It was against this antagonist that Milton was ordered by the council, January 8, 1649-50, to compose an answer. Salmasius had contended for the divine right of kings, and Milton replied by asserting the unlimited sovereignty of the people. Hobbes professed himself unable to decide whose language is best, or whose arguments are worst. Johnson thought the periods of Milton smoother, neater, and more pointed. Both too frequently forgot the cause they were to support, in the blind fury of their intemperate partisanship; and rather aimed their blows against each other, than at the avowed objects of their contention. Who would imagine, from a perusal of these treatises, that the writer of one was the noblest poet of his country, and that the other, in his domestic habits, was amiable and unassuming, gentle and affectionate! Milton's success, as might be anticipated for the advocate of the popular and triumphant party, was rapid and extensive : he was gratified by the visits and compliments of all the foreign ministers in London. That the parliament presented him with a thousand pounds, is asserted by Toland, whose statement has been usually credited by the poet's biographers. But the extracts from the orderbooks of the council, given by Todd, do not countenance the story. Three lines, in which Mr. Lemon says a grant of money was made to Milton, are erased, and the entry is as follows;-"The Council takeing notice of the manie good services performed by Mr. John Milton, their Secretarie for Forreigne Languages, to this state and commonwealth, particularlie for his book in vindication of the Parliament and the people of England, against the calumnies and invectives of Salmasius, have thought fit to declare their resentment and good acceptance of the same; and that the thanks of the Council be returned to Mr. Mylton, and their behalfe." sense represented in that The reception of Salmasius was of course less enthusiastic, but the slanderous account of his disgrace at the court of Christina, has been propagated on the worthless authority of the Mercurius Politicus, where it first appeared. His health had been long declining, and an improper use of the mineral waters of Spa, whither he went to seek relief for his maladies, is supposed to have accelerated his death*. Voltaire might boast that he killed a cardinal through vexation at a political hoax, but the destruction of an adversary like Salmasius, need not be numbered among the mightier exploits of Milton. In the Summer of 1651 he was removed, notwithstanding the influence of the council exerted in his favour, from his apartments at Whitehall; and soon after, says Philips, (who was evidently unacquainted with the cause of the change,) took a pretty garden-house in Petty France, in Westminster, next door to the Lord Scudamore, opening into St. James's Park. He was now suffering under almost total blindness, being entirely deprived of the use of one eye; yet he continued to discharge the duties of his office with the assistance of his nephew, Edward Philips. In the following year, his sight was completely gone. His eyes had been gradually growing feeble since 1644, and his intense application to the Defensio Populi, against the urgent advice of his physician, hastened the melancholy event. He has given a most affecting history of his sufferings, in a letter addressed to his friend Leonard Philaras, ambassador from the Duke of Parma at Paris, who was anxious to lay his *Mitford. : case before Thevenot, a physician celebrated for his success in the treatment of ocular complaints. The following passage is extracted from Hayley's translation. "It is about ten years, I think, since I perceived my sight to grow weak and dim. Early in the morning, if I began as usual to read, my eyes immediately suffered pain, but after some moderate bodily exercise were refreshed ; whenever I looked at a candle, I saw a sort of Iris around it. Not long afterwards, on the left side of my left eye, (which began to fail some years before the other,) a darkness arose, that hid from me all things on that side; if I chanced to close my right eye, whatever was before me seemed diminished. In the last three years, as my remaining eye failed by degrees, some months before my sight was utterly gone, all things that I could discern, though I moved not myself, appeared to fluctuate, now to the right, now to the left. Obstinate vapours seem to have settled all over my forehead and temples, overwhelming my eyes with a sort of sleepy heaviness, especially after food, till the evening; so that I frequently recollect the condition of the prophet Phineas in the Argonautics; Him vapours dark Enveloped, and the earth appeared to roll But I should not emit to say, that while I had some little sight remaining, as soon as I went to bed, and reclined on either side, a copious light used to dart from my closed eyes; then as my sight grew daily less, darker colours seemed to burst forth with vehemence, and a kind of internal noise; but now, as if everything lucid were extinguished, blackness, either absolute, or chequered, and interwoven, as it were, with ash-colour, is accustomed 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 |