of their proper chronological places in the printed editions. They must have been written, it is said, before Milton lost his sight: for how are such invitations to mirth and festivity reconcileable with Milton's circumstances in the third or fourth year of his blindness? There is no mistake in the matter, however. In Milton's own second or 1673 edition of his Minor Poems the sonnets, in the order in which we have printed them,--with the exception of No. 2, which had then to be omitted on account of its political point,--come immediately after the sonnet on the Piedmontese Massacre; and there are other reasons of external evidence which assign Nos. 1, 3, and 4, distinctly to about the same date as No. 2, the opening--words of which date _it_ near the middle of 1655. But, indeed, we should miss much of the biographic interest of the last two sonnets by detaching them from the two first. In No. 1 we have a plaintive soliloquy of Milton on his blind and disabled condition, ending with that beautiful expression of his resignation to God's will in which, under the image of the varieties of service that may be required by some great monarch, he contrasts his own stationariness and inactivity with the energy and bustle of so many of his contemporaries. In No. 2, addressed to Cyriack Skinner, he treats of the same topic, only reverting with pride, as he had done several times in prose, to the literary labour that had brought on his calamity. In both the intimation is that he has disciplined himself to live on as cheerfully as possible, taking daily duties, and little pleasures too, as they come. What more natural, therefore, than that, some little while after those two affecting sonnets on his blindness had been written, there should be two others, in which not a word should be said of his blindness, but young Lawrence and Cyriack Skinner should find themselves invited, in a more express manner than usual, to a day in Milton's company? For that is the proper construction of the Sonnets. They are cards of invitation to little parties, perhaps to one and the same little party, in Milton's house in the winter of 1655-6. It is dull, cold, weather; the Parks are wet, and the country-roads all mire; and for some days Milton has been baulked of his customary walk out of doors, tended by young Lawrence or Cyriack. To make amends, there shall be a little dinner in the warm room at home--"a neat repast" says Milton temptingly, adding "with wine," that there may be no doubt in that particular--to be followed by a long talk and some choice music. So young Lawrence is informed in the metrical missive to _him_; and the same day (unless, as we may hope, the little dinner became a periodical institution in Milton's house), Cyriack is told to come too. Altogether they are model cards of invitation.[1]

[Footnote 1: More detailed reasons for the dating of Sonnets 1, 3, and 4 (for Sonnet 2 dates itself) will be found in the Introductions to those Sonnets in the Cambridge Edition of Milton. In line 12 of No. 2 I have substituted the word "talks" for the word "rings," now always printed in that place. "Of which all Europe rings from side to side," is the reading in the copy of the Sonnet as first printed by Phillips in 1694 at the end of his memoir of Milton; but that copy is corrupt in several places. The original dictated draft of the Sonnet among the Milton MSS. at Cambridge is to be taken as the true text; and there the word is "talks." Phillips had doubtless the echo of "rings" in his ear from the Sonnet to Fairfax. The more sonorous reading, however, has found such general acceptance that an editor hardly dares to revert to "talks."]

We are now in the winter of 1655-6, and we have seen no Secretarial work from Milton since his letters and other documents in the business of the Piedmontese Protestants in May, June, and July, 1655. Officially, therefore, he had had another relapse into idleness. Not, however, into total idleness. "_Scriptum Dom. Protectoris Reipublicæ Anglicæ, Scotiæ, Hiberniæ, &c., ex Consensa atque Sententia Concilii Sui Edictum, in quo Hujus Reipublicæ Causa contra Hispanos justa esse demonstratur_, 1655" ("Manifesto of the Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland. Ireland, &c., put forth by the consent and advice of his Council, in which the justice of the cause of this Commonwealth against the Spaniards is demonstrated, 1655"), is the title of a Latin document, of the length of about twenty such pages as the present, now always included in editions of Milton's prose-writings, on the probability, though not quite the certainty, that it was Milton's performance. If so, it was the third great document in the nature of a Declaration of War furnished by Milton for the Commonwealth, the two former having been his Latin version of the Declaration of the Causes of War against the Scots in June 1650 (IV. 228) and his similar version of the Declaration against the Dutch in July 1652 (IV. 482-483). The present manifesto was perhaps a more difficult document to draft than either of those had been, inasmuch as Cromwell had to justify in it his recent attack upon the Spanish possessions in the West Indies. Accordingly, the manifesto had been prepared with some pains. It passed the Council finally on the 26th of October, 1655, four days after the Spanish ambassador Cardenas had left England, and two days after the Treaty between Cromwell and France had been signed;[1] and the Latin copies of it were out in London on the 9th of November.[2] Unlike the previous Declarations against the Scots and the Dutch, which had been printed in several languages, it appears to have been printed in Latin only.

[Footnote 1: Council Order Book of date.]

[Footnote 2: Dated copy among the Thomason Pamphlets.]

A general notion of the document will be obtained from, an extract or two in translation. The opening is as follows:--

"That the causes that induced us to our recent attack on certain Islands in the West Indies, now for some time past in the possession of the Spaniards, are just and in the highest degree reasonable, there is no one but will easily understand if only he will reflect in what manner that King and his subjects have always conducted themselves towards the English nation in that tract of America ... Whenever they have opportunity, though without the least reason of justice, and with no provocation of injury, they are incessantly killing, murdering, nay butchering in cold blood, our countrymen there, as they think fit, seizing their goods and fortunes, destroying their plantations and houses, capturing any of their vessels they may meet on those seas, and treating their crews as enemies and even pirates. For they call by that opprobrious name all of any nation, themselves alone excepted, who dare to navigate those waters. Nor do they profess to have any other or better right for this than reliance on some ridiculous donation of the Pope, and the fact that they were the first discoverers of some parts of that western region ... Certainly it would have been disgraceful and unworthy in us, in possession as we were, by God's bounty, of so many ships, furnished, equipped, and ready for every use of maritime warfare, to have chosen to let them rot idly at home, rather than employ them in those parts in avenging the blood of the English, so unjustly, so inhumanly, and so often, shed by the Spaniards there,--nay, the blood too of the Indians, inasmuch as God 'hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation' [Acts xvii. 26] ... Our purpose, however, is to show the right and equity of the transaction itself, rather than to state all our several reasons for it. And, that we may do this the more clearly, and explain general assertions by particulars, it will be proper to cast our eyes back a little into the past, and to run strictly over the transactions between the English and the Spaniards, observing the state of affairs on both sides, as far as mutual relations were concerned, from the time of the first discovery of the West Indies and of the Reformation of Religion. For those two great events, as they were nearly contemporary, occasioned everywhere in the world vast changes, but especially as between the English and the Spaniards; which two nations have from that time followed diverse and almost opposite methods and principles in the management of their affairs."

The manifesto, accordingly, then reviews the history of the relations between Spain and England from the time of Henry VIII., appending at last a long list of more recent outrages by the Spaniards on English ships and settlements in the West Indies, the dates all duly given, with the names of the ships and their captains, and the values of the cargoes. After which, returning to more general considerations, it discusses the two pretexts of the Spaniards for their sole sovereignty in the West Indies,--the Papal donation, and the right of first discovery. Both are dismissed as absurd; and the document ends with an appeal to the common interests of Protestantism throughout Europe. Even the recent massacre of the Vaudois Protestants is brought into the plea. Thus:--

"If meanwhile we suffer such grievous injuries to be done to our countrymen in the West Indies without any satisfaction or vengeance; if we consent to be all excluded from that so important part of the world; if we permit our bitter and inveterate enemy (especially now that peace has been made with the Dutch) to carry home unmolested those huge treasures from the West Indies, by which he can repair his present losses, and restore his affairs to such a condition that he shall be able again to betake himself to that deliberation of his in 1588 'whether it would be more prudent to begin with England for the recovery of the United Provinces of Holland, or to begin with them for the subjugation of England';--beyond a doubt he will find for himself not fewer, but even more reasons, why the beginning should now be made with England. And, should God permit him ever to carry out these designs, then we should have good grounds for expecting that on us first, but eventually on all Protestants wheresoever, there would be wreaked the residue of that most brutal massacre suffered lately by our brothers in the Alpine valleys: which massacre, if credit is to be given to the published complaints of those poor orthodox Christians, was originally schemed and appointed in the secret councils of the Spanish Court, through the agency of those paltry friars whom they call missionaries (_per illos fraterculos missionarios quos vacant Hispanicæ aulæ consiliis intimis informata primitus ac designata erat_)."

How far Milton's hand helped in this important document of the Protectorate may fairly be a question. The substance was probably drafted by the Council and Thurloe, and only handed to Milton for re-expression and translation; nay, it is possible that even in the work of translation, to save time, Milton and Meadows may have been partners. All in all, however, as the proofs are all but certain that Milton's hand was to _some_ extent employed in the document, it may mark his return to ordinary official work in Oct.-Nov. 1655, after three months of renewed exemption from such work, following his batch of state-letters on the subject of the Massacre in Piedmont.[1]

[Footnote 1: The _Scriptum Domini Protectoris contra Hispanos_ was reprinted, as indubitably Milton's, in 1738, and again in 1741, to assist in rousing British feeling afresh against Spain; and Birch and all succeeding editors of Milton have agreed in regarding it as his. Godwin, however (_Hist. of Commonwealth_, IV. 217-219, footnote), suggests doubts.]

What adds to the probability that Cromwell's Manifesto against Spain, dated Oct. 26, 1655, and published Nov. 9, was partly of Milton's composition, is the fact, to which we have now to request attention, that he did about this time resume ordinary office-work to an extent beyond expectation. The following is a list of Letters to Foreign States and Princes written by him for Cromwell from Dec. 1655 to May 1656 inclusively. Two or three of them are important Cromwellian documents, and require elucidation:--

(LXV.) TO THE DOGE OF VENICE, _Dec. 1655_:--His Highness congratulates the Venetians upon their recent naval victory over the Turks, but brings to their notice the fact that among the ships they had taken in that victory there was an English one, called _The Great Prince_, belonging to William and Daniel Williams and Edward Beal, English merchants. She had been pressed by the Turks at Constantinople, and employed as a transport for Turkish soldiers and provisions to Crete. The crew had been helpless in the affair, and the owners blameless; and his Highness does not doubt that the Doge and Senate will immediately give him a token of their friendship by causing the ship to be restored.--The naval victory of the Venetians was, doubtless, that which Morus had celebrated In the Latin poem for which he received his gold chain (ante pp. 212-213).

(LXVI.) To LOUIS XIV. OF FRANCE, Dec. 1655:--Samuel Mico, William Cockain, George Poyner, and other English merchants have petitioned his Highness about a ship of theirs, called _The Unicorn_, which had been seized in the Mediterranean as long ago as 1650 by the Admiral and Vice-Admiral of the French fleet, with a cargo worth £34,000. The capture was originally unfair, as there was then peace between England and France, and express promises had been recently given by Cardinal Mazarin and the French Ambassador, M. de Bordeaux, that amends would be made as soon as the Treaty with France was complete. That happily being now the case, his Highness expects from his Majesty the indemnification of the said merchants as "the first-fruits of the renewed friendship and recently formed alliance."

(LXVII.) To LOUIS XIV. OF FRANCE, _Jan._ 1655-56:[1]--His Highness has been informed of very extraordinary conduct on the part of the French Governor of Belleisle in the Bay of Biscay. On the 10th of December last, or thereabouts, he not only admitted into his port one Dillon, a piratic enemy of the English Commonwealth, and assisted him with supplies, but also prevented the recapture of a merchant ship from the said Dillon by Captain Robert Vessey of the _Nightingale_ war-ship, and further secured Dillon's escape when Vessey had fought him and had him at his mercy. All this is, of course, utterly against the recent Treaty: and his Majesty will doubtless take due notice of the Governor's conduct and give satisfaction.

[Footnote 1: Not in the Printed Collection nor in Phillips; but in the Skinner Transcript (No. 46 there), and printed thence in Hamilton's Milton Papers (p. 4).]

(LXVIII.) TO THE EVANGELICAL SWISS CANTONS, _Jan._ 1655-6. To understand this important letter it is necessary to remember that in 1653 there had broken out, for the second or third time, a Civil War of Religion among the Swiss. The Popish Cantons of Schwytz, Uri, Zug, Unterwalden, Luzern, &c., had quarrelled with the Protestant or Evangelical Cantons of Zurich, Basel, Schaffhausen, Bern, Glarus, Appenzell, &c.; and, as the Popish Cantons trusted to help from surrounding Catholic powers, the Confederation and Swiss Protestantism were in peril. It had been to watch events and proceedings in this struggle that Cromwell had sent into Switzerland, early in 1654, Mr. John Pell and Mr. John Durie, as his agents (ante p. 41). Durie had remained only about a year; but Pell was still there, reinforced now by Morland, who, after his special mission to the Duke of Savoy on the business of the Piedmontese Massacre of April 1655, had taken up his abode in Geneva to superintend the distributing of the money collected for the Piedmontese Protestants. That massacre had been ominous to the Swiss, and had complicated the strife between the Popish and the Evangelical Cantons. In the Popish Cantons, especially that of Schwytz, there had been severe persecutions of Protestant Dissenters; the union of these Cantons among themselves and their Anti-Protestant temper had become stronger; and altogether the news from Switzerland was bad. Application had been made by the Evangelical Cantons, through Pell, for help from Cromwell, similar application being made at the same time to the Dutch; and the following is Cromwell's answer:--"Both from your public acts transmitted to us by our Commissioners at Geneva [Pell and Morland], and from your letter dated at Zürich, Dec. 27, we understand abundantly in what condition your affairs are.--too abundantly, since it is none of the best. Wherein, though we grieve to find your peace at an end and so lasting a Confederacy ruptured, yet, as it appears that this has happened by no fault on your part, we trust that hence, from the very iniquity and obstinacy of your adversaries, there is again being furnished you only so much new occasion for displaying your courage and your long-known constancy in the Evangelical Faith. For what the Schwytz Cantoners are driving at in their resolution to make it a capital offence in any one to embrace our Religion, and who they are that have instigated them to proceedings of such a hostile spirit to the Orthodox Faith, no one can avoid knowing who has not yet forgotten that foul slaughter of our brethren in Piedmont. Wherefore, well-beloved friends, as you always have been, be still, by God's help, brave; do not yield your rights and federate privileges, nay, Liberty of Conscience and Religion itself, to be trampled on by worshippers of idols; and so prepare yourselves that you may not only appear the champions of your own liberty and safety, but may be able also to succour and stand by your neighbouring brethren by all means in your power, especially those most sorrow-stricken Piedmontese: firmly persuaded of this, that the intention was to have opened a passage to your persons over their bodies and deaths. For my part, be assured [the expression in the singular: _de me scitote_] that your safety and prosperity are no less my care and anxiety than if this fire had broken out in this our own Commonwealth, or than if those axes of the Schwytz Cantoners had been sharpened, and their swords drawn (as they veritably are, for all the Reformed are concerned), for our own necks. No sooner, therefore, have we been informed of the state of your affairs, and the obdurate temper of your enemies, than, taking counsel with some very honourable persons, and some ministers of the Church of highest esteem for their piety, on the subject of the assistance it might be possible to send you consistently with our own present requirements, we have come to those resolutions which our agent Pell will communicate to you. For the rest, we cease not to commend to the favour of Almighty God all your plans, and the protection of this most righteous cause of yours, whether in peace or in war."--From a private letter of Thurloe's to Pell, of the same date as this official one, we learn that the persons consulted by Cromwell on the occasion were the Committee for the Piedmontese Collection (ante pp. 40-41), his Highness regarding the Piedmontese business and the Swiss business as radically identical, and desiring to prepare the public mind for exertions, if necessary, in behalf of Swiss Protestantism as extraordinary as those that had been made for the Piedmontese. The conferences on the subject were very earnest, with the result that his Highness instructed Pell to offer the Cantons of Zürich and Bern a subsidy of £20,000, at the rate of £5000 a month, on security for repayment--the first £5000, however, to be sent immediately, without waiting for such security.[1]

[Footnote 1: See Thurloe's Letter in Vaughan's _Protectorate_, I, 334-337.]

