to form itself in my eyes; yet the darkness perpetually before them, as well during the night as in the day, seems always approaching rather to white than to black, admitting as the eye rolls, a minute portion of light as through a crevice."

"Westminster, September 28, 1654.”

To the Defensio Populi, an answer appeared in the same year, not written, as Milton persuaded himself, by the learned Bishop Bramhall, but by a person named John Rowland, a fact established by the researches of Mr. Todd. This barbarous production was honoured with a reply, drawn up by Philips, but corrected by Milton. In the next year was published Regii Sanguinis Clamor ad Cælum. The author was Peter du Moulin, afterwards a prebendary of Canterbury. To this book we owe the Second Defence of Milton, which has been pronounced one of the most interesting of his productions.

But his adulatory address to Cromwell is injured by what we never expect to find in Milton,-the servility of flattery.

He commenced his Second Defence in a tone of triumphant exultation; he no longer regarded himself as the advocate of a single nation, but as the champion of Christendom, surrounded "by listening Europe, confiding and passing judgment." "Some hasten," he says, "to receive me with shouts of applause; others, in fine, vanquished by truth, surrender themselves captive. Encompassed by such countless multitudes, it seems to me, that from the Columns of Hercules to the farthest borders of India, that throughout this vast expanse, I am bringing back, bringing home to every nation, liberty, so long driven out, so long an exile: and as is recorded of Tri

ptolemus of old, that I am importing fruits for the nations from my own city, but of a far nobler kind than those fruits of Ceres. That I am spreading abroad among the cities, the kingdoms, and nations, the restored culture of civility and freedom of life."

His enemies had disgraced themselves by reproaching him with his blindness; but we almost pardon their cruelty, for the eloquent expression of religious patience and resignation which it drew from the poet. He warns his revilers to desist from their dreamy forgeries concerning him, declaring that he neither repines at, nor repents him of his lot; acquiescing humbly in the Divine will, and being ever more mindful of what his Heavenly Father bestows upon him, than on what he denies. "Moreover," he adds, "how many things are there which I would not see? How many which I can be debarred the sight of without repining? How few left which I much desire to see? But neither am I disheartened, that I am now become the companion of the blind, of the afflicted, of those that sorrow, and of the weak; since I comfort myself with the hope, that these things do, as it were, make me belong still more to the protection and mercy of the Supreme Father. There is, according to the apostle, a way through weakness to the greatest strength; let me be the most weak, provided that in my weakness that immortal and better strength exert itself with more efficacy; provided that in my darkness, the light of the face of God shine the clearer. So shall I prove at the same time, the most weak and the most strong; dark blind, and at the same time clear-sighted. Oh let me be consummate in this weakness! in this perfected! Let me be thus enlightened in this darkness. And sure, we that are blind, are not the least care of

God, who hath been in this element above all, and merciful to us, that he will have us see nothing but himself. The high dispensation of God, his favour, hath given us a protection from the injuries of men, and rendered us almost sacred. Nor doth he indeed seem to have brought this darkness upon us so much by the dimness of our eyes, as by the shadow of his protecting wings."

With this publication Milton concluded his controversial labours, and with a pension of one hundred and fifty pounds returned once more to those more appropriate and congenial pursuits, from which he had been so long estranged. He collected materials for an elaborate dictionary of the Latin tongue, which were incorporated after his decease in the edition of the Cambridge Dictionary, in 1693, and began to form the first outline of that magnificent poem on which his mind had so long brooded. His early dreams of King Arthur and his renowned chivalry were passed away, and after "long choosing and beginning late," he fixed upon Paradise Lost, a design, observes Johnson, so comprehensive, that it could be justified only by success. But these occupations did not engross his whole attention. He found leisure to edit a manuscript of Sir Walter Raleigh, and the Correspondence of the Parliament with Foreign States, and to compose a Treatise of Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes, and Considerations touching the means of removing Hirelings out of the Church, besides a Letter to a Friend, and a Brief Declaration addressed to General Monk.

But the time was come when the, fiercest demonstrations of revolutionary zeal would be unregarded, and Milton's renewed declaration of animosity to the church and the monarchy died away in ineffectual thunder. The

nation, with one universal voice, welcomed the return of their exiled prince. At the Restoration he retired to the house of a friend in St. Bartholomew's Close, and so perfect was his concealment, that all the efforts employed to discover his retreat proved unavailing. A story has been told of a mock funeral having been made for him, and that the gay and light-hearted monarch only laughed at the imposition. Johnson thinks that the search was not very diligent; but his escape seems rather to have been owing to his strict seclusion, than to any negligence on the part of his adversaries. The proclamation declares that the "said John Milton and John Goodwin are so fled, or so obscure themselves, that no endeavours used for their apprehension can take effect, whereby they may be brought to legal trial, and deservedly receive condign punishment for their treasons and offences." The Iconoclastes, and the Defensio pro Populo Anglicano, were, by a resolution of the House of Commons, ordered to be burnt, a sentence which was executed on the 27th of August. The Act of Indemnity passed on the 30th of the same month, and released him from any further apprehensions. Burnet says that he escaped all censure, and came out of his concealment, to the surprise of all people. He was, however, subsequently in the custody of the serjeant-at-arms, and his release has been attributed to the friendship of Sir William Davenant. Richardson* affirms, that he lived in perpetual terror of assassination, but we have no reason to conclude that his alarm proceeded from any hostility of the government; indeed it is related by Richardson, on the authority of Pope, that the situation of Latin secretary to the king was offered to Milton, who indignantly replied to the entreaties of his wife that he

*See Richardson's Life, p. 86, &c.

would accept it, "Thou art in the right; you, as other women, would ride in your coach; for me, my aim is to live and die an honest man."

After residing a little while in Holborn, not far from Red Lion Street, he removed to a house in Jewin Street, near Aldersgate, and in 1661 furnished a proof of the versatility of his mind, by publishing Accidence commenced Grammar.

In 1664 he married his third wife, Elizabeth Minshull, a relation of his friend Dr. Paget, and, according to Aubrey, of a peaceful and agreeable humour*. Soon after his marriage he relinquished his residence, and occupied lodgings in the house of Millington, a book auctioneer of considerable eminence, and who appears to have treated his illustrious inmate with becoming respect. A friend of Richardson frequently met him leading the poet by the hand. He, however, again changed his abode for a small house in Artillery Walk, leading into Bunhill Fields, which Philips incorrectly calls his last stage in the world, for the Quaker Elwood, during the great plague, provided a retreat for him in what he styles a "pretty box" at Chalfont, in Buckinghamshire, where he appears to have remained from the summer of 1665, until the abatement of the pestilence in the spring of the following year. When Milton arrived at Chalfont, his young friend was confined in the gaol of Aylesbury, but on obtaining his discharge he hastened to the poet's residence," and after some common discourses," he says, "had passed between us, he called for a MS. of his, which being brought, he delivered to me,

She survived the poet fifty-two years, dying in 1727, at Nantwich, in Cheshire. "I remember," observes Dr. Newton, "to have heard from a gentleman who had seen his widow in Cheshire, that she had hair of this colour (golden).”