neither in this was any injury done to the other lady whom he was courting, for she is said to have been always averse from the motion, not daring, I suppose, to venture in marriage with a man who was known to have a wife still living. He might not think himself too at liberty as before, while his wife continued obstinate; for his most plausible argument for divorce proceeds upon a supposition, that the thing be done with mutual consent.

After his wife's return his family was increased, not only with children, but also with his wife's relations, her father and mother, her brothers and sisters, coming to live with him in the general distress and ruin of the royal party; and he was so far from resenting their former ill-treatment of him, that he generously protected them, and entertained them very hospitably, till their affairs were accommodated through his interest with the prevailing faction. And then upon their removal, and the death of his own father, his house looked again like the house of the Muses; but his studies had like to have been interrupted by a call to public business, for about this time there was a design of constituting him adjutant-general in the army under Sir William Waller; but the new modelling of the army soon following, that design was laid aside. And not long after, his great house in Barbican being now too large for his family, he quitted it for a smaller in High Holborn, which opened backward into Lincoln's-Inn-Fields, where he prosecuted his studies till the king's trial and death, when the Presbyterians declaiming tragically against the king's execution, and asserting that his person was sacred and inviolable, provoked him to write the "Tenure of Kings and Magistrates," proving that it is lawful to call a tyrant to account, and to depose and put him to death, and that they who of late so much blame deposing are the men who did it themselves; and he published it at the beginning of the year 1649, to satisfy and compose the minds of the people. Not long after this he wrote his "Observations on the Articles of Peace between the Earl of Ormond and the Irish Rebels." And in these and all his writings, whatever others of different parties may think, he thought himself an advocate for true liberty: for ecclesiastical liberty in his treatises against the bishops, for domestic liberty in his books of divorce, and for civil liberty in his writing against the king in defence of the parliament and people of England.

After this he retired again to his private studies; and thinking that he had leisure enough for such a work, he applied himself to the writing of a " History of England," which he intended to deduce from the earliest accounts down to his own times; and he had finished four books of it, when neither courting nor expecting any such preferment, he was invited by the Council of State to be their Latin Secretary for foreign affairs. And he served in the same capacity under Oliver, and Richard, and the Rump, till the Restoration; and without doubt a better Latin pen could not have been found in the kingdom. For the Republic and Cromwell scorned to pay that tribute to any foreign prince, which is usually paid to the French king, of managing their affairs in his language; they thought it an indignity and meanness, to which this or any free nation ought not to submit; and took a resolution neither to write any letters to any foreign states, nor to receive any answers from them, but in the Latin tongue, which was common to them all.

But it was not only in foreign despatches that the Government made use of his pen. He had discharged the business of his office a very little time, before he was called to a work of another kind. For soon after the king's death was published a book under his name entitled " Eikon Basilike," or the Royal Image; and this book, like Cæsar's last will, making a deeper impression, and exciting greater commiseration in the minds of the people, than the king himself did while alive, Milton was ordered to prepare an answer to it, which was published by authority, and en titled " Eikonoklastes," or the Image Breaker, the famous surname of many Greek emperors, who, in their zeal against idolatry, broke all superstitious images to pieces.

But his most celebrated work in prose is his " Defence of the People of England" against Salmasius," Defensio pro populo Anglicano contra Claudii Anonymi, alias Salmasii, Defensionem Regiam." Salmasius, by birth a Frenchman, succeeded the famous Scaliger as honorary professor of the University of Leyden, and had gained great reputation by his" Plinian Exercitations on Solinus," and by his critical remarks on several Latin and Greek authors, and was generally esteemed one of the greatest and most consummate scholars of that age, besides possessing extraordinary talents in railing. "This prince of scholars," as somebody said of him," seemed to have erected his throne upon a heap

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of stones, that he might have them at hand to throw at every one's head who passed by." He was therefore courted by Charles II., as the most able man to write a defence of the late king his father, and to traduce his adversaries, and a hundred Jacobuses were given him for that purpose, and the book was published in 1649 with this title Defensio Regia pro Carolo I. ad Carolum II." No sooner did this book appear in England, but the Council of State unanimously appointed Milton, who was then present, to answer it: and he performed the task with amazing spirit and vigour, though his health at that time was such, that he could hardly endure the fatigue of writing, and being weak in body he was forced to write by piecemeal, and to break off almost every hour, as he says himself in the introduction. This necessarily occasioned some delay, so that his " Defence" was not made public till the beginning of the year 1651. It was somewhat extraordinary that Salmasius, a pensioner to a republic, should pretend to write a defence of monarchy; but the States showed their disapprobation by publicly condemning his book, and ordering it to be suppressed. And, on the other hand, Milton's book was burned at Paris and at Toulouse by the hands of the common hangman; but this served only to procure it the more readers: it was read and talked of every where, and even they who were of different principles, yet could not but acknowledge that he was a good defender of a bad cause; and Salmasius's book underwent only one impression, while this of Milton passed through several editions. On the first appearance of it, he was visited or invited by all the foreign ministers at London, not excepting even those of crowned heads; and was particularly honoured and esteemed by Adrian Paaw, ambassador from the States of Holland. He was likewise highly complimented by letters from the most learned and ingenious persons in France and Germany; and Leonard Philares, an Athenian born, and ambassador from the Duke of Parma to the French king, wrote a fine encomium of his " Defence," and sent him his picture, as appears

