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that Charles, contrary to his most solemn pledges, was prepared to secure his objects by the aid of the Irish Catholics, and by any amount of deception that might serve his purpose. The signatures attached to this compact were written only thirteen days before the unhappy king was led to execution. "Such," says Milton, "were the fruits of my private studies, which I gratuitously presented to the Church and to the State, and for which I was recompensed by nothing but impunity, though the acts themselves procured me peace of conscience and the approbation of the good, while I exercised that freedom of discussion which I loved. Others, without labour or desert, got possession of honours and emoluments; but no one ever knew me either soliciting anything myself or through the medium of my friends—ever beheld me in a suppliant posture at the doors of the senate, or the levees of the great. I usually kept myself secluded at home, where my own property, part of which had been withheld during the civil commotions, and part of which had been absorbed in the oppressive contributions which I had to sustain, afforded me a scanty subsistence. When I was released from these engagements, and thought that I was about to enjoy an interval of uninterrupted ease, I turned my thoughts to a history of my country, from the earliest times to the present."

This English history was a favourite subject with Milton, but he was not to bring his narrative lower than to the Conquest. As a history, it is of no great value to us; but as giving us the thoughts of Milton, and as calling forth his powers of description in relation to such a series of events, the fragment must always be interesting. Its occasional comparisons between past and present, though deemed irrelevant then, are not among its least instructive portions to us.

But the time had now come in which the man who had never sought place for himself was to be raised to an honourable position by the unbought patronage of the State. Milton was invited by the Government to become Secretary for Foreign Tongues. His recent pamphlet had done the State some service, and his competency to the vacant office was above that of any other man to whom it could have been assigned. The President of the Council was the great lawyer, Bradshaw, and we have seen that the mother of the poet was said to have been a Bradshaw. Milton accepted the appointment on the 13th of March, 1649, and on the 15th was formally admitted to his new function—a function which was not to be a sinecure in his hands.

In the judgment of many, the execution of the king was a great crime, and, judged by its effects, it was certainly a great error. Of course, it would hold forth a warning to crowned heads that might not be unwholesome, and any other course that might have been taken would have been beset with extraordinary difficulties. But the feeling of the nation was deeply offended by what had been done, and over a large surface the wound was such as not to admit of being healed. In this state of feeling a heavy blow was inflicted on the new Commonwealth by the publication of the Eikon Basilike. That book of devotions was fabricated to set forth the late king as a person of singular devoutness and sanctity, in all the habits of his private life. Even in that age of slow intercommunication, the book flew through the country, edition after edition, with surprising rapidity. In answer to the Eikon Basilike (the Royal Image), Milton sent forth one of the most elaborate of his writings, under the title of Iconoclastes (the Image-breaker). The aim of this publication was, of course, to state the case of the Parliament as against the king, and to demonstrate the falsity of the pretensions set up in his favour. It was a second Grand Remonstrance, and could not fail to serve the Commonwealth.

But the conduct of the Parliament and of the Army towards the king gave hardly less offence abroad than at home. Towards the close of this year, Claude Saumaise, better known as Salmasius, published his Defensio Regia pro Carlo Primo ad Carolum Secundum. The author of this work was

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a scholar of the first rank, and of great celebrity. In the course of his argument the divine right of kings is openly and emphatically asserted, and all sorts of learning are laid under contribution to show that sovereigns owe no responsibility to subjects, but to God only. Such reasoning would have done little harm in England, but it was seasoned with much foul abuse of our country, and was adapted to mislead foreigners. Such, indeed, was the impression made by this performance, that in January, 1650, we find it ordered in Council, that "Mr. Milton do prepare something in answer to the book of Salmasius." The treatise, when produced, was ordered to be printed, and thanks were voted to the author. As the work of Salmasius was in Latin, the reply was in the same language. It bore the title Defensio pro Populo Anglicano.

Salmasius was grossly misinformed concerning the real state of things in England, and from carelessness, and contempt of the persons whom he assailed, he fell into many blunders not creditable to his general scholarship. Manifestly, nothing was further from his thoughts than that an antagonist like Milton would be sent forth to meet him—an opponent keen to detect every slip, and strong to expose it when detected. His extreme servility, and the arrogance and insolence of his manner generally, were such that Milton knew not how to speak of him in subdued terms. This, it must be remembered, was the secret of the invective, the sarcasm, the ridicule, and of the degrading epithets which the Englishman discharged so fiercely and so pitilessly against his adversary. His agility and force in this conflict, remind you of nothing so much as of the skill and daring of some chieftain among the ancient athletes when in the heat of the strife. By every blow, he seems to tell you, that the foe before him deserves no mercy and shall have none. But his passion is not so ascendant as to impair his logic, or to prevent his availing himself of his stores of learning. His defence of the rights of humanity against every form of oppression is almost uniformly just, and rises at times to a grandeur which subdues you by its elevation and usefulness. It was only natural that a fight between such Titans should attract the attention of the learned, and of educated men generally, over Europe. It was a rare thing to see two such combatants face to face. Some said that Milton had killed his opponent, who never seemed to be the same man again, and died the next year. Others denied that assertion. But it was impossible that such a handling should have failed to produce a bitter vexation.¹ From this time the feeling on the Continent hostile to the English Parliament was much changed. The fame of Milton became second only to that of Cromwell, and the light of the one and the power of the other were accepted widely as representing the influences which had raised England to her new position.

When Milton received the order of the Council to write this work, his sight, which had shown symptoms of weakness through some ten years past, had declined in an alarming degree during the last two years. His medical advisers assured him, that to attempt to obey the instruction of the Government, would be to lose his last remnant of vision—to become blind! His answer deliberately given, was, "Then let blindness come." And the blindness came as had been predicted. But to his last hour of life it was his solace to remember, that this falling of a dark curtain between himself and the visible universe, had come from such a cause.

"Cyriack, this three years' day these eyes, though clear,

Bereft of light, their seeing have forgot,

What supports me, dost thou ask?

The conscience, friend, to have lost them overplied

In liberty's defence, my noble task."

¹ Salmasius left a reply in MS., which was printed amidst the excitement of the Restoration, eight years after his decease. Its extraordinary virulence betrayed the rankling of the wound that had been inflicted. The work attracted little attention.