Before Milton passes to the review of Morus's vindication of his

character and past career, he disposes of Dr. Crantzius and Ulac, as

objects intervening between him and that main task. For the _Fides

Publica_, it will be remembered, had been bound up with that Hague

edition of Milton's _Defensio Secunda_ to which the Rev. Dr.

Crantzius had prefixed a preface in rebuke of Milton and in defence

of Morus, and to which Ulac had also prefixed a statement replying to

Milton's charges against him of dishonesty and bankruptcy. Several

pages are given to Dr. Crantzius, who is called "a certain I know not

what sort of a bed-ridden little Doctor," then taxed with ignorance,

garrulity, and general imbecility, and at last kicked out of the way

with the phrase "But I do marvellously delight in Doctors." Ulac, as

having been reckoned with before, receives briefer notice. "_You

are a swindler, Ulac_, said I; _I am a good Arithmetician_,

says Ulac:" so the notice begins; and then follow some sentences to

the effect that Ulac's creditors had been very ill satisfied with his

_counting_, that the rule of probity is not the _Logarithmic

canon_, that correct accounts are different things from _Tables

of Sines_ or _Tables of Tangents and Secants_, and that

acting on the square is not necessarily taught by

_Trigonometry_. After which Milton reverts to Ulac's

double-dealings with himself, first in his fathering the abusive

Dedication of the _Regii Sanguinis Clamor_ while he was

corresponding with Milton's friends in London and making kind

inquiries about Milton's health, and next in bringing out a pirated

edition of the _Defensio Secunda_, printing the same

inaccurately, and actually binding it up with the _Fides

Publica_ of Morus, so as to compel a united sale of the two books

for his own profit. How a man could have published so coolly a book

in which he was himself held up as a rogue and swindler passes

Milton's comprehension; but Ulac, he seems to admit, was no ordinary

tradesman.

For poor Morus himself there is not an atom of mercy yet. All his

dexterous pleading, all his declarations of innocence, all his

pathetic appeals, all his citations of the decisions in his favour in

the Bontia case by the Walloon Synod and the Supreme Court of

Holland, are simply trampled under foot, and the charges formerly

made against him are ruthlessly reiterated as true nevertheless.

There are even additional details, and fresh charges of the same

kind, derived from more recent information. The plan adopted by

Milton is to go over the _Fides Publica_, extracting phrases and

sentences from it, and commenting on each extract; but the general

effect of the book is that of the ruthless chasing round and round of

the poor ecclesiastic in a biographical ellipse, the two foci of

which are Geneva and Leyden.

Distinct evidence is produced that both at Geneva and in Holland the

_fama_ against Morus was still as strong as ever. The evidence

takes the form of extracts from two letters received by Milton since

the _Fides Publica_ had appeared;--

_From a Letter from Geneva, dated Oct. 14, 1654_ (i.e. from

that letter of Ezekiel Spanheim of which Milton had told Spanheim

that he meant to avail himself, though without mentioning the

writer's name: sec ante pp. 172-173). "Our people here cannot

sufficiently express their wonder that you are so thoroughly

acquainted with the private history of a man unknown to you

personally, and that you have painted him so in his native colours

that not even by those with whom he has been on the most familiar

terms could the whole play-acting career of the man (_tota,

hominis histrionia_) have been more accurately or happily set

forth; whence they are at a loss, and I with them, to understand

with what face, shameless though he is and impudent-mouthed, he is

on the point of daring again to appear in the public theatre. For

it is the consummation and completeness of your success in this

part of the business that you have not brought forward either

imagined or otherwise unknown charges against the man, but charges

of common repetition in the mouths of all his greatest friends

even, and which can be clearly corroborated by the authority and

vote of the whole assembly, and even by the accession of farther

criminations to the same effect... I would assure you that hardly

any one can now longer be found here, where for many years he

discharged a public-office, but greatly to the disgrace of this

Church, who would dare or undertake longer to lend his

countenance to the man's prostituted character."

_From a Letter from Durie at Basel, Oct. 3, 1654_:--"As

regards Morus's vices and profligacy, Hotton does not seem to

entertain that opinion of him; I know, however, that others speak

very ill of him, that his hands are against nearly everybody and

everybody's hands against him, and that many ministers even of the

Walloon Synod are doing their best to have him deprived of the

pastoral office. Nor here in Basel do I find men's opinion of him

different from that in Holland of those who like him least."

The fresh, particulars of information that Milton had received about

Morus and his alleged misdeeds are unsparingly brought out. The name

of the woman of bad character at Geneva with whom Morus was said to

have been implicated there, and the scandal about whom had driven him

from Geneva, has now been ascertained by Milton. It was Claudia

Pelletta; and of her name, and all the topographical details of

Morus's alleged meetings with her, there is enough and more than

enough. Claudia Pelletta at Geneva, and Bontia at Leyden, pull Morus

between them page after page: not that they only have claims, for in

one sentence we hear of an insulted widow somewhere in Holland, and

in another of a dubious female figure seen one rainy night with Morus

in a street in Amsterdam. But Bontia is still Milton's favourite. He

repeats the Latin epigram about her and Morus; he apologizes for

having hitherto called her Pontia, attributes the error to a

misreading of the MS. of that epigram when it first came from

Holland, but says he still thinks Pontia the prettier name; and,

using information that had recently reached him, though we have been

in prior possession of something equivalent (Vol. IV. p. 465), he

thus reminds Morus of his most memorable meeting with that brave

damsel:--

"You remember perhaps that day, nay I am sure you remember the day,

and the hour and the place too, when, as I think, you and Pontia

[he still keeps to the form 'Pontia'] last met in the house of

Salmasius--you to renounce the marriage-bond, she to make you name

the day for the nuptials. When she saw, on the contrary, that it

was your intention to dissolve the marriage-engagement made in the

seduction, then lo! your unmarried bride, for I will not call her

Tisiphone, not able to bear such a wrong, flew furiously at your

face and eyes with uncut nails. You who, on the testimony of

Crantzius (for it is right that so great a contest should not begin

without quotation from your own _Fides Publica_)--you who, on

the testimony of Crantzius, were _altier_ in French, or

_fiercish_ in Latin, and on the testimony of Diodati had

_terrible spurs for self-defence_, prepare to do your manly

utmost in this feminine kind of fight. Madame de Saumaise stands by

as Juno, arbiter of the contest, Salmasius himself, lying in the

next room ill with the gout, when he heard the battle begun,

almost dies with laughing. But alas! and O fie! our unwarlike

Alexander, no match for his Amazon, falls down vanquished. She,

getting her man underneath, then first, from her position of

vantage, goes at his forehead, his eye-brows, his nose; with

wonderful arabesques, and in a Phrygian style of execution, she

runs her finger-points over the whole countenace of her prostrate

subject: never were you less pleased, Morus, with Pontia's lines

of beauty. At last, with difficulty, either margin of his cheeks

fully written on, but the chin not yet finished, up he rises, a

man, by your leave, absolutely nail-perfect, no mere Professor now

but a Pontifical Doctor,--for you might have inscribed upon him, as

on a painting, _Pontia fecit_. [We see now the reason for

keeping to the form 'Pontia.'] Doctor? Nay rather a codex in which

his vengeful critic had scraped her adverse comments with a new

stilus. You felt then, I think, Ulac's Tables of Tangents and

Secants, to a radius of I know not how many painful ciphers,

printed on your skin."

