employed by Charles II: whereupon the very next morning Milton's kinsman was sent to him with an order of Council, commanding him to depart the kingdom within three days, or expect the punishment of a spy. This kinsman was in all probability Mr. Philips or his brother, who were Milton's nephews, and lived very much with him, and one or both of them were assistant to him in his office. His blindness no doubt was a great hindrance and inconvenience to him in his business, though sometimes a political use might be made of it; as men's natural infirmities are often pleaded in excuse for not doing what they have no great inclination to do. Thus when Cromwell, as we may collect from Whitlock, for some reasons delayed artfully to sign the treaty concluded with Sweden, and the Swedish ambassador made frequent complaints of it, it was excused to him, because Mr. Milton on account of his blindness proceeded slower in business, and had not yet put the articles of the treaty into Latin. Upon which the ambassador was greatly surprised, that things of such consequence should be intrusted to a blind man, for he must necessarily employ an amanuensis, and that amanuensis might divulge the articles; and said it was very wonderful, that there should be only one man in England who could write Latin, and he a blind one. But his blindness had not diminished, but rather increased the vigour of his mind; and his stateletters will remain as authentic memorials of those times, to be admired equally by critics and politicians; and those particularly about the sufferings of the poor protestants in Piedmont, who can read without sensible

emotion? This was a subject he had very much at heart, as he was an utter enemy to all sorts of persecution; and among his Sonnets there is a most excellent the same occasion.

one upon

But Oliver Cromwell being dead, and the government weak and unsettled in the hands of Richard and the Parliament, he thought it a seasonable time to offer his advice again to the public; and in 1659 published a Treatise of civil power in ecclesiastical causes; and another tract entitled Considerations touching the likeliest means to remove hirelings out of the church; both addressed to the Parliament of the commonwealth of England'. And after the Parliament was dissolved, he wrote a letter to some statesman, with whom he had a serious discourse the night before, concerning the ruptures of the commonwealth; and another as it is supposed to General Monk, being a brief Delineation of a free commonwealth, easy to be put in practice, and without delay. These two pieces were communicated in manuscript to Mr. Toland by a friend, who

See Letters to the Duke of Savoy, to the Prince of Transylvania, to the King of Sweden, to the States of Holland, Switzerland, and Geneva, to the Kings of France and of Denmark. Symmons.

The former of these pieces, says Dr. Birch in his Life of Milton, p. xlii. ed. 1755, restored him to the good opinion of some of his republican friends, who had before questioned his attachment to their principles. See Mr. Wall's Letter prefixed to the Iconoclastes. E.

Milton had collected a variety

of State Papers, from the death of the King to the present period. They were published in 1743, with the following title: "Ori"ginal Letters and Papers of "State, addressed to Oliver "Cromwell, concerning the Af"fairs of Great Britain. From "the year 1649 to 1658. Found "among the Political Collections " of Mr. John Milton. Now first

published from the originals. "By John Nickolls, jun. Mem"ber of the Society of Antiqua"ries, London." They had been once in the possession of Ellwood. Todd.

a little after Milton's death had them from his nephew; and Mr. Toland gave them to be printed in the edition of our author's Prose Works in 1698. But Milton, still finding that affairs were every day tending more and more to the subversion of the commonwealth, and the restoration of the royal family, published his Ready and easy way to establish a free commonwealth, and the excellence thereof, compared with the inconveniences and dangers of re-admitting kingship in this nation. We are informed by Mr. Wood, that he published this piece in February 1659-60; and after this he published Brief notes upon a late sermon entitled, the Fear of God and the King, preached by Dr. Matthew Griffifth at Mercers' Chapel, March 25, 1660: so bold and resolute was he in declaring his sentiments to the last, thinking that his voice was the voice of expiring libertyt.

