[Footnote 1: Letter of Hartlib's in Worthington's Diary and Correspondence, edited by Crossley (I, 66).]

Ten Latin State-letters nearly all at once, implying as they do consultations with Thurloe, if not also interviews with the Protector and the Council, argue a pretty considerable demand upon Milton at this date for help again in the Foreign Secretaryship.

It would seem, however, that it had occurred to the Protector and the Council that they were again troubling Mr. Milton too much or left too dependent on him, and that, with the increase of foreign business now in prospect in consequence of the Swedo-Danish war and its complications, it would be well to have an assistant to him, such as Meadows had been. Accordingly, at a meeting of the Council on Tuesday Sept. 8, 1657, Cromwell himself present, with Lawrence, Fleetwood, Lord Lisle, Strickland, Pickering, Sydenham, Wolseley, and Thurloe, there was this minute: "Ordered by his Highness the Lord Protector, by and with the advice of the Council, that MR. STERRY do, in the absence of Mr. Philip Meadows, officiate in the employment of Mr. Meadows under Mr. Secretary [Thurloe], and that a salary of 200 merks per annum be allowed him for the same."[1] Whether this Mr. Sterry was the preacher Mr. Peter Sterry, already employed and salaried as one of the Chaplains to the Council, or only a relative of his, I have not ascertained; but it is of the less consequence because the appointment did not take effect. The person actually appointed was MR. ANDREW MARVELL at last. We say "at last," for had he not been recommended for the precise post by Milton four years and a half before under the Rump Government? Milton may have helped now to bring him in, or it may have been done by Oliver himself in recognition of Marvell's merits in his tutorship of young Dutton and of his Latin and English Oliverian verses. There seems to be no record of Marvell's appointment in the Order Books; but he tells us himself it was in the year 1657. "As to myself," he wrote in 1672, "I never had any, not the remotest, relation to public matters, nor correspondence with the persons then predominant, until the year 1657, when indeed I entered into an employment for which I was not altogether improper." When Marvell wrote this, he was oblivious of some particulars; for, though it is true that he was in no public employment under the Protectorate till 1657, it can hardly be said that he had not "the remotest relation" till then to public matters, nor any "correspondence with the persons then predominant." Enough for us that, from the year he specifies, and precisely from September in that year, he was Milton's colleague in the Foreign or Latin Secretaryship. "Colleague" we may call him, for his salary was to be L200 a year (not 200 merks, as had been proposed for Sterry), the same as Milton's was, and the same as Meadows's had been; and yet not quite "colleague," inasmuch as Milton's L200 a year was a life-pension, and also inasmuch as, in stepping into Meadows's place, Marvell became one of Thurloe's subordinates in the office, while something of the original honorary independence of the Foreign Secretaryship still encircled Milton.—Just as Marvell had for some time been wistful after a place in the Council Office, suitable for a scholar and Latinist, so there was another person now in the same condition of outside waiting and occasional looking-in. "Received then of the Right honble. Mr. Secretary Thurloe the sume of fifty pounds: L50: by mee, JOHN DRIDEN" is a receipt, of date "19 October 1657," among Thurloe's papers in the Record Office—the words "by mee, JOHN DRIDEN" in a neat slant hand, different from the body of the receipt. The poet Dryden, it may be remembered, was the cousin and client of Sir Gilbert Pickering, one of the most important men in the Council and one of the most strongly Oliverian. The poet left Cambridge, his biographers tell us, without his M.A. degree, "about the middle of 1657," and it was a taunt against him afterwards that he had begun his London life as "clerk" to Sir Gilbert. As he cannot have got the L50 from Thurloe for nothing, the probability is that he had been employed, through Sir Gilbert, to do some clerkly or literary work for the Council. No harm, at all events, in remembering the ages at this date of the three men of letters thus linked to the Protectorate at its centre. Milton was in his forty-ninth year, Marvell in his thirty-eighth, Dryden in his twenty-seventh.[2]

[Footnote 1: Council Order Books of date.]

[Footnote 2: Marvell's Rehearsal Transprosed (in Mr. Grosart's edition of Marvell's Prose Works), I. 322; Receipt in Record Office as quoted; Christie's Memoir of Dryden prefixed to Globe edition of Dryden's Poetical Works.—That Marvell was appointed Milton's colleague or assistant precisely in September 1657 is proved by the fact that his first quarter's salary appears in certain accounts as due in the following December (see Thurloe, VII. 487).]

On the day on which Dryden received his fifty pounds from Thurloe there was this entry in the birth-registers of the parish of St. Margaret's, Westminster: "October 19, 1657, Katherin Milton, d. to John, Esq., by Katherin." The entry may be still read in the book, with these words appended in an old hand some time afterwards: "This is Milton, Oliver's Secretary." It is the record of the birth of a daughter to Milton by his second wife, Katharine Woodcock, in the twelfth month of their marriage. The little incident reminds us at this point of the domestic life in Petty France; but it need not delay us. We proceed with the Secretaryship.

Whatever share of the regular work of the Foreign Department may have been now allotted to Marvell, an occasional letter was still required from Milton. The following Latin dispatches were written by him between September 1657 and Jan. 1657-8, when the Protector's Second Parliament reassembled for its second session, as a Parliament of two Houses:—

(CXII.) TO M. DE BORDEAUX, THE FRENCH AMBASSADOR, Oct. 1657:—This is not in the Protector's name, but in that of the President of the Council. It is about the case of a Luke Lucy (Lucas Lucius) a London merchant. A ship of his, called The Mary, bound from Ireland to Bayonne, had been driven by tempest into the port of St. Jean de Luz, seized there at the suit of one Martin de Lazon, and only discharged on security given to abide a trial at law of this person's claim. Now, his claim was preposterous. It was founded on an alleged loss of money as far back as 1642 by the seizure by the English Parliament of goods on board a ship called The Santa Clara. He was not the owner of the goods, but only agent, with a partner of his, called Antonio Fernandez, for the real owners; there had been a quarrel between the partners; and the Parliament had stopped the goods till it should be decided by law who ought to have them. Fernandez was willing to try the action in the English Courts; but De Lauzon had made no appearance there. And now De Lauzon had hit on the extraordinary expedient of seizing Lucy's ship and dragging the totally innocent Lucy into an action in the French Courts. All which having been represented to the Protector by Lucy's petition, it is begged that De Lauzon may be told he must go another way to work.

(CXIII.) TO THE DOGE AND SENATE OF VENICE, Oct. 1657:—A rather long letter, and not uninteresting. First the Protector congratulates the Venetians on their many victories over the Turks, not only because of the advantage thence to the Venetian State, but also because of the tendency of such successes to "the liberation of all Christians under Turkish servitude." But, under cover of this congratulation, he calls to their attention again the case of a certain brave ship-captain, Thomas Galilei (Thomam Galileum). He had, some five years ago, done gallant service for the Venetians in his ship called The Relief, fighting alone with a whole fleet of Turkish galleys and making great havoc among them, till, his own ship having caught fire, he had been taken and carried away as a slave. For five years he had been in most miserable captivity, unable to ransom himself because he had no property in the world besides what might be owing to him for his ship and services by the Venetian Government. He had an old father still alive, "full of grief and tears which have moved Us exceedingly"; and this old man begs, and His Highness begs, that the Doge and Senate will arrange for the immediate release of the captive. They must have taken many Turkish prisoners in their late victories, and it is understood that those who detain the captive are willing to exchange him for any Turk of equal value. Also his Highness hopes the Doge and Senate will pay at once to the old man whatever may be due to his captive son. This, his Highness believes, had been arranged for after his former application on the subject; but probably, in the multiplicity of business, the matter had been overlooked. May the Republic of Venice long flourish, and God grant them victories over the Turks to the very end!

(CXIV.) TO THE HIGH AND MIGHTY LORDS, THE STATES GENERAL OF THE UNITED PROVINCES, Nov. 1657:—This is a letter of commendation of the Dutch Ambassador William Nieuport on his temporary return home on private affairs (see ante p. 312). Through the "several years" of His Highness's acquaintance with him, he had found him of "such fidelity, vigilance, prudence, and justice, in the discharge of his office" that he could not desire a better Ambassador, or believe their High Mightinesses could find a better one. He cannot take leave of him, though but for a short time, without saying as much. Throughout his embassy, his aim had been, "without deceit or dissimulation," to preserve the peace and friendship that had been established; and, so long as he should be Dutch Ambassador in London, his Highness did not see "what occasion of offence or scruple could rankle or sprout up" between the two States. At the present juncture he should regret his departure the more if he were not assured that no man would better represent to their High Mightinesses the Protector's goodwill to them and the condition of things generally. "May God, for His own glory and the defence of the Orthodox Church, grant prosperity to your affairs and perpetuity to our friendship!"—In writing this letter, Milton must have remembered Nieuport's interference in behalf of Morus, for the suppression at the last moment, if possible, of the Defensio Secunda. He had not quite relished that interference, or the manner of it. See Vol. IV, pp. 631-633, and ante p. 202-203.