How does Milton meet Morus's protestations of his innocence both at

Geneva and in Leyden, and the evidence he adduces in his behalf?

Respecting the protestations, he notes that they are merely general

and that, like his denials of the authorship of the _Regii

Sanguinis Clamor_, they are worded equivocally or indistinctly.

Why does he not deny the Pelletta charge and the Bontia charge, and

the other charges, one by one specifically, and in a downright

manner? Why does he not go back to Geneva, face the living witnesses

and the documentary evidence there waiting him, and abide the issue?

As for the decisions in his favour in the Bontia case by the Walloon

Synod and the Supreme Court of Holland, of what worth are they? One

could see, one had even been informed, that there had been influences

at work with both tribunals to procure the result, such as it was.

Many good, but easy, men had thought it best, for the reputation of

the Christian ministry, not to rake too deeply into such an

unpleasant business. Especially in the Synod the proceedings had been

a farce. When Riverius, the moderator of the Synod, at the close of

the proceedings, had said to Morus, "_Never was a Moor so

whitewashed as you have been to-day_," could not everybody, with

any sense of humour, perceive that the Reverend gentleman had been

joking? Then, what had been the formal decision of the Synod?

"_That nothing had been found in the papers of weight to take away

from the Churches their wonted liberty of inviting M. Morus to preach

when there was occasion_." Was that a whitewashing with which to

be content? No wonder that Morus had taken refuge among his paper

testimonials. About the whole system of Testimonials Milton is

considerably dubious. He does not deny that a public testimonial may

be an honour, and that there may be proper occasion for such things;

but, real discernment of merit being rare, and those who give and

those who seek testimonials being but a jumble of the good and the

bad together, the abuses of the system bring it into discredit. "The

man of highest quality needs another's testimonial the least; nor

does any good man ever do anything merely to make himself known."

Waiving that general question, however, one may _examine_

Morus's testimonials.

This examination of the testimonials is begun in the first or main

part of Milton's _Pro Se Defensio_; but, as Morus had only

entered on his testimonials in the _Fides Publica_ as originally

published, and presented most of them in his _Supplementum_ to

that book, so Milton prolongs this branch of his criticism into an

appendix entitled separately _Authoris ad Aleasandri Mori

Supplementum Responsio_ ("The Author's Answer to Alexander More's

Supplement.") Prom the first sentences of this Appendix we learn that

the preceding part of Milton's book had been written two months

before the _Supplementum_ had come into his hands.

Morus's published Testimonials divide themselves chronologically, it

may have been observed, into three sets--(1) those given him at

Geneva early in the year 1648, and brought by him into Holland on his

removal thither, (2) those given him at Middleburg between Nov. 1649

and Aug. 1652, and (3) the three given him at Amsterdam in July 1654,

after Milton's _Defensio Secunda_ had appeared, and in

contradiction of statements made in that book.--On the Genevese set

of Testimonials, including that from the venerable Diodati, Milton's

criticism, in substance, is that they were vitiated by their date.

They had been given, or obtained by hard begging, not perhaps before

the Pelletta scandal had been heard of, but before it had been

sufficiently notorious, and while it still seemed credible to many

that Morus was innocent, and others were good-naturedly willing to

stop the investigation by speeding him off to another scene, Theodore

Tronchin, pastor and Professor of Theology, and Mermilliod and

Pittet, two other pastors, had been the first movers, among the

Genevese clergy, for an inquiry into Morus's conduct; the elder

Spanheim had, as Milton believed, been one of those that even then

would have nothing to do with the Testimonials; the aged Diodati had

then for some time ceased to attend the meetings of his brethren, and

might not know all. But, in any case, nearly a year had elapsed

between the date of the last of those Genevese Testimonials which

Morus had published and Morus's actual departure from Geneva. During

that interval there had been a progress of Genevese opinion on the

subject of his character and conduct, and he had been furnished with

fresh papers in the nature of farewell Testimonials. Morus had

suppressed those. Would he venture to produce them?--On the

Middleburg Testimonials the criticism is that they do not matter much

one way or another, but that they show Morus on the whole to have

soon been found a troublesome person in Holland also, some business

about whom was always coming up in the Walloon Synods. In Middleburg

too there had been a progress of opinion about him with farther

experience. His co-pastor there. M. Jean Long, who had been his firm

friend for a while, and had signed some of the testimonials, was now

understood to speak of him with absolute detestation. Morus having

produced some of these testimonials to disprove Milton's assertion

that he had been ejected by the Middleburg church, Milton explains

that he had not said _ejected_, but only _turned adrift_,

and that this was substantially the fact. Now, however, if Durie's

report is correct, not only would the single Middleburg church, but

nearly the whole Walloon Synod also, willingly _eject_

him.--Milton's greatest difficulty is with the three Amsterdam

testimonials of July 1654. He has to admit that they prove him to

have been misinformed when he said that the Amsterdam authorities had

interdicted Morus from the pulpit, just as he had been wrong in

calling Morus's Amsterdam professorship that of Greek. That admission

made (and it was hard for Milton ever to admit he was wrong, even in

a trifle), he contents himself with quoting sentences from the

Amsterdam testimonials to show how merely formal they were, how

little hearty, and with this characteristic observation about the

Amsterdam dignitaries, tossing their testimony aside in any case:

"_Et id nescio_, [Greek: aristindên] _an_ [Greek:

ploutindên], _virtute an censu, magistratum ilium in civitate suâ

obtineant_: And I know not, moreover, whether it is by merit or by

wealth that the gentlemen hold that magistracy in their city." This

is, doubtless, Milton's return for the slighting mention of himself

in the Amsterdam testimonials.[1]

[Footnote 1: A Hague correspondent of Thurloe, commenting on the

appearance of the first part of Morus's _Fides Publica_ and its

abrupt ending had written, Nov. 3, 1654, thus: "The truth is Morus

durst not add the sentence [text of the judicial finding] against

Pontia; for the charges are recompensed [costs allowed her], and

where there is payment of charges that is to say that the action of

Pontia is good, but that the proofs fail.... The attestations of his

life at Amsterdam and at the Hague, he could not get them to his

fancy" (Thurloe, 11.708).]

While we have thus given, with tolerable completeness, an abstract of

Milton's extraordinary _Pro Se Defensio contra Alexandrum

Morum_, we have by no means noticed everything in it that might be

of interest in the study of Milton's character. There is, for

example, one very curious passage in which Milton, in reply to a

criticism of Morus, defends his use of very gross words (_verba

nuda et prætextata_) in speaking of very gross things. He makes

two daring quotations, one from Piso's Annals and the other from

Sallust, to show that he had good precedent; and he cites Herodotus,

Seneca, Suetonius, Plutarch, Erasmus, Thomas More, Clement of

Alexandria, Arnobius, Lactantlas, Eusebius, and the Bible itself, as

examples occasionally of the very reverse of a squeamish euphemism.