A little before the King's landing he was discharged from his office of Latin Secretary, and was forced to leave his house in Petty France, where he had lived eight years with great reputation, and had been visited by all foreigners of note, who could not go out of the country without seeing a man who did so much honour to it by his writings, and whose name was as well known and as famous abroad as in his own nation"; and by several

persons of quality of both sexes, particularly the pious and virtuous Lady Ranelagh, whose son for some time he instructed, the same who was Paymaster of the forces in King William's time; and by many learned and ingenious friends and acquaintance, particularly Andrew Marvel, and young Laurence, son to the President of Oliver's Council, to whom he has inscribed one of his sonnets, and Marchamont Needham the writer of Politicus, and above all Cyriac Skinner, whom he has honoured with two sonnets. But now it was not safe for him to appear any longer in public, so that by the advice of some who wished him well and were concerned for his preservation, he fled for shelter to a friend's house in Bartholomew Close near West Smithfield, where he lay concealed till the worst of the storm was blown over. The first notice that we find taken of him was on Saturday the 16th of June, 1660, when it was ordered by the House of Commons, that his Majesty should be humbly moved to issue his proclamation for the calling in of Milton's two books, his Defence of the people, and Iconoclastes, and also Goodwyn's book entitled the Obstructors of justice, written in justification of the murder of the late King, and to order them to be burnt by the hands of the common hangman. And at the same time it was ordered, that the Attorney General should proceed by way of indict

note. "The late Reverend Mr. "Thomas Bradbury, an emi"nent dissenting minister, used "to say, that Jer. White, who "had been chaplain to O. Crom"well, and whom he personally "knew, had often told him, that "Milton was allowed by the Par

"liament a weekly table for the

entertainment of foreign min"isters, and persons of learn"ing, such especially as came "from protestant states; which "allowance was also continued "by Cromwell." E.

ment or information against Milton and Goodwyn in respect of their books, and that they themselves should be sent for in custody of the Serjeant at Arms attending the House. On Wednesday, June 27th, an order of Council was made agreeable to the order of the House of Commons for a proclamation against Milton's and Goodwyn's books; and the proclamation was issued the 13th of August following, wherein it was said that the authors had fled or did abscond*: and on Monday, August 27th, Milton's and Goodwyn's books were burnt according to the proclamation at the Old Bailey by the hands of the common hangman. On Wed

* See the proclamation printed at length in Kennet's Register and Chronicle, 1728, p. 189. Todd. Or in Toland's Life of Milton, 8vo. 1761, p. 113.

E.

Milton's prose was to suffer another disgrace. Twenty-seven Propositions gathered from the writings of our author, Buchanan, Hobbes, Baxter, John Goodwin, Knox, Owen, and others, were

proscribed by the University of Oxford, July 21, 1683, as destructive both to Church and State; and ordered to be burnt in the court of the Schools. See the Decree of the University, in Somers's Tracts, iii. 223. This transaction is celebrated in a

poem of the Musa Anglicana, called "Decretum Oxoniense," 1683. vol. ii. p. 180, 181. edit. 1714. I transcribe some of the

lines with abhorrence,

Hæ tibi sint laudes immortalesque triumphi,

O dea, Bellositi sacras quæ protegis arces!

Quamquam o, si simili quicunque hæc scripserit auctor

Fato succubuisset, codemque árserit

igne;

In medio videas flamma crepitante cremari,

Miltonum, cœlo terrisque inamabile nomen!

does not seem to have been inBut by what follows, the writer does not seem to have been insensible to the beauties of Milton's poetry.

Milton is said to have been a

chief founder of the Calves' Head Club, a festival which began to be held on the thirtieth of January during the usurpation, in opposition to Bishop Juxon, Dr. Hammond, and other divines of the Church of England, who met privately to celebrate that day with fasting and a form of prayer. See Secret History of the Calves' Head Club, by one who seems to be well acquainted with anecdotes of those days. Lond. 1703. Harl. Misc. vi. 554. For such provocations alone, it was natural for the restored powers to retaliate. He, however, escaped, yet not without difficulty. I was told by Mr. Tyers,