(CXV.) TO THEIR HIGH MIGHTINESSES THE STATES GENERAL OF THE UNITED PROVINCES, Dec. 1657:—A fit sequel to the foregoing, for it is the Letter Credential to GEORGE DOWNING, just selected to be his Highness's Resident at the Hague, and so the counterpart of Nieuport (ante p. 312). "GEORGE DOWNING," it begins, "a gentleman of rank, has been for a long time now, by experience of him in many and various transactions, recognised and known by Us as of the highest fidelity, probity, and ability." He is, accordingly, recommended in the usual manner; and there is intimation, though not in language so strong as that of Lockhart's credentials to France, that "communications" with him will be the same as with his Highness personally. "Communications" only this case, Downing not being a plenipotentiary like Lockhart.[1]

[Footnote 1: Downing's father was Emanuel Downing, a settler in Massachusetts, and his mother was a sister of the celebrated Governor John Winthrop. Though born in this country (in or near Dublin in 1623), their son had grown up in New England, much under the charge of Hugh Peters, who was related to him. He graduated at Harvard University in 1642. Thence he had come to England, and, from being a preacher in Okey's regiment of dragoons in the New Model (1645), had passed gradually into other employments. He had been Scoutmaster-General to the Army in Scotland (1653), but had been attached since 1655 to Thurloe's office, and employed, as we have seen, in diplomatic missions. His appointment to be Cromwell's minister at the Hague was a great promotion. His salary in the post was to be L1100 a year, worth nearly L4000 a year now. (Sibley's Biographical Sketches of Graduates of Harvard University. I. 28-53, with corrections at p. 583.)]

(CXVI.) TO THE PROVINCIAL STATES OF HOLLAND, Dec. 1657:—While recommending DOWNING to the States General, his Highness cannot refrain from recommending him also specially to the States of Holland, self-governed as they are internally, and "so important a part of the United Provinces" besides.

(CXVII.) TO FERDINAND, GRAND DUKE OF TUSCANY, Dec. 1657:—The Protector's last letter to the Grand Duke (ante 372) had produced immediate effect. The rascally Englishman Ellis, who, to the discredit of English and Christian good faith, had run off with the cargo of rice, sugar, and coffee, belonging to the Sultan of Turkey, had been arrested in Leghorn. So the Grand Duke had informed Cromwell in a letter dated Nov. 10. The present is a reply to that letter, and is very characteristic. "We give you thanks for this good office; and now we make this farther request,—that, as soon as the merchants have undertaken that satisfaction shall be made to the, Turks, the said Master be liberated from custody, and the ship and her lading be forthwith let off, lest perchance we should seem to have made more account of the Turks than of our own citizens. Meanwhile we relish so agreeably your Highness's singular, conspicuous, and most acceptable good-will towards us that we should not refuse the brand of ingratitude if we did not eagerly desire a speedy opportunity of gratifying you in return by the like promptitude, by means of which we might prove to you in very deed our readiness also in returning good offices. Your Highness's most affectionate OLIVER."

To the same month as the last three of these Latin State-Letters belong two more of Milton's Latin Familiar Epistles. The persons to whom they are addressed are already known to us:

"To the very distinguished MR. HENRY DE BRASS.

"Having been hindered these days past by some occupations, illustrious Sir, I reply later than I meant. For I meant to do so all the more speedily because I saw that your present letter, full of learning as it is, did not so much leave me room for suggesting anything to you (a thing which you ask of me, I believe, out of compliment to me, not for your own need) as for simple congratulation. I congratulate myself especially on my good fortune in having, as it appears, so suitably explained Sallust's meaning, and you on your so careful perusal of that most wise author with so much benefit from the same. Respecting him I would venture to make the same assertion to you as Quintilian made respecting Cicero,—that a man may know himself no mean proficient in the business of History who enjoys his Sallust. As for that precept of Aristotle's in the Third Book of his Rhetoric [Chap. XVII] which you would like explained—'Use is to be made of maxims both in the narrative of a case and in the pleading, for it has a moral effect'—I see not what it has in it that much needs explanation: only that the narration and the pleading (which last is usually also called the proof) are here understood to be such as the Orator uses, not the Historian; for the parts of the Orator and the Historian are different whether they narrate or prove, just as the Arts themselves are different. What is suitable for the Historian you will have learnt more correctly from the ancient authors, Polybius, the Halicarnassian, Diodorus, Cicero, Lucian, and many others, who have handed down certain stray precepts concerning that subject. For me, I wish you heartily all happiness in your studies and travels, and success worthy of the spirit and diligence which I see you employ on everything of high excellence. Farewell.

"Westminster: December 16, 1657."

"To the highly accomplished PETER HEIMBACH.

"I have received your letter dated the Hague. Dec. 18 [foreign reckoning: the English would be Dec. 8], which, as I see it concerns your interests, I have thought I ought to answer on the very day it has reached me. After thanking me for I know not what favours of mine,—which, as one who desires everything good for you, I would were really of any consideration at all,—you ask me to recommend you, through Lord Lawrence, to our Minister appointed for Holland [DOWNING, whose credential letters Milton had drawn up only a day or two before]. I really regret that this is not in my power, both because of my very few intimacies with the men of influence, almost shut up at home as I am, and as I prefer to be (propter paucissimas familiaritates meas cum gratiosis, qui domi fere, idque libenter, me contineo), and also because I believe the gentleman is now embarking and on his way, and has with him in his company the person he wishes to be his Secretary—the very office about him you seek. But the post is this instant going, Farewell.

"Westminster: December 18, 1657."

Too much is not to be made of certain phrases in this note. Milton was declining, in as civil terms as possible, a request which might perhaps have been troublesome even if the Secretaryship to Mr. Downing had been vacant; and, though it would have been enough, as far as Heimbach's present application was concerned, to tell him that Mr. Downing was already provided, the other reason may have been thrown in by way of discouragement of such applications in future. We have had proof that Milton liked Heimbach; but we do not know what estimate he had formed of Heimbach's abilities. Still, any words used by Milton about himself are always to be taken as in correspondence with fact; and hence we are to suppose that, at the time he wrote, he did keep himself as much aloof as possible from the magnates of the Council, performing the pieces of work required of him in his own house, rather than making them occasions for visits and colloquies. His old and intimate friend Fleetwood, and his friend Lord President Lawrence, with Desborough, Pickering, Strickland, Montague, and Sydenham, all of whom had been mentioned by him with more or less of personal regard in the Defensio Secunda in 1654, were still Councillors, and formed indeed more than half the Council; but his intercourse with some of these individually may have been less since his blindness. Then, of the rest, Thurloe was the real man of influence, the real gratiosus who could carry or set aside a request like Heimbach's; and, though Milton's communications with Thurloe must necessarily have been more frequent than with any other person of the Council, one has an indefinable impression that Thurloe had never taken cordially to Milton or Milton to Thurloe. At the date of Milton's note to Heimbach, too, gratiosi were becoming plentiful all round the Council. Cromwell's sixty-three writs for the new Upper House had gone out, or were going out, and in a week or two many more "lords" were to be seen walking in couples in any street in Westminster. Milton, in his quiet retreat there, may have had something of all this in his mind when he wrote to young Mr. Heimbach.

The short second session of the Parliament, with its difficult experiment of the two Houses once more, and the angry dispute of the Commons whether the name of "Lords" should be allowed to the Other House, had come and gone (Jan. 20—Feb. 4, 1657-8), and of Milton or his thoughts and doings through that crisis we have no trace whatever. Our next glimpse of him is just after the moment of the abrupt dissolution of the Parliament, when Cromwell was addressing himself again, single-handed, to the task of grappling with the double danger of anarchy within and a threatened invasion from without. The glimpse is a very sad one.

"Feb. 10, 1657-8, Mrs. Katherin Milton," and again "March, 20, 1657-8, Mrs. Katherin Milton," are two entries, within six weeks of each other, in the burial registers of St, Margaret's, Westminster. They are the records of the deaths of Milton's second wife and the little girl she had borne him only in October last. Which entry designates the mother and which, the child we should not know from the entries themselves; but a sentence in Phillips's memoir of his uncle settles the point. "By his second wife; Katharine, the daughter of Captain Woodcock of Hackney," says Phillips, "he had only one daughter, of which the mother, the first year after her marriage, died in childbed, and the child also within a month after." The first entry, therefore, is for the mother, and the second for the child. The mother died exactly at the time of the dissolution of the Parliament, and not in child-birth itself, but nearly four months after child-birth; and the little orphan, outliving the mother a short while, died at the age of five months. And so Milton was again left a widower, with his three daughters by the first marriage, the eldest in her twelfth year. His private life, for eighteen years now, had certainly not been a happy one; but this death of his second wife seems to have been remembered by him ever afterwards with deep and peculiar sorrow. She had been to him during the short fifteen months of their union, all that he had thought saintlike and womanly, very sympathetic with himself, and maintaining such peace and order in his household as had not been there till she entered it. And now once more it was a dark void, in which he must grope on, and in which things must happen as they would.