Of even greater interest is a passage in which he foresees the

charges of cruelty, ruthlessness, and breach of literary etiquette,

likely to be brought against him on account of his treatment of

Morus, and expounds his theory on that subject. The passage may fitly

conclude our account of the _Pro Se Defensio_:--

"To defame the bad and to praise the good, the one on the principle

of severe punishment and the other on that of high reward, are

equally just, and make up together almost the sum of justice; and

we see in fact that the two are of nearly equal efficacy for the

right management of life. The two things, in short, are so

interrelated, and so involved in one and the same act, that the

vituperation of the bad may in a sense be called the praising of

the good. But, though right, reason, and use are equal on both

sides, the acceptability is not the same likewise; for whoever

vituperates another bears the burden and imputation of two very

heavy things at once,--accusing another, and thinking well of

himself. Accordingly, all are ready enough with praise, good and

bad alike, and the objects of their praise worthy and unworthy

together; but no one either dares or is able to accuse freely and

intrepidly but the man of integrity alone. Accustomed in our youth,

under so many masters, to make laborious displays of imaginary

eloquence, and taught to think that the demonstrative force of the

same lies no less in invective than in praise, we certainly do at

the desk hack to pieces bravely the traditional tyrants of

antiquity. Mezentius, if such is the chance, we slay over again

with unsavoury antitheta; or we roast to perfection Phalaris of

Agrigentum, as in his own bull, with lamentable bellowing of

enthymemes. In the debating room or lecture-room, I mean; for in

the State for the most part we rather adore and worship such, and

call them most powerful, most great, most august. The proper thing

would be either not to have spent our first years in sport as

imaginary declaimers, or else, when our country or the State needs,

to leave our mere fencing-foils, and venture sometimes into the

sun, and dust, and field of battle, to exert real brawn, shake real

arms, seek a real foe. The Suffeni and Sophists of the past, on the

one hand, the Pharisees and Simons and Hymenæi and Alexanders of

the past on the other, we go at with many a weapon: those of the

present day, and come to life again in the Church, we praise with

studied eulogies, we honour with professorships, and stipends, and

chairs, the incomparable men that they are, the highly-learned and

saintly. If it comes to the censuring of one of them, if the mask

and specious skin of one of them are dragged off, if he is shown to

be base within, or even publicly and openly criminal, there are

some who, for what purpose or through what timidity I know not,

would have him publicly defended by testimonies in his favour

rather than marked with due animadversion. My principle, I confess,

and as the fact has several times proved, is far enough apart from

theirs, inasmuch as, if I have made any profit when young in the

literary leisure I then had, whether by the instructions of learned

men or by my own lucubrations, I would employ the whole of it to

the advantage of life and of the human race, could I range so far,

to the utmost of my weak ability. And, if sometimes even out of

private enmities public delinquencies come to be exposed and

corrected, and I have now, impelled by all possible reasons,

prosecuted with most just invective, nor yet without proper result,

not an adversary of my own merely, but one who is the common

adversary of almost all, a nefarious man, a disgrace to the

Reformed Religion and to the sacred order especially, a dishonour

to learning, a most pernicious teacher of youth, an unclean

ecclesiastic, it will be seen, I hope, by those who are chiefly

interested in making an example of him (for why should I not so

trust?), that herein I have performed an action neither displeasing

to God, nor unwholesome to the Church, nor unuseful to the State."

What a blast this to pursue poor Morus over the Continent! It would

seem as if, in expectation of it, he had put himself as far as he

could out of hearing. When Milton's _Pro Se Defensio_ appeared,

Morus was no longer in France, but in Italy; and it was not till May,

1656, or nine months after, that he reappeared in Holland. Then, as

he had outrun by more than a year his formal leave of absence from

his Amsterdam professorship, granted Dec, 20, 1654, there seem to

have been strict inquiries as to the causes of his long absence. It

was explained that he had fallen ill at Florence; it also came out

that he had had a very distinguished reception from the Grand Duke of

Tuscany, and that the Venetian Senate had presented him with a chain

of gold for a Latin poem he had written on a recent defeat of the

Turks at sea by the Venetian navy; and, what was most to the point,

it appeared, by addresses of his own at Amsterdam, and at a meeting

of the Walloon Synod at Leyden, that he had found in Italy great

opportunities "for advancing the glory of God by the preaching of the

Gospel." We know independently that, while in Italy, he had made

acquaintance with some of those wits and scholars among whom Milton

had moved so delightfully in his visit of 1638-9, and among whom

Heinsius had been back in 1652-3, to find that they still remembered

Milton, and could talk about him (Vol. IV. pp. 475-476); and it is

even startling to have evidence from Moms himself that he exchanged

especial compliments at Rome with Milton's old friend Holstenius, the

Vatican librarian, and became so very intimate at Florence with

Milton's beloved Carlo Dati as to receive from Dati the most

affectionate attention and nursing through his illness. And so, all

seeming fully satisfied at Amsterdam, he resumed his duties in the

Amsterdam School. Not to be long at peace, however. Hardly had he

returned when, either on the old charges, now so terrifically

reblazoned through Holland by Milton's perseverance for his ruin, or

on new charges arising from new incidents, he and the Walloon

church-authorities were again at feud. In this uncomfortable state we

must leave him for the present.[1]

[Footnote 1: Bayle's Dict, Art. _Morus_, and Bruce's Life of

Morus, pp. 142-145 and 204-205. This last book is a curiosity. One

hardly sees why the life and character of Morus should have so

fascinated the Rev. Archibald Bruce, who was minister of the Associate

Congregation at Whitburn, in Linlithgowshire, from 1768 to 1816, and

Professor of Theology there for the Associate Presbyterian Synod for

nearly all that time. He was a worthy and learned man, for whom Dr.

McCrie, the author of the Life of John Knox, and of the same

Presbyterian denomination, entertained a more "profound veneration"

than for any other man on earth (see Life of McCrie by his son, edit.

1840, pp. 52-57). He was "a Whig of the Old School," with liberal

political opinions in the main, but strongly opposed to Roman

Catholic emancipation; which brought him into connexion with Lord

George Gordon, of the "No Popery Riots" of 1780. He wrote many books

and pamphlets, and kept a printer at Whitburn for his own use. He may

have been drawn to Morus by his interest in the history of

Presbyterianism abroad, especially as Morus was of Scottish

parentage, or by his interest in the proceedings of Presbyterian

Church Courts in such cases of scandal as that of Morus. At any rate,

he defends Morus throughout most resolutely, and with a good deal of

scholarly painstaking. Milton, on the other hand, he thoroughly

dislikes, and represents as a most malicious and un-Christian man,

consciously untruthful, and of most lax theology to boot. To be sure,

he was the author of _Paradise Lost_; but that much-praised poem

had serious religious defects too! There is something actually

refreshing in the _naïveté_ and courage with which the

sturdy Professor of the Associate Synod propounds his own dissent

from the common Milton-worship.--The authority for Morus's

acquaintanceship in Italy with Holstenius and Dati is the collection

of his Latin Poems, a thin quarto, published at Paris in 1669, under

the title of _Alexandri Mori Poemata_. It contains his poem, a

longish one in Hexameters, on the victory of the Venetians over the

Turks; also verses to the Grand-Duke of Tuscany; also obituary

elegiacs to Diodati of Geneva, and several pieces to or on Salmasius.

