Salmasius, who died in 1653, left a reply to his formidable antagonist, which was published at the time of the restoration. In this work he reproached Milton with losing his eyes in the quarrel, and Milton again is said to have delighted himself with the belief that he had shortened Salmasius's life ; both, perhaps," says Johnson, "with more malignity than reason."

When Cromwell usurped the regal authority, without the name, our sturdy republican, who had said that "a popular government was the most frugal; for the trappings of a monarchy would set up an ordinary commonwealth;" sold his services and his flatteries to the tyrant.

He continued to be Latin Secretary, and he pursued his controversies with unabated vigour. His treatment of Morus, to whom he ascribed a work entitled, Regis Sanguinis clamor ad Cælum, "the blood of the king crying to heaven," was scandalous. Milton knew that Morus was not the author of the book, and yet he attacked him with a shower of the vilest abuse. He raked even into the chronicle of private scandal, and in a most indecent epigram charged his overwhelmed victim with having had a bastard by a servant girl of Salmasius. So low could Milton descend. His adulation of Bradshaw, Ireton, and Cromwell, was as mean and disgusting as his controversies were venomous. The language in which he addresses his master, the Protector, is beyond example; unless, perhaps, we may be allowed to except

the

the impious flatteries which in our days have been poured forth at the shrine of a still greater tyrant and usurper.

"We were left," says Milton to Cromwell, "to ourselves: the whole national interest fell into your hands, and subsists only in your abilities. To your virtue, overpowering and resistless, every man gives way, except some, who, without equal qualifications, aspire to equal honours, who envy the distinctions of merit greater than their own, or who have yet to learn, that in the coalition of human society, nothing is more pleasing to God, or more agreeable to reason, than that the highest mind should have the sovereign power."

On the death of Oliver, and the resignation of Richard Cromwell, Milton endeavoured to prevent the restoration, and his pamphlets were filled with the old venom against monarchical go

vernment.

He had borne too active a part in the preceding convulsions, to suppose that he should escape unnoticed on the re-establishment of the ancient order of things. Accordingly on the approach of that event he concealed himself in a friend's house, in Bartholomew's-Close, for some time. His Iconoclastes, and Defence of the people of England, were burnt by the common hangman, and the House of Commons resolved, that both he and Goodwin, who had also vindicated the murder of the king, should be prosecuted by the Attorney General. But on the passing of the Act of Ob

livion,

livion, Milton finding his name not excepted therein, and thinking himself safe, came out of his concealment. The Attorney General, however, not being discharged of the order to prosecute, caused him to be apprehended, and he was accordingly taken into the custody of the Serjeant at Arms, but was soon released.

Dr. Johnson rightly remarks, that as a prosecution was ordered, it must have been by design that Milton was included in the general oblivion. He is said to have had friends in the house, such as Marvel, Morrice, and Sir Thomas Clarges; and undoubtedly a man like him must have had influence. A very particular story of his escape is told by Richardson, in his memoirs, which he received from Pope, as delivered by Betterton, who might have heard it from Davenant. In the war between the king and the parliament, Davenant was made prisoner, and condemned to die; but was spared at the request of Milton. When the turn of success brought Milton into the like danger, Davenant repaid the benefit by appearing in his favour.

Another account of the means by which our author escaped, has been given by an historian who lived near his own times. It is as follows:

Milton, the Latin Secretary to Cromwell, distinguished by his writings in favour of the rights and liberties of the people, pretended to be dead,

and had a publick funeral procession. The king applauded his policy in escaping the punishment of death, by a seasonable shew of dying."*

Being thus out of danger, he removed to Jewin street, where he married his third wife, who was the daughter of a Cheshire gentleman, but the state of wedlock did not afford him much happiness. The first wife left him in disgust, and was brought back only by terror; the second seems to have been more of a favourite, but her life was short. The third, as Philips relates, oppressed his children in his life time, and cheated them at his death. †

Milton's last remove was to a house in the Artillery Walk, leading to Eunhill Fields, but during the plague he retired to St. Giles Chalfont, in Buckinghamshire. On a glass window in the house where he resided at Chalfont, were discovered several years ago, the following lines, evidently the composition of Milton, though they have not obtained a place in his works.

Fair mirror of foul times, whose fragile sheen,
Shall, as it blazeth, break; while Providence
(Ay watching o'er his saints with eye unseen)
Spreads the red rod of angry pestilence

Το

sweep the wicked and their counsels hence;

Cunningham's History of Great Britain, Vol. I. p. 14.

+ Johnson's Lives of the Poets, Vol. I. F. 184.

Yea,

Yea, all to break the pride of lustful kings
Who heaven's lore reject for brutish sense;
As erst he scourged Jesside's sin of yore

For the fair Hittite, when on Seraph's wings,
He sent him war, or plague, or famine sore.

Of this sonnet, it will hardly be doubted, that the manner, sentiment, and expression are such as might be expected from Milton; but there is a singular mistake in the concluding lines where the pestilence is represented as having been a judgment on David for his adultery with Bathsheba, when, on the contrary, that visitation was the consequence of his sin in numbering the people.

Milton had finished his Paradise Lost, before he went into the country, where, upon a hint given him by his reader Elwood, the quaker, he began his Paradise Regained, to which by an unaccountable partiality he gave the preference.

His nephew relates a remarkable circumstance concerning the composition of Paradise Lost:

"Whereas," says he, "I had the perusal of it from the very beginning, for some years, as I went from time to time to visit him, in parcels of ten, twenty, or thirty verses at a time, (which being written by whatever hand came next, might possibly want correction as to the orthography and pointing) having as the summer came on, not been shewed any for a considerable while, and desiring the reason thereof, was answered, that this vein never happily flowed but from the

autumnal