Small comfort at this time can Milton have had from either of his nephews. Not that they had openly separated themselves from him, or even ceased to be deferential to him and proud of the relationship, but that they had more and more gone into those courses of literary Bohemianism those habits of mere facetious hack-work and balderdash, which he must have noted of late as an increasing and very ominous form of protest among the clever young Londoners against Puritanism and its belongings. The Satyr against Hypocrites by his younger nephew in 1655 had been, in reality, an Anti-Puritan and Anti-Miltonic production; and, since the censure of that younger nephew by the Council in 1656 for his share in The Sportive Wit or Muses' Merriment, he had naturally stumbled farther and farther in the same direction. By the year 1658, I should say, John Phillips had entirely given up his uncle's political principles, and was known among his tavern-comrades as an Anti-Oliverian. We have no express publications in his name of this date, but he seems to have been scribbling anonymously. Of the literary industry of his more sedate and likeable elder brother, Edward, there is authentic evidence. A New World of Words, or a General Dictionary, containing the Terms, Etymologies, Definitions, and Perfect Interpretations, of the proper Significations of hard English words throughout the Arts and Sciences: such is the title of a folio volume published by him in 1657, and for the purposes of which he was afterwards accused of having plagiarized largely from the Glossographia of one Thomas Blount, published in the preceding year. In this piece of labour, which was doubtless a bookseller's commission, he must have had, the question of plagiarism apart, his uncle's thorough good-will; but it cannot have been the same with his Mysteries of Love and Eloquence: or the Arts of Wooing and Complimenting, as they are managed in the Spring Garden, Hide Park, the New Exchange, and other eminent Places. That performance, which appeared in August 1658, with a Preface "To the Youthful Gentry," and which must have been in progress at our present date, was much more in the vein of his brother John, and indeed was done to the order of Nathaniel Brooke, the bookseller who had published John's Satyr against Hypocrites, and also the more questionable Sportive Wit or the Muses' Merriment. "The book," says Godwin, "is put together with conspicuous ingenuity and profligacy, and is entitled to no insignificant rank among the multifarious productions which were at that time issued from the press to debauch the manners of the nation and bring back the King. It consists of imaginary conversations and forms of address for conversation, poems, models of letters, questions and answers, an Art of Logic with examples from the poets, and various instructions and helps to the lover for the composition of his verses; and, if we could overlook the gross provocations to libertinism and vice which everywhere occur in the book, it might be mentioned as no unentertaining illustration of the manners of the men of wit and gallantry in the time when it was published." To Godwin's description we may add that the book includes a Rhyming Dictionary, "useful for that pleasing pastime called Crambo," also a collection of parlour-games, and a number of other clever things. The poems and songs interspersed with the prose were mostly old ones reprinted, some of them chosen with fine taste; but one or two were Phillips's own. Of the model phrases or set expressions which form one of the prose parts of the volume, by way of instruction in the language of gallantry and courtship, specimens are these,—"With your ambrosiac kisses bathe my lips;" "You are a white enchantress, lady, and can enchain me with a smile;" "Midnight would blush at this;" "You walk in artificial clouds and bathe your silken limbs in wanton dalliance." What could Milton do, so far as such a production came within his knowledge, but shake his head and mingle smiles with a frown? Clearly the elder nephew too had slipped the Miltonic restraints. He had not lapsed, however, so decidedly as his brother; and we may partly retract in his case the statement that Milton could have little comfort from him. He still went and came about Milton, very attentively.[1]

[Footnote 1: Godwin's Lives of the Phillipses (1815), 49-57, and 139-140; Wood's Ath. IV. 760-769. I have not myself examined Phillips's New World of Words; but I have looked at the Thomason copy of his Mysteries of Love and Eloquence, where the date of publication is given. Perhaps Godwin is a little too severe in his account of it.]

During the month immediately preceding his wife's death, and the two months following it, there is a break in the series of Milton's State-Letters for Cromwell. But he resumed the familiar occupation on the 30th of March, 1658; and thenceforward to the end of the Protectorate the series is again pretty continuous. Indeed, of this period of Milton's life we know little more than may be inferred from, or associated with, the following morsels of his continued Secretaryship:—

(CXVIII.) To CHARLES X., KING OF SWEDEN, March 30, 1658:—The occasion of this letter was the receipt of news at last of the climax of the Swedish-Danish war in a great triumph of the Swedes. "In January 1658 Karl Gustav marches his army, horse, foot, and artillery, to the amount of twenty thousand, across the Baltic ice, and takes an island without shipping,—Island of Fuenen, across the Little Belt; three miles of ice; and a part of the sea open, which has to be crossed on planks. Nay, forward from Fuenen, when he is once there, he achieves ten whole miles more of ice; and takes Zealand itself—to the wonder of mankind." Such, in Mr. Carlyle's summary (History of Frederick the Great, i. 223, edit. 1869), was the feat of the Swedish warrior against his Danish enemy. It was followed almost immediately by a Peace between the two Powers, called The Peace of Roeskilde, by which Sweden acquired certain territories from Denmark, but very generous terms on the whole were granted to the Danes. Of all this there had been news to Cromwell, not only from his own correspondents, but also in an express letter from Charles Gustavus; and it is to this letter that Milton now replies in Cromwell's name:—"Most serene and potent King, most invincible Friend and Ally,—The Letter of your Majesty, dated from the Camp in Zealand, Feb. 21, has brought Us all at once many reasons why, both privately on our own account, and on account of the whole Christian Commonwealth, we should be affected by no ordinary joy. In the first place, because the King of Denmark (made your enemy, I believe, not by his own will or interests, but by the arts of the common foes) has been, by your sudden advent into the heart of his kingdom, and without much bloodshed, reduced to such a pass that he has at length, as was really the fact, judged peace more advantageous to him than the war undertaken against you. Next, because, when he thought he could in no way sooner obtain such a peace than by using Our help long ago offered him for a conciliation, your Majesty, on the prayer merely of the letters of our Envoy, deigned to show, by such an easy grant of peace, how much value you attached to Our friendship and interposed good-will, and chose that it should be My office in particular, in this pious transaction, to be myself nearly the sole adviser and author of a Peace which is speedily to be, as I hope, so salutary to Protestant interests. For, whereas the enemies of Religion despaired of being able to break your combined strength otherwise than by engaging you against each other, they will now have cause, as I hope, thoroughly to fear that this unlooked-for conjunction of your arms and hearts will turn into destruction for themselves, the kindlers of this war. Do you, meanwhile, most brave King, go on and prosper in your conspicuous valour, and bring it to pass that, such good fortune as the enemies of the Church have lately admired in your exploits and course of victories against the King now your ally, the same they may feel once more, with God's help, in their own crushing overthrow."[1] From this letter it will be seen that the missions of Meadows and Jephson, but especially that of Meadows, had been of use. The immediate object of the missions, a reconciliation of Sweden and Denmark, had been accomplished; and what remained farther was, as Cromwell hints, the association of the other Continental Protestant powers with these two Scandinavian kingdoms in a league against Austria and Spain. How exactly this idea accorded with reflective Protestant sentiment everywhere appears from a few sentences in one of Baillie's letters, commenting on the very occurrences that occasioned Cromwell's present despatch. "I am glad," writes Baillie, "that by a Peace, however extorted, the Swedes are free to take course with other enemies. I wish Brandenburg may return to his old posture, and not draw on himself next the Swedish armies; which the Lord forbid! for, after Sweden, we love Brandenburg next best.... Our wish is that the Muscoviter, for reforming of his churches, civilizing of his people, and doing some good upon the Turks and Tartars, were more straitly allied with Sweden, Brandenburg, the Transylvanian, and other Protestant princes. We should rejoice if, on this too good a quarrel against the Austrians ... he [Charles Gustavus] would turn his victorious army upon them and their associates, with the assistance of France and a good Dutch league. It seems no hard matter to get the Imperial Crown and turn the Ecclesiastic Princes into Secular Protestants."[2] Very much in the direction of Baillie's hopes were Cromwell's envoys, Meadows, Jephson, Bradshaw, and Downing, to labour for the next few months. Of their journeys hither and thither, their expectations and disappointments, there are glimpses in successive letters in Thurloe; from which also it appears that Meadows and Downing gave most satisfaction, and that, after a while, Jephson was relieved of the main business of the Swedish mission, and that mission was conjoined with the Danish in the hands of Meadows (Thurloe, VII. 63-64).

[Footnote 1: The translation of this letter by Phillips is unusually careless. It jumbles the tenses in such a manner that the Peace between Sweden and Denmark does not seem to have yet taken place, but only to be hoped for by Cromwell. In fact, Phillips's translation robs the letter of all its meaning and interest.]

[Footnote 2: Baillie, III. 371.]

(CXIX.) TO THE GRAND-DUKE OF TUSCANY, April 7, 1658:—A John Hosier, master of a ship called The Lady, had been swindled in April 1656 by an Italian named Guiseppe Armani, who has moreover possessed himself fraudulently of 6000 pieces of eight belonging to one Thomas Clutterbuck. There is a suit against Armani at Leghorn; but Hosier, after going to great expenses, is deterred from appearing there by threats of personal violence. "We therefore request your Highness both to relieve this oppressed man, and also to restrain the insolence of his adversary, according to your accustomed justice."