from Milton's letter to Philares dated at London in June 1652. And what gave him the greatest satisfaction, the work was highly applauded by those who had desired him to undertake it; and they made him a present of a thousand pounds, which, in those days of frugality, was reckoned no inconsiderable reward for his performance

But the case was far otherwise with Salmasius. He was then in high favour at the court of Christina, Queen of Sweden, who had invited thither several of the most learned men of all countries; but when Milton's " Defence of the People of England" was brought to Sweden, and was read to the Queen at her own desire, he sunk immediately in her esteem and the opinion of every body; and though he talked big at first, and vowed the destruction of Milton and the Parliament, yet finding that he was looked upon with coldness, he thought proper to take leave of the court; and he who came in honour, was dismissed with contempt. He died some time afterwards at Spa in Germany, and it is said more of a broken heart than of any distemper, leaving a posthumous reply to Milton, which was not published till after the Restoration, and was dedicated to Charles II. by his son Claudius; but it has done no great honour to his memory, abounding with abuse much more than argument.

It is probable that Milton, when he was first made Latin Secretary, removed from his house in High Holborn to be nearer Whitehall: and for some time he had lodgings at one Thompson's, next door to the Bull Head Tavern, at Charing Cross, opening into Spring Garden, till the apartment appointed for him in Scotland Yard could be got ready for his reception. He then removed thither; and there his third child, a son, was born, and named John, who, through the ill usage or bad constitution of the nurse, died an infant. His own health, too, was greatly impaired; and for the benefit of the air he removed from his apartment in Scotland Yard, to a house in Petty France, Westminster, which was next door to Lord Scudamore's, and opened into St. James's Park, and there he remained eight years, from the year 1652, till within a few weeks of the king's resto ration. In this house he had not been settled long, before his first wife died in childbed; and his condition requiring some care and attendance, he was easily induced, after a proper interval of time, to marry a second, who was Catharine, daughter of Captain Woodcock, of Hackney: and she too died in childbed within a year after their marriage, and her child, who was a daughter, died in a month after her; and her husband has done honour to her memory in one of his sonnets.

Two or three years before this second marriage, he had totally lost his sight. And his enemies triumphed in his

blindness, and imputed it as a judgment upon him for writing against the king; but his sight had been decaying several years before, through his close application to study, and the frequent head-aches to which he had been subject from his childhood, and his continual tampering with physic, which, perhaps, was more pernicious than all the rest. It was the sight of his left eye that he lost first and at the desire of his friend, Leonard Philares, the Duke of Parma's minister at Paris, he sent him a particular account of his case, and of the manner of his growing blind, for him to consult Thevenot, the physician, who was reckoned famous in cases of the eyes. The letter is the fifteenth of his familiar epistles, and is dated September 28, 1654; but it does not appear what answer he received; we may presume, none that administered any relief. His blindness, however, did not disable him entirely from performing the business of his office. An assistant was allowed him, and his salary as secretary still continued to him.

The controversy with Salmasius did not die with him, and there was published at the Hague in 1652, a book entitled the "Cry of the King's Blood," &c., "Regii Sanguinis Clamor ad Cœlum adversus Parricidas Anglicanos." The true author of this book was Peter du Moulin the younger, who was afterwards prebendary of Canterbury; and he transmitted his papers to Salmasius; and Salmasius entrusted them to the care of Alexander Morus, a French minister, and Morus published them with a dedication to King Charles II., in the name of Adrian Ulac, the printer, from whence he came to be reputed the author of the whole. This Morus was the son of a learned Scotchman, who was president of the college which the Protestants had formerly at Castres, in Languedoc, and he is said to have been a man of a most haughty and licentious disposition, hasty, ambitious, full of himself and his own performances, and satirical upon all others. He was, however, esteemed one of the most eminent preachers of that age among the Protestants; but as Bayle observes, his chief talent must have consisted in the gracefulness of his delivery, or in those sallies of imagination and quaint turns and allusions, whereof his sermons are full; for they retain not those charms in reading which they were said to have formerly in the pulpit. Against this man, therefore, as the reputed author of "Regii Sanguinis Clamor," &c., Milton published by authority his "Second Defence of the People of England,"