continued till within a few weeks of the Restoration. In 1651 he was suffering under the approach of total blindness. He had lost the entire use of one eye and his nephew, Edward Philips, was supposed to have greatly assisted him in the affairs of secretary. In 1652 his sight was totally gone.* His enemies, as we have seen, considered his blindness as a judgment for writing against the king; and one of the prebendaries of Exeter reproached him, even from the pulpit, with the severe visitation. But he himself more truly accounted for the affliction by the wearisome labours and studious watchings wherein he spent, and almost tired out, a whole youth. His letter to his Athenian friend, Leonard Phileras, gives an account of the gradual approach of the disease; Philips says that Milton was always tampering with physic: to which he attributes the loss of his sight, as well as to his continual studies, and the headaches to which he had been subject from his youth. It is supposed that in 1653 Milton lost his first wife, who died in childbed, leaving him three daughters. He remained a widower for three years, when he was again united in marriage to a daughter of Captain Woodcock of Hackney. She also died within a year after her marriage, in the same manner; and in one of his sonnets he has paid an affectionate tribute to her memory. Soon 4 His eyesight was decaying about twenty years before his death. His father read without spectacles till eighty-four. His mother had very weak eyes, and used spectacles presently after she was thirty years old. Aubrey Lett. iii. p. 449. He lost the use of his left eye in 1651: and it is supposed, of the other, in 1654. See Todd's Life (1st ed.), p. 85, but the period of the complete affliction is not known with exactness. after this event, he retired from his office of secretary 5 on an allowance for life, of one hundred and fifty pounds a year. His name does not again occur in the books of the council of state; his friend Andrew Marvell had been associated with him. 6 As we are now arrived at the close of Milton's public life, it may be as well for a moment to look back, and recollect the system upon which he asserts his political career to have been conducted, and the end to which his writings were directed. He says, when the outcry against the bishops commenced, and the model of our reformed church was to its disadvantage compared to others, he saw that a way was opening for the establishment of real liberty. That he perceived there were three species of liberty essential to the happiness of social life-religious, domestic, and civil. To promote the first, he wrote his Treatise on Reformation, &c.; and as he saw that the magistrates were active in obtaining the third, he therefore turned his attention to the second, or domestic. This included three material questions, first, the conduct of the conjugal tie; secondly, the education of children; and, thirdly, the free 5 But see Mr. Todd's Life (ed. 2), p. 158, who says some official documents were written by him after 1655. The last payment of his salary was Oct. 22, 1659, when he was sequestered from the office. 6 "His familiar learned acquaintance were A. Marvell, Lawrence, Needham, Hartlib, Mr. Skinner, Dr. Paget, M. D. Mr. Skinner was his disciple. His widow assures me that Mr. Hobbes was not one of his acquaintance. That her husband did not like him at all; but he would acknowledge him to be a man of great parts, and a learned man." Aubrey Lett. iii. 444. He had no intimacy with Cromwell, nor with those in power. He tells Heimbach that he cannot serve him, Propter paucissimas familiaritates meas cum gratiosis." Ep. Fam. Dec. 18, 1657. publication of the thoughts. These questions were severally considered by him in his Treatise on Divorce, his Tractate on Education, and his Areopagitica, or Liberty of unlicensed printing. With regard to civil affairs, he left them in the hands of the magistrates, till it became necessary to vindicate the right of lawfully dethroning, or destroying tyrants (without any immediate or personal application to Charles), against the doctrine of the presbyterian ministers. Such were the fruits of his private studies, which he had gratuitously presented to church and state, and for which he was recompensed by nothing but impunity. Though the actions themselves (he says) procured me peace of conscience, and the approbation of the good; while I exercised that freedom of discussion which I loved. Disencumbered of the duties of secretary, disgusted with the treachery of parties, and the failure of his fondest wishes, Milton at length retreated from the changes and turbulence of the times, and had now leisure to resume the great works which he had long destined for his future employment. He commenced a history of his native country, a dictionary of the Latin language, more copious and correct than that of Stephens; he framed a body of divinity out of the Bible; and, lastly, he sketched the first outlines of his immortal poem. For the subject of 7 These collections consisted of three large volumes in folio. They were much discomposed and deficient, but were used by the editors of the Camb. Dict. in 1693, 4to. See the Pref. to Ainsworth's Lat. Thesaurus. It was said that Philips was the last possessor of these collections. I have an extract from a bookseller's catalogue by me-Dictionary, Latin and English, compiled from the works of Stephens, Cooper, Littelton, a large MS. in three volumes, of Mr. John Milton, 15s. 4to. his epic poem, says Johnson, after much deliberation, long choosing, and beginning late, he fixed upon Paradise Lost, a design so comprehensive, that it could be justified only by success. He had once meant to celebrate the exploits of K. Arthur, as he has hinted in his Verses, "but," says Toland," this particular subject was reserved for the celebrated pen of Sir Richard Blackmore." Amidst the prosecution of these great and laborious designs, he found time during the year 1659 for some humbler occupations. He edited some manuscript treatises of Sir Walter Raleigh. He published the foreign correspondence of the English parliament and of Cromwell; he wrote (against the Presbyterians) his “Considerations to remove hirelings out of the Church; and, alarmed at the prospect of a returning monarchy, he printed his "Ready and easy way to establish a free Commonwealth." What he speaks, he says, is the language of that which is not called amiss-"the good old cause." It appears, from a passage in this treatise, that commerce had much languished during the civil wars and usurpation; and that the trading community were all anxious for the return of a luxurious court, and the assistance of regal prodigality. دو When the restoration of the king proved all his wishes fruitless, Milton withdrew to a friend's house in Bartholomew Close. This temporary concealment seems to have been necessary to his safety, for a particular prosecution was directed against him. It is mentioned by his biographers that a mock 8 This circumstance was first related by T. Warton, on the authority of Tyers: see his ed. of Milton, p. 308, and by Cunningham in his Hist. of G. Britain. 1. p. 14. funeral was made for him, and that when matters were arranged, the careless and merry monarch laughed at the imposition. It was however ordered that his 'Iconoclastes' and 'Defensio pro Populo Anglicano' should be burned by the common hangman, and that the attorney general should proceed against them by indictment, or otherwise. Of the proscribed books several copies on the 27th of August were committed to the flames. Within three days after this, the act of indemnity passed, and he was relieved from the necessity of further concealment. When subsequently he was in the custody of the serjeant at arms, it is supposed that his pardon was obtained by the intervention of some powerful friends.10 Whether the story of Davenant's assistance is authentic, I am not able to say. The house on the 13th of December ordered his release: but how long he remained in custody is not known. Richardson says, that he lived in perpetual terror of being assassinated. It has been asserted, that Milton was offered the place of Latin secretary to the king, an offer that it is obvious, he could not in honour or conscience accept, and that on 9 In 1683 twenty-seven propositions from the writings of Milton, Hobbes, Buchanan, &c. were burnt at Oxford, as destructive to Church and State. This transaction is cele brated in Musæ Anglicanæ, called Decretum Oxoniense, vol. iii. p. 180. Si similis quicunque hæc scripserit auctor, 10 The most copious account of the circumstances attending Milton's pardon are in Richardson's Life, p. 86, &c. communicated by Pope; who is also the authority for the assertion that Milton was offered the place of Latin secretary to the king. |