(CXX.) TO LOUIS XIV. OF FRANCE, May 26, 1658:[1]—This is a very momentous letter. It is Cromwell's appeal to the French King in behalf once more of the poor Piedmontese Protestants:—"Most serene and potent King, most august Friend and Ally,—Your Majesty may remember that, at the time when there was treaty between us for the renewing of our League [April 1655]—the highly auspicious nature of which transaction is now testified by many resulting advantages to both nations and much damage to the common enemy—there fell out that miserable massacre of the People of the Valleys, whose cause, forsaken on all hands and sorely beset, we commended, with all ardour of heart and commiseration, to your pity and protection. Nor do we think that your Majesty, of yourself, was wanting in a duty so pious, nay so human, in as far as, by your authority or by the respect due to your person, you could prevail with the Duke of Savoy. We, certainly, and many other Princes and States, were not wanting, in the matter of embassies, letters, interposed entreaties, on the subject. After a most bloody slaughter of both sexes and of every age, Peace was at last granted, or rather a kind of more guarded hostility clothed with the name of Peace: the conditions of the Peace were settled in your town of Pignerol—hard conditions indeed, but in which wretched and poor people that had suffered all that was dreadful and brutal might easily acquiesce, if only, hard and unjust as they are, they were to be stood to. They are not stood to; for the promise of each and all of them is eluded and violated by false interpretation and various asides: many are thrown out of their ancient abodes; many are interdicted from their native religion; new tributes are exacted; a new citadel is hung over their heads, whence soldiers frequently break forth, plundering or murdering all they meet: in addition to all which, new forces of late are secretly being got ready against them, and those among them who profess the Roman Religion have warning orders to remove for a time, so that all things now again seem to point to an exterminating onslaught on those most miserable creatures who were left over from that last butchery. That you will not allow this to be done I beseech and conjure you, Most Christian King, by that right hand of yours which sealed alliance and friendship with Us, by that most sacred ornament of the title of Most Christian; that you will not permit such a license of furious raging, I do not say to any prince (for such furious raging cannot possibly come upon any prince, much less upon the tender age of that Prince, or into the womanly mind of his Mother), but to those most holy assassins, who, while they profess themselves the servants and imitators of our Saviour Christ, Him who came into this world to save sinners, abuse His most meek name and institutes for savage slaughters of innocents. Snatch, thou who art able, and who in such a towering station art worthy to be able, so many suppliants of yours from the hands of homicides, who, drunk with gore recently, thirst for blood again, and consider it most advisable for themselves to lay at the doors of princes the odium of their own cruelty. Do not thou, while thou reignest, suffer thy titles or the territories of thy realm, or the most merciful Gospel of Christ, to be defiled by that scandal. Remember that these very Vaudois submitted themselves to your grandfather Henry, that great favourer of Protestants, when the victorious Lesdiguieres, through those parts where there is even yet the most convenient passage into Italy, pursued the yielding Savoyard across the Alps. The instrument of that Surrender is yet extant among the Public Acts of your Kingdom; in which, among other things, it is expressly provided and precautioned that the Vaudois should thenceforth be handed over to no one unless with those same conditions on which, by that instrument, your most invincible grandfather received them into his protection. This protection the suppliants now implore; as pledged by the grandfather, they demand it from you, the grandson. They would prefer and desire to be your subjects rather than his to whom they now belong, even by some exchange, if that could be managed; but, if that cannot be managed, to be yours at least in as far as your patronage, pity, and shelter can make them so. There are even reasons of state which might exhort you not to drive back Vaudois fleeing to you for refuge; but I would not, such a great King as you are, think of you as moved to the defence of those lying under calamity by other considerations than the promise of your ancestors, piety, and kingly benignity and greatness of soul. So the praise and glory of a most beautiful deed will be yours unalloyed and entire, and through all your life you will find the Father of Mercy, and His Son, King Christ, whose name and doctrine you will have vindicated from a wicked atrocity, more favouring and propitious to yourself. May God Almighty, for His own glory, the safeguard of so many innocent Christian human beings, and your true honour, dispose your Majesty to this resolution!" The letter was sent to Ambassador Lockhart, then commanding the English auxiliaries at Dunkirk, with very precise instructions to deliver it to his French Majesty, and to follow it up energetically by his own counsels.[2] It may have been delivered to Louis XIV. at or near Calais. It had, as we have seen, full effect. All in all, it is one of the most eloquent of the Milton series; and Milton must have exerted himself in the composition.

[Footnote 1: The exact day of the month is not given either in the Printed Collection or in the Skinner Transcript; but it is determined by a letter of Cromwell's to Ambassador Lockhart on the same business. The two letters went together (see Carlyle, III. 357-365).]

[Footnote 2: Letter of Cromwell to Lockhart of date May 25, 1658, printed by Mr. Carlyle, loc. cit., from the Ayscough MSS.]

(CXXI.) TO THE EVANGELICAL SWISS CANTONS, May 26, 1658:[1]—On the same great business as the last.—"Illustrious and most honourable Lords, most dear Friends:—Concerning the Vaudois, your most afflicted neighbours, what grievous and intolerable things they have suffered from their Prince for Religion's sake, besides that the mind almost shrinks from remembering them because of the very atrocity of the facts, we have thought it superfluous to write to you what must be much better known to yourselves. We have also seen copies of the letters which your Envoys, who a good while since were the advisers and witnesses of the Peace of Pignerol, have written to the Duke of Savoy and the President of his Council in Turin; in which they show and prove in detail that all the conditions of the Peace have been broken, and have been rather a snare for those miserable people than a security. Which violation of the conditions, continued from the very date of the Peace even to this day, and every day growing more grievous, unless they endure patiently, unless they prostrate themselves and lie down to be trampled on and pushed into mud, their Religion itself forsworn, there impends over them the same calamity, the same havoc, which harassed and desolated them, with their wives and children, in so miserable a manner three years ago, and which, if it is to be undergone again, will wholly extirpate them. What can the poor people do? They have no respite, no breathing-time, as yet no certain refuge. They have to deal with wild beasts or with furies, to whom the recollection of the former slaughters has brought no remorse, no pity for their fellow-countrymen, no sense of humanity or satiety in shedding blood. These things are clearly not to be borne, whether we have regard to our Vaudois brethren, cherishers of the Orthodox Religion from of old, or to the safety of that Religion itself. We, for our part, removed though we are by too great an interval of space, have heartily performed all we could in the way of help, and shall not cease to do the like. Do you, who are close not only to the torments and almost to the cries of your brethren, but also to the fury of the same enemies, consider prospectively, in the name of Immortal God, and that betimes, what is now your duty; on the question of what assistance, what protection, you can and ought to give to your neighbours and brothers, otherwise speedily to perish, consult your own prudence and piety, but your valour also. It is identity of Religion, be sure, that is the cause why the same enemies would see you likewise destroyed, nay why they would, at the same time, in the same by-past year, have seen you destroyed by an intestine war against you by members of your Confederacy. Next to the Divine aid it seems simply to be with you to prevent the very oldest branch of the purer Religion from being cut down in that remnant of the primitive faithful: and, if you neglect their safety, now brought to the extreme crisis of peril, see that the next turn do not, a little while after, visit yourselves. While we advise thus fraternally and freely, we are meanwhile not idle on our own part: what alone it is allowed to us at such a distance to do, whether for securing the safety of those who are endangered, or for succouring the poverty of those who are in need, we have taken all pains in our power to do, and shall yet take all pains, God grant to us both such tranquillity and peace at home, such a settled condition of things and times, that we may be able to turn all our resources and strength, all our anxiety, to the defence of His Church against the fury and madness of His enemies!"

[Footnote 1: The day of the month not given either in the Printed Collection or in the Skinner Transcript; but we may date by the last letter.]

(CXXII.-CXXV.) TO LOUIS XIV. AND CARDINAL MAZARIN: end of May 1658:[1]—This is a group of four letters, two to the King and two to the Cardinal, all appertaining to the splendid embassy of compliment on which Cromwell despatched his son-in-law, Viscount Falconbridge, in the end of May 1658, when he heard that the French Court had come so near England as Calais (ante pp. 340-341):—(1.) TO LOUIS XIV. "Most serene and potent King, most august Friend and Ally,—Thomas, Viscount Falconbridge, my son-in-law, being on the point of setting out for France, and desiring to come into your presence, to kiss your royal hand and testify his veneration and the respect which he cherishes for your Majesty, though, on account of the great pleasantness of his society, I am unwilling to part with him, yet, as I do not doubt but, from the Court of so great a King, in which so many most prudent and valiant men have their resort, he will shortly return to us much more accomplished for all honourable occupations, and in a sense finished, I have not thought it right to oppose his mind and wish. And, though he is one, if I mistake not, who may seem to bring his own sufficient recommendations with him wherever he goes, yet, if he should feel himself somewhat more acceptable to your Majesty on my account, I shall likewise consider myself honoured and obliged by that same kindness. May God keep your Majesty safe, and long preserve our fast friendship for the common good of the Christian world."—(2.) TO CARDINAL MAZARIN. As his son-in-law Lord Falconbridge is going into France, recommended by a letter to the French King, Cromwell cannot but inform his Eminence of the fact, and give Lord Falconbridge an introduction to his Eminence also. "Whatever benefit he may receive from his stay amongst you (and he hopes it will not be small) he is sure to owe most of it to your favour and kindness, whose mind and vigilance almost singly sustain and guard such great affairs in that kingdom." (3.) To LOUIS XIV. "Most serene and potent King, most august Friend and Ally,—As soon as news had arrived that your Majesty was come into camp, and was besieging with so great forces that infamous town and asylum of pirates, Dunkirk, I conceived a great joy, and also a sure hope that now in a short time, by God's good assistance, the sea will be less infested with robbers and more safely navigable, and that your Majesty will soon by your warlike prowess avenge those frauds of the Spaniard,—one commander corrupted by gold to betray Hesden, another treacherously taken at Ostend. I therefore send to you the most noble Thomas, Viscount Falconbridge, my son-in-law, both to congratulate your arrival in a camp so close to us, and also to explain personally with what affection we follow your Majesty's achievements, not only by the junction of our forces, but with all wishes besides that God Almighty may keep your Majesty's self safe and long preserve our fast friendship for the common good of the Christian world." (4.) To CARDINAL MAZARIN. As he is sending his son-in-law Viscount Falconbridge to congratulate the arrival of his French Majesty in the camp near Dunkirk, he has commanded him to convey also salutations and thanks to his Eminence, "by whose fidelity, prudence, and vigilance, above all, it has been brought about that French business is so prosperously managed against the common enemy in so many different parts, and especially in neighbouring Flanders." It is clear that all these letters cannot have been sent, but only two of them. The closing words of the two letters to the King, for example, are identical to an extent incompatible with the idea that they were both delivered. It may be guessed by the suspicious that at first the intention was that Lord Falconbridge should seem to be visiting France for his own curiosity or pleasure, the Protector only taking advantage of his whim, and that letters 1 and 2 were then drafted, but that afterwards it was thought better to send Lord Falconbridge on an avowed embassy of congratulation in Cromwell's own name, and letters 3 and 4 were then substituted. Perhaps, however, there was no duplicity in the affair at all, and the idea of the embassy did actually originate in a whim of Lord Falconbridge. Anyhow all the notes were written by Milton, and he kept copies of those not used.