One piece, in elegiacs, is addressed "_Ad Franciscum Turretinum,

raræ indolis ac summæ spei juvenem_." This Francis Turretin (so

addressed, I suppose, long ago, when he and Morus were in Geneva

together) was, if I mistake not, the famous Turretin of Milton's

letter about Morus to Ezekiel Spanheim (ante pp. 173-176). Among the

other pieces are one to Holstenius and one to Carlo Dati. In the

first Morus, speaking of his introduction to Holstenius and to the

Vatican library together, says he does not know which seemed to him

the greater library. The poem to Dati is of considerable length, in

Hexameters, and entitled "_Ægri Somnium: ad præstantem virum

Carolum Dati_" ("An Invalid's Dream: To the excellent Carlo

Dati"). It represents Morus as very ill in Florence and thinking

himself dying. Should he die in Florence and be buried there, he

would have a poetic inscription over his grave to the effect that

while alive he also had cultivated the Muses, and begging the

passer-by to remember his name ("_Qui legis hæc obiter, Morique

morique memento_"). How kind Dati had been to him--Dati, "than

whom there is not a better man, the beloved of all the sister Muses,

the ornament of his country, having the reputation of being all but

unique in Florence for learning in the vanished arts, siren at once

in Tuscan, Latin, and Greek! ... This Dati soothed my fever-fits with

the music of his liquid singing, and sat by my bed-side, and spoke

words of sweetness, which inhere yet in my very marrow." And so

Milton's Italian friend of friends (Vol. III. pp. 551-654 and

680-683) had been charitable to poor Morus, whom he knew to be a

fugitive from Milton's wrath, and who could name Milton, if at all,

only with tears and cursing.]

It is now high time, however, to answer a question which must have

suggested itself again and again in the course of our narrative of

the Milton and Morus controversy. Who was the real author of the book

for which Morus had been so dreadfully punished, and what was the

real amount of Morus's responsibility in it?

That Milton's original belief on this subject had been shaken has

been already evident. He had written his _Defensio Secunda_, in

firm reliance on the universal report that Morus was the one proper

author of the _Regii Sanguinis Clamor_, or that it had been

concocted between him and Salmasius; and, though Morus's denial of

the authorship had been formally conveyed to him before the

_Defensio Secunda_ left the press, he had let it go forth as it

was, in the conviction that he was still not wrong in the main. The

more express and reiterated denials of Morus in the _Fides

Publica_, however, with the references there to another person as

the real author, though Morus was not at liberty to divulge his name,

had produced an effect. The authorship of the _Regii Sanguinis

Clamor_ was then indeed a secondary question, inasmuch as in the

_Fides Publica_ Morus had interposed himself personally,--not

only in self-defence, but also for counter-attack on Milton. Still,

as the _Fides Publica_ would never have been written had not

Milton assumed Morus to be the author of the _Regii Sanguinis

Clamor_ and dragged him before the world solely on that account,

Milton had necessarily, in replying to the _Fides Publica_,

adverted to the secondary question. His assertion now, i.e, in the

_Pro Se Defensio_, was a modified one. It was that, whatever

facts had yet to be revealed respecting the authorship of the four or

five parts of the compound book severally, he yet knew for certain

that Morus had been the editor of the whole book, the corrector of

the press for the whole, the busy and ostentatious agent in the

circulation of early copies, and the writer at least of the

Dedicatory Preface to Charles II., put forth in Ulac's name. The

question for us now is how far this modified assertion of Milton was

correct.

Almost to a tittle, it _was_. That Morus was the editor of the

book, the corrector of the press, and the active agent in the

circulation of early copies, may be taken as established by the

documentary proofs furnished by Milton, and is corroborated by

independent evidence known to ourselves long ago (Vol. IV. pp.

459-465). But was he also partially the author? Here too Milton's

evidence may be taken as conclusive, so far as respects the

Dedicatory Epistle to Charles II. That Epistle, with its enormous

praises of Salmasius, and its extremely malignant notice of Milton,

was undoubtedly by Morus, for copies of it signed by himself were

still extant. So far, therefore, Milton was right in saying that

Morus's denial of the authorship of the _Regii Sanguinis Clamor_

was an equivocation, resting on a tacit distinction between the body

of the book and the additional or editorial matter. In several

passages Morus himself had betrayed this equivocation, but in none so

remarkably as in a sentence to the peculiar phrasing of which we

called attention in quoting it (ante p. 159). Protesting that he had

not so much as known the fact of Milton's blindness at the time of

the publication of the _Regii Sanguinis Clamor_, and therefore

could not have been guilty of the heartless allusion to it in the

Dedicatory Epistle, he there said, "_If anything occurred to me

that might seem to look that way, I referred to the mind_,"--a

phrase which it is difficult to construe otherwise than as an

admission that he had written the Dedicatory Epistle, but had

employed the familiar quotation there ("_monstrum horrendum,

informe, ingens, cui lumen ademptum_") only metaphorically. All in

all, then, the authorship of the Dedicatory Epistle, as well as the

editorship and adoption of the whole anonymous book, is fastened upon

Morus. With this amount of responsibility fastened upon him, however,

Morus must be dismissed, and another person brought to the bar. He

was the Rev. DR. PETER DU MOULIN the younger.

