After the works already mentioned, he is not known to have published any thing earlier than his treatise, which appeared early in 1649, entitled The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, &c. maintaining the right of the people to depose and put to death a tyrannical king. The unfortunate Charles I. had suffered on the scaffold. Milton's work therefore came forth, not to accelerate Charles's fate, but, as he expressly declares, to tranquil lize men's minds in the agitation which his fate produ ced. The pity which King Charles's tragic story excites, —a pity, however, by no means irreconcileable in hu mane minds with the conviction of his conduct having been deeply culpable, should not lead us hastily to re gard the attempt at tranquillizing men's minds after his death as unprincipled. On the contrary, Charles had no sooner died, than compassion for him was made the pretext for met] avowing slavish principles of the most abandoned nature. It was proclaimed as a fun damental maxim of government, that kings were from God, and not responsible to man ; and this maxim too was avowed in some instances by men, who, at an ear lier stage of the civil wars, had paved the way for the very dethronement and death which they now hypocri tically lamented.
Without denying that Milton, in the sternness of his republican opinions—and, let it be allowed, even in the infectious taint of over-heated party zeal—may have re garded Charles with less humane allowance than the candid eye of an impartial posterity regards him ; yet still it must be remembered, that this work professed not to discuss the question personally respecting Charles, but respecting the abstract principle of human tights and regal responsibility, at the root of which the anti regicides were now striking. Whatever treatment it might have been true and humane policy to have im posed on the fallen monarch, it was not to be tolerated, that his fate should be called in question, on the cious principle that kings are not responsible. So that Milton, as far as abstract principle was concerned, is not to be viewed in the light of one contributing to shed Charles's blood, but to be justified for slaying the monstrous opinions that lose out of it.
His next work was a pamphlet on the articles of peace, which the Earl of Ormond concluded at Kilkenney in the king's name with the Irish insurgents.
Without imputing to Charles any participation in the horrible massacre of the Irish pro:estants, it is clear that the treaty with the Catholics, concluded under the king's name and authority by Ormond, was sufficient to confirm the public prepossession on the subject, and to give an appearance of the tone of truth to republican and puritan invective. Milton, therefore, found it not difficult to be severe on the articles of a peace, which by abandoning the English and Protestant cause in Ireland, permitted their enemies to indulge in sangui nary revenge. When he had concluded this attack, he returned to the more quiet occupations of literature, and finished four books of his history of England. These come down no farther than the union of the heptarchy under Edgar. Two other books, written at a subse quent period, namely, after his controversy with Alorus, bring the narrative as far as the battle of Hastings. It is a history unfortunately terminating at the period where our annals begin to be interesting ; but the ma terials are copious and curious, and the style energetic, though occasionally harsh. The first book is abandon
ed without reserve to the fables of Geoffrey of Mon mouth, and was intended, as the author intimated, ra ther to suggest subjects to the poet, than maxims to the statesman or sage.
On the death of Charles I. the executive power of the commonwealth was lodged in a council of 38 members of the legislative assembly, who made England for a time command the respect and .terror of Europe. Re solving to adopt the old Roman language in their in tercourse with foreign powers, they appointed a Latin secretary ; and the learning, talents, and republicanism of Milton, pointed him out as the person best fitted to fill this office. The younger Vane and Bradshaw, who have both been the subject of his panegyric, are suppo sed to have first suggested his appointment. His con tinuance in this office was prolonged to the Restoration ; and the state papers in his department were models in the class of diplomatic compositions. Those letters in particular which he wrote in the Protector's name, to mediate for the oppressed Protestants of Piedmont, re flect a lustre on the reign of Cromwell, and on the his tory of England.
Milton had scarcely entered on the proper functions of his office, when he was summoned by the new go vernment to the discharge of another and peculiar duty. One of the contrivances of the royalists after the death of Charles, to stimulate public euthusiasm in their cause, was to publish the Eikon Basilike, or portrait of his sa cred majesty in his solitude and sufferings. The book was given out to be a collection of the feelings and re flections which Charles I. had at vat loos times during the civil wars committed to writing. It represents him in the constant intercourse of prayer with his Maker, asserting the integrity of his motives before the Search er of hearts, and appealing to his justice from the injus tice of man. There are few men, whose conduct through life would sanction them in writing such a di ary, to make conscientiously such constant appeals to the Deity in favour of the purity of their motives, and Charles was neither so pure as to be able to make them with a safe conscience, nor so hardened as to have made them with cool hypocrisy. It has been ascertained, by proofs which no reasonable man can reject, that this book, representing him as a saint and a martyr, was written for the political ends of the royalists by Dr. Claude]) ; and it is remarkably curious, that the most decided confession of the spuriousness of the Eikon was made by Charles's own sons Charles II. and the Duke of York.* The work. however, was considered as ge nuine when Milton wrote his remarks on it, although there were internal symptoms against its which his s igacity could not overlook. The council of state saw the dangerous impression which the Eikon B tsilike was calculated to make. They might have sup pressed it by force ; but they preferred waging war, by opposing argument to argument, and book to book. Milton, at their desire, wrote the Iconoclastes, or image breaker, in which he disclaims the intention of insulting the memory of Charles, but confronts the monarch's actions with the piety ascribed to him, and has even hinted at the work having been manufactured for him by his household rhetorician,—a suspicion which time has verified.