[Footnote 1: Exact day not given either in Printed Collection or in Skinner Transcript; but the occasion fixes the time pretty closely.]

(CXXVI.) To THE GRAND DUKE OF TUSCANY, May 1658:—This is in a very different tone from recent letters of the Protector to the same Italian Prince (ante p. 372 and p. 378).—His Highness has been informed of various acts of discourtesy of late to his Fleet off Leghorn, utterly inconsistent with the terms of friendship on which he had supposed himself to stand with the Grand Duke. Accommodation to the ships has been refused, out of deference to Spain; restrictions have been put on their supplies of fresh water; English merchants resident in Leghorn, and even the English Consul, have not been permitted to go on board; shots have actually been fired; &c. If these things had been done by the Governor of the Town without orders, let him be punished; but, if otherwise, "let your Highness consider that, as we have always very highly valued your good-will, so we have learnt to distinguish open injuries from-good-will."

(CXXVII.-CXXX.) To LOUIS XIV. AND CARDINAL MAZARIN. June 1658:—On the 16th of June there had arrived in London, in rapid return for the embassy of Viscount Falconbridge to Calais, the splendid counter-embassy to Cromwell of the Duke de Crequi and M. Mancini, the Cardinal's nephew (ante pp. 340-341). That in itself would have been an incident calling for some special acknowledgment from the Protector; but hardly had the embassy arrived when there came news of the great event which both Louis XIV. and Cromwell had for some time been intently expecting—the capture of Dunkirk. On the 15th of June the keys of the captured town had been handsomely delivered to Sir William Lockhart by Louis XIV. himself, so that the Treaty with Cromwell had been fully kept in that particular. Louis had sent a special Envoy with letters to announce the event to Cromwell formally; and this Envoy shared in the magnificent hospitalities which Cromwell showered upon the Duke de Crequi, M. Mancini, and their retinue. The four following letters all relate to this glorious occasion, and date themselves between June 16, when the French ambassadors arrived in London, and June 21, when they took their departure. (1.) To Louis XIV. "Most serene and potent King, most august Friend and Ally,—That your Majesty has so speedily, by the illustrious embassy you have sent, repaid my mission of respect with interest, besides that it is a proof of your singular graciousness and magnanimity, comes as a manifestation also of the degree of your regard for my honour and dignity, not to myself only, but to the whole English People; on which account, in their name, I duly return your Majesty my most cordial thanks. Over the most happy victory which God gave to our conjoint forces against the enemy [in the Battle near Dunkirk on June 3, ten days before the surrender of the town: ante p. 340], I rejoice along with you; and it is very gratifying to me that in that battle our men were not wanting either to their duty to you, or to the warlike glory of their ancestors, or to their own valour. As for Dunkirk, your Majesty's hopes for the near surrender of which are expressed in your letter, I have the additional joy of being able so soon to write back that the surrender has now actually taken place; and my hopes are that the Spaniard will presently pay for his double treachery by the loss not of one city only,—the effecting of which result by the capture of the other town [Bergen, near Dunkirk, now also besieged] I would that your Majesty may have it in your power to report as quickly. As to your Majesty's farther promise that my interests shall be your care, in that matter I have no mistrust, the promise coming from a King of such worth and friendliness, and having the confirmation of the word of his Ambassador, the most excellent and accomplished Duke de Crequi. That Almighty God may be propitious to your Majesty and to the French State, at home and in war, is my sincere wish." (2.) To CARDINAL MAZARIN. As we have already seen in Cromwell's correspondence with France, letters to the King and the Cardinal then almost always went in pairs, for Louis XIV. was but beginning his long career of Grand Monarque at the age of twenty, while the Cardinal, at the age of fifty-six, still retained that ministerial ascendancy which he had exercised all through the minority of Louis, and indeed since the death of Richelieu in 1642. This letter of Cromwell's to the Cardinal is even more interesting than that to the King, and may be given in full:—"Most Eminent Lord,—While I am thanking by letter your most Serene King, who has sent such a splendid embassy to return respects and congratulations and to communicate to me his joy over the recent most noble victory, I should be ungrateful if I did not at the same time pay by letter the thanks due also to your Eminence, who, to testify your good-will towards me, and your regard for my honour in all possible ways, have sent with the embassy your most worthy and highly accomplished young nephew, and even write that, if you had any one nearer akin to you or dearer, you would have sent that person in preference,—adding a reason which, coming from the judgment of so great a man, I consider no mean tribute of praise and distinction: to wit, your desire that those nearest to you in blood should imitate your Eminence in honouring and respecting me. Well, they will perhaps, at least, in your love for me, have had no stinted example of politeness, candour, and friendliness: of worth and prudence at their highest there are other far more brilliant examples in you, by which they may learn how to administer kingdoms and the greatest affairs with glory. With which that your Eminence may long and prosperously conduct affairs, for the common good of the French kingdom, yea of the whole Christian Republic, a distinction properly yours, I promise that my wishes shall not be wanting." (3.) To LOUIS XIV.[1] A more formal letter than the last, acknowledging the French King's own intimation that Dunkirk had been taken, and given into the possession of Lockhart. "That Dunkirk had surrendered to your Majesty, and that it had been by your orders immediately put in our possession, we had already heard by report; but with what a willing and glad mind your Majesty did it, to testify your good-will towards me in this matter, I have been especially informed by your royal letter, and have had abundantly confirmed by the gentleman in whom, from the tenor of that letter, I have all confidence,—the master in ordinary of your Palace. In addition to this testimony, though it needs no farther weight with me, our Ambassador with you [Lockhart], in discharge of his duty, writes to the same effect, and there is nothing that he does not ascribe to your most firm steadiness in my favour. Let your Majesty be assured in turn that there shall be no want of either care or integrity on our part in performing all that remains of our agreement with the same faith and diligence as hitherto. For the rest, I congratulate your Majesty on your successes and on the very near approach of the capture of Bergen; and may God Almighty grant that there may be as frequent exchanges as possible of such congratulations between us." (4.) TO CARDINAL MAZARIN[2]. This is on the same occasion and in the same strain. One sentence will suffice. "With what faith and expression of the highest good-will all was performed by you, though your Eminence's own assurance fully satisfied me, yet, that I should have nothing more to desiderate, our Ambassador, in carefully writing to me the details, had omitted nothing that could either serve for my information or answer your opinion of him."—It is curious, after these two last letters, to turn to those letters of Lockhart's to which Cromwell refers. They quite confirm his words, though they contain expressions, about both the King and the Cardinal, of which Cromwell would not perhaps have sent them literal copies. Thus, in a letter to Thurloe, of June 14, the day before the delivery of Dunkirk to the English, but when all the arrangements for the delivery had been made, Lockhart, speaking of the difficulties he anticipated in so arduous and delicate a post as the Governorship of Dunkirk, especially with his small supplies and great lack of money, adds,—"Nevertheless I must say I find him [the Cardinal] willing to hear reason; and, though the generality of Court and Army are even mad to see themselves part with what they call un si bon morceau, so delicate a bit, yet he is still constant to his promises, and seems to be as glad in the general, notwithstanding our differences in little particulars, to give this place to his Highness as I can be to receive it: the King is also exceeding obliging and civil, and hath more true worth in him than I could have imagined." Next day Lockhart wrote a brief note to Thurloe announcing himself as actually in possession, "blessed be God for this great mercy, and the Lord continue his protection to his Highness"; and there were subsequent longer letters both to Thurloe and to Cromwell himself[3]. Dunkirk was called "The Key of Spanish Flanders"; and the conquest of this place for the Protectorate was, it is to be remembered, among the last of Cromwell's great acts.

[Footnote 1: This Letter is not to be found in the Printed Collection or in Phillips; but it is in the Skinner Transcript (No. 102 there), and has been printed by Mr. Hamilton in his Milton Papers, 7-8.]

[Footnote 2: Neither is this Letter in the Printed Collection. It stands as No. 103 in the Skinner Transcript, and has been printed by Hamilton, p. 8.]

[Footnote 3: Thurloe, VII. 173 et seq.]