The Du Moulins were a French family, well known in England. The

father, Dr. Peter Du Moulin the elder (called _Molinæus_ in

Latin), was a French Protestant theologian of great celebrity. He had

resided for a good while in England in the reign of James I.,

officiating as French minister in London, and in much credit with the

King and others; but, on the death of James, he had returned to

France. At our present date he was still alive at the age of

eighty-seven, and still not so much out of the world but that people

in different countries continued to think of him as a contemporary

and to quote his writings. There are references to him, far from

disrespectful, in one of Milton's Anti-Episcopal Pamphlets in reply

to Bishop Hall.[1] Two of his sons, both born in France, had settled

permanently in England, and had become passionately interested in

English public affairs, though in very different directions.--The

younger of these, LEWIS DU MOULIN, born 1606, having taken the degree

of Doctor of Physic at Leyden, had come to England when but a young

man, and, after having been incorporated in the same degree at

Cambridge (1684), had been in medical practice in London. At the

beginning of the Long Parliament, he had taken the Parliamentarian

side, and had written, under the name of "Irenæus Philalethes," two

Latin pamphlets against Bishop Hall's _Episcopacy by Divine

Right_--pamphlets very much in the same vein of root-and-branch

Church Reform as those of the Smectymnuans and Milton at the same

time. Since then, still adhering to the Parliament through the Civil

War, he had become well known as an Independent--much, it is said, to

the chagrin of his old father, who was a Presbyterian, with leanings

to moderate Episcopacy; and in 1647, in the Parliamentary visitation

of the University of Oxford, he had been rewarded with the Camden

Professorship of History in that University. He had been made M.D. of

Oxford in 1649. At least three publications had come from his pen

since his appointment to the Professorship, one of them a Translation

into Latin (1650) of the first chapter of Milton's

_Eikonoklastes_. From this we should infer, what is

independently likely, that he was acquainted with Milton

personally.[2]--Very different from the Independent and

Commonwealth's man Lewis Du Monlin. M.D. and History Professor of

Oxford, was his elder brother PETER DU MOULIN, D.D. Born in 1600, he

had been educated, like his brother, at Leyden, and had taken his

D.D. degree there. He is first heard of in England in 1640, when he

was incorporated in the same degree at Cambridge; and at the

beginning of the Civil War he was so far a naturalised Englishman as

to be Rector of Wheldrake, near York. From that time, though a

zealous Calvinist theologically, he was as intensely Royalist and

Episcopalian as his brother was Parliamentarian and Independent. So

we learn most distinctly from a brief MS. sketch of his life through

the Civil Wars and the Commonwealth, written by himself after the

Restoration, for insertion into a copy of the second edition of one

of his books, of date 1660, presented by him to the library of

Canterbury Cathedral. "Our gracious King and now glorious Martyr,

Charles the First, he there says, finding that his rebellious

subjects, not content to make war against him in his kingdom,

assaulted him with another war out of his kingdom with their tongues

and pens, he set out a Declaration to invite all his loving subjects

and friends that could use the tongues of the neighbouring states to

represent with their pens the justice of his cause, especially to

Protestant Churches abroad. That Declaration smote my heart, as

particularly addressed to me; and I took it as a command laid upon me

by God himself. Whereupon I made a solemn vow to God that, as far as

Latin and French could go in the world, I would make the justice of

the King's and the Church's cause to be known, especially to the

Protestants of France and the Low Countries, whom the King's enemies

did chiefly labour to seduce and misinform. To pay my vow, I first

made this book" [entitled originally "_Apologie de la Religion

Reformée, et de la Monarchie et de I'Église d'Angleterre, contre les

Calomnies de la Ligue Rebelle de quelques Anglois et Écossois_";

but in an imperfect English translation the title was afterwards

changed into "_History of the Presbyterians_", and in the second

French edition, on a copy of which Du Moulin was now writing, it

became "_Histoire des Nouveaux Presbytériens, Anglois et

Écossois_"]--which was begun "at York, during the siege [i.e. June

1644, just before Marston Moor], in a room whose chimney was beaten

down by the cannon while I was at my work; and, after the siege and

my expulsion from my Rectory at Wheldrake, it was finished in an

underground cellar, where I lay hid to avoid warrants that were out

against me from committees to apprehend me and carry me prisoner to

Hull. Having finished the book, I sent it to be printed in Holland by

the means of an officer of the Master of the Posts at London, Mr.

Pompeo Calandrini, who was doing great and good services to the King

in that place. But, the King being dead, and the face of public

businesses altered, I sent for my MS. out of Holland, and reformed it

for the new King's service. And it was printed, but very

negligently, by Samuel Browne at the Hague [1649?] ... Much about the

same time I set out my Latin Poem, _Ecclesiæ Gemitus_ ('Groans

of the Church'), with, a long Epistle to all Christians in the

defence of the King and the Church of England; and, two years after

[1652], _Clamor Regii Sanguinis ad Coelum_. God blessed these

books, and gave them the intended effect, the disabusing of many

misinformed persons. And it was so well resented by his Majesty, then

at Breda, that, being showed my sister Mary among a great company of

ladies, he brake the crowd to salute her, and tell her that he was

very sensible of his obligations to her brother, and that, if ever

God settled him in his kingdom, he would make him know that he was a

grateful prince." Here, then, in Dr. Peter Du Moulin's own hand,

though not till after the Restoration, we have the _Regii Sanguinis

Clamor_ claimed as his, with the information that it was one of a

series of books written by him with the special design of maintaining

the cause of Charles II. and discrediting the Commonwealth among

Continental Protestants.[3]

[Footnote 1: See close of _Animadversions on the Remonstrant's

Defence_.]

[Footnote 2: Wood's Fasti, II. 125-126; Whitlocke, II. 290. The

writings of Lewis Du Moulin I have here mentioned are known to me

only by the titles and descriptions given by Wood and his annotator

Dr. Bliss.]

[Footnote 3: Wood's Fasti, II. 195; and _Gentleman's Magazine_

for 1773, pp. 369-370. In the last is given the autobiographic

sketch of Du Moulin, transcribed from the copy of his _Histoire

des Nouveaux Presbytériens_ (edit. 1660) in the Canterbury

Library.--The Mary du Moulin, the sister of Peter and Lewis,

mentioned in the autobiographic sketch, died at the Hague in Feb.

1699, having, like most of the Du Moulins, attained a great age.

The father, Dr. Peter the elder, died in 1658 at the age of ninety;

Lewis died in 1683 at the age of seventy-seven; and Peter the

younger, of the _Regii Sanguinis Clamor_, died in 1684 at the

age of eighty-four.--The reader will have noted the Pompeo

Calandrini mentioned as an official in the London Post Office in

the time of the Civil War, and as secretly aiding Charles I. in his

correspondence. He was, doubtless, of the Italian-Genevese family of

Calandrinis already mentoned, _ante_ pp. 172-173 and footnote.]

Yet farther proof on the subject, also from Dr. Peter's own hand. In

the Library of Canterbury Cathedral there is, or was, his own copy of

the original edition of the _Regii Sanguinis Clamor_; and in

that copy the preliminary Dedicatory Epistle in Ulac's name to

Charles II. is marked for deletion, and has these words prefixed to

it in Du Moulin's hand; "_Epistola, quam aiunt esse Alexandri

Mori, quæ mihi valde non probatur_" ("Epistle which they say is by

Alexander Morus, and which is not greatly to my taste"),[1] All the

rest, therefore, was his own. But, to remove all possible doubt, we

have the still more complete and exact information furnished by him

in 1670, Milton then still alive and in the first fame of his

_Paradise Lost_. In that year there appeared from the Cambridge

University Press a volume entitled _Petri Molinæi P. F. [Greek:

Parerga]: Poematum Libelli Tres_. It was a collection of Dr. Peter

Du Moulin's Latin Poems, written at various times of his life, and

now arranged by him in three divisions, separately title-paged,

entitled respectively "Hymns to the Apostles' Creed," "Groans of the

Church" (_Ecclesiæ Gemitus_), and "Varieties." In the second

division were reprinted the two Latin Poems that had originally

formed part of the _Regii Sanguinis Clamor_, with their full

titles as at first: to wit, the "Eucharistic Ode," to the great

Salmasius for his _Defensio Regia_, and the set of scurrilous

Iambics "To the Bestial Blackguard John Milton, Parricide and

Advocate of the Parricide." With reference to the last there are

several explanations for the reader in Latin prose at different

points in the volume. At one place the reader is assured that, though

the Iambics against Milton, and some other things in the volume, may

seem savage, zeal for Religion and the Church, in their hour of sore

trial, had been a sufficient motive for writing them, and they must

not be taken as indicating the private character of the author, as

known well enough to his friends. At another place (pp. 141-2 of the

volume) there is, by way of afterthought or extension, a larger and

more express statement about the Iambics against Milton, which must

here be translated in full: "Into what danger I was thrown," says Du

Moulin, "by the first appearance of this Poem in the _Clamor Regii

Sanguinis_ would not seem to me worthy of public notice now, were

it not that the miracle of divine protection by which I was kept safe

is most worthy of the common admiration of the good and the praise of

the Supreme Deliverer. I had sent my manuscript sheets to the great

Salmasius, who entrusted them to the care of that most learned man,

Alexander Morus. This Morus delivered them to the printer, and

prefixed to them an Epistle to the King, in the Printer's name,

exceedingly eloquent and full of good matter. When that care of

Morus over the business of printing the book had become known to

Milton through the spies of the Regicides in Holland, Milton held it

as an ascertained fact that Morus was the author of the

_Clamor;_ whence that most virulent book of Milton's against

Morus, entitled _Defensio Secunda pro Populo Anglicano_. It had

the effect, moreover, of making enemies for Morus in Holland; for at

that time the English Tyrants were very much feared in foreign parts.

Meanwhile I looked on in silence, and not without a soft chuckle, at

seeing my bantling laid at another man's door, and the blind and

furious Milton fighting and slashing the air, like the hoodwinked

horse-combatants in the old circus, not knowing by whom he was struck

and whom he struck in return. But Morus, unable to stand out against

so much ill-will, began to cool in the King's cause, and gave Milton

to know who the author of the _Clamor_ really was (_Clamoris

authorem Miltono indicavit_). For, in fact, in his Reply to

Milton's attack he produced two witnesses, of the highest credit

among the rebels, who might have well known the author, and could

divulge him on being asked. Thus over me and my head there hung the

most certain destruction. But that great Guardian of Justice, to whom

I had willingly devoted both my labour and my life, wrought out my

safety through Milton's own pride, as it is customary with His Wisdom

to bring good out of evil, and light out of darkness. For Milton, who

had gone full tilt at Morus with his canine eloquence, and who had

made it almost the sole object of his _Defensio Secunda_ to cut

up the life and reputation of Morus, never could be brought to

confess that he had been so grossly mistaken: fearing, I suppose,

that the public would make fun of his blindness, and that

grammar-school boys would compare him to that blind Catullus in

Juvenal who, meaning to praise the fish presented to Domitian,

"'Made a long speech,

Facing the left, while on his right there lay

The actual turbot.'

[Footnote 1: _Gentleman's Magazine_ for 1773, as in last note.]

"And so, Milton persisting in his blundering charge against Morus

for that dangerous service to the King, the other Rebels could not,

without great damage to their good patron, proceed against any other

than Morus as guilty of so great a crime. And, as Milton preferred my

getting off scatheless to being found in a ridiculous position

himself, I had this reward for my pains, that Milton, whom I had

treated so roughly, turned out my patron and sedulous body-guard.

Don't laugh, reader; but give best thanks, with me, to God, the most

good, the most great, and the most wise, deliverer."

This final version of the story of Du Moulin (in 1670, remember)

seems to have become current among those who, after the Restoration,

retained any interest in the subject. Thus, Aubrey, in his notes for

Milton's life, written about 1680, has a memorandum to this effect,

giving "Mr. Abr. Hill" as his authority: "His [Milton's] sharp

writing against Alexander More of Holland, upon a mistake,

notwithstanding he [Morus] had given him [Milton], by the ambassador,

all satisfaction to the contrary, viz. that the book called

_Clamor_ was writ by Peter Du Moulin. Well, that was all one

[said Milton]; he having writ it [the _Defensio Secunda_], it

should go into the world: one of them was as bad as the

other.'"--_Bentrovato_; but there is at least one vital

particular in which neither Du Moulin's amusing statement in 1670 nor

Aubrey's subsequent anecdote seems to be consistent with the exact

truth as already before us in the documents. The secret of the real

authorship of the _Regii Sanguinis Clamor_ had been better and

longer kept than Du Moulin's statement would lead us to suppose. Even

Ulac in 1654, as we have seen, while declaring that Morus was not the

author, could not tell who else he was. Morus himself did then know,

having been admitted into the secret, probably from the first; and

several others then knew, having been told in confidence by

Salmasius, Morus, or Du Moulin. Charles II. himself seems to have

been informed. But that Morus had refrained from divulging the secret

generally, or communicating it in a precise manner to Milton, even at

the moment when he was frantically trying to avert Milton's wrath and

stop the publication of the _Defensio Secunda_, seems evident,

and must go to his credit. In the remonstrance with Thurloe, in May

1654, through the Dutch ambassador Nieuport, intended to stop the

publication when, it was just leaving the press, we hear only of the

denial of Morus that he was the author--nothing of any information

from him that Du Moulin was the real author; and, though Durie had

about the same time informed Milton in a letter from the Hague that

he had heard the book attributed, on private authority from Morus, to

"a certain French minister," no name was given. Farther, in the

_Fides Publica_, published some months afterwards, Morus was

still almost chivalrously reticent. While declaring that the real

author was "alive and well," and while describing him negatively so

far as to say that he was not in Holland, nor within the circle of

Morus's own acquaintances, he still avoids naming him, and only

appeals to himself to come forward and own his performance. And so,

as late as August 1655, when Milton replied to Morus in his _Pro Se

Defensio_, the evidence still is that, though he had more correct

ideas by that time as to the amount and nature of Morus's

responsibility for the book, and was aware of some other author at

the back of Morus, he had not yet ascertained who this other author

was, and still thought that the defamatory Iambics against himself,

as well as the Dedicatory Epistle to Charles II., might be Morus's

own. It seems to me possible that not till after the Restoration did

Milton know that the alleged "French Minister" at the back of Morus

in the _Regii Sanguinis Clamor_ was Dr. Peter Du Moulin, or at

all events that not till then did he know that the defamatory

Iambics, as well as the main text, were that gentleman's. The only

person who could have put an end to the mystery completely was Du

Moulin himself, and not till after the Restoration, as we have seen,

was it convenient, or even safe, for Du Moulin to avow his

handiwork.

Yet all the while, as Du Moulin himself hints in his confession of

1670, he had been, if we may so express it, close at Milton's elbow.