(LXIX.) To CHARLES X., KING OF SWEDEN, _Feb._ 1655-6:[1]--This letter also is very important, though less in itself than in its circumstances; and it requires introduction.--Charles X., or Charles Gustavus (Karl Gustav), the successor of Queen Christina on the Swedish throne, was proving himself a man of energy. Chancellor Oxenstiern, so long the leading statesman of Sweden, had died in Aug. 1654, just after the accession of Charles; and under the new King, with the younger Oxenstiern for his Chancellor, Sweden had entered on a career of war, which was to continue through his whole reign, and the aim of which was little less than the extension of Sweden into an Empire across the Baltic. He had begun with Poland, between which and Sweden there was an old feud, and the King of which then was John Casimir. Other powers, however, had been immediately stirred by the war. Denmark, Russia, and the German empire generally, were interested in saving Poland, and therefore tended to an alliance against Karl Gustav; while, on the other hand, the Great Elector of Brandenburg, Friedrich-Wilhelm, found it convenient for the present, in the interests of his Prussian possessions, to be on the side of Sweden. Cromwell had not been likely at first to interfere directly in such a complicated continental quarrel; and, indeed, as we have seen from a previous letter of his to the Swedish King (ante p. 166), his first feeling on hearing of the Swedish movements on the Continent had been that of regret at the disturbance of the Peace of Westphalia. Still Sweden was a power which commanded Cromwell's respect. Nor was Charles X., on his side, less anxious to retain the friendship of the great English Protector. On succeeding Christina he had accepted and ratified her Treaty with Cromwell--"Whitlocke's Treaty," as it may be called; he had sent a Mr. PETER COYET to be Swedish Resident in London; and, after he had begun his Polish war, there was nothing he desired more than some yet closer partnership between himself and Cromwell, that might unite Sweden and England in a common European policy. Accordingly, in July 1655, Charles X. being then in camp in Poland, there had arrived in London a splendid Swedish embassy extraordinary, consisting of COUNT CHRISTIERN BUNDT, and other noblemen and gentlemen, with attendants, to the number of two hundred persons in all, "generally proper handsome men and fair-haired." Whitlocke, who was naturally called in by the Protector on this occasion, describes with unusual gusto the reception of the Embassy. There was a magnificent torchlight procession of coaches, most of them with six horses, to convey the Ambassador and his suite from Tower Wharf, where they landed, to Sir Abraham Williams's house in Westminster; there were feastings and other entertainments, at the Lord Protector's charge, for three days; and at length on the third day Count Bundt had audience in the Banqueting House at Whitehall, in the midst of a great assembly, with ladies in the galleries. It was difficult to say whether in this audience the Ambassador or the Protector acquitted himself best. "The Ambassador's people," says Whitlocke, "were all admitted into the room, and made a lane within the rails in the midst of the room. At the upper end, upon a footpace and carpet, stood the Protector, with a chair of state behind him, and divers of his Council and servants about him. The Master of the Ceremonies [still Sir Oliver Fleming] went before the Ambassador on the left side; the Ambassador, in the middle, betwixt me and Strickland, went up in the open lane of the room. As soon as they [the Ambassador and his immediate suite] came within the room, at the lower end of the lane, they put off their hats, the Ambassador a little while after the rest; and, when he was uncovered, the Protector also put off his hat, and answered the Ambassador's three salutations in his coming up to him; and on the foot-pace they saluted each other as friends usually do; and, when the Protector put on his hat, the Ambassador put on his as soon as the other. After a little pause, the Ambassador put off his hat, and began to speak, and then put it on again; and, whensoever in his speech he named the King his master, or Sweden, or the Protector, or England, he moved his hat: especially if he mentioned anything of God, or the good of Christendom, he put off his hat very low; and the Protector still answered him in the like postures of civility." The speech, which was in Swedish, but immediately translated into Latin by the Ambassador's secretary, was to the effect that the King of Sweden desired to propound to His Highness some matters for additional treaty. Cromwell's reply, delivered in English, which the Ambassador understood, was to the effect that he was very willing to enter into "a nearer and more strict alliance" with the King of Sweden and would nominate some persons to hear Count Bundt's proposals.--All this had been in the last days of July 1655; but, though there had been subsequent audiences of the Ambassador, and banquets given to him and the other chief Swedes by the Protector himself at Hampton Court, August had passed, and September, and October, and November, and still the actual Treaty had been avoided. Other things engrossed the Protector--the Treaty with France, the West-India Expedition, the beginning of the War with Spain, &c. But in Count Bundt there had been sent to Cromwell perhaps the most high-tempered ambassador he had ever seen. Immediately after the first audience, Dorset House, in Fleet Street, taken and furnished at the Ambassador's own expense, had become the head-quarters of the Embassy; and here, as month after month had passed without approach to real business, his impatience had flashed into fierceness. It broke out in his talk to Whitlocke, who took every opportunity of being with him, the rather because other "grandees" held aloof. "No Commissioners being yet come to the Swedish Ambassador," writes Whitlocke, under date Dec. 1655, "he grew into some high expressions of his sense of the neglect to his master by this delay; which I did endeavour to excuse, and acquainted the Protector with it, who thereupon promised to have it mended." In truth, the warlike Swedish King had become by this time a man whose embassy compelled attention. "_Letters of the success of the Swedes in Poland and Lithuania," "Letters of the Swedes' victory against the Muscovites," "The Swedes had good success in Poland and Moscovia," "An Agreement made between the King of Sweden and the Elector of Brandenburg:_" such had been pieces of foreign news recently coming in. Accordingly, in January 1655-6, Whitlocke, Fiennes, Strickland, and Sir Gilbert Pickering, had been empowered, on the Protector's part, to treat with Count Bundt, and the Treaty had begun.--There were preliminary difficulties, however. Cromwell wanted a Treaty that should include the Dutch and the King of Denmark, and be, in fact, a League of the chief Protestant Powers of Europe in behalf of general Protestant interests; Count Bundt, on the other hand, pressed that special League between England and Sweden which he had come to propound, arguing that, while it would be more advantageous to both countries in the meantime, it might be extended afterwards. For a while there was danger of wreck on this preliminary difference; and Cromwell even talked of transferring the Treaty to Stockholm and sending Whitlocke thither for the second time as Ambassador-Plenipotentiary--greatly to Whitlocke's horror, who had no desire for another such journey, and a good deal to Count Bundt's displeasure, who thought himself and his mission slighted. At length, the Ambassador having signified that he had received new instructions from his master, which would enable him to meet Cromwell's views in some points, he was allowed to have his own way in the main; and in February 1655-6 the Treaty was on foot, both in the Council meetings at Whitehall, and in meetings of Whitlocke and the other English Commissioners with the Ambassador at Dorset House. "A long debate touching levies of soldiers and hiring of ships in one another's dominions;" "long debates touching contraband goods, in which list were inserted by the Council corn, hemp, pitch, tar, money, and other things:" such are Whitlocke's descriptions of the Dorset House meetings. The Treaty, in fact, was partly commercial and partly political, pointing to new advantages for England, but also to new responsibilities, all round the Baltic and throughout Germany. In the debates no one more resolute, no one more clear-headed, no one more contemptuous when he pleased, than Count Bundt; and he had, it appears, a very able second in his subordinate, the Swedish Resident in ordinary, Mr. Coyet.--In the midst of these laborious debates over the Treaty news had arrived of the birth at Stockholm of a son and heir to the Swedish King. The birth of this Prince, afterwards Charles XI. of Sweden, occasioned a grand display of loyalty at the Swedish Embassy in London. "Feb. 20," writes Whitlocke, "the Swedish Ambassador kept a solemnity this evening for the birth of the young Prince of Sweden. All the glass of the windows of his house, which were very large, being new-built, were taken off, and instead thereof painted papers were fitted to the places, with the arms of Sweden upon them, and inscriptions in great letters testifying the rejoicing for the birth of the young Prince: on the inside of the papers in the rooms were set close to them a very great number of lighted candles, glittering through the painted papers: the arms and colours and writings were plainly to be discerned, and showed glorious, in the street: the like was in the staircase, which had the form of a tower. In the balconies on each side of the house were trumpets, which sounded often seven or eight of them, together. The company at supper were the Dutch Ambassador, the Portugal and Brandenburg Residents, Mynheer Coyet, Resident for Sweden, the Earls of Bedford and Devon, the Lords St. John, Ossory, Bruce, Ogilvie, and two or three other young lords, the Count of Holac (a German), the Lord George Fleetwood, and a great many knights and gentlemen, besides the Ambassador's company. It was a very great feast, of seven courses. The Swedish Ambassador was very courteous to me; but the Dutch and others were reserved towards me, and I as much to them."--Milton's Letter to the Swedish King in Cromwell's name relates itself to this last incident. The King had written specially to Cromwell announcing the happy news of the birth of his son and heir; and Cromwell replies in this fashion:--"As it is universally understood that all concerns of friends, whether adverse or prosperous, ought to be of mutual and common interest among them, the performance by your Majesty of the most agreeable duty of friendship, by vouchsafing to impart to us your joy by express letters from yourself, cannot but be extremely gratifying to us, in regard that it is a sign of singular and truly kingly civility in you, indisposed as you are to live merely for yourself, so to be indisposed even to keep a joy to yourself, without feeling that your friends and allies participate in the same. We duly rejoice, therefore, in the birth of a Prince, to be the son of so excellent a King, and the heir, we hope, of his father's valour and glory; and we congratulate you on the same happy coincidence of domestic good fortune and success in the field with which of old that King of renowned fortitude, Philip of Macedon, was congratulated--the birth of whose son Alexander and his conquest of the powerful nation of the Illyrians are said to have been simultaneous. For we make no question but the wresting of the Kingdom of Poland by your arms from the Papal Empire, as it were a horn from the head of the Beast, and your Peace made with the Duke of Brandenburg, to the great satisfaction of all the pious, though with growls from your adversaries, will be of very great consequence for the peace and profit of the Church. May God grant an end worthy of such signal beginnings; may He grant you a son like his father in virtue, piety, and achievements! All which we truly expect and heartily pray of God Almighty, already so propitious to your affairs,"--It is clear that Cromwell desired to be all the more polite to the Swedish monarch because of the long delay of the Treaty with Count Bundt. That Treaty was going on slowly; and we shall hear more of Milton in connexion with it.[2]

[Footnote 1: So dated in Printed Collection, Phillips, and Skinner Transcript.]

[Footnote 2: Whitlocke, IV. 208-227; i.e. from July 1655 to Feb. 20, 1655-6.]

(LXX.) To FREDERICK III., KING OF DENMARK, _Feb._ 1655-6(?)[1]:--John Freeman, Philip Travis, and other London merchants, have represented to his Highness that a ship of theirs was seized and detained by the Danish authorities in March 1653 because the Captain tried to slip past Elsinore without paying the toll. He was a Dutchman and had done this dishonestly on his own account, that he might pocket the money. There had been negotiations on the subject with the Danish Ambassador when there had been one in London, and redress had been promised; but, though the merchants had since sent an agent to Copenhagen, the only effect had been to add expense to their loss. By the Danish law it is the master of a ship that is punishable for the offence of evading toll, and the ship may be condemned, but not the goods. The offender in this case is now dead, but left a confession; the sum evaded was small; the cargo detained was worth £3000; will his Majesty see that the goods are restored, with reparation?

[Footnote 1: Quite undated in Printed Collection, Phillips, and Skinner Transcript, but conjecturally of about this date.]

(LXXI.) TO THE STATES GENERAL OF THE UNITED PROVINCES, _April_ 1, 1656:--A complaint in behalf of Thomas Bussel, Richard Beare, and other English merchants. A ship of theirs, called _The Edmund and John_, on her voyage from Brazil to Lisbon, was seized long ago by a privateer of Flushing, commanded by a Lambert Bartelson. The ship itself and the personal property of the sailors had been restored; but not the goods of the merchants. The Judges in Holland had not done justice in their case; and now, after long litigation, an appeal is made to the chief authority.

(LXXII.) To Louis XIV. OF FRANCE, _April_ 9, 1656 (?): This is the Credential Letter of LOCKHART, going on his embassy to the French King. As Lockhart was by far the most eminent of the Protector's envoys, it may be translated entire: "WILLIAM LOCKHART, to whom We have given this letter to be carried to your Majesty, is a Scot by nation, of an honourable house, beloved by us, known for his very great fidelity, valour, and integrity of character. He, that he may reside in France, and be with you, so as to be able assiduously to signify to you my singular respect for your Majesty, and my desire not only for the preservation of peace between us but also for the perpetuation of friendship, has received from us the amplest instructions. We request, therefore, that you will receive him kindly, and give him gracious audience as often as there may be occasion, and place absolutely the same trust in whatsoever may be said and settled by him in our name as if the same things had been said and settled by Ourselves in person. We shall hold them all as ratified. Meanwhile we pray all peace and prosperity for your Majesty and your kingdom."

(LXXIII.) To CARDINAL MAZARIN, _April_ 9, 1656 (?):--A Letter accompanying the above, and introducing LOCKHART specially to the Cardinal. It is also worth translating entire: "Seeing the affairs of France most happily administered by your counsels, and daily increasing in prosperity to such a degree that your high popularity and high authority in government are justly increased and enlarged accordingly, I have thought it fit, when sending an ambassador to your King with letters and instructions, to recommend him also most expressly to your Eminence: to wit, WILLIAM LOCKHART, a man of honourable family, closely related to us, and respected by us besides for his singular trustworthiness. Wherefore your Eminence may receive as our own whatsoever shall be communicated by him in our name, and may also freely commit and entrust to him in my confidence whatever you shall think fit to communicate in return. From him too you will learn more at large, what I now again profess, as more than once already, how high is my feeling of your great services to France, and what a well-wisher I am to your reputation and dignity."[1]

[Footnote 1: Neither of these Letters about Lockhart is in the Printed Collection or in Phillips; but both are in the Skinner Transcript (Nos. 110 and 111 there), whence they have been printed by Mr. Hamilton in his _Milton Papers_ (pp. 9-10). He dates them both, as in the Transcript, "_West., Aug._ 1658;" but that is clearly a mistake, and the letters are out of their proper places in the Transcript. Lockhart was nominated for the Embassy in Dec. 1655, and he "took ship at Rye on the 14th of April, 1656, on his way to France" (see a letter of Thurloe's to Pell in Vaughan's _Protectorate_, I. 376-377). I have ventured to affix the exact date "April 9, 1656" to the two letters, because it is on that day that I find Lockhart's departure on his embassy definitely settled in the Council Order Books. Before "Aug. 1658" Lockhart had known Louis XIV. and the Cardinal intimately for more than two years and needed no introduction.]

