Is kingly; thousands at His bidding speed, Cyriac, this three-years-day, these eyes, though clear Against Heav'n's hand, or will, nor bate one jot 2 The conscience, friend, to have lost them overpli'd In Liberty's defence,3 my noble task, Of which all Europe rings from side to side. This thought might lead me through this world's vain mask, Content, though blind, had I no better guide.1 1 Sonnet XIX. On his Blindness.' Was this inherited, as Aubrey says that his mother wore spectacles soon after she was thirty? 2 Consciousness. 3 He alludes here to his Defensio pro Populo Anglicano, before writing which he was warned by his physicians that if he persisted he would lose the sight of his remaining eye, which penalty he willingly incurred. • Sonnet XXII. To Cyriac Skinner, upon his Blindness. He was the friend and perhaps pupil of Milton. His mother was the daughter of Sir Edward Coke, to whom the poet alludes in his twenty-first sonnet. HIS PUBLIC LIFE. 119 CHAPTER IV. LATIN SECRETARY TO CROMWELL.'—CONTROVERSY WITH SALMASIUS. A.D. 1648-1655.—a.Æт. 40—48. 'THE beginning of nations is to this day unknown. Perhaps disesteem and contempt of the public affairs then present, as not worth recording, might partly be in cause. Certainly ofttimes we see that wise men, and of best ability, have forborne to write the acts of their own days, while they beheld with a just loathing and disdain, not only how ' It is not clear how long Milton's secretaryship actually lasted. We know that he wrote State-papers up to the time of the Restoration. But he seems to have retired from active service in 1655, having his salary reduced from 2887. to 150l. per annum, which was to be paid to him during his life, as is seen from an order in Council, dated April 17, 1655. This left him, though entirely blind a year before, time at his disposal for four great works which he contemplated, his History of England, Latin Dictionary, A Body of Divinity, and his long-intended Epic Poem. unworthy, how perverse, how corrupt, but often how ignoble, how petty, how below all history, the persons and their actions were; who, either by fortune or some rude election, had attained, as a sore judgment and ignominy upon the land, to have chief sway in managing the commonwealth.' Seeing that ofttimes relations heretofore accounted fabulous have been after found to contain in them many footsteps and reliques of something true, as what we read in poets of the flood, and giants, little believed, till undoubted witnesses. taught us that all was not feigned; I have, therefore, determined to bestow the telling over even of these reputed tales; be it for nothing else but in favour of our English poets and rhetoricians, who by their art will know how to use them judiciously. Which, imploring Divine assistance, that it may redound to His glory, and the good of the British nation, I now begin.'2 At the commencement of the third book, he digresses to draw a parallel or portrait of the Long 1 Here we learn to qualify our surprise that Milton, with his love of history, should have never written a history of his own times. 2 History of Britain,' book i., Works, vol. v. p. 164. HIS POLITICAL BIAS, 121 Parliament and the Assembly of Divines, 'considering that the late civil broils had cast us into a condition not much unlike to what the Britons then were in when the imperial jurisdiction departing hence left them to the sway of their own councils.' It is omitted in all editions up to that of 1738 for political reasons. It is too long and dry to insert here, though some part of it is highly autobiographical, as he seems evidently to have had his own sufferings and treatment in view, and his own petition to the sequestrators with regard to the property of his father-in-law, Richard Powell. 'On civil liberty I said nothing, because I saw that sufficient attention was paid to it by the magistrates; nor did I write anything on the prerogative of the Crown, till the king, voted an enemy by the Parliament, and vanquished in the field, was summoned before the tribunal which condemned him to lose his head. But when, at length, some Presbyterian ministers, who had formerly been the most bitter enemies to Charles, became jealous of the growth of the Independents and of their ascendency in the Parliament, most tumultuously clamoured against the sentence, and did all in their power to prevent the execution, though they were not angry, so much on account of the act itself, as because it was not the act of their party; and when they dared to affirm that the doctrine of the Protestants, and of all the reformed Churches, was abhorrent to such an atrocious proceeding against kings, I thought that it became me to oppose such a glaring falsehood; and accordingly, without any immediate or personal application to Charles, I showed, in an abstract consideration of the question, what might lawfully be done against tyrants; and in support of what I advanced, produced the opinions of the most celebrated divines; while I vehemently inveighed against the egregious ignorance or effrontery of men who professed better things, and from whom better things might have been expected. That book' did not make its appearance till after the death of Charles; and was written rather to reconcile the minds of the people to the event than to discuss the legitimacy of that particular sentence which concerned the magistrates, and which was already executed. Such were the The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, 1648–49. |