In 1652, when the _Regii Sanguinis Clamor_ appeared, Du Moulin,

then fifty-two years of age, and knows as a semi-naturalized

Frenchman, the brother of Professor Lewis Du Moulin of Oxford, had

been going about in England as an ejected parson from Yorkshire, the

very opposite of his brother in politics. He had necessarily known

something of Milton already; and, indeed, in the book itself there is

closer knowledge of Milton's position and antecedents than would have

been easy for Salmasius, or Morus, or any other absolute foreigner.

The author had evidently read Milton's _Tenure of Kings and

Magistrates_ and his _Eikonoklastes_, as well as his

_Defensio Prima_; he was aware of the significance given to the

first of these treatises by the coincidence of its date with the

King's Trial, and could represent it as actually a cause of the

Regicide; he had gone back also upon Milton's Divorce Pamphlets and

Anti-Episcopal Pamphlets, and had collected hints to Milton's

detriment out of the attacks made upon him by Bishop Hall and others

during the Smectymnuan controversy. All this acquaintance with

Milton, the phrasing being kept sufficiently indefinite, Du Moulin

could show in the book without betraying himself. That, as he has

told us, would have been his ruin. The book, though shorter than the

_Defensio Regia_ of Salmasius, was even a more impressive and

successful vilification of the Commonwealth than that big

performance; and not even to the son of the respected European

theologian Molinaeus, and the brother of such a favourite of the

Commonwealth as Dr. Lewis Du Moulin, could Parliament or the Council

of State have shown mercy after such an offence. As for Milton, the

attack on whom ran through the more general invective, not for "forty

thousand brothers" would _he_ have kept his hands off Dr. Peter

had he known. Providentially, however, Dr. Peter remained

_incognito_, and it was Morus that was murdered, Dr. Peter

looking on and "softly chuckling." Rather, I should say, getting more

and more alarmed, and almost wishing that the book had never been

written, or at all events praying more and more earnestly that he

might not be found out, and that Morus, murdered irretrievably at any

rate, would take his murdering quietly and hold his tongue. For the

Commonwealth had firmly established itself meanwhile, and had passed

into the Protectorate; and all rational men in Europe had given up

the cause of the Stuarts, and come to regard pamphlets in their

behalf as so much waste paper; and was it not within the British

Islands after all, ruled over though they were by Lord Protector

Cromwell, that a poor French divine of talent, tied to England

already by various connexions, had the best chances and outlooks for

the future? So, it appears, Du Moulin had reasoned with himself, and

so he had acted. "After Ireland was reduced by the Parliamentary

forces," we are informed by Wood, "he lived there, some time at

Lismore, Youghal, and Dublin, under the patronage of Richard, Earl of

Cork. Afterward, going into England, he settled in Oxon (where he was

tutor or governor to Charles, Viscount Dungarvan, and Mr. Richard

Boyle his brother); lived there two or more years, and preached

constantly for a considerable time in the church of St. Peter in the

East."[1] His settlement at Oxford, near his brother Dr. Lewis, dates

itself, as I calculate, about 1654; and it must have been chiefly

thence, accordingly, that he had watched Milton's misdirected

attentions to poor Morus, knowing himself to be "the actual turbot."

There is proof, however, as we shall find, that he was, from that

date onwards, a good deal in London, and, what is almost startlingly

strange, in a select family society there which must have brought him

into relations with Milton, and perhaps now and then into his

company. Du Moulin could believe in 1670 that Milton even then knew

his secret, and that he owed his escape to Milton's pride and

unwillingness to retract his blunder about Morus. We have seen reason

to doubt that; and, indeed, Milton, had, in his second Morus

publication, put himself substantially right with the public about

the extent of Morus's concern in the _Regii Sanguinis Clamor_,

and had scarcely anything to retract. What he could do in addition

was Du Moulin's danger. He could drag a new culprit to light and

immolate a second victim. That he refrained may have been owing, as

we have supposed most likely, to his continued ignorance that the Dr.

Du Moulin now going about in Oxford and in London, so near himself,

was the original and principal culprit; or, if he did have any

suspicions of the fact, there may have been other reasons, in and

after 1655, for a dignified silence.

[Footnote 1: Wood's Fasti, II. 195.]

In proceeding from the month of August 1655, when Milton published

his _Pro Se Defensio_, to his life through the rest of Oliver's

Protectorate, it is as if we were leaving a cluster of large islands

that had detained us long by their size and by the storms on their

coasts, and were sailing on into a tract of calmer sea, where the

islands, though numerous, are but specks in comparison. The reason of

this is that we are now out of the main entanglement of the Salmasius

and Morus controversy. Milton had taken leave of that subject, and

indeed of controversy altogether for a good while.

In the original memoirs of Milton due note is taken of this calm in

his life after his second castigation of Morus. "Being now quiet from

state adversaries and public contests," says Phillips, "he had

leisure again for his own studies and private designs"; and Wood's

phrase is all but identical: "About the time that he had finished

these things, he had more leisure and time at command." Both add

that, in this new leisure, he turned again at once to those three

labours which had been occupying him, at intervals, for so many

years, and which were, in fact, always in reserve as his favourite

hack-employments when he had nothing else to do--his compilations for

his intended _Thesaurus Linguæ Latinæ_, his _History of

Britain_, and his _Body of Biblical Theology_. The mere

mention of such works as again in progress in the house in Petty

France in the third or fourth year of Milton's blindness confirms

conclusively the other evidences that he had by this time overcome in

a remarkable manner the worst difficulties of his condition. One sees

him in his room, daily for hours together, with his readers and

amanuenses, directing them to this or that book on the shelves,

listening as they read the passages wanted, interrupting and

requiring another book, listening again, interrupting again, and so

at length dictating his notes, and giving cautions as to the keeping

of them. His different sets of papers, with the volumes most in use,

are familiar now even to his own touch in their places on the table

or the floor; and, when his amanuenses are gone, he can sit on by

himself, revising the day's work mentally, and projecting the sequel.

And so from day to day, with the variation of his afternoon exercise

in the garden, or the walk beyond it in some one's company into the

park or farther, or an occasional message from Thurloe on

office-business, or calls from friends singly or two or three

together, and always, of course, at intervals through the day, the

pleased contact of the blind hands with the stops of the organ.

Among the inmates of the house in Petty France in the latter part of

1655, besides the blind widower himself, were his three little orphan

girls, the eldest, Anne, but nine years of age, the second, Mary, but

seven, and the youngest, Deborah, only three. How they were tended no

one knows; but one fancies them seeing little of their father, and

left very much to the charge of servants. Two women-servants, with

perhaps a man or boy to wait on Milton personally, may have completed

the household, unless Milton's two nephews are to be reckoned as also

belonging to it.