(LXXIV.) To CHARLES X., KING OF SWEDEN, _April_ 17, 1656:--Another extremely polite letter of the Protector to his Swedish Majesty, marking a farther stage in the proceedings of the Swedish Treaty.--That Treaty had been going on at Dorset House, the Swedish Ambassador and the Swedish Resident, continuing their colloquies with Whitlocke. Fiennes, and Strickland, about pitch, tar, hemp, mutual privileges of trade between England and Sweden, trade also with Prussia, Poland, and Russia, and all the other items of the Treaty, and the Ambassador always pushing on the business and chafing at the slow progress made. Again and again he had taken serious offence at something. Once it was because, waiting on the Protector at Whitehall, he had been kept half-an-hour before the Protector appeared. It was with difficulty he was prevented from going away without seeing his Highness; "he durst not for his head," he said, "admit of such dishonour to his master"; he had to be pacified by an apology. Then, when he did see the Protector, he had fresh cause for dissatisfaction. The propositions of the Treaty, as agreed upon so far between the Commissioners and the Ambassador, having been reported to the Council, and there having been a discussion on them there, Thurloe taking a chief part, new hesitations and difficulties had arisen, so that, when Cromwell conversed with Count Bundt, the Count was amazed to find his Highness cooler about the Treaty altogether than he had expected, and again harping on Protestant interests and the necessity of including the Dutch. The Count seems then to have broken bounds in his talk about the Protector to Whitlocke and others. In his own country, Sweden, he said, "when a man professed sincerity, they understood it to be plain and clear dealing"; if a man meant _Yea_ he said _Yea_, and if he meant _No_ he said _No_; but in England it seemed to be different. The explanations and soft words of Whitlocke and the rest having calmed him down again, the Treaty proceeded.--One of the most important meetings at Dorset House, by Whitlocke's account, was on the 8th of April. Mr. Jessop, as one of the Clerks of the Council, was there by appointment, and read "the new Articles in English as they were drawn up according to the last resolves of the Council." A long debate on the Articles followed. The Ambassador begged "to be excused if he should mistake anything of the sense of them, they being in English, which he could not so well understand as if they had been in Latin, which they must be put into in conclusion; but he did observe," &c. In fact, he restated his objections to making pitch, tar, hemp, flax, and sails, contraband, as they were the staple produce of Sweden. Lord Fiennes, in reply, premised: "that the Articles were brought in English for the saving of time, and they should be put in Latin when his Excellency should desire," and then discussed the main subject. Whitlocke followed, and the Ambassador again, and Fiennes again, all in English; and "Mynheer Coyet then spake in Latin, that pitch, tar, and hemp were not in their own nature, nor by the law of nations, esteemed contraband goods," &c. Strickland said a few words in reply, and then Whitlocke made a longer and more lawyer-like answer to Mynheer Coyet,--also, as he takes care to tell us, speaking in Latin. The discussion, which was long protracted, and extended to other topics, was closed by the Ambassador; who said "he desired a copy of these Articles now debated, and, if they pleased, that he might have it in Latin, which he would consider of." This was promised.--The meeting so described was nearly the last in which the Swedish Resident, M. Coyet, took part. He was on the eve of his departure from England, leaving his principal, Count Bundt, to finish the Treaty; and the present brief letter of Milton for Cromwell to his Swedish Majesty has reference to that fact. "Peter Julius Coyet," it begins, "having performed his mission to us, and so performed it that he ought not to be dismissed by us without the distinction of justly earned praise, is on the point of returning to your Majesty"; and in three sentences more very handsome testimony is borne to Coyet's ability and fidelity in the discharge of his duty, and his Swedish Majesty is again assured of the Protector's high regard for himself. "A constant course of victories against all enemies of the Church" is the Protector's wish for him.--Evidently, again, Cromwell, whatever might be the issue of the Treaty, was anxious to stand well with the Scandinavian; in corroboration of which we have this special paragraph in Whitlocke under date May 3: "This day the Protector gave the honour of knighthood to MYNHEER COYET, the King of Sweden's Resident here, who was now SIR PETER COYET, and gave him a fair jewel, with his Highness's picture, and a rich gold chain: it cost about £400." Coyet, therefore, had remained in London a fortnight after the date of Milton's letter.[1] Indeed he remained a few days longer, assisting in the Treaty to the last.

[Footnote 1: Whitlocke, IV. 227-255: i.e. from Feb. 20, 1655-6, to May 3, 1656.]

(LXXV.) To Louis XIV. OF FRANCE, _May_ 14, 1656:[1]--John Dethicke, Merchant, at present Lord Mayor of the City of London, and another merchant, named William Wakefield, have represented to his Highness that, as long ago as October 1649, a ship of theirs, called _The Jonas of London_, was taken at the mouth of the Thames by one White of Barking, acting under a commission from the son of the late King, and taken into Dunkirk, then governed for the French King by M. L'Estrades. They had applied for satisfaction at the time, but had received a harsh answer from the governor. Perhaps his French Majesty, on receipt of this letter, will direct justice to be done.

[Footnote 1: Not dated in Printed Collection, Phillips, or Skinner Transcript; but dated by reference to it in a subsequent letter.]

(LXXVI.) TO THE STATES-GENERAL OF THE UNITED PROVINCES, _May_ 1656:--Also about a ship, but this time for the recovery of insurance on one. She was _The Good Hope of London_, belonging to John Brown, Nicholas Williams, and others; she had been insured in Amsterdam; she had been taken by a ship of the Dutch East India Company on her way to the East Indies; the insurers had refused to pay the sum insured for; and for six years the poor owners had been hopelessly fighting the case in the Dutch courts. It is a case of real hardship.

(LXXVII.) TO THE SAME, _May_ 1656:--Three times before letters have been written to the States-General in the interest of Thomas and William Lower, who had been left property in Holland by their father's will, but have been unjustly kept out of the same by powerful persons there, and tossed from law-court to law-court. This fourth application, it is hoped, may be more successful.

These thirteen State Letters, were there nothing else, would prove that in and after the winter of 1655-6 Milton's services were again in request for ordinary office-work. But they do not represent the whole of his renewed industry in that employment.

The tremendous Swedish ambassador, Count Bundt, whose energy in his master's interests had swept through Whitehall like a storm, searching out flaws, waking up Thurloe and the Council, and obliging Cromwell himself to be more circumspect, had made his influence felt, it seems, even in the house of the blind Secretary-Extraordinary. It was on the 8th of April, 1656, as we have just learnt from Whitlocke, that the Ambassador, in one of his conferences with Whitlocke, Fiennes, and Strickland, in Dorset House, M. Coyet also being present, had rather objected to the fact that the new Articles of the Treaty, drafted for his consideration by the Council, and brought to the conference by Mr. Jessop, had been brought in English, and not in Latin, as would have been business-like. Latin or English, as the Commissioners knew, it would have been all the same to Count Bundt, inasmuch as it was the matter of the Articles that displeased him; but they had promised that he should have them in Latin, and Whitlocke had judiciously taken the opportunity of speaking in Latin, in reply to some of M. Coyet's observations in the same tongue, as if to show the Ambassador that Latin was by no means so scarce a commodity as he seemed to suppose about the Protector's Court. There had been delay, however, in furnishing the promised Latin translation; and Count Bundt, glad of that new occasion for fault-finding, did not let it escape him. "The Swedish Ambassador," relates Whitlocke under date May 6, 1656, "again complained of the delays in his business, and that, when he had desired to have the Articles of this Treaty put into Latin, according to the custom in Treaties, it was fourteen days they made him stay for that translation, and sent it to one MR. MILTON, a blind man, to put them into Latin, who, he said, must use an amanuensis to read it to him, and that amanuensis might publish the matter of the Articles as he pleased; and that it seemed strange to him there should be none but a blind man capable of putting a few Articles into Latin: that the Chancellor [the late Oxenstiern] with his own hand penned the Articles made at Upsal [in Whitlocke's Treaty], and so he heard the Ambassador Whitlocke did for those on his part. The employment of MR. MILTON was excused to him, because several other servants of the Council, fit for that employment, were then absent."[1] If this is exact, Count Bundt, having been promised the Latin translation on the 8th of April, did not receive it till about the 22nd, and he had been nursing his wrath on the subject for a fortnight more before it exploded. In the delay itself he had certainly good ground for complaint. There was reason also in the complaint that important secret documents had gone to a blind man, who must employ an amanuensis, unless the Commissioners could have replied that the Protector and the Council had thoroughly seen to that matter, and that Milton's amanuensis on such occasions was always a sworn clerk from the Whitehall office. On the whole, the Commissioners seem to have taken more easily than became their places, or than the Protector would have liked, the insinuation of the imperious Count that the Protector's official retinue must be a ragged and undisciplined rout, not to be compared with Karl Gustav's. May not Whitlocke himself, however, thinking at that moment of his own Latin sufficiency, have sharpened the point of the insinuation?[2]

[Footnote 1: Whitlocke, IV. 257.]

[Footnote 2: Whitlocke, from his interest in Swedish affairs, had taken ample notes of the negotiations with Count Bundt; and his story of them is unusually minute. One observes that more than once in the course of it he dwells on the fact that, though employed by the Protector in this business, and taking the lead in it, he was still _not_ one of the Council.]

The excuse of the Commissioners to Count Bundt for having sent the Articles to Milton for translation was that "several other servants of the Council, fit for that employment, were then absent." They mast have referred, in particular, to Mr. Philip Meadows, the Latin Secretary in Ordinary. He had, we find, taken some part in the negotiation in its earlier stage;[1] but, before it had proceeded far, he had been selected for a service which took him out of England. In December 1655 it had been resolved to send a special agent to Portugal; and on the 19th of February, 1655-6, at a Council meeting at which Cromwell himself was present, Meadows, thought of from the first, was formally nominated as the fit person. It was a great promotion for Meadows; for, whereas his salary hitherto in the Latin Secretaryship had been £200 a year, his allowance for the Portuguese agency was to be £800 a year or more. On the 21st of February he had £300 advanced to him for his outfit; on the 28th he was voted £100, being for two quarters of his Secretarial salary due to him, with £50 more for the quarter then current but not completed; and within a few days afterwards he was on his way to Lisbon.[2] His departure, I should say--preceded perhaps by a week or two of cessation from office duty in preparation for it--was the real cause of the re-employment of Milton at this time in such routine work as we have seen him engaged in. All or most of his former letters for the Protector, it may have been noticed, e.g. those on the Piedmontese business, had been on important occasions, such as might justify resort to the Latin Secretary Extraordinary; but in the batch written since Dec. 1655, when Meadows's Portuguese mission had been resolved on, the ordinary and the extraordinary come together, and Milton, in writing letters about ships, as well as in translating draft articles, does work that would have been done by Meadows. And this arrangement, we may add, was to continue henceforth. For, despite the sneers of Count Bundt as to the poverty of the Protector's official staff, the Protector and Council, we shall find, were in no hurry to fill up the place left vacant by Meadows, but were quite satisfied that Mr. Milton should go on doing his best alone, with Thurloe to instruct him, and with the help of such underlings in Latin as Thurloe could put at his disposal. My belief is that Milton was pleased at this trust in his renewed ability for ordinary business.

[Footnote 1: Whitlocke, IV. 218; where it is mentioned that in Dec. 1655 Meadows communicated with Whitlocke on the subject of the Treaty by Thurloe's orders.]

[Footnote 2: Council Order Books of dates. It is curious that Whitlocke, noting the new appointment of Meadows, under March 1655-6, enters it thus: "Mr. Meadows was going for _Denmark_, agent for the Protector." Meadows did go to Denmark, but not till a good while afterwards; and the blunder of _Denmark_ at this date for _Portugal_ is one of the many proofs that Whitlocke's memorials are not all strictly contemporary, but often combinations of reminiscences and afterthoughts with the materials of an actual diary.]

Among the matters that occupied the attention of the Protector's Government about this time was the state of Popular Literature.

It is a fact, easily explained by the laws of human nature, and capable of being proved statistically, that since the strong government of Cromwell had come in, and something like calm and leisure had become possible, there had been a return of people's fancies to the lighter Muses. Nothing strikes one more, in turning over the Registers of the old London Book-trade, than the steady increase through the Protectorate of the proportion of books of secular and general interest to those of controversy and theology. One feels oneself still in the age of Puritanism, it is true, but as if past the densest and most stringent years of Puritanism and coming once more into a freer and merrier air. Poems, romances, books of humour, ballads and songs, reprints of Elizabethan tragedies and comedies, reprints of such pieces as Shakespeare's _Venus and Adonis_, collections of facetious extracts from the wits and poets of the reigns of James and Charles I., are now not uncommon. Humphrey Moseley, Milton's publisher of 1645, faithful to his old trade-instinct for poetry and the finer literature generally, was still at the head of the publishers in that line; but Henry Herringman, who had published Lord Broghill's _Parthenissa_, had begun to rival Moseley, and there were other caterers of amusing and humorous books. Publishers imply authors; and so in the London of the Protectorate, apart from stray survivors from among the wits of King Charles's reign, there were men of a younger sort, bred amid the more recent Puritan conditions, but with literary zests that were Bohemian rather than Puritan, Among these, as we have hinted, and as we may now state more distinctly, were Milton's nephews, Edward and John Phillips.[1]

[Footnote 1: My notes from the Stationers' Registers, from 1652 to 1656.]

Such Popular Literature as we have described had been left perfectly free. Indeed Censorship or Licensing of books generally, as distinct from newspapers, had all but ceased. Since Bradshaw's Press-Act of 1649, it had been rather rare for an author or bookseller to take the trouble, in the case of a non-political book, to procure the imprimatur of any official licenser in addition to the ordinary trade-registration; and in this, as an established custom, Cromwell's Government had acquiesced. Only in one particular, apart from politics, was there any disposition to interfere with the liberty of printing. This was where popular wit, humour, or poetry might pass into the ribald, profane, or indecent. Vigilance against open immorality had from the first appeared to Cromwell one of the chief duties of his Government; and he seems to have been unusually attentive to this duty in 1655-6, when he had just put the country under the military police of his Major-Generals and their subordinates. Then it is that we hear most of the suppressing of horse-races and the like, and that we are least surprised at encountering such a piece of information as that "players were taken in Newcastle and whipped for rogues." Now, though by this time there had already, by previous care on the part of Government, been a considerable cleansing of the Popular Literature of London, yet something or other in the state of the book-world about 1655-6 seems to have occasioned new and more special interference. I believe it to have been the increased frequency of ballads, facetiæ, and reprints, of higher literary character than the coarse pamphlets that had been suppressed, but objectionable on the same moral grounds. At all events, all but simultaneously with the Order of the Protector and his Council, of Sept. 5, 1655, concentrating the whole newspaper press in the hands of Needham and Thurloe (see ante pp. 51-52), there had been a new general Ordinance "against Scandalous Books and Pamphlets and for the Regulation of Printing" (Aug. 18, 1655), and it was not long before this Ordinance was put in operation in one or two cases of the kind indicated. Here are some extracts from the Order Books of the Council in April and May 1656:--

_Tuesday, April_ 1656:--"That it be referred to the Earl of Mulgrave, Colonel Jones, and Lord Strickland, or any two of them, to examine the business touching the book entitled _Sportive Wit or the Muses' Merriment_, and to send for the author and printer, and report the same to the Council."

_Friday, April_ 25, 1656:--Present: the Lord President Lawrence, the Earl of Mulgrave, Lord Lambert, Sir Gilbert Pickering, Colonel Sydenham, Colonel Jones, the Lord Deputy of Ireland (Fleetwood), Lord Viscount Lisle, Mr. Rous, Major-General Skippon, and Lord Strickland. "Colonel Jones reports from the Committee of the Council to whom was referred the consideration of a book entitled _Sportive Wit or the Muses' Merriment_, that the said book contains in it much scandalous, lascivious, scurrilous, and profane matter. _Ordered_ by his Highness the Lord Protector, by and with the advice of the Council, That the Lord Mayor of the City of London and the rest of the Committee for the regulation of Printing do cause all such [copies] of the said book as are not already seized to be forthwith seized on, wherever they shall be found, and cause the same, together with those already seized, to be delivered to the Sheriffs of London and Middlesex, who are to cause the same to be forthwith publicly burnt.--He further reports that Nathaniel Brookes, Stationer, at the Angel in Cornhill, caused the said book to be printed; that the printers thereof were John Grismond, living in Ivy Lane, and James Cotterill, living in Lambeth Hill; and that JOHN PHILLIPS, of Westminster, was the author of the Epistle Dedicatory. _Ordered_, That it be referred to Sir John Barkstead, Knight, Lieutenant of the Tower [and Major-General for Westminster and Middlesex], to cause the fines to be levied on the said persons according to law: [also] that the said persons do attend the Council on Tuesday next."--Milton's younger nephew, therefore, had been the editor of the offending volume. Of the eleven members of Council present when this fact came out, six were among those friends of Milton whom he had specially mentioned in his _Defensio Secunda_: viz. Fleetwood, Lambert, Lawrence, Pickering, Sydenham, and Strickland.

_Saturday, April_ 26, 1656:--His Highness the Lord Protector approves of a great many recent Orders of Council presented to him all at once by Mr. Scobell, the Clerk of the Council. Among them is the order "for burning the book called _Sportive Wit_."

_Friday, May_ 9, 1656:--His Highness the Lord Protector present in person, with Lord President Lawrence, Lambert, Fleetwood, Sir Gilbert Pickering, Strickland, Sydenham, and Jones:--_Ordered_, &c. "That the Lord Mayor of the City of London and the rest of the Committee for regulating Printing do cause all the books entitled _Choice Droliery, Songs and Sonnets_ (being stuffed with profane and obscene matter, tending to the corruption of manners), to be seized wherever the same shall be found, and cause the same to be delivered to the Sheriffs of London and Middlesex, who are required to give order that the same be burnt."

Copies of the second of the two books thus condemned by Cromwell and his Council have, I believe, survived the burning, The publisher was a John Sweeting, who had duly registered the book on the 9th of February 1655-6, shortly after which date it had appeared with this full title, _Choice Drollery, Songs and Sonnets: being a Collection of Divers Eminent Pieces of Poetry of several Eminent Authors, never before printed_. I have not seen any copy of the other book bearing the precise title _Sportive Wit, or the Muses' Merriment_; but there are surviving copies of what may be the same with an alternative title, viz. _Wit and Drollery: Jovial Poems, never before printed, by Sir J.M., Jas. S., Sir W.D., J.D., and other admirable wits_. It had been out in London since. Jan. 18, 1655-6, had been registered on the 30th of that month, and is a respectably printed little book of 160 pages, with the motto "_Ut nectar ingenium_" under the title, and with, the imprint _London. Printed for Nath. Brook, at the Angel in Cornhill_, 1656. It contains moreover a Dedication "To the truly noble Edward Pepes, Esq.," and an Epistle "To the Courteous Reader," both signed with the initials J.P. Either, therefore, this is the same book as the _Sportive Wit or the Muses' Merriment_ which, figures in the Orders of the Council, or John Phillips had edited simultaneously for Nathaniel Brooke (who had been the publisher of his _Satyr against Hypocrites_ in the preceding August) two books of the same general character. Even on the latter supposition, _Wit and Drollery,_ in the absence of _Sportive Wit,_ may serve as a representative of that production of the same editor and the same publisher. The substance of Phillips's Epistle to the Reader in _Wit and Drollery_ is as follows:--

"Reader,--To give thee a broadside of plain dealing, this _Wit_ I present thee with is such as can only be in fashion, invented purposely to keep off the violent assaults of melancholy, assisted by the additional engines and weapons of sack and good company... What hath not been extant of Sir J. M., of Ja. S., of Sir W. D., of J. D., and other miraculous muses of the times, are here at thy service; and, as Webster, at the end of his play called _The White Devil,_ subscribes that the action of Perkins crowned the whole play, so, when thou viewest the title, and readest the sign of 'Ben Jonson's Head, in the backside of the Exchange, and the Angel in Cornhill,' where they are sold, enquire who could better furnish thee with such sparkling copies of wit."

Among the included pieces are the younger Alexander Gill's lampoon on Ben Jonson for his _Magnetic Lady_ and Ben Jonson's reply to the same (ante Vol. I. pp. 528-529); there are also several pieces of Suckling; but, for the rest, as the title-page bears, the volume consists chiefly of specimens of _"Sir J. M."_ (Sir John Mennes), _"Jas. S."_ (James Smith), _"Sir W. D"_ (Sir William Davenant), and _"J. D."_ (Dr. Donne), professing not to have been before in print. Whether this was so, and whether the pieces were all authentically by these poets, need not here concern us. It is enough to say that many of the pieces are decidedly, and some very grossly, of the improper kind. The reader will not expect to have this proved by extract; but of the more innocent "drollery" the following stanzas from a poem entitled _"Nonsense"_ may be a sample:--

O that my lungs could bleat like buttered pease! But bleating of my lungs hath caught the itch, And are as mangy as the Irish seas, That doth engender windmills in a bitch.

I grant that rainbows, being lulled asleep, Snort like a woodknife in a lady's eyes; Which makes her grieve to see a pudding creep; For creeping puddings only please the wise.

Note that a hard-roed herring should presume To swing a tithe-pig in a catskin purse, For fear the hailstones which did fall at Rome By lessening of the fault should make it worse.

For 'tis most certain winter woolsacks grow, Till that the sheepshorn planets give the hint, From geese to swans, if men could keep them so, And pickle pancakes in Geneva print.

At worst, the volume was but a catchpenny collection of pieces of a kind of which there was plenty already dispersed in print under the names of the same authors, or of others as classical; and, if this was the same book as the _Sportive Wit,_ or at all like that book, it may have been some mere accident of the moment that brought Government censure upon Phillips's volume, while others, as had, escaped. But how annoying the whole occurrence to Milton![1]

[Footnote 1: Thomason copy of _Wit and Drollery_ in the British Museum, dated Jan. 18, 1655-6.--I failed to find a book with the title _The Sportive Wit_ in the Thomason Collection, and hence my hypothesis that there was but one book, with alternative titles. I am rather inclined to believe, however, that there were two, and have a vague recollection of having seen two books, one with one of the titles and the other with the other, advertised in a contemporary newspaper list of books on sale by the publisher Brooke. In Lowndes's Bibliog. Manual by Bohn, _sub voce_ "Wit," the two books are given as distinct; but then _Sportive Wit or the Muses' Merriment_ is there dated 1656, while there is no notice of an edition of _Wit and Drollery, Jovial Poems,_ till 1661. Though I leave the matter in doubt, some collector of Facetiac may know all about it. In any case, if _Wit and Drollery_ was not the identical book condemned, it is of interest to us as being one of Phillips's editing at the same moment.--Donne, who figures so strangely in _Wit and Drollery,_ had been dead twenty-five years, but was accessible in various editions and reprints of his Poems. The other three poets named in the title-page as the chief authors of the pieces--Sir John Mennes, James Smith, and Davenant--were still alive and publishing for themselves. Indeed the _Musarum Delitice, or Muses' Recreation,_ consisting of pieces by Mennes and Smith, had been published by Herringman only the year before (1655), and was in its second edition in 1658; and it may have been the success of this and Smith in it. Mennes, a stout book that led to Phillips's publication and to the use of the names of Mennes Royalist sea-captain, who had served with Prince Rupert, and was in exile at our present date, became Chief Comptroller of the Navy after the Restoration and lived to 1670. Smith was a Devonshire clergyman, of Royalist antecedents, who had complied with the existing powers and retained his living. After the Restoration he had promotion in the Church: and he died in 1667.]

Less unsatisfactory to Milton, must hare been the literary appearances about the same time of his elder nephew, Edward Phillips. On the same day on which the stationer Nathaniel Brooke had registered _Wit and Drollery_ edited by John Phillips, i.e. on Jan. 30, 1655-6, he had registered two tales or small novels called "_The Illustrious Shepherdess_" and "_The Imperious Brother_" both "written originally in Spanish and now Englished by Edward Phillips, Gent."[1] The first of these translations, both from the Spanish of Juan Perez de Montalvan (1602-1638), is dedicated by Phillips to the Marchioness of Dorchester, in what Godwin calls "an extraordinary style of fustian and bombast."[2] With the exception, of such affectation in style, which Phillips afterwards threw off, there is nothing ill to report of these early performances of his; and two translations from the Spanish were a creditable proof of accomplishment. But still more interesting was another literary performance of Edward Phillips's of the same date. This was his edition of the Poems of Drummond of Hawthornden.

[Footnote 1: Stationers' Registers of date.]

[Footnote 2: Godwin's _Lives of the Phillipses_, 138-139. I know the translations only from Godwin's account of them.]

Drummond had died in 1649, leaving in manuscript, at Hawthornden or in Edinburgh, not only his _History of Scotland from 1423 to 1542, or through the Reigns of the Five Jameses_, but also various other prose-writings, and a good deal of verse in addition to what he had published in his life-time. Drummond's son and heir being under age, the care of the MSS. had devolved chiefly on Drummond's brother-in-law, Sir John Scot of Scotstarvet, a well-known Scottish judge, antiquary, and eccentric. Hitherto the troubles in Scotland had prevented the publication by Sir John of these remains of his celebrated relative, the only real Scottish poet of his generation. With the other Scottish dignitaries and officials who had resisted the English invasion, Sir John himself had been turned out of his public posts, heavily fined, and remitted into private life (Vol. IV. p. 561). Gradually, however, as Scotland had become accustomed to her union with England, things had come round again for the old ex-Judge, as well as for others. There is reason to believe that he was in London for some time in 1654-5, soliciting the Protector and the Council for favour in the matter of his fine, if not for restoration to one of his former offices, the Director of the Scottish Chancery. The case of Scot of Scotstarvet, at all events, _was_ then under discussion in the Council, with the result that his fine, which had been originally £1500, but had been reduced to £500, was first reduced farther to £300, and next, apparently by Cromwell's own interposition, altogether "discharged and taken off, in consideration of the pains he hath taken and the service he hath done to the Commonwealth."[1] If Scotstarvet himself, then seventy years of age, had come to London on the business, he must have brought Drummond's MSS., or copies of them, with him. On the 16th of January 1854-5 there had been registered at Stationers' Hall, as forthcoming, Drummond's _History of Scotland through the Reigns of the Five Jameses_, with a selection of other prose-writings of his, chiefly of a political kind; and the volume did appear immediately, as a handsome small folio, bearing date 1655, and "printed by Henry Hills for Rich. Tomlins and himself." As Henry Hills was one of the printers to his Highness and the Council, the appearance from his press of a volume so full of conservative doctrine, inculcating so strongly the duty of submission to kingly prerogative and to constituted authority, may not be without significance. Another interesting circumstance about it is that it had appeared under the charge of a London editor, "Mr. Hall of Gray's Inn,"--i.e., unless I am mistaken, that Mr. John Hall whom we saw brought in, at £100 a year, to do pieces of literary hackwork for the Council under Milton as long ago as May 1649, and who had been in some such employment for the Council, at least occasionally, ever since (ante p. 177). Accidental or not, the fact that the editor of Drummond's Prose Writings, selected by Scotstarvet or by the printer Hills, should have been a servant of the Council of State, and a kind of underling of Milton in that capacity, is at least curious. But it becomes more curious when taken in connexion, with the fact that the editor of the companion volume, containing the first professedly complete edition of Drummond's Poems, was Milton's elder nephew. This volume, though announced by Mr. Hall in his Introduction to the Prose Volume, did not appear till about a year afterwards, and then as an octavo of 224 pages, with this title, _"Poems by that most famous Wit, William Drummond of Hawthornden ... London, Printed for Rickard Tomlins, at the Sun and Bible, neare Pye-Corner,_ 1656." The volume is dedicated to Sir John Scot of Scotstarvet, and includes about sixty small pieces of Drummond never before published, which Sir John had supplied from the Hawthornden MSS. Apart from revision of the proofs, Phillips's editorship consisted in a prose preface, signed "E.P.," and a set of commendatory verses, signed in full "Edward Phillips."

[Footnote 1: Council Order Books, March 9 and March 19, 1654-5.]

Drummond's Poetry had long been known to Milton in the fragmentary state in which alone it had been till then accessible, i.e. in the successive instalments of it published by Drummond himself in Edinburgh between 1613 and 1638. There might be proof also that Drummond was one of Milton's favourites, and regarded by him as one of the sweetest and truest poets that there had been in Great Britain through that age of miscellaneous metrical effort, much of it miscalled Poetry, which included the whole of the laureateship of Ben Jonson and the beginning of that of Davenant. Accordingly, it is not difficult to suppose that phrases about Drummond from Milton's own mouth were worked by Phillips into his prose preface to the London edition of the Poems of Drummond. There is a little hyperbolism in that preface; but the opening definition of Drummond's genius is exact, and the fitness of some of the phrases quite admirable. Thus:--

"To say that these Poems are the effects of a genius the most polite and verdant that ever the Scottish nation produced, although it he a commendation not to be rejected (for it is well known that that country hath afforded many rare and admirable wits), yet it is not the highest that may be given him; for, should I affirm that neither Tasso, nor Guarini, nor any of the most neat and refined spirits of Italy, nor even the choicest of our English Poets, can challenge to themselves any advantage above him, it could not be judged any attribute superior to what he deserves ... And, though he hath not had the good fortune to be so generally famed abroad as many others, perhaps of less esteem, yet this is a consideration that cannot diminish, but rather advance, his credit; for, by breaking forth of obscurity, he will attract the higher admiration, and, like the sun emerging from a cloud, appear at length with so much the more forcible rays..."

Milton's interesting German friend, Henry Oldenburg, had recently removed from London to Oxford. "In the beginning of this year," says Wood in his _Fasti_ for 1656, "studied in Oxon, in the condition of a sojourner, HENRY OLDENBURG, who wrote himself sometimes GRUBENDOL [anagram of OLDENBUBG]; and in the month of June he was entered a, student by the name of _'Henricus Oldenburg, Bremensis, Nobilis Saxo'_: at which time he was tutor to a young Irish nobleman, called Henry O'Bryen [son of Henry, Earl of Thomond], then also a student there."[1] As we construe the case, Oldenburg, having been for some years in England as agent for Bremen, had begun to see that he was likely to remain in England permanently; and he had gone to Oxford for the benefit of a year of study there with readings in the Bodleian, and the society more especially of Robert Boyle, Wilkins, Wallis, Petty, and the rest of the Oxford colony or offshoot from the _Invisible College_ of London. Desirable on its own account, this migration to Oxford had been made easier to him financially, if it had not been, occasioned, by the arrangement that he should be tutor there to the young Irish nobleman whom Wood names. But this young nobleman was not to be Oldenburg's only pupil at Oxford. Though Wood does not mention the fact, there went with him thither, or there speedily followed him thither, to be also under his charge, another young Irish nobleman. This was no other than, our own Richard Jones, son of Viscount and Lady Ranelagh, the Benjamin among Milton's pupils. Whatever had been the nature of Milton's recent instructions of the youth, they had now ceased, and Oldenburg was to be thenceforward the youth's more regular tutor. It does not seem to have been intended that young Ranelagh should formally enter a college, so as to receive the usual education at the University, but only that he should obtain some acquaintance with Oxford and its ways, and be for a while in the society of his uncle Boyle, and of his two cousins, Viscount Dungarvan and Mr. Richard Boyle. If these two sons of the Earl of Cork were still under the tutorship of Dr. Peter Du Moulin, Oldenburg and Jones at Oxford must have come necessarily also into constant intercourse with that very secret admirer of Milton. Oxford, we do gather, was still Du Moulin's head-quarters; but he was so much on the wing thence that Oldenburg might expect to succeed him in the tutorship of at least one of the young Boyles. Oldenburg was then thirty years of age, and young Ranelagh about sixteen.

[Footnote 1: Wood's Fasti, II. 197.]

Among four letters to young Jones or Ranelagh included in Milton's Latin Familiar Epistles one is undated. It is put second of the four in the printed collection, but it ought to have been put first. It is Milton's first letter to the youth in his new position at Oxford under Henry Oldenburg's charge. The date may be in or about May 1636:--

"To the Noble Youth, RICHARD JONES.

"I received your letter much after its date,--not till it had lain, I think, fifteen days, put away somewhere, at your mother's. Most gladly at last I recognised in it your continued affection for me and sense of gratitude. In truth my goodwill to you, and readiness to give you the most faithful admonitions, have never but justified, I hope, both your excellent mother's opinion of me and confidence in me, and your own disposition. There is, indeed, as you write, plenty of amenity and salubrity in the place where you now are; there are books enough for the needs of a University: if only the amenity of the spot contributed as much to the genius of the inhabitants as it does to pleasant living, nothing would seem wanting to the happiness of the place. The Library there, too, is splendidly rich; but, unless the minds of the students are made more instructed by means of it in the best kinds of study, you might more properly call it a book-warehouse than a Library. Most justly you acknowledge that to all these helps there must be added a spirit for learning and habits of industry. Take care, and steady care, that I may never have occasion to find you in a different state of mind; and this you will most easily avoid if you diligently obey the weighty and friendly precepts of the highly accomplished Henry Oldenburg beside you. Farewell, my well-beloved Richard; and allow me to exhort and incite you to virtue and piety, like another Timothy, by the example of that most exemplary woman, your mother.

"Westminster."

In this letter one observes the rather strict tone of Mentorship assumed towards young Ranelagh, as if Milton was aware of something in the youth, that needed checking, or as if Lady Ranelagh, with her motherly knowledge, had given Milton a hint that the strict tone with him would be generally the best. The tendency to a depreciation of Oxford, which is also visible in the letter, is no surprise from Milton.

The Anti-Oxonian feeling, if that is not too strong a name for it after all, is even more apparent in Milton's next letter, addressed not to young Ranelagh, but to his tutor. Young Ranelagh, it appears, not long after the receipt of the foregoing, had run up to London on a brief visit to his mother, and had brought Milton a letter from Oldenburg. To this Milton replies as follows:--

"To HENRY OLDENBURG, Agent for Bremen with the English Government.

"Your letter, brought by young Ranelagh, has found me rather busy; and so I am forced to be briefer than I should wish. You have certainly kept _your_ departing promise of writing to me, and that with a punctuality surpassed. I believe, by no one hitherto in the payment of a debt. I congratulate you on your present retirement, to my loss though it be, since it gives pleasure to you; I congratulate you also on that happy state of mind which enables you so easily to set aside at once the ambition and the ease of city-life, and to lift your thoughts to higher matters of contemplation. What advantage that retirement affords, however, besides plenty of books, I know not; and those persons you have found there as fit associates in your studies I should suppose to be such rather from their own natural constitution than from the discipline of the place,--unless perchance, from missing you here, I do less justice to the place for keeping you away. Meanwhile you yourself rightly remark that there are too many there whose occupation it is to spoil divine and human things alike by their frivolous quibblings, that they may not seem to be doing absolutely nothing for those many endowments by which they are supported so much to the public detriment. All this you will understand better for yourself. Those ancient annals of the Chinese from the Flood downwards which you say are promised by the Jesuit Martini[1] are doubtless very eagerly expected on account of the novelty of the thing; but I do not see what authority or confirmation they can add to the Mosaic books. Our Cyriack, whom you bade me salute, returns the salutation. Farewell.

"Westminster: June 25, 1656."

[Footnote 1: Martin Martini, Jesuit Missionary to China, was born 1614 and died 1661.]

That Count Bundt's remonstrance on the employment of a blind man in the Protector's diplomatic business had had no effect will be proved by the following list of state-letters written by Milton immediately after that remonstrance. We bring the list down to Sept. 1656, the month in which the Second Parliament of the Protectorate met:

(LXXVIII.) To KINGS AND FOREIGN STATES GENERALLY, _June_ 1656:[1]--This is a Passport by the Protector in favour of PETER GEORGE ROMSWINCKEL, Doctor of Laws. He had been born and bred in the Roman Catholic Church, and had held high offices in that Church at Cologne, but had become an ardent Protestant, and had been for some time in England. He was now on his way back to Germany, to assume the post of Councillor to the widowed Duchess of Symmeren (?); and the Protector desires all English officers, consuls, agents, &c., and also all foreign Governments, to give him free passage and handsome treatment. The tone of the letter is even haughtily Protestant. On the ground that "most people think in Religion with easy acquiescence in exactly what they have received from their forefathers, and not what they themselves, after imploring divine help, have learnt to be true by their own perception and knowledge," the case of Romswinckel is represented as peculiarly interesting; and such phrases as "the Papal superstition" are not spared. The passport was probably expected to come only into Protestant hands.

[Footnote 1: This Letter is not given in the Printed Collection or in Phillips; it is in the Skinner Transcript, and has been printed by Mr. Hamilton in his _Milton Papers_ (pp. 5-6).]

(LXXIX.) To CHARLES X., KING OF SWEDEN, _June_ 1656:[1]--A special recommendation of the above Romswinckel to the Swedish King, in the same high Protestant tone.

[Footnote 1: Not in Printed Collection or Phillips, but in Skinner Transcript, and printed by Hamilton (_Milton Papers_, 6-7).]

(LXXX.) TO THE KING OF PORTUGAL, _July_ 1656:--The Portuguese merchants of the Brazil Company owe certain English merchants a considerable sum of money on shipping accounts since 1649 and 1650. The English merchants, understanding that, by recent orders of his Portuguese Majesty, they are likely to lose the principal of the debt, and be put off with the bare interest, have applied to the Protector. He thinks it a hard case, and begs the King to let the debt be paid in full, principal and five years of interest.

(LXXXI.) To CHARLES X., KING OF SWEDEN, _July_ 1656:--After more than two months of farther debating between Count Bundt and the English Commissioners, in the course of which there had been frequent new displays of the Count's high temper, the Treaty between the Protector and Charles Gustavus had at last been happily finished on the 17th of July. On that day, Whitlocke tells as, he and Lords Fiennes and Strickland had their long final meeting over the Treaty with the Ambassador, ending; in formal signing and sealing on both sides. The main difficulty had been got over thus: "Concerning the carrying of pitch, tar, &c. to Spain, during our war with them [the Spaniards], there was a single Article, that the King of Sweden should be moved to give order for the prohibiting of it, and a kind of undertaking that it should be done." On the whole, the Protector was satisfied; and, as he had contracted some admiration and liking for the Ambassador, precisely on account of his unusual spirit and stubbornness, he marked the conclusion of the Treaty by special compliments and favours. "The Swedish Ambassador," says Whitlocke under date July 25, "having taken his leave of the Protector, received great civilities and respects from him, and afterwards dined with him at Hampton Court, and hunted with him. The Protector bestowed the dignity of knighthood upon one of his [the Ambassador's] gentlemen, Sir Gustavus Duval, the mareschal." The present Latin letter by Milton, accordingly, was the letter of honourable dismissal which the Swede was to take back to his master. Perhaps the Swede knew that even this was written by the Protector's blind Latinist.--"Oliver, Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland, Ireland, &c., to the most Serene Prince, Charles Gustavus, King of the Swedes, Goths, and Vandals, &c." is the heading of the letter; which proceeds thus:--"Most Serene King,--As we have justly a very high regard for the friendship of so great a Prince as your Majesty, one so famous for his achievements, so necessarily should that most illustrious Lord, CHRISTIERN BUNDT, your Ambassador Extraordinary, by whose endeavours a Treaty of the closest alliance has just been ratified between us, have been to as, were it but on this pre-eminent account, an object of favour and good report. We have accordingly judged it fit that he should be sent back to you after his most praiseworthy performance of this Embassy: but not without the highest acknowledgment at the same time of his other excellent merits, to the end that one who has been heretofore in esteem and honour with you may now feel that he is indebted to this our commendation for yet more abundant fruits of his assiduity and prudence. As for the transactions that yet remain, we have resolved shortly to send to your Majesty a special Embassy for those; and meanwhile may God preserve your Majesty safe, to be a pillar in His Church's defence and in the affairs of Sweden!--From our Palace of Westminster,--July 1656. Your Majesty's most affectionate, OLIVER, Protector &c."--Count Bundt, we may add, remained in England a month more after all, receiving farther attentions and entertainments; and not till Aug. 23 did he finally depart, taking with him not only Milton's Letter, but also a present from the Protector of £1200 worth of "white cloth" and a magnificent jewel. It was because this jewel could not be got ready at once that he had staid on; and it was worth waiting for. "The jewel was his Highness's picture in a case of gold, about the bigness of a five-shillings piece of silver, set round the case with sixteen fair diamonds, each diamond valued at £60: in all worth about £1000." The Count wore the jewel tied with a blue ribbon to his breast so long as he was in sight, barging down the Thames.[1]

[Footnote 1: Whitlocke, IV. 257-273.]

(LXXXII.) To the King of Portugal, _Aug._ 1656:--Mr. Philip Meadows has been in Lisbon since March, busy in the duties of his mission, and sending letters and reports home. There was still danger, however, in being an agent for the English Commonwealth in a Roman Catholic country; and Meadows had nearly shared the fate of Dorislaus and Ascham. On the 11th of May, as he was returning at night to his lodgings in Lisbon, carried in a litter, he was attacked by two horsemen, who "discharged two pistols into the litter and shot him through the left hand."[1] The wound was not serious; but the King of Portugal was naturally in great concern. He offered a large reward for the discovery of the criminals; and, in a Latin letter to Cromwell, dated "Alcantara, May 26, N.S.," he professed his desire to have them punished, whether they were English refugees or native Portuguese.[2] The present Letter by Milton is the Protector's reply. Though there has been some interval since the receipt of his Majesty's letter, his Highness has not yet heard that the criminals have been apprehended; and he insists that there shall be a vigorous prosecution of the search and recommends that it should be put into the hands of "some persons of honesty and sincerity, well-wishers to both nations."

[Footnote 1: Thurloe to Pell, June 26, Vaughan's _Protectorate_, I. 432.]

[Footnote 2: See Letter itself in Thurloe, V. 28.]

(LXXXIII.) To Louis XIV. of France, _Aug._ 1656:--Again about a ship, but this time in a peremptory strain.--Richard Baker and Co. of London have complained to the Protector that a ship of theirs, called _The Endeavour_, William Jopp master, laden at Teneriffe with 300 pipes of rich Canary wine, had, in November last, been seized by four French privateer vessels under command of a Giles de la Roche, who had carried ship, cargo, and most of the crew away to the East Indies, after landing fourteen of the crew on the Guinea coast. For this daring act he had pleaded no excuse, except that his own fleet wanted provisions and that he believed the owners of his fleet would make good the loss. The Protector now demands that £16,000 be paid to Messrs. Baker and Co., and also that Giles de la Roche be punished. It concerns his French Majesty's honour to see to this, after that recent League with the English Commonwealth to which his royal oath is pledged. Otherwise all faith in Leagues will be at an end.

(LXXXIV.) TO CARDINAL, MAZARIN, _Aug._ 1656:--On the same subject as the last. While writing to the King about such an outrage, the Protector cannot refrain from imparting the matter also to his Eminence, as "the sole and only person whose singular prudence governs the most important affairs of the French and the chief business of the kingdom, with equal fidelity, counsel, and vigilance."

(LXXXV.) TO THE STATES-GENERAL OF THE UNITED PROVINCES, _Aug._ 1656. A Letter of some length, and very important. "We doubt not," It begins, "but all will bear us this testimony--that no considerations have ever been stronger with us in contracting foreign alliances than, the duty of defending the Truth of Religion, and that we have never accounted anything more sacred than the union and reconciliation of those who are either the friends and defenders of Protestants, or at least not their enemies." With what grief, then, does his Highness hear of new dissensions breaking out among Protestant powers, and especially of signs of a rupture between the United Provinces and Sweden! Should there be war between those two great Protestant powers, how the common enemy will rejoice! "To the Spaniard the prospect has already brought such an access of spirit and confidence that he has not hesitated, through his Ambassador residing with you, to obtrude most audaciously his counsels upon you, and that about the chief concerns of your Republic: daring even partly to terrify you by throwing in threats of a renewal of war, partly to solicit you by setting forth a false show of expediency, to the end that, abandoning by his advice your old and most faithful friends, the French, the English, and the Swedes, you would be pleased to form a close alliance with your former enemy and tyrant, pacified now forsooth, and, what is most to be feared, quite fawning." The Protector earnestly adjures their High Mightinesses the States to be on their guard. "We are not ignorant that you, in your wisdom, often revolve in your minds the question of the present state of Europe in general, and especially the condition of the Protestants: how the Cantons of the Swiss following the orthodox faith are kept in suspense by the expectation from day to day of new commotions to be stirred up by their countrymen following the faith of the Pope, and this while they have hardly emerged from that war which, plainly on account of Religion, was blown and kindled by the Spaniard, who gave their enemies leaders and supplied the money; how for the inhabitants of the Alpine Valleys the designs of the Spaniards are again contriving the same slaughter and destruction which they most cruelly inflicted on them last year; how the German Protestants are most grievously troubled under the rule of the Kaiser, and retain their paternal homes with difficulty; how the King of Sweden, whom God, as we hope, has raised up as a valiant champion of the Orthodox Religion, is carrying on with the whole strength of his kingdom a doubtful and most severe war with the most powerful enemies of the Reformed Faith; how your own Provinces are threatened by the ominous league lately struck up among your Papist neighbours, of whom a Spaniard is the Prince; how we here, finally, are engaged in a war declared against the Spanish King." What an aggravation of this condition of things if there should be an actual conflict between their High Mightinesses and Sweden! Will not their High Mightinesses lay all this to heart, and come to a friendly arrangement with Charles Gustavus? The Protector hardly understands the causes of the disagreement; but, if he can be of any use between the two powers, he will spare no exertion. He is about to send an embassy to the Swedish King, and will convey to him also the sentiments of this letter.--That the preparation of this Letter to the States-General had been very careful appears from the following minute relating to it in the Council Order-Books for Tuesday Aug. 19:--"Mr. Secretary [Thurloe] reports the draft of a letter to the States-General of the United Provinces; which was read, and committed to Sir Charles Wolseley, with the assistance of the Secretary, to amend the same, in pursuance of the present debate, and report it again to the Council." Cromwell was himself present at this meeting of the Council, with Lawrence, Lambert, Wolseley, Strickland, Rous, Jones, Skippon, and Pickering. The draft read was most probably the English that was to be turned into Latin by Milton: but this does not preclude the idea that the document itself was substantially Milton's. Thurloe can hardly have drafted _such_ a document. He may have gone to Milton first.

(LXXXVI.) To The King of Portugal, _Aug._ 1656:--The Protector has received his Portuguese Majesty's Ratification of the Peace negotiated in London by his Extraordinary Ambassador Count Sa in 1654, and also of the secret and preliminary articles of the same; and he has received letters from Philip Meadows, his agent at Lisbon, informing him that the counterpart Ratification on the English side had been duly delivered to his Majesty. There being now therefore a firm and settled Peace between the two nations, dating formally from June 1656, the Protector salutes his Majesty with all cordiality. As to his Majesty's letters of June 24th, mentioning some clauses of the League a slight alteration of which would be convenient for Portugal, the Protector is willing to have these carefully considered, but suggests that the whole Treaty may be perilled by tampering with any part of it.

(LXXXVII.) To THE COUNT OF ODEMIRA, _Aug._ 1656:--This is a letter to the Prime Minister of Portugal, to accompany the foregoing to the King. The Protector acknowledges the Count's zeal and diligence in promoting the Peace now concluded, and takes the opportunity of pressing upon him, rather than again upon the King, relentless inquiry into the late attempt to assassinate Meadows.

(LXXXVIII.) To CHARLES X., KING OF SWEDEN, _Aug._ 1656:--A letter very much in the strain of that just sent to the States-General of the United Provinces. Although, knowing what a champion the Protestant Faith has in his Swedish Majesty, the Protector cannot but rejoice in the news of his successes, there is one drawback. It is the accompanying news of the misunderstanding between his Majesty and the Dutch, now come to such a pass, he hears, that open conflict is likely, especially in the Baltic. The Protector is in the dark as to the causes, but ventures to press on his Majesty the views he had been pressing, but a few days ago, upon the Dutch. Let him think of the perils of Protestantism; let him think of Piedmont, of Austria, of Switzerland! "Who is ignorant that the counsels of the Spaniards and of the Roman Pontiff have, for two years past, filled all those places with conflagrations, slaughters, and troubles to the orthodox? If to these evils, so many already, there shall be added an outbreak of bad feeling among Protestant brethren themselves, and especially between two powers in whose valour, resources, and constancy lies the greatest safeguard of the Reformed Churches, so far as human means avail, the Reformed Religion itself must be endangered and brought to an extreme crisis. On the other hand, were all of the Protestant name to cultivate perpetual peace with that brotherly unanimity which becomes them, there will be no reason at all to be very much afraid of inconvenience to us from all that the arts or force of our enemies can do." O that his Majesty may see his way to a pacific settlement of his differences with the Dutch! The Protector will gladly do anything to secure that result.

(LXXXIX.) TO THE STATES OF HOLLAND, _Sept._ 1856:--William Cooper, a London minister, has represented to the Protector that his father-in-law, John le Maire of Amsterdam, invented, about thirty-three years ago, a certain device by which much revenue was brought in to the States of Holland, without any burden to the people. It was the settling of a certain small seal or stamp to be used in the Provinces ("_id autem erat parvi sigilli in Provinciis constitutio_"). For the working this invention he had taken into partnership one John van den Brook; and the States of Holland had promised the partners 3000 guilders yearly, equal to about £300 English, for the use of the thing. Not a farthing, however, had they ever received, though the States had benefited so much; and now, as they are both tired out, they have transferred their right to William Cooper, who means to prosecute the claim. The States are prayed to look into the matter, and to pay Cooper the promised annual pension, with arrears.

(XC.) To LOUIS XIV. of FRANCE, _Sept._ 1656:--His Highness is sorry to trouble his Majesty so often; but the grievances of English subjects must be attended to. Now a London merchant, called Robert Brown, who had bought 4000 hides, part of the cargo of a Dieppe ship, legally taken before the League between France and Britain, had sold about 200 of them to a currier in Dieppe, but; instead of receiving the money, had found it attached and stopped in his factor's hands. He could have no redress from the French court of law to which the suit had been referred; and the Protector now desires his Majesty to bring the matter before his own Council. If acts done before the League are to be called in question, Leagues will be meaningless; and it would be well to make an example or two of persons causing trouble of this kind.

Six of these thirteen State-Letters, it ought to be observed, belong to the single month of August 1656. They form Milton's largest contribution of work of this kind in any one month since the very beginning of his Secretaryship, with the exception of his burst of letters on the news of the Piedmontese Massacre in May 1655. Nor ought it to escape notice that some of the letters of Aug. 1656 are particularly important, and that two of them are manifestos of that passionate Protestantism of the Protector which had prompted his bold stand in the matter of the Piedmontese Persecution, and which had matured itself politically since then into the scheme of an express League or Union of all the Protestant Powers of Europe. It cannot be by mere accident that, when Cromwell wanted letters written in the highest strain of his most characteristic passion, they should have always been supplied by Milton. Whatever might be done by the office people that Thurloe had about him, it must have been understood that, for things of this sort, there was always to be recourse to the Latin Secretary Extraordinary.

A little item of recent Council-business of which Milton may have heard with some interest appears as follows in the Council Order-Books under date Aug. 7, 1656:--"Upon consideration of the humble petition of Peter Du Moulin, the son, Doctor of Divinity, and a certificate thereunto subscribed, being presented to his Highness, and by his Highness referred to the Council, _Ordered_ ... That the said Dr. Peter Du Moulin, the petitioner, be permitted to exercise his ministerial abilities, the late Proclamation [of Nov. 24, 1655: see ante pp. 61-62], or any orders or instructions given to the Major-Generals and Commissioners in the several counties, notwithstanding." And so even the author of the _Regii Sanguinis Clamor_ was now an indulged man, and might look forward to being a Vicar or a Rector, or something higher still, in Cromwell's Established Church. _Can_ his secret have possibly been then known? _Can_ the Council have known that the man who petitioned the Protector for indulgence, and to whom they now advised the Protector to grant it, was the author of the most vehement and bitter book that had ever been written on the Royalist side, the man who had abused the Commonwealth men as "robbers, traitors, parricides" and "plebeian scoundrels," who had written of Cromwell "Verily an egg is not liker an egg than Cromwell is like Mahomet," and who had capped all his other politenesses about Milton by calling him "more vile than Cromwell, damned than Ravaillac"?[1]

[Footnote 1: Dr. Peter du Moulin did become a Vicar in Cromwell's Established Church. He was inducted into the Vicarage of Bradwell, in Bucks, Oct. 24, 1657, but quitted it in a few days, apparently for something better (Wood's Fasti, II. 195: Note by Cole).]

SECTION III: FROM SEPTEMBER 1656 TO JUNE 1657, OR THROUGH THE FIRST SESSION OF OLIVER'S SECOND PARLIAMENT.

ANOTHER LETTER FROM MILTON TO MR. RICHARD JONES: DEPARTURE OF LADY RANELAGH FOR IRELAND: LETTER FROM MILTON TO PETER HEIMBACH: MILTON'S SECOND MARRIAGE: HIS SECOND WIFE, KATHARINE WOODCOCK: LETTER TO EMERIC BIGOT: MILTON'S LIBRARY AND THE BYZANTINE HISTORIANS: M. STOUPE: TEN MORE STATE-LETTERS BY MILTON FOR THE PROTECTOR (NOS. XCI.-C.): MORLAND, MEADOWS, DURIE, LOCKHART, AND OTHER DIPLOMATISTS OF THE PROTECTOR, BACK IN LONDON: MORE EMBASSIES AND DISPATCHES OVER LAND AND SEA: MILTON STANDING AND WAITING: HIS THOUGHTS ABOUT THE PROTECTORATE GENERALLY.

Not much altogether is recoverable of Milton's life through that section of the Protectorate which coincides with the first Session of the Second Parliament (Sept. 17, 1656-June 26, 1657). What is recoverable will connect itself with (1) Three Private Epistles of his dated in these nine months, and (2) The series of his State-letters in the same period. To Richard Jones, _alias_ young Ranelagh, still at Oxford with Oldenburg, Milton, four days after the meeting of the Parliament, addressed another letter in that tone of Mentorship which he seems to have thought most suitable for the youth:--

"To the Noble youth, RICHARD JONES.

"Preparing again and again to reply to your last letter, I was first prevented, as you know, by some sudden pieces of business, of such a kind as are apt to be mine; then I heard you were off on an excursion to some places in your neighbourhood; and now your most excellent mother, on her way to Ireland--whose departure ought to be a matter of no ordinary regret to both of us (for to me also she has stood in the place of all kith and kin: _nam et mihi omnium, necessitudinum loco fuit_)--carries you this letter herself. That you feel assured of my affection for you, right and well; and I would have you feel daily more and more assured of it, the more of good disposition and of good use of your advantages you give me to see in you. Which result, by God's grace, I see you not only engage for personally, but, as if I had provoked you by a wager on the subject, give solemn pledge and put in bail that you will accomplish,--not refusing, as it were, to abide judgment, and to pay the penalty of failure if judgment should be given against you. I am truly delighted with this so good hope you have of yourself; which you cannot now be wanting to, without appearing at the same time not only to have been faithless to your own promises but also to have run away from your bail. As to what you write to the effect that you do not dislike Oxford, you adduce nothing to make me believe that you have got any good there or been made any wiser: you will have to shew me that by very different proofs. Victories of Princes, which you extol with praises, and matters of that sort in which force is of most avail, I would not have you admire too much, now that you are listening to Philosophers [Robert Boyle and his set?]. For what should be the great wonder if in the native land of _wethers_ there are born strong horns, able to _ram_ down most powerfully cities and towns? [_Quid enim magnopere mirandum est si vervecum, in patria valida nascantur cornua quæ urbes et oppida arietare valentissime possint?_ Besides the pun, there is some geographical allusion, or allusion of military history, which it is difficult to make out.] Learn you, already from your early age, to weigh and discern great characters not by force and animal strength, but by justice and temperance. Farewell; and please to give best salutations in my name to the highly accomplished Henry Oldenburg, your chamber-fellow.

"Westminster: Sept. 21, 1656."

If the date of this letter, as published by Milton himself, is correct, it was written on a Sunday. Yet there can have been no particular haste; for Lady Ranelagh, who was to carry the letter to her son at Oxford on her way to Ireland, did not leave London for at least another fortnight. The pass for "Lady Catharine, Viscountess of Ranelagh, and her two daughters," with their servants, eight horses, &c., to go into Ireland, was granted, I find, by the Protector's Council, Oct. 7, 1656, on the motion of Lord President Lawrence.[1] She was to be away in Ireland for some years, occupied with family business of various kinds; and Milton was thinking with regret of the blank in his life that would be caused by her absence. For she had been to him, he says, "in the place of all kith and kin." How much that phrase involves! Though we have no letters from Milton to Lady Ranelagh, or from Lady Ranelagh to Milton, and though the fact of their friendship has been left by Milton unrecorded in that poetical form, whether of sonnet or of idyll, which has preserved for us so finely other incidents and intimacies of his life, this one phrase, duly interpreted, ought to make up for all. Perhaps in no part of any eminent man's life, especially if he is bereft domestically, is there wanting this benefit of some supreme womanly interest wakened in his behalf. Twice in Milton's life, so unfortunate domestically hitherto, we have seen something of the kind. Twelve years ago, in the old Aldersgate days of his desertion by his wife, it seemed to be the Lady Margaret Ley that was paramount. More recently, through the Westminster years of blindness and widowerhood, the real ministering angel, if there had been any such, had been that Lady Ranelagh whom English History remembers at any rate as the incomparable sister of Lord Broghill and of Robert Boyle. Let there be restored to her henceforth the honour also of having been Milton's friend.

[Footnote 1: Council Order-Books of date.]

The next extant Epistle of Milton, written when the Second Parliament of the Protectorate had sat nearly two months, is also quite of a private nature. Of the German or Dutch youth to whom it is addressed, Peter Heimbach, I have ascertained only that he had been residing for some time in London, perhaps originally brought thither in the train of some embassy or agency, and that he had recently published in London a Latin letter of eulogy on Cromwell,[1] extremely enthusiastic and somewhat juvenile. Milton's letter suggests farther that he had been much about Milton, as amanuensis or what not, but was now on a visit to Holland.

[Footnote 1: The Letter, which is in thirty-five pages of small folio, is entitled "_Petri ab Heimbach, G.F., ad Serenissimum Potentissimumque Principem Olivarium, D. G. Magnæ Brittaniæ Protectorem, veræ Fidei Defensorem, Pium, Felicem, Invictum, Adlocutio Gralulatoria: Londini, Ex Typographia Jacobi Cottrellii_, 1656." The praise of Cromwell is boundless; and his conduct in the Piedmontese business, and his care of learning and the Universities, are especially noticed.]

"To the very accomplished youth, PETER HEIMBACH.

"Most amply, my Heimbach, have you fulfilled your promises and all the other expectations one would have of your goodness, with the exception, that I have still to long for your return. You promised that it would be within two months at farthest; and now, unless my desire to have you back makes me misreckon the time, you have been absent nearly three. In the matter of the Atlas you have abundantly performed all I requested of you; which was not that you should procure me one, but only that you would find out the lowest price of the book. You write that they ask 130 florins; it must be the Mauritanian mountain _Atlas_, I think, and not a book, that you tell me is to be bought at so huge a price. Such is now the luxury of Typographers in printing books that the furnishing of a library seems to have become as costly as the furnishing of a villa. Since to me at least, on account of my blindness, painted maps can hardly be of use, vainly surveying as I do with blind eyes the actual globe of the earth, I am afraid that the bigger the price at which I should buy that book the greater would seem to be my grief over my deprivation. Be good enough, pray, to take so much farther trouble for me as to be able to inform me, when you return, how many volumes there are in the complete work, and which of the two issues, that of Blaeu or that of Jansen, is the larger and more correct. This I hope to hear from yourself personally, on your speedy return, rather than by another letter. Meanwhile farewell, and come back to us as soon as you can.

"Westminster: Nov. 8, 1656."

One guesses from this letter that Heimbach was then in Amsterdam. It was there, at all events, that the two Atlases about which Milton enquired had been published or were in course of publication. That of John Jansen, called _Novus Atlas_, when completed in 1658, consisted of six folio volumes; the yet more magnificent _Geographia Blaeviana_, or Atlas of the geographer and printer John Blaeu, was not perfect till 1662, and then consisted of eleven volumes of very large folio. But various Atlases, or collections of maps in anticipation of the complete Atlas, had been on sale by Blaeu for ten or twelve years previously: e.g., from his own trade-catalogue in 1650, "Atlas, four volumes illuminated, bound after the best fashion, will cost 150 guldens," and "Belgia Foederata and Belgia Regia, two vols., white [uncoloured], 70 guldens, or illuminated 140 guldens." The gulden or Dutch florin was equal to 1_s._ 8_d._ English, so that the price of Blaeu's four volume Atlas of 1650 was £12 10_s._ To Milton in 1656 the price of the same, or of whatever other Atlas he had in view, was to be twenty florins less, i.e. about £11. It was much as if one were asked to give £38 for a book now; and no wonder that Milton hesitated.[1]

[Footnote 1: The information about the prices of Blaeu's general Atlas in 1650 and his special Atlas of the two Belgiums in the same year is from a curious letter in the _Correspondence of the Earls of Ancram and Lothian_, edited for the Marquis of Lothian, in 1875, by Mr. David Laing (II. 256).]

Just four days after the date of the letter to Heimbach, i.e. on the 12th of November, 1656, there took place an event of no less consequence to the household in Petty France than Milton's second marriage, after four years of widowerhood. It was performed, as the Marriage Act then in force required, not by a clergyman, but by a justice of the peace, and is registered thus in the books of the parish of St. Mary Aldermanbury, London, under the year 1656: "The agreement and intention of marriage between JOHN MILTON, Esq., of the Parish of Margaret's in Westminster, and MRS. KATHARINE WOODCOCKE, of the Parish of Mary's in Aldermanbury, was published three several market-days in three several weeks, viz. on Wednesday the 22nd and Monday the 27th of October, and on Monday the 3rd of November; and, no exceptions being made against their intention, they were, according to the Act of Parliament, married the 12th of November by Sir John Dethicke, Knight and Alderman, one of the Justices of Peace for this City of London."[1] Of this KATHARINE WOODCOCK (the "Mrs." before whose name does not mean that she had been married before) we learn farther, from Phillips, that she was "the daughter of Captain Woodcock of Hackney"; and that is nearly all that we know of her family. A Captain John Woodcock, who is found giving a receipt for £13 8_s._ to the Treasurer-at-War on Oct. 6, 1653, on the disbanding of his troop, may possibly have been her father, as no other Captain Woodcock of the time has been discovered.[2] There is reason to believe that Milton had not been acquainted with the lady before his blindness, and so that, literally, he had never _seen_ her. Not the less, for the brief space of her life allotted to their union, she was to be a light and blessing in his dark household.

[Footnote 1: Given in Gentleman's Magazine for June, 1840; but I owe my copy to the kindness of Colonel Chester, who took it direct from the Register of St. Mary, Aldermanbury; and who supplies me with the following information in connexion with it: "It is generally said that the marriage took place in that church; but this, I think, may be doubted. I noticed, in several instances, that, when the religious ceremony was performed after the civil one, the fact was recorded; but it is not so in this case. I think that the City marriages at that period usually took place in the Guildhall, where a magistrate sat daily; though I believe they were sometimes solemnized at the residence of one of the parties."]

[Footnote 2: Phillips; Hunter's _Milton Gleanings_, p. 35. Colonel Chester tells me that, although Katharine Woodcock is described in the Register as "of the parish of Mary's in Aldermanbury," he found no trace of her family in that parish at the time. "There were Woodcocks there at a much earlier period (say 100 years before); but about this time I found only one burial, that of Michael Woodcock, whose will I have since looked at, but which does not mention her." The conjecture that Mr. Francis Woodcock, minister of St. Olave's, Southwark, was a relative, receives no support from what is known of his principles (see Vol. III, 184). A contemporary Puritan divine, Thomas Woodcock, for some time minister of St. Andrew Undershaft, is found living at Hackney after the Restoration.]

The household better ordered; the three young orphan girls of the first marriage better tended; more of lightsomeness and cheerfulness for Milton himself among his books; continuance, under new management, of the little hospitalities to the learned foreigners who occasionally call, and to the habitual visitors: so, we are to imagine, pass away at home those winter months of 1656-7 during which the great topics of interest outside were the war with Spain, Sindercombe's plot against the Protector's life, the debates in Parliament over the case of James Nayler, and the proceedings there for amending the system of the Protectorate, whether by converting it into Kingship or otherwise. Not, however, till the last day of March 1656-7, or three months and a half after the marriage with Katharine Woodcock, have we another distinct glimpse of Milton in his private life. On that day he dictated, in Latin, the following letter:--

"To the most accomplished EMERIC BIGOT.

"That on your coming into England I had the honour of being thought by you more worth visiting and saluting than others was truly and naturally gratifying to me; and that now you renew your salutation by letter, even at such an interval, is somewhat more gratifying still. For in the first instance you might have come to me perhaps on the inducement of other people's opinion; but you could hardly return to me by letter save at the prompting of your own judgment, or, at least, good will. On this surely I have ground to congratulate myself. For many have made a figure by their published writings whose living voice and daily conversation have presented next to nothing that was not low and common: if, then, I can attain the distinction of seeming myself equal in mind and manners to any writings of mine that have been tolerably to the purpose, there will be the double effect that I shall so have added weight personally to my writings, and shall receive back by way of reflection from them credit, how small soever it may be, yet greater in proportion. For, in that case, whatever is right and laudable in them, that same I shall seem not more to have derived from authors of high excellence than to have fetched forth pure and sincere from the inmost feelings of my own mind and soul. I am glad, therefore, to know that you are assured of my tranquillity of spirit in this great affliction of loss of sight, and also of the pleasure I have in being civil and attentive in the reception of visitors from abroad. Why, in truth, should I not bear gently the deprivation of sight, when I may hope that it is not so much lost as revoked and retracted inwards, for the sharpening rather than the blunting of my mental edge? Whence it is that I neither think of books with anger, nor quite intermit the study of them, grievously though they have mulcted me,--were it only that I am instructed against such moroseness by the example of King Telephus of the Mysians, who refused not to be cured in the end by the weapon that had wounded him. As to that book you possess, _On the Manner of Holding Parliaments_, I have caused the marked passages of it to be either amended, or, if they were doubtful, confirmed, by reference to the MS. in the possession of the illustrious Lord Bradshaw, and also to the Cotton MS., as you will see from your little paper returned herewith. In compliance with your desire to know whether also the autograph of this book is extant in the Tower of London, I sent one to inquire of the Herald who has the custody of the Deeds, and with whom I am on familiar terms. His answer is that no copy of that book is extant among those records. For the help you offer me in return in procuring literary material I am very much obliged. I want, of the Byzantine Historians, _Theophanis Chronographia_ (folio: Greek and Latin), _Constantini Manassis Breviarium Historicum_, with _Codini Excerpta de Antiquitatibus Constantinopolitanis_ (folio: Greek and Latin), _Anastasii Bibliothecarii Historia et Vitæ Romanorum Pontificum_ (folio); to which be so good as to add, from the same press, _Michael Glycas_, and _Joannes Cinnamus_, the continuator of Anna Comnena, if they are now out. I do not ask you to get them as cheap as you can, both because there is no need to put a very frugal man like yourself in mind of that, and because they tell me the price of these books is fixed and known to all. MR. STOUPE has undertaken the charge of the money for you in cash, and also to see about the most convenient mode of carriage. That you may have all you wish, and all you aspire after, is my sincere desire. Farewell.

"Westminster: March 24, 1656-7."

Of the French scholar to whom this letter was addressed there is an excellent notice in Bayle. "EMERIC BIGOT," says Bayle, "one of the most learned and most honest men of the seventeenth century, was a native of Rouen, and of a family very distinguished in the legal profession. He was born in 1626. The love of letters drew him aside from public employments; his only occupation was in books and the acquisition of knowledge; he augmented marvellously the library which had been left him by his father. Once every week there was a meeting at his house for talk on matters of erudition. He kept up literary intercourse with a great number of learned men; his advices and information were useful to many authors; and he laboured all he could for the good and advantage of the Republic of Letters. He published but one book [a Life of St. Chrysostom]; but apparently he would have published others had he lived to complete them. M. Ménage in France, and Nicolas Heinsius among foreigners, were his two most intimate friends. He had none of the faults that accompany learning: he was modest and an enemy to disputes. In general, one may say he was the best heart in the world. He died at Rouen Dec. 18, 1689, aged about sixty-four years." How exactly this description of Bigot for his whole life tallies with the notion we should have of him, at the age of thirty-two, from Milton's letter! He had been in England some time ago, it appears, and had there, like other foreigners, paid his respects to Milton. And now, either from Rouen, or more probably from Paris, he had reopened the communication, quite in the style of a man such as Bayle paints him. The immediate object of his letter seems to have been to ask Milton to have some doubtful passages in a book "On the Manner of Holding Parliaments" compared with MS. authorities in London; but he had taken occasion to express also his vivid recollection of Milton, his interest in Milton's present condition, and his desire to be of use to him in the quest or purchase of foreign books.

Milton, who had evidently performed very punctually Bigot's immediate commission,[1] did, it will be observed, send him a commission in return. It deserves a little explanation:--There was then in course of publication at Paris, under the auspices and at the expense of Louis XIV., the first splendid collective edition of the Byzantine Historians, i.e. of that series of Historians, Chroniclers, Antiquarians, and Memoir-writers of the Eastern or Greek Empire from the 6th century to the 15th in whose works lies imbedded all our information as to the History of the East through the Middle Ages. The publication, which was to attain to the vast size of thirty-six volumes folio, containing the Greek Texts with Latin Translations and Notes, was not to be completed till 1711; but it had been begun in 1645. Now, in Milton's library, it appears, the Byzantine Historians were already pretty well represented, either in the shape of the earlier volumes of this Parisian collection, or in that of separate prior editions of particular writers. There were some gaps, however, which he wanted to fill up. He wanted the _Chronographia_ of Theophanes Isaacius, a chronicle of events from A.D. 277 to A.D. 811; also the _Brevarium Historicum_ of Constantine Manasses, a metrical chronicle of the world from the Creation to A.D. 1081; also the book of Georgius Codinus, the compiler of the fifteenth century, entitled _Excerpta de Originibus Constantinopolitanis_; also that of Anastasius Bibliothecarius on the _Lives of the Popes_. The Parisian editions of these, or of the first three, were now out (all in 1655). At the same time there might be sent him the Parisian editions, if they had appeared, of the Annals of _Michael Glycas_, bringing the History of the World from the Creation to A.D. 1118, and the valuable Lives of John and Manuel Comnenus by _Joannes Cinnamus_, the imperial notary of the 12th century.--As the Parisian edition of Michael Glycas (by Labbe) did not appear till 1660, and that of Joannes Cinnamus (by Du Cange) not till 1670, Bigot can have forwarded to Milton only the first-mentioned Byzantine books. One may imagine the arrival of the parcel of learned folios in the neat new tenement which Milton inhabited in Petty France; and it gives one a stronger idea than we have yet had of Milton's passion for books, and of his indomitable perseverance and ingenuity in the use of them in his blind state, that he should have taken such pains, at our present date, to supply himself with copies of some of the rare Byzantine Historians. Connecting this purchase, through Bigot, with the recent inquiry, through Heimbach, about the price of Blaeu's great Atlas, may we not also discern some increased attention to the furnishing of the house occasioned by the second marriage?

[Footnote 1: It seems to me possible, though I would not be too sure, that the book about which Bigot wrote to Milton was one entitled _Modus tenendi Parliamentum apud Anglos_, by Henry Elsynge, Clerk of the House of Lords, and father of the Henry Elsynge who was Clerk of the Commons In the Long Parliament (Wood, Ath. III. 363-4). The book, which had been sent forth under Parliamentary authority in 1641, was a standard one; and manuscript copies of it, or drafts for it, more complete than itself, may well have been extant in such places as the Cotton Library or Bradshaw's. Actually Elsynge's autograph of the book, dated 1626, was extant in London at the date of Milton's letter, though not in the Tower. An edition of the book, "enriched with a large addition from the author's original MS.," was published in 1768; and the MS. itself is now in the British Museum (Bonn's _Lowndes_, Article "Elsynge").]

The Herald in charge of the Records in the Tower, mentioned in Milton's letter as one of his acquaintances, was, I believe, WILLIAM RYLEY, Norroy King-at-arms. He had been Clerk of the Records, under the Master of the Rolls, for some years, and was to continue in the post till after the Restoration. A more interesting person was the "MR. STOUPE" who took charge of the cash to Bigot for the Byzantine volumes, and was to see to their conveyance to London.--He was no common character. A Grison by birth, he had settled in London as minister of the French Church in the Savoy; but he had left that post to be one of Thurloe's travelling-agents and political intelligencers or spies. For two years or more he had been employed in secret missions to France and Switzerland, chiefly for negotiation in the interests of the continental Protestants; and his success in this kind of employment, often at considerable personal risk, and his talent for collecting information in London itself by means of correspondence from abroad, had gradually recommended him to the Protector. Burnet, who knew him well in after life, when he was more a frantic Deist than either a Protestant or "Christian," had more anecdotes about Cromwell from him than from any other man. The anecdotes he liked best to tell were those in which his own intriguing ability figured. Thus it was Stoupe, according to his own account, that knew of Cromwell's design on the Spanish West Indies before all the rest of the world. One day, late in 1654, having been called into the Protector's room on business, he had noticed him very intent upon a map and measuring distances on it. Information being Stoupe's trade, he contrived to see that the map was one of the Bay of Mexico, and drew his inference. Accordingly, when the fleet of Penn and Venables was ready to sail, but nobody knew its destination, "Stoupe happened to say in a company he believed the design was on the West Indies. The Spanish Ambassador, hearing that, sent for him very privately, to ask him upon what ground he said it; and he offered to lay down £10,000 if he could make any discovery of that. Stoupe owned to me that he had a great mind to the money, and fancied he betrayed nothing if he did discover the grounds of these conjectures, since nothing had been trusted to him; but he expected greater matters from Cromwell, and said only that in a diversity of conjectures that seemed to him more probable than any others." Another of Stoupe's stories to Burnet was even more curious. Having learnt by a letter from Brussels that a certain refugee had come over to assassinate Cromwell, and was lodged in King Street, Westminster, he had hurried to Whitehall, and sent in a note to Cromwell, then in Council, saying he had something to communicate. Cromwell, supposing it might be one of Stoupe's ordinary pieces of intelligence, had sent out Thurloe to him. Though "troubled at this," Stoupe had no option but to show Thurloe the letter. To his surprise, Thurloe had made light of the matter, saying that they had rumours of that kind by the score, and it was not for a great man like the Protector to trouble himself about them. Stoupe, who had hoped his fortune would be made, went away "much cast down," to write to Brussels for surer evidence. He mentioned the matter, however, to Lord Lisle; and so, when Sexby's or Sindercombe's Plot was discovered a while afterwards, Lisle, talking of it with the Protector, and not doubting that the Protector knew all about Stoupe's previous revelation, said _that_ must be the man Stoupe had spoken of. "Cromwell seemed amazed at this, and sent for Stoupe, and in great wrath reproached him for his ingratitude in concealing a matter of such consequence to him. Stoupe upon this shewed him the letters he had received, and put him in mind of the note he had sent in to him, which was immediately after he had the first letter, and that he had sent out Thurloe to him. At that Cromwell seemed yet more amazed, and sent for Thurloe, to whose face Stoupe affirmed the matter; nor did he deny any part of it, but only said that he had many such advertisements sent him, in which till this time he had never found any truth. Cromwell replied sternly that he ought to have acquainted _him_ with it, and left _him_ to judge of the importance of it. Thurloe desired to speak in private with Cromwell. So Stoupe was dismissed, and went away, not doubting but Thurloe would be disgraced." What was his surprise, however, to find not only that Thurloe was not disgraced, but that he himself was thenceforth less in favour? Thurloe, in justifying himself, had told Cromwell more about Stoupe than he previously knew, and "possessed Cromwell with such an ill opinion of him that after that he never treated him with any confidence."[1] If the story is true, Stoupe's loss of favour dates from Jan. 1656-7, or two months before Milton's letter to Bigot. It would seem, however, that he was still employed in some way as one of Thurloe's agents; and hence Milton's use of him to convey the cash to France.[2] That Milton knew Stoupe would have been certain without this evidence; but the evidence is interesting.[3]

[Footnote 1: Burnet's _Hist. of his Own Time_, Book I.]

[Footnote 2: Of the £2000 sent from London to Geneva in June 1655 as the first instalment of relief for the Piedmontese Protestants (Cromwell's own subscription) £500 had been sent through Stoupe. See ante p. 190.]

[Footnote 3: Stoupe might make a good character in any historical novel of the time of the Protectorate. His career did not end then. He was to be "a brigadier-general in the French armies," and one knows not what else, before Burnet made his acquaintance.]

Of the following State-Letters of Milton, all belonging to our present section of his life, five bear date before his second marriage, and five after. Those after the marriage come at longer intervals than those before:--

(XCI.) TO THE KING OF PORTUGAL, _Oct._ 1656:--Peace with Portugal being happily ratified, the Protector is despatching THOMAS MAYNARD to be his consul in that country. This letter is to introduce him and bespeak access for him to his Majesty.

(XCII.) TO THE KING OF SWEDEN, _Oct._ 1656:--A soldierly knight, Sir William Vavasour, who has been in England, is now returning to his military duty under the Swedish King. The Protector need hardly recommend back to his Majesty a servant so distinguished, but ventures to do so, and to suggest that he should be paid his arrears.

(XCIII.) TO THE KING OF PORTUGAL, _Oct._ 1656:--An English ship-master, called Thomas Evans, is going to Lisbon to prosecute his claim for £7000 against the Brazil Company, being damages sustained by the seizure of his ship, the _Scipio_, six years before, by the Portuguese Government, while he was in the Company's service. The Treaty provides for such claims; and, though the Protector has written before on the subject generally, he cannot but write specially in this case.

(XCIV.) TO THE SENATE OF HAMBURG, _Oct. 16, 1656:_--Long ago, in the time of King Charles, two brothers, James and Patrick Hays, being the lawful heirs of their brother Alexander, who had died intestate in Hamburg, had obtained a decree in their favour in the Hamburg Court, assigning them all the said Alexander's property, except dower for his widow. From that day to this, however, chiefly by the influence of Albert van Eizen, a man of consequence in Hamburg, they have been kept out of their rights. They are in extreme poverty and have applied to the Protector. As he considers it the first duty of his Protectorate to look after such cases, he writes this letter. It is to request the Hamburg Senate to see that the two brothers have the full benefit of the old decision of the Court. Further delay has been threatened, he hears, in the form of an appeal to the Chamber of Spires. That such an appeal is illegal will appear by the signed opinions of English lawyers which he forwards. "But, if entreaty is of no avail, it will be necessary, and that by the common right of nations, to resort to measures of retaliation." His Highness hopes this may be avoided by the prudence of the Senate.

(XCV.) TO LOUIS XIV. OF FRANCE, _Nov. 1656:_--No answer has yet been received to his Highness's former letter, of May 14, on the subject of the claim of Sir John Dethicke, then Lord Mayor of London, and his partner William Wakefield, on account of the capture of a ship of theirs in 1649 by a pirate acting for Charles Stuart, and the insolent detention of the same by M. L'Estrades, the French Governor of Dunkirk (see the Letter, ante p. 253). Perhaps the delay had arisen from the fact that M. L'Estrades was then away with the army in Flanders; but "now he is living in Paris itself, or rather fluttering about with impunity in city and court enriched with the spoils of our people." His Highness now imperatively demands immediate and strict attention to the matter. It is one of positive obligation by the Treaty; and the honour and good faith of His French Majesty are directly concerned.--It is a curious coincidence that within a day or two of the writing of this strong letter by Milton in behalf of Sir John Dethicke, that knight should have solemnised Milton's marriage with Katharine Woodcock. Nov. 12 was the date of the marriage; and, as Dethicke is spoken of in this letter as no longer in his Mayoralty, it must have been written after Lord Mayor's day, i.e. after Nov. 9, 1656.

(XCVI.) TO FREDERICK III., KING OF DENMARK, _Dec. 1856:_--This is another of Cromwell's fervid Protestant letters, very much in the strain of those four months before to the States-General of the United Provinces and Charles Gustavus of Sweden, and indeed, with identical expressions. First he acknowledges letters from his Danish Majesty, of date Feb. 16, received through the worthy Simon de Pitkum, his Majesty's agent. They have been so gratifying, and the matter of them is so important, that his Highness has been looking about for a suitable person to be sent as confidential minister to Copenhagen. Such a person he hopes to send soon: meanwhile a letter may convey some thoughts about the state of Europe that are much occupying his Highness. The dissensions among Protestant States are causing him profound grief. Especially he is grieved by the jealousies and misunderstandings that separate two such important Protestant States as Denmark and Sweden. Can they not be removed? Sweden and the United Provinces, with both of which his Highness had taken the liberty of remonstrating to the same effect, have been coming to a happy accommodation: why should Denmark keep aloof? Let his Danish Majesty lay this to heart. Let him think of the persecutions of Protestants in Piedmont, in Austria, and in Switzerland; and let him imagine the eternal machinations of the Spaniard behind all. These surely are inducements sufficient to a reconciliation with Sweden, if it can be brought about. The Protector's good offices towards that end shall not be wanting if required. He has the highest esteem for the King of Denmark, and would cultivate yet closer alliance with him.--Relating to this letter is a minute of Council of the date Tuesday, Dec. 2: "The draft of a letter from his Highness to the King of Denmark was this day read, and after read by parts; and the several clauses thereof, being put to the question, were, with some amendments, agreed; and, the whole being so passed, it was offered to his Highness as the advice of the Council that his Highness will please to send the same." The letter, therefore, was deemed important. Was the draft read in English or in Latin? On the first supposition it may still have come from Milton, though it had to go back to him.

(XCVII.) To WILLIAM, LANDGRAVE OF HESSE, _March 1656-7_:--After an apology to the Landgrave for not having sooner answered a letter of his received nearly twelve months ago, the Protector here also plunges into the subject of Union among Protestants. He is glad that the Landgrave appreciates the exertions in this behalf that have been made in Britain and elsewhere. "We have particularly desired the same peace for the Churches of all Germany, where dissension has been too sharp and of too long continuance; and through our DURIE, labouring at the same fruitlessly now for many years, we have heartily offered any possible service of ours that might contribute thereto. We remain still in the same mind; we desire to see the same brotherly love to each other among those Churches: but how hard a business this is of settling a peace among those sons of peace, as they pretend themselves, we understand, to our great grief, only too abundantly. For it is hardly to be hoped that those of the Reformed and those of the Augustan confession will ever coalesce into the communion of one Church; they cannot without force be prevented from severally, by word and writings, defending their own beliefs; and force cannot consist with ecclesiastical tranquillity. This, at least, however, they might allow one to entreat--that, as they do differ, they would differ more humanely and moderately, and love each other nevertheless." It is a great pleasure to the Protector to exchange sentiments on this subject with a Prince of such distinguished Protestant ancestry.

(XCVIII.) TO THE DUKE OF COURLAND, _March 1657_:--After thanking this potentate of the Baltic for his hospitality, some time ago, to an English agent passing through to Muscovy, the Protector brings to his notice the case of one John Jamesone, a Scotchman, master of one of the Duke's ships. The ship had been wrecked going into port, but not by Jamesone's fault. The pilot, to whom he had intrusted it, according to rule and custom, had been alone to blame. Jamesone has been a faithful servant of the Duke for seven years; he is in great distress; and his Highness hopes the Duke will not stop his pay.

(XCIX.) TO THE CONSULS AND SENATE OF DANTZIG, _April 1657_:--The Dantzigers, for whom the Protector has a great respect, have unfortunately sided with the Poles against the King of Sweden. Would that, for the sake of Religion, and in the spirit of their old commercial amity with England, they had chosen otherwise, or would yet change their views! That, however, is rather beyond the immediate business of this letter; which is to request them either to release the noble Swede, Count Konigsmarck, who has become their prisoner by treachery, or at least make his captivity easier.

(C.) TO THE EMPEROR OF RUSSIA, _April 1657_:--On the throne of this vast, chaotic, semi-Asiatic Empire at this time was Alexis, the son and successor of Michael Romanoff, the founder of that new dynasty under which Russia was to enter on her era of greatness. He had come to the throne, as a young man, in 1645, and had since then, in the despotic Czarish way, continued his father's policy for the civilization of his subjects by cultivating commerce with the neighbouring European states, and bringing in foreigners for service in his armies or otherwise. On the execution of Charles I., however, he had broken utterly with the Regicide Island, and had ordered out of his dominions all English adherents of the Parliament. He alone of European Sovereigns had at once taken this high stand against the English Republic. But events, Russian interests, and communications from the Protector, had gradually brought him round. Since 1654, when a certain WILLIAM PRIDEAUX had been sent to Russia as agent for the Protector, the trade with Russia, through Archangel, had resumed its former dimensions, under rules permitting English merchants to sell and buy goods at Archangel, and have a factory there, but "not to go up in the country for Moscow or any other city in Russia."[1] The envoy himself, however, had visited Moscow; and his long letters thence, or from Archangel, had thrown much light on the internal condition of that strange outlandish Muscovy, as Russia was then generally called, about which there had been hitherto more of curiosity than knowledge. The immense wealth of the Emperor, his vast military forces, the barbaric splendours of his Court, the Oriental submissiveness of the people and their oddities of dress and manners, the peculiarities of the Greek Religion, the great resources of Russia, and the obstructions yet existing in the way of trade with her, had all become topics of English gossip. But, in fact, Alexis had become a considerable personage in general European politics. By wars with Poland, and other populations about him, he had greatly enlarged his territories, adopting new titles of sovereignty to signify the same; and in the general imbroglio of North-Eastern Europe, involving Sweden, Denmark, Poland, the United Provinces, and even Germany, he had come to be a power whose movements and embassies commanded attention. It had been resolved, therefore, by the Protector and his Council to send a more special envoy to "the Great Duke of Muscovia"; and, on the 12th of March 1656-7, RICHARD BRADSHAW, ESQ., so long Resident for the Commonwealth at Hamburg, was recommended by the Council to his Highness as the proper person.[2] The present letter of Milton, accordingly, is the Letter of Credence which Bradshaw was to take with him.--The Letter is addressed to his Russian Majesty, as punctually as possible, by all his chaos of titles, thus: "Oliver, Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland, Ireland, &c., to the Most Serene and most powerful Prince and Lord, the Emperor and Great Duke of all Russia, Lord of Volodomeria, Moscow, and Novgorod, King of Kazan, Astracan, and Siberia, Lord of Vobscow, Great Duke of Smolensk, Tuerscow, and other places, Lord and Great Duke of Novograda, and of the lower countries of Czernigow, Rezanscow, &c., Lord of all the Northern Clime, and also Lord of Everscow, Cartalinska, and many other lands."[3] After referring to the old commercial intercourse between Russia and England, the Protector says he is moved to seek closer communication, with his most august Imperial Majesty by that extraordinary worth, far outshining that of all his ancestors, by which he has won himself so good an opinion among all neighbouring Princes, Then he introduces and highly recommends BRADSHAW, who will duly reveal his instructions.

[Footnote 1: Thurloe, II. 562.]

[Footnote 2: Council Order Book of date.]

[Footnote 3: Compare this address with that which the Envoy of the United Provinces was instructed by the States-General to be most punctual in using in his addresses to his Czarish Majesty nearly six years before (Aug. 1651: see Thurloe, I. 196):--"Most illustrious, most potent great Lord, Czar and Grand Duke Alexey Michaelowitz, Autocrator of all both the Greater and Lesser Russia, Czar of Kiof, Wolodomiria, Novgorod, Czar of Kazan, Czar of Astracan, Czar of Siberia, Lord of Plescow, and Grand Duke of Smolensko, Tweer, Jugonia, Permia, Weatka, Bolgaria, Lord and Grand-Duke of Novagrada and the low lands of Zenigow, Resan, Polotzko, Rostof, Yareslav, Belooseria, Udoria, Obdoria, Condinia, Wietepsky, M'Stitslof, Lord of all the Northern Lands, Lord of the Land of Iversky, Czar of Cartalinsky and Grusinsky, and of the Land of Cardadinsky, Prince of the Circasses and Gorshes, heir of his Father and Grand-father, and Lord and Sovereign of many other Easterly, Westerly, and Northerly Lordships and Dominions." Milton, for the Protector, is somewhat more economical and uses _Rex_ for _Czar_.]

The mission of BRADSHAW to Russia was not the only incident in the Protector's diplomatic service about this time in which Milton, as Foreign Secretary Extraordinary, may have felt an interest. MORLAND, after having been in Switzerland for about a year and a half on the business that had grown out of his original Piedmontese mission, had been at length recalled, leaving the Swiss agency, as before, in the hands of PELL by himself. He had been back in London since Dec. 1656, had attended the Council several times to give full and formal report of his proceedings, and had also appeared before the great Committee for the Collection for the Piedmontese Protestants, and presented his accounts of the moneys received and expended. All that he had done met with high approbation; and, by way of reward in kind, it was voted by the Council, May 5, 1657, that he should have £700 for 'the charge of paper, printing, and cutting of the maps, for 2000 copies of his History,' and the whole of the profits of that book. Morland's _History of the Evangelical Churches of Piemont_, which appeared in the following year, was therefore a State publication the copyright of which was made over to the author. More munificent still was the reward of the services of MEADOWS in Portugal. His special mission having been successfully accomplished, and ordinary consular duty in Lisbon having been put into good hands, he too had returned to London, but only to be designated at once (Feb. 24, 1656-7) for another mission of importance. This was that mission to the King of Denmark which Cromwell had promised in his letter to the King of Dec. 1656, but for which a suitable person had not then been found. To Meadows, fresh from Portugal, the appointment to Denmark was in itself a high compliment; but there were very substantial accompaniments. His allowance in his new mission was to be £1000 a year; a special sum of £400 was voted for the expense of his journey; and it was ordered that, for his able discharge of his Portuguese mission, £100 a year should be settled on him and his for ninety-nine years--a vote partly commuted a few days afterwards (March 19) into a present money-payment of £1000. For DURIE, who was also now back in England, and indeed close to Milton in Westminster, after another of his roving missions, first through Switzerland, and then in other parts, there was to be no employment so distinguished as that found for Meadows. It was enough that he should be at hand for any farther service of propagandism in behalf of his life-long idea of a Pan-Protestant Union. Of two new diplomatic appointments that were soon to be made, both above Durie's mark, we shall hear in time. The most splendid diplomatic appointment of all in the Protector's service had, as we already know (ante p. 114), just received an increase of dignity. The Scottish COLONEL WILLIAM LOCKHART, the husband of Cromwell's niece, and his Ambassador at the Court of France since April 1656, had been back on a visit in the end of the year to attend Parliament and to consult with Cromwell; and now, knighted by Cromwell, he had returned to France as SIR WILLIAM LOCKHART, with his great allowance of £100 a week, or £5200 a year.[1]

[Footnote 1: Council Order Books of dates Jan. 1, 27, Feb. 3, 24, March 5, 12, 19, 1656-7, and May 5, 1657; Letter of Durie, dated "Westminster, May 28, 1657," in Vaughan's Protectorate (II. 173).]

At no time, indeed, since the beginning of the Protectorate, had there been such activity in that foreign and diplomatic department of the Protector's service to which Milton belonged. Cromwell's alliance offensive and defensive with France against Spain (March 23, 1656-7), leading immediately to the transport of an English auxiliary army under General Reynolds to co-operate with the French in Flanders (ante pp. 140-141), would in itself have caused an increase of such activity; but, in addition to this, and inextricably involved with this in Cromwell's general Anti-Spanish policy, was that idea of a League or Union of the Protestant States of Europe which had first perhaps been roused in his mind by the Piedmontese massacre of 1655, but had gradually, as so many of Milton's subsequent State-Letters prove, assumed firmer form and wider dimensions. The Dutch, the Protestant Swiss, the Protestant German princes and cities, the Danes, the Swedes, the Protestants of Transylvania and other eastern parts, perhaps even the Russians, all, so far as Cromwell's influence could go, were to be brought to a common understanding for the promotion of Protestant interests throughout the world and the defiance of all to the contrary. It was Durie's old dream of Pan-Protestantism redreamt by a man whose state was kingly, and who had the means of turning his dreams into realities. Now, consequently, in the service of that dream, as in his service generally,

"Thousands at his bidding speed, And post o'er land and ocean without rest."

While so many were thus coming and going, at £800 a year, £1000 a year, or £5000 a year, blind Milton, with his £200 a year, could only "stand and wait," the stationary Latin drudge. The return of his old assistant Meadows from Portugal may again have relieved him of somewhat of the drudgery; for, though Meadows was designated for the new mission to Denmark Feb. 24, 1656-7, he did not actually set out for Denmark till the following August, and there is something like proof that in the interval, envoy though he now was, he resumed secretarial duty at Whitehall under Thurloe. His renewed presence in London may account for the comparative rarity of Milton's State-Letters from Dec. 1656 to April 1657, and also for the fact that then there follows a total blank of four months in the series, bringing us precisely to August, when Meadows was preparing to go away again. What passed during these months we already know. The great question of Kingship or continued Protectorship, which had been in suspense during those months of March and April in which Milton had written his last four letters, had been brought to a close May 8, when Cromwell at last decisively refused the Crown; and the First Session of his Second Parliament had accordingly ended, June 26, not in his coronation, as had been expected, but in his inauguration in that Second Protectorship the constitution of which had been framed by the Parliament in their so-called _Petition and Advice_.--What may have been Milton's thoughts on the Kingship question we can pretty easily conjecture. Almost to a certainty, he was one of the private "_Contrariants_," one of those Oliverians who, with Lambert, Fleetwood, and most of the Army-men, objected theoretically to a return to Kingship, feared it would be fatal, and were glad therefore when Cromwell declined it and accepted the constitutionalized Protectorship instead. But, indeed, by this time, it is possible that Milton, though still Oliverian in the main, still a believer in Cromwell's greatness and goodness, was not so devotedly an Oliverian as he had been when he had written his panegyric on the Protector and the Protectorate in his _Defensio Secunda_. Even then he had made his reserves, and had ventured to express them in advices and cautions to Cromwell himself. He can hardly have professed that in those virtues of the avoidance of arbitrariness and self-will, the avoidance of over-legislation and over-restriction, which he had especially recommended to Cromwell, the rule of the Protector through the last three years had quite satisfied his ideal. Many of the so-called "arbitrary" measures, and even the temporary device of the Major-Generalships, he may have excused, as Cromwell himself did, on the plea of absolute necessity; all the measures distinctly for repression of Royalist risings and conspiracies must have had his thorough approbation; and, in the great matter of liberty of speculation and speech, Cromwell had certainly shown more sympathy with the spirit of Milton's _Areopagitica_ than most of his Councillors or either of his Parliaments. Nor, as we have sufficiently seen, did Milton's notions of Public Liberty, any more than Cromwell's, formulate themselves in mere ordinary constitutionalism, or the doctrine of the rightful supremacy of Parliaments elected by a wide or universal suffrage, and a demand that such should be sitting always. He had more faith perhaps, as Cromwell had, in a good, broad, and pretty permanent Council, acting on liberal principles, and led by some single mind. But there _had_ been disappointments. What, for example, of the frequent questionings and arrests of Bradshaw, Vane, and other high-minded Republicans whom Milton admired, and what especially of the prolonged disgrace and imprisonment of his dear friend Overton? Or, even if the plea of necessity or supposed necessity should cover such cases too (for Cromwell's informations through Thurloe might reach farther than the public knew, and the good Overton, at all events, had gone into devious and dangerous courses), what about the Protector's grand infatuation on the subject of an Established Church? He had preserved the abomination of a State-paid ministry; he had made that institution the very pride of his Protectorate; he was actually fattening up over again a miscellaneous State-clergy, in place of the old Anglicans, by studied encouragements and augmentations of stipend. So Milton thought, and very much in that language; and here, above all, must have been his dissatisfaction with Cromwell's Government. But what could be done? What other Government could there be? What would the Commonwealth have been without Cromwell, and in what condition would it be if he were removed? On the whole, what could a blind private thinker do but, in his occasional interviews with the great Protector on business, or his rarer presences perhaps in a retired place at one of the Protector's musical entertainments at Whitehall, keep all such thoughts to himself, reserving frank expression of them for his intimates, and meanwhile behaving as a loyal Oliverian and performing his duty? In such a state of mind, as I believe, did Milton pass from the First Protectorate into the Second.