(CXXXI.) TO CHARLES GUSTAVUS, KING OF SWEDEN, June 1658:—Since Cromwell's last letter by Milton to this heroic Scandinavian (March 30), congratulating him on his generous Peace with Denmark, and urging the policy of a League of all the northern Protestant Powers for conjoint action against Austria, Poland, and Catholicism universally, the movements of the Swede had been most perplexing. Now he had been turning against the Poles and Austrians; but again Denmark, or even the Dutch, seemed to be the object of his resentment, while there was very quarrelsome negotiation between him and the Elector Marquis of Brandenburg, and every appearance that the Elector might have to bear the next full burst of his wrath. All this did not seem favourable to the prospects of a Protestant League, and Cromwell's envoys, Meadows, Jephson, Bradshaw, and Downing, had been going to and fro with their wits on the stretch. Such, in general, was the condition of affairs when Milton for Cromwell wrote as follows:—"Most serene and potent King, most dear Friend and Ally,—As often as we look upon the ceaseless plots and various artifices of the common enemies of Religion, so often our thought with ourselves is how necessary it is for the Christian world, and how salutary it would be, for the easier frustration of the attempts of these adversaries, that the Potentates of Protestantism should be conjoined in the strictest league among themselves, and principally your Majesty with our Commonwealth. How much, and with what zeal, that has been furthered by Us, and how agreeable latterly it would have been to us if the affairs of Sweden and our own had been in such a condition and position that the League could have been ratified heartily by us both, and with all fit aid the one to the other, We have testified to your agents from the time when they first treated of the matter with Us. Nor, truly, were they wanting to their duty; but, as was their custom in other things, in this matter also they displayed prudence and diligence. But we have been so exercised at home by the perfidy of wicked citizens, who, though several times received back into trust, do not yet cease to form new conspiracies, and to repeat their already often shattered and routed plots with the exiles, and even with the Spanish enemy, that, occupied in beating off our own dangers, we have not hitherto been able, as was our wish, to turn our whole attention and entire strength to the guardianship of the common cause of Religion. What was possible, however, to the full extent of our power, we have already studiously performed; and, whatever for the future in this direction shall seem to conduce to your Majesty's interests, we shall not desist not only to desire, but also to co-operate with you with all our strength in accomplishing where they may be opportunity. Meanwhile we congratulate, and heartily rejoice in, your Majesty's most prudent and most valiant actions, and desire with assiduous prayers that God may will, for the glory of his own Deity, that the same course of prosperity and victory may be a very long one."—So far as Milton's state-letters show, this is the last of the relations between Oliver Cromwell and Karl-Gustav of Sweden. But, in Thurloe and elsewhere, there are farther traces of the great Swede in connexion with Cromwell, and of the interest which the two kindred souls felt in each other. Passing over some weeks of still uncertain movement of the Swede hither and thither in his complications with Austria, Poland, Denmark, Muscovy, Brandenburg, and the Dutch, we may note the sudden surprise of all Europe when, early in August, he tore up his brief Peace with Denmark, re-invaded Zealand, and marched straight upon Copenhagen. His reasons for this extraordinary act he thought it right to explain to Cromwell in a long letter dated from his quarters near Copenhagen, August 18, 1658. The letter can have reached Cromwell only on his death-bed; and, on the whole, Cromwell had to leave the world with the consciousness that the League of Protestant Powers for which he had prayed and struggled was apparently as far off as ever. The election to the vacant Emperorship had already taken place at last, July 8, 1658, at Frankfort-on-the-Main, and it was the Austrian Leopold, King of Hungary, and not the French Louis XIV., after all, that had been proclaimed and saluted Imperator Romanorum.[1]

[Footnote 1: Thurloe, VII., at various points from the beginning, but especially pp. 338, 342, and 257. Foreign dates in Thurloe have to be rectified.]

(CXXXII.) TO THE KING OF PORTUGAL, August 1658:—A John Buffield, merchant of London, has been wronged by the detention of property of his by a Portuguese mercantile firm, and has been tossed about in Portuguese law-courts. The Protector requests his Portuguese Majesty to look into the matter and see justice done.

So ends the series of Milton's Letters for Oliver. As there had been eighty-eight such in all (XLV.-CXXXII.) during the four years and nine months of the Protectorate, whereas there had been but forty-four (I.-XLIV.) similar letters during the preceding four years and ten months of the Commonwealth proper and Interim Dictatorship, it will be seen that Milton's industry in this particular form of his Secretaryship had been just twice as great for Oliver as for the Governments before the Protectorate.[1] That fact in itself is rather remarkable, when we remember that Milton came into the Protector's service totally blind. Of course, whoever had been in the post would have had more to do in the way of letter-writing for the Protector than had been required by the preceding Councils of State in their comparatively thin relations with foreign powers; but that a blind man in the post should have been so satisfactory for the increased requirements says something for the employer as well as for the blind man. Thurloe and others had relieved Milton of much of the secretarial work; there had also been many breaks in Milton's secretaryship even in the letter-writing department, occasioned by ill-health, family-troubles, or occupation with literary tasks which were really public commissions and were credited to him as such; and at such times the dependence had been on Meadows or some one else for the Latin letters necessary. Always, however, when the occasion was very important, as when there had to be the burst of circular letters about the Piedmontese massacre, the blind man had to be sent to, or sent for. And what is worthy of notice now is that this had continued to be the case to the last. At no time in the Secretaryship had there been a series of more important letters from Milton's pen than those just inventoried, written for the Protector in the last five months of his life, and mostly in the months of May and June, 1658. Two or three of them are about ships or other small matters, showing that, even with Marvfell now; at hand for such drudgery, Milton did not wholly escape it; but the rest are on the topics of highest interest to Cromwell and closest to his heart. The poor Piedmontese Protestants are again in danger. Who must again sound the alarm? Milton. Cromwell's son-in-law, the gallant Falconbridge, starts on his embassy to Calais. Who must write the letters that are to introduce him to King Louis and the Cardinal? Milton. The gorgeous return embassy of the Duke de Crequi and M. Mancini has to be acknowledged, and the bells rung for the fall of Dunkirk; and with the congratulations to be conveyed across the Channel on that event there have to be interwoven Cromwell's thanks to the King and the Cardinal for having so punctually kept their faith with him by the delivery of the town to Lockhart. Who shall express the complex message? None but Milton. Finally, Cromwell would stretch his hand eastward across the seas to grasp that of the Swedish Charles Gustavus struggling with his peculiar difficulties, to give him brotherly cheer in the midst of them, brotherly hope also that they two, whoever else in a generation of hucksters, may yet live to lead in a glorious Protestant League for the overthrow of Babylon and the woman blazing in scarlet. Who interprets between hero and hero? Always and only the blind Milton. Positively, in reading Milton's despatches for Cromwell on such subjects as the persecutions of the Vaudois and the scheme of a Protestant European League, one hardly knows which is speaking, the secretary or the ruler. Cromwell melts into Milton, and Milton is Cromwell eloquent and Latinizing.[2]

[Footnote 1: With one exception, all the State-letters of Milton, from the beginning of his Secretaryship to the death of Cromwell, that have been preserved either in the Printed Collection or in the Skinner Transcript, have now been inventoried, and, as far as possible, dated and elucidated in the text of these volumes. The exception is a brief scrap thrown in at the end of the Letters for Cromwell both in the Printed Collection and in the Skinner Transcript, but omitted by Phillips in his translation as not worthwhile. It was not written for Cromwell or his Council, but only for the Commissioners of the Great Seal—whether for those under the Protectorate, or for their predecessors, does not appear, though perhaps that might be ascertained. The scrap may be numbered at this point, though inserted only as a note:—(CXXXIII.) "We, Commissioners of the Great Seal of England, &c., desire that the Supreme Court of the Parliament of Paris will, on request, take such steps that Miles, William, and Maria Sandys, children of the lately deceased William Sandys and his wife Elizabeth Soame, English by birth and minors, may be able, from Paris, where they are now under protection of the said Court, to return to us forthwith, and will deliver the said children into the charge of the Scotchman James Mowat, a good and honest man, to whom we have delegated this charge, that he may receive them where they are and bring them to us; and we engage that, on opportunity of the same sort offered, there will be a return from this Court of the like justice and equity to any subjects of France."]

[Footnote 2: The uniformly Miltonic style of the greater letters for the Protector, the same style as had been used in the more important letters for the Commonwealth, utterly precludes the idea that Milton was only the translator of drafts furnished him. In the smaller letters, about ships wrongfully seized and other private injuries, the case may have been partly so, though even there Milton must have had liberty of phraseology, and would imbed the facts in his own expressions. But there was not a man about the Council that could have furnished the drafts of the greater letters as we now have them. My idea as to the way in which they were composed is that, on each occasion, Milton learnt from Thurloe, or even in a preappointed interview with the Council, or with Cromwell himself, the sort of thing that was wanted, and that then, having himself dictated and sent in an English draft, he received it back, approved or with corrections and suggested additions, to be turned into Latin. Special Cromwellian hints to Milton for the letter to Louis XIV, on the alarm of a new persecution of the Piedmontese (ante pp. 387-9) must have been, I should say, the causal reference to a certain pass as the best military route yet into Italy from France, and the suggestion of an exchange of territories between Louis and the Duke of Savoy so as to make the Vaudois French subjects. The hints may have been given to Milton beforehand, or they may have been [n]otched in by Cromwell in revising Milton's English draft.]

The last letters to Louis XIV., Mazarin, and Charles Gustavus of Sweden, bring us to within about two months of Cromwell's death, and the last one of all, that to the King of Portugal, to within less than a single month of the same. We have yet a farther trace of the diplomacies proper to Milton's office round the dying Protector. Here, however, it is not Milton that comes into view, but his colleague or assistant, Andrew Marvell.

