John Milton

About the end of 1651 Milton left his official rooms in White hall for a "garden house" he had taken on the edge of St. James's park in what was then called Petty France, Westminster, but is now York street. Milton had now more to do in the special work of his office, in consequence of the increase of correspond ence with foreign powers. But he had for some time been in ailing health ; and a dimness of eyesight which had been growing upon him gradually for ten years had been settling rapidly, since his labour over the answer to Salmasius, into total blindness. Before or about May 1652, when he was but in his 44th year, his blindness became total, and he could go about only with some one to lead him. Hence a rearrangement of his secretarial duties. Such of these duties as he could perform at home, or by oc casional visits to the Council Office near, he continued to per form; but much of the routine work was done for him by an assistant, a well-known German, George Rudolph Weckherlin, succeeded later by Philip Meadows and, eventually, by Andrew Marvell. Precisely to this time of a lull in Milton's secretaryship on account of his ill-health and blindness we have to refer his two great companion sonnets "To the Lord General Cromwell" and "To Sir Henry Vane the Younger." In 1652 died his only son, who had been born at Whitehall in the March of the preceding year. His wife died in 1653/4, just after she had given birth to his third daughter, Deborah. With the three children thus left him—Anne, but six years old, Mary, not four, and the infant Deborah—the blind widower lived on in his house in Petty France in such desolation as can be imagined. He had recovered sufficiently to resume his secretarial duties; and the total number of his dictated state letters for the single year 1652 is equal to that of all the state letters of his preceding term of secretaryship put together. To the same year there be long also three df his Latin "Familiar Epistles." In December 1652 there was published Joannis Philippi Angli responsio ad apologiam anonymi cujusdarn tenebrionis, being a reply by Mil ton's younger nephew, John Phillips, but touched up by Milton himself, to one of several pamphlets that had appeared against Milton for his slaughter of Salmasius.

In Dec. 1653 Cromwell's formal sovereignty began under the name of the Protectorate, causing a split in the party. Milton adhered to Cromwell, and was his Latin secretary through the whole of the Protectorate. For a while, indeed, his Latin letters to foreign states in Cromwell's name were but few, the reason for which may have been that he was then engaged on an answer to the pamphlet from The Hague entitled Regii sanguinis clamor ad coelum adversus parricidas anglicanos (March 1652). It came out in May 1654, with the title Joannis Miltoni Angli pro populo anglicano defensio secunda (Second Defence of John Milton, Englishman, for the People of England). The author of Regii sanguinis clamor was Dr. Peter du Moulin the younger, then moving about in English society, close to Milton ; but the reply is made to Alexander More, a professor at Middelburg, to whom the pamphlet was attributed. The Defensio contains passages of singular autobiographical and historical value, and includes lauda tory sketches of such eminent Commonwealth's men as Bradshaw, Fairfax, Fleetwood, Lambert and Overton, together with a long panegyric on Cromwell himself and his career, which remains to this day unapproached for elaboration and grandeur by any esti mate of Cromwell from any later pen.

From about the date of the publication of the

Defensio Secunda to the beginning of 1655 the only specially literary relics of Mil ton's life are his translations of Ps. i.–viii. in different metres, done in Aug. 1654, his translation of Horace's Ode, i. 5, done probably about the same time, and two of his Latin "Familiar Epistles." The most active time of his secretaryship for Cromwell was from April 1655 onwards. Milton's office was then redefined; the ordinary Foreign Office work was taken off his hands and he was left to deal with special occasions. Hardly was the arrange ment made when a signal occasion did occur. In May 1655 all England was horrified by the news of the massacre of the Vaudois Protestants (Waldenses) by the troops of Emanuele II., duke of Savoy and prince of Piedmont, in consequence of their dis obedience to an edict requiring them either to leave their native valleys or to conform to the Catholic religion. Cromwell and his council took the matter up with all their energy ; and the burst of indignant letters on the subject despatched in that month and the next to the duke of Savoy himself, Louis XIV. of France, Cardinal Mazarin, the Swiss cantons, the states-general of the United Provinces, and the kings of Sweden and Denmark, were all by Milton. His famous sonnet "On the Late Massacre in Pied mont" was his more private expression of feeling on the same occasion. Milton's last Latin pamphlets, the Pro se Defensio, and the Scriptum domini protectoris, appeared in August.

Through the rest of Cromwell's Protectorate, Milton's life was of comparatively calm tenor. He was in much better health than usual, bearing his blindness with courage and cheerfulness; he was steadily busy with important despatches to foreign powers on behalf of the Protector, then in the height of his great foreign policy; and his house in Petty France seems to have been, more than at any previous time since the beginning of his blindness, a meeting-place for friends and visitors, and a scene of pleasant hospitalities. The four sonnets now numbered xix.–xxii., one of them to young Lawrence, the son of the president of Cromwell's council, and two of the others to Cyriack Skinner, once his pupil, belong to this time of domestic quiet, as do also no fewer than ten of his Latin "Familiar Epistles." His marriage to Katherine Woodcock on Nov. 12, 1656 brought him a brief period of domestic happiness; but, after only 15 months, he was again a widower, by her death in childbirth in February 1657/8. The touching sonnet which closes the series of Milton's Sonnets is his tribute to the memory of his second marriage. Some of his greatest despatches for Cromwell, including letters, of the highest importance, to Louis XIV., Mazarin and Charles Gustavus of Sweden, belong to the year 1658. On the whole, there is no doubt of Milton's high opinion of Cromwell; but he felt some doubts about his later policy, which he expressed in the Defensio Secunda. Above all, he was disappointed with Cromwell's church policy. Milton was strongly for complete disestablishment, and Crom well's conservation of the Established Church must have been Milton's deepest disappointment with Cromwell's rule.