That the nephews still hovered about Milton, and resided with him

occasionally, together or by turn, giving him their services as

amanuenses, appears to be certain. Edward Phillips was now

twenty-five years of age, and John Phillips twenty-four; but neither

of them had taken to any profession, or had any other means of

subsistence than private pedagogy, with such work for the booksellers

as could be obtained by their own ability or through their uncle's

interest. The younger, as we know, had made some name for himself by

his _Joannis Philippi, Angli, Responsio_ of 1652, written in

behalf of his uncle, and under his uncle's superintendence; and it is

probable that both the brothers had in the interval been doing odds

and ends of literary work. There are verses by both among the

commendatory poems prefixed to the first two parts of Henry Lawes's

_Ayres and Dialogues for one, two, or three Voices_, published

in 1653, as a sequel to that previous publication of 1648, entitled

_Choice Psalmes put into musick for three Voices_, which had

contained Milton's own sonnet to Lawes; and in the _Divine

Poems_ of Thomas Washbourne, a Gloucestershire clergyman,

published in 1654, there are "Verses to his friend Thomas Washbourne"

by Edward Phillips. In this latter year, I find, John Phillips must

have been away for some time in Scotland, for in a letter to Thurloe

dated "Wood Street, Compter, 11th April, 1654", the writer--no other

than Milton's interesting friend Andrew Sandelands, now back from

Scotland himself--mentions Phillips as there instead. Sandelands had

not ceased, under the Protectorate, to try to make himself useful to

the Government, and so get restored to his Rectory; and, as nothing

had come of his grand proposal about the woods of Scotland, he had

interested himself in a new business: viz. "the prosecution of that

information concerning the Crown Lands in Scotland which his Highness

and the late Council of State did refer to the Commissioners at

Leith." Assuring Thurloe that he had been diligent in the affair, he

says, "I have employed Mr. John Phillips, Mr. Milton's kinsman, to

solicit the business, both with the Judges at Edinburgh and with the

Commissioners at Leith; who by _his last letter_ promiseth to

give me a very good account very speedily." Whether this means that

Sandelands had himself sent Phillips from London to Scotland on the

business, or only that, knowing Phillips to be already in Scotland,

he had put the business into his hands, in either case one discerns

an attempt on Milton's part to find some public employment, other

than clerkship under himself, for the unsteady Phillips. The attempt,

however, must have failed; for in 1655 Phillips was back in London,

still a Bohemian, and apparently in a mood that boded ill for his

ever being anything else.[1]

[Footnote 1: Wood's Ath. IV. 760-769 and 212; Lawes's _Ayres and

Dialogues_; Thurloe, II. 226-227.--At the date of the letter to

Thurloe (April 11, 1654) Sandelands was still in great straits. He

had been arrested for debt and was then in prison. He reminds Thurloe

of his attempts to be useful for the last year or more, not

forgetting his project, in the winter of 1652-3, of timber and tar

from the Scottish woods. The "stirs in Scotland" since, it appears,

had obstructed that design after it had been lodged, through Milton,

with the Committee of the Admiralty; but Sandelands hopes it may be

revived, and recommends a beginning that summer in the wood of

Glenmoriston about Loch Ness, where the English soldiers are to be

plentiful at any rate. "Sir," he adds, "if a winter journey into

Scotland to do the State service, and my long attendance here, hath

not deserved a small reward, or at least the taking off of the

sequestration from my parsonage in Yorkshire, I hope ere long I

shall merit a far greater, when by my means his Highness's revenues

shall be increased."--Milton, I may mention, had, about this time,

several old acquaintances in the Protector's service in Scotland.

One was the ex-licencer of pamphlets, Gilbert Mabbot. I find him, in

June 1653, in some official connexion with Leith (Council Order

Book, June 3).]

On the 17th of August, 1655, or just nine days after the publication

of Milton's _Pro Se Defensio_, there appeared anonymously in

London, in the form of a small quarto pamphlet of twenty-two pages, a

poem in rhyming heroics, entitled _A Satyr against Hypocrites_.

In evidence that it was the work of a scholar, there were two mottoes

from Juvenal on the title-page, one of them the well known "Si natura

negat, facit indignatio versum." Of the performance itself there can

be no more exact description than that of Godwin. "It is certainly

written," he says, "with considerable talent; and the scenes which

the author brings before us are painted in a very lively manner. He

describes successively a Sunday, as it appeared in the time of

Cromwell, a christening, a Wednesday, which agreeably to the custom

of that period was a weekly fast, and the profuse and extravagant

supper with which, according to him, the fast-day concluded. The

christening, the bringing home the child to its mother, who is still

in confinement, and the talk of the gossips, have a considerable

resemblance to the broadest manner of Chaucer." This last remark

Godwin at once qualifies. Whereas in Chaucer, he says, we have sheer

natural humour, with no ulterior end, the _The Satyr against

Hypocrites_ "is an undisguised attack upon the National Religion,

upon everything that was then visible in this country and metropolis

under the name of Religion." In other words, it is in a vein of

anti-Puritanism, or even anti-Cromwellianism, quite as bitter as that

of any of the contemporary Royalist writers, or as that of Butler and

the post-Restoration wits, with a decided tendency also to indecency

in ideas and expression, Of the more serious parts this is a

specimen:--

"Oh, what will men not dare, if thus they dare

Be impudent to Heaven, and play with prayer,

Play with that fear, with that religious awe,

Which keeps men free, and yet is man's great law!

What can they but the worst of Atheists be

Who, while they word it 'gainst impiety,

Affront the throne of God with their false deeds?

Alas! this wonder in the Atheist breeds.

Are these the men that would the age reform,

That _Down with Superstition_ cry, and swarm

This painted glass, that sculpture, to deface,

But worship pride and avarice in their place?

_Religion_ they bawl out, yet know not what

Religion is, unless it be to prate!"

That such "a smart thing," as Wood calls it, should have appeared in

the middle of Cromwell's Protectorate, and that, its

anti-Cromwellianism being implied in its general anti-Puritanism

rather than explicitly avowed, it should have had a considerable

circulation, need not surprise us. What is surprising is that the

author should have been Milton's younger nephew, who had been brought

up from his very childhood under his uncle's roof, and educated

wholly and solely by his uncle's own care. It would add to the

surprise if the thing had been actually written in Milton's house;

and even for that there is, as we shall find, something like

evidence. Altogether, I should say, Mr. John Phillips had, of late,

got quite beyond his uncle's control, and had taken to courses of his

own, not in very good company. Among new acquaintances he had

forsworn his uncle's politics, and was no longer perfectly at ease

with him.[1]

[Footnote 1: _A Satyr against Hypocrites_, 1655 (Thomason copy

for date of publication); Godwin's _Lives of the Phillipses_,

49-51; Wood's Ath. IV. 764.--The _Satyr against Hypocrites_ is

ascribed in some book-catalogues to Edward Phillips; nay, I have

found it ascribed, by a singular absurdity, to Milton himself. That

it passed at the time as Edward Phillips's seems proved by the entry

of it in the Stationers' Registers under date March 14, 1654-5: "_A

Satyr against Hypocrites by Edward Phillips, Gent_," the

publisher's name being given as "Nathaniel Brooke." I cannot explain

this; but John Phillips was certainly the author. Wood alone would

be