The Dutch Lord-Ambassador Nieuport, after having been absent in Holland since November 1657, had been sent back by their High Mightinesses, the States-General, to resume his post. The complication of affairs in northern Europe by the movements of Charles Gustavus, and the menacing attitude of that King not only pretty generally all round the Baltic, but also towards the Dutch themselves, had rendered Nieuport's renewed presence in London very necessary. Newly commissioned and instructed, he made his voyage, and was in the Thames on the night of the 23rd of July, though too late to reach Gravesend that night. The arrival of an ambassador being then an affair of much punctilio, he sent his son up the river in a shallop, to inform Mr. Secretary Thurloe and Sir Oliver Fleming, the master of the ceremonies, and to deliver to Thurloe a letter requesting that the pomp of a public reception might be waived and he might be permitted to take up his quarters quietly in the Dutch Embassy, still furnished and ready, just as he had left it. Young Mynheer Nieuport, coming to London on this errand, found things there in unexpected confusion,—the Lord Protector at Hampton Court, attending the death-bed of his daughter Lady Claypole, and leaving business to itself, and Secretary Thurloe also out of town. Fortunately, Thurloe was not then at Hampton Court, but only at his own country-house two miles off. Thither young Nieuport rode at once. He met Thurloe coming in his coach to Whitehall; whereupon Thurloe, after all proper salutations, informed him that his Highness had already heard of his father's arrival and had given orders for his suitable reception. Meanwhile, would young Mr. Nieuport come into the coach, so that they might drive back to Whitehall together? Arrived at Whitehall, Thurloe immediately gave orders for the preparation of one of his Highness's barges to be sent down to Gravesend, "with a gentleman called Marvell, who is employed in the despatches for the Latin tongue." Apparently this gentleman was on the spot, and was at once introduced by Thurloe to young Nieuport. Then young Nieuport went down the river by himself, rejoining his father at Gravesend, and bringing him a letter from Thurloe, to the effect that his Highness was very anxious that his reception should be in all points such as became the respect due to himself and his office, but that Mr. Marvell would come expressly to discuss and arrange particulars and that whatever Lord Nieuport should finally judge fitting should also be satisfactory to his Highness. That was on the night of Saturday, the 24th. Next day, Sunday the 25th, Marvell was duly down at Gravesend in the barge, actually before morning-sermon, as the Ambassador himself informs us, bidding the Ambassador formally welcome in the Lord Protector's name, and sketching out for him "a public reception, with barges and coaches, and also an entertainment, such as is usually given to the chiefest Ambassadors." Lord Nieuport still preferring less bustle on his own account, and thinking also that a great public reception would be unseemly at a time when "the Lord Protector and the whole Court were in great sadness for the mortal distemper of the Lady Claypole," Marvell remained in waiting on him at Gravesend that day, and in the night brought him up to town in his barge incognito. It was thought that his Highness might possibly be able to come from Hampton Court to Whitehall the next day or the next; but, that chance having passed, it was arranged that the Ambassador should himself go to Hampton Court, and have an audience with the Protector at three o'clock in the afternoon of Thursday the 29th. Accordingly, at eleven o'clock on that day the master of the ceremonies was at the Dutch Embassy, with three six-horse coaches; and, having been driven to Hampton Court, the Ambassador was received by Thurloe "at the second gate of the first court," and taken to his Highness's room. After interchange of compliments, his Highness expressed his regret "that his own indisposition, and other domestic inconveniencies, had hindered him from coming to London"; and then, the general company having been dismissed, and only Lord President Lawrence, Lord Strickland, and Thurloe, remaining in the room, there was some talk on business. Various matters were mentioned, but only generally, Nieuport not thinking it fit to trouble his Highness with "a large discourse," and his Highness indeed intimating that he did not find himself well enough to talk much. But all was very amicable, and at the end of the interview Cromwell, saying he hoped to be in London next week, insisted on conducting the Ambassador to the door of the antechamber, leaving Lawrence, Strickland, and Thurloe, to do the rest by attending him through the galleries back to the coaches. On that same day there had been a Council-meeting at Hampton Court, the last at which Cromwell was present. Possibly Dutch business was discussed there, and also at the next meeting of Council, which was at Whitehall on the 3rd of August, and without Cromwell. On the 5th, at all events, when the Council again met at Hampton Court, Cromwell not present, there was, as we have seen (ante, p. 355), a minute on Dutch business of a very ominous character. Cromwell's heart was now with the magnanimous Swede rather than with the merchandizing Dutch; and, in all probability, had he lived longer, Ambassador Nieuport would have had to send home news that might not have been pleasant to their High Mightinesses. But the next day (August 6) Lady Claypole was dead; and from that day, through the remaining four weeks of Cromwell's life, the concerns of the foreign world grew dimmer and dimmer in his regards. Perhaps to the last moment of his consciousness what did most interest him in that foreign world was the great new commotion round the Baltic in which his Swedish brother was the central figure, and in which both the Dutch and the Brandenburg Elector were playing anti-Swedish parts, the Elector avowedly, the Dutch more warily, "The King of Sweden hath again invaded the Dane, and very probably hath Copenhagen by this time," wrote Thurloe from Whitehall to Henry Cromwell at two o'clock in the morning of August 27. Cromwell, therefore, had learnt that fact before his death, and it must have mingled with his thoughts in his dying hours. In these very hours, we find, not only was Ambassador Nieuport close at hand again, for Dutch negotiations in which the fact would naturally be of high moment, but Herr. Schlezer also, the London agent of the Brandenburg Elector, was at the doors of the Council office, with express letters from the Elector, which he was anxious to deliver to Thurloe himself, in case even at such a time some answer might be elicited. Thurloe choosing to be inaccessible, he had left the letters with Mr. Marvell. Thus, twice in the last weeks of Oliver's Protectorate we have a distinct sight of Marvell in his capacity of substitute for Milton. He barges down the Thames very early on a Sunday morning to salute an Ambassador in the name of the Protector and bring him up to town in a proper manner; and he receives in the Whitehall office a troublesome diplomatic agent, who has come with important despatches.[1]

[Footnote 1: Thurloe, VII 286 and 298-299 (Letters of Nieuport to the States-General), 362 (Letter of Thurloe to Henry Cromwell), and 373-374 (Latin letter of Schlezer to Thurloe, two days after Cromwell's death).]

Thirty-three Latin State-Letters and five Latin Familiar Epistles are the productions of Milton's pen we have hitherto registered as belonging to the Second Protectorate of Oliver. Two or three incidents, appertaining more properly to his Literary Biography, have yet to be noticed before we leave the period.

Here is the title of a little foreign tract of which I have seen a solitary, and perhaps unique, copy:-"Dissertationis ad quoedam loca Miltoni Pars Posterior; quam, adspirante Deo, Praesids Dn. Jacobo Schallero, S.S, Theol. Doct, et Philos. Pract. Prof., ad. h.t. Facult. Phil. Decano, solenniter defendet die[17] mens. Septemb. Christophorus Guentzer, Argentorat. Argentorati, Typis Friderici Spoor, 1657" ("Second Part of a Dissertation, on certain Passages of Milton; which, with God's favour, and tinder the presidency of James Schaller, Doctor of Divinity and Professor of Practical Philosophy, acting as Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy for the occasion, Christopher Guentzer of Strasburg will solemnly defend on the 17th of September. Strasburg, Printed by Frederic Spoor, 1657"). Of the Schaller here mentioned we have heard before in connexion with a publication of his in 1653, also entitled Dissertatio ad loca quaedam Miltoni, and appended then to certain Exercitationes concerning the English Regicide by the Leipsic jurist Caspar Ziegler (Vol. IV. pp. 534-535). He seems to have retained an interest in the subject, and to have kept it up among those about him; for here, four years after his own Dissertation, he is to preside at the academic defence of another on the same subject by a Christopher Guentzer, who was probably one of his pupils. Young Guentzer, it seems, had been trying his hand on the subject already; for this is but the "second part" of his performance. The "first part" I have not seen, though it seems to have been published. The "second part" is a thin quarto, paged 45-92, as if to be bound with the first. It is in a juvenile and dry style of quotation and academic reasoning, modelled after Schaller's older Dissertation, and not worth an abstract. More interesting than itself are eleven pieces of congratulatory Latin verse prefixed to it by college friends of the disputant. In more than one of these Milton is mentioned; but the liveliest mention of him is in a set of Phalaecians signed "Christianus Keck." Phalaecians are not to be attempted in English; but, as the semi-absurd relish of the thing would be lost in prose, the first few lines may run into a kind of equivalent doggrel:—

"What Salmasius, he whom all men hailed as Learning's prodigy, Phoenix much too big for His own late generation, ay or any old one, Wrote so bravely against the sin of Britain, Then all wet with the royal bloodshed in her, Milton answered with pen that, be it granted, Showed vast genius, nor a mind without some Real marks of artistic cultivation, Though, O shame! patronizing such an outrage. Milton's pen is refuted next by Schaller's,— Quite a different pen and more respected."

Young Keck then goes on to assure his fellow-students that, if their eminent Professor Schaller's Dissertation of 1653 in reply to Milton had been duly read and pondered in Great Britain, it would have been of far more use towards a restoration of the Stuarts than camps and cannon; and he ends by congratulating the world on the fact that now young Guentzer, the accomplished young Guentzer, has placed himself by the side of the learned Professor, to wave the same inextinguishable torch of truth.[1]—In all probability, Milton never heard of such a trifle. It illustrates, however, the kind of rumour of himself and his writings that was circling, in the year 1657, in holes and corners of German Universities. Strasburg, with Elsatz generally, was then within the dominions of Austria; and it was naturally less in Austrian Germany than in other parts of the Continent that there was that especial admiration of Milton which had been growing since the publication of his Defensio Prima, but which, as Aubrey tells us, had reached its height under the Protectorate. "He was mightily importuned," says Aubrey, "to go into France and Italy. Foreigners came much to see him, and much admired him, and offered to him great preferments to come over to them; and the only inducement of several foreigners that came over into England was chiefly to see O. Protector and Mr. J. Milton; and [they] would see the house and chamber where he was born. He was much more admired abroad than at home." This corresponds with all our own evidence hitherto, though we have heard nothing of those invitations and offers of foreign preferment of which Aubrey speaks.

[Footnote 1: The copy I have seen of Guentzer's Dissertatio is in the British Museum Library. The figure "17" is inserted in MS. after the word "die" in the title-page.]

In May 1658, three or four months before Cromwell's death, there was published in London a little volume of about 200 pages, with this title-page: "The Cabinet Council; Containing the chief Arts of Empire, and Mysteries of State; Discabineted in Political and Polemical Aphorisms, grounded, on Authority, and Experience; And illustrated with the choicest Examples and Historical Observations. By the Ever-renowned Knight, Sir Walter Raleigh, published by John Milton Esq.-Quis Martem tunica tectum Adamantina digne scripserit?-London, Printed by Tho. Newcomb for Tho. Johnson at the sign of the Key in St. Pauls Churchyard, near the West-end, 1658." Prefixed to the body of the volume, which is divided into twenty-six chapters, is a note "To the Reader," as follows: "Having had the manuscript of this Treatise, written by Sir Walter Raleigh, many years in my hands, and finding it lately by chance among other books and papers, upon reading thereof I thought it a kind of injury to withhold longer the work of so eminent an author from the public: it being both answerable in style to other works of his already extant, as far as the subject would permit, and given me for a true copy by a learned man at his death, who had collected several such pieces.-JOHN MILTON."[1]

[Footnote 1: There were subsequent reprints of Raleigh's Cabinet Council from this 1658 edition by Milton, with changes of title. See Bohn's Lowndes under Raleigh]

By far the most interesting fact, however, in Milton's literary life under the Second Protectorate is that he had certainly, before its close, resumed his design of a great English poem, to be called Paradise Lost. Phillips's words might even imply that he had resumed this design before the end of the First Protectorate. For, after having mentioned that, in the comparative leisure in which he was left by the conclusion of his controversy with Morus (Aug. 1655), he resumed those two favourite hack-occupations on which he always fell back when he had nothing else to do,—his History of England and his compilations for a Latin Dictionary,—Phillips adds, "But the highth of his noble fancy and invention began now to be seriously and mainly employed in a subject worthy of such a muse: viz. a Heroic Poem, entitled Paradise Lost, the noblest," &c. In this passage, however, Phillips is throwing together, in 1694, all his recollections of the four years of his uncle's life between Aug. 1655 and Aug. 1659; and Aubrey's earlier information (1680), originally derived from Phillips himself, is that Paradise Lost was begun "about two years before the King came in," i.e. about May 1658. This would fix the date somewhere in the two or three months immediately following the death-of Milton's second wife. In such a matter exact certainty is unattainable; and it is enough to know for certain that the resumption of Paradise Lost was an event of the latter part of Cromwell's Second Protectorate, and that some portion of the poem was actually written in the house in Petty France, Westminster, while Milton was in communication with Cromwell and writing letters for him. In the rooms of that house, or in the garden that stretched from the house into St. James's Park across part of what is now the ground of Wellington Barracks, the subject of the epic first took distinct shape in Milton's mind, and here he began the great dictation.

Eighteen years had elapsed since Milton, just settled in London after his return from Italy, had first fastened on the subject, preferred it by a sure instinct to all the others that occurred in competition with it, and sketched four plans for its treatment in the form of a sacred tragedy, one with the precise title Paradise Lost, and another with the title Adam Unparadised (Vol. II. pp. 106-108, and 115-119). Through all the distractions of those eighteen years the grand subject had not ceased to haunt him, nor the longing to return to it and to his poetic vocation. Nay there had hung in his memory all this while certain lines he had actually written and destined for the opening of the intended tragedy. They were the ten lines that now form lines 32-41 of the fourth book of our present Paradise Lost. He had imagined, for the opening of his tragedy, Satan already arrived within our Universe out of Hell, and alighted on our central Earth near Eden, and gazing up to Heaven and the Sun blazing there in meridian splendour. He had imagined Satan, in this pause of his first advent into the Universe he was to ruin, thus addressing the Sun as its chief visible representative:—

"O thou that with surpassing glory crowned, Look'st from thy sole dominion like the god Of this new World,—at whose sight all the stars Hide their diminished heads,—to thee I call, But with no friendly voice, and add thy name, O Sun, to tell thee how I hate thy beams, That bring to my remembrance from what state I fell, how glorious once above thy sphere, Till pride and worse ambition threw me down, Warring in Heaven against Heaven's matchless King!"

And now, after eighteen years, the poem having been resumed, but with the resolution, made natural by Milton's literary observations and experiences in the interval, that the dramatic form should be abandoned and the epic substituted, these ten lines, written originally for the opening of the Drama, were to be the nucleus of the Epic.[1] With our present Paradise Lost before us, we can see the very process of the gradual reinvention. In the epic Satan must not appear, as had been proposed in the drama, at once on our earth or within our universe. He must be fetched from the transcendental regions, the vast extra-mundane spaces, of his own prior existence and history. And so, round our fair universe, newly-created and wheeling softly on its axle, conscious as yet of no evil, conscious only of the happy earth and sweet human life in the midst, and of the steady diurnal change from day and light-blue sunshine into spangled and deep-blue night, Milton was figuring and mapping out those other infinitudes which outlay and encircled his conception of all this mere Mundane Creation. Deep down beneath this MUNDANE CREATION, and far separated from it, he was seeing the HELL from which was to come its woe; all round the Mundane Creation, and surging everywhere against its outmost firmament, was the dark and turbid CHAOS out of which its orderly and orbicular immensity had been cut; and high over all, radiant above Chaos, but with the Mundane Universe pendent from it at one gleaming point, was the great EMPYREAN or HEAVEN of HEAVENS, the abode of Angels and of Eternal Godhead. Not to the mere Earth of Man or the Mundane Universe about that Earth was Milton's adventurous song now to be confined, representing only dramatically by means of speeches and choruses those transactions in the three extramundane Infinitudes that might bear on the terrestrial story. It must dare also into those infinitudes themselves, pursue among them the vaster and more general story of Satan's rebellion and fall, and yet make all converge, through Satan's scheme in Hell and his advent at last into our World, upon that one catastrophe of the ruin of infant Mankind which the title of the poem proclaimed as the particular theme.

[Footnote 1: Phillips's words in quoting these lines are, "In the Fourth Book of the Poem there are six [he says six, but quotes all the ten] verses which, several years before the Poem was begun, were shown to me and some others as designed for the very beginning of the said Tragedy." These words, if the Epic was begun in 1658, might carry us back at farthest to about 1650 as the date when the ten lines were in existence; but, besides that Phillips's expression is vague, we have Aubrey's words in 1680 as follows:—"In the [4th] Book of Paradise Lost there are about six verses of Satan's exclamation to the Sun which Mr. E. Phi. remembers about fifteen or sixteen years before ever his Poem was thought of; which verses were intended for the beginning of a Tragoedie, which he had designed, but was diverted from it by other business." This, on Phillips's own authority, would take the lines back to 1642 or 1643; and that, on independent grounds, is the probable date. Hardly after 1642 or 1643 can Milton have adhered to his original intention of writing Paradise Lost in a dramatic form.]

"Of Man's first disobedience, and the fruit Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste Brought death into the World, and all our woe, With loss of Eden, till one greater Man Restore us and regain the blissful seat, Sing, Heavenly Muse"—

Such might be the simple invocation at the outset; but, knowing now all that the epic was really to involve, and how far it was to carry him in flight above the Aonian Mount, little wonder that he could already promise in it

"Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme."

It may have been in one of the nights following a day of such meditation of the great subject he had resumed, and some considerable instalment of the actual verse of the poem as we now have it may have been already on paper, or in Milton's memory for repetition to himself, when he dreamt a memorable dream. The house is all still, the voices and the pattering feet of the children hushed in sleep, and Milton too asleep, but with his waking thoughts pursuing him into sleep and stirring the mimic fancy. Not this night, however, is it of Heaven, or Hell, or Chaos, or the Universe of Man with its luminaries, or any other of the objects of his poetic contemplation by day, that dreaming images come. Nor yet is it the recollection of any business, Piedmontese, Swedish, or French, last employing him officially, that now passes into his involuntary visions. His mind is wholly back on himself, his hard fate of blindness, and his again vacant and desolate household. But lo! as he dreams, that seems somehow all a mistake, and the household is not desolate. A radiant figure, clothed in white, approaches him and bends over him. He knows it to be his wife, whom he had thought dead, but who is not dead. Her face is veiled, and he cannot see that; but then he had never seen that, and it was not so he could distinguish her. It was by the radiant, saintlike, sweetness of her general presence. That is again beside him and bending over him, the same as ever; and it was certainly she! So for the few happy moments while the dream lasts; but he awakes, and the spell is broken. So dear has been that dream, however, that he will keep it as a sacred memory for himself in the last of all his Sonnets:—

"Methought I saw my late espoused saint Brought to me like Alcestis from the grave, Whom Jove's great son to her glad husband gave, Rescued from Death by force, though pale and faint. Mine, as whom washed from spot of child-bed taint Purification in the Old Law did save, And such as yet once more I trust to have Full sight of her in Heaven without restraint, Came vested all in white, pure as her mind. Her face was veiled; yet to my fancied sight Love, sweetness, goodness, in her person shined So clear as in no face with more delight. But oh! as to embrace me she inclined, I waked, she fled, and day brought back my night."[1]

[Footnote 1: We do not know the exact date of this Sonnet; but the internal evidence decidedly is that it was written not very long after the second wife's death, and probably in 1658. The manuscript copy of it among the Milton MSS. at Cambridge is in the hand of a person who was certainly acting as amanuensis for Milton early in 1660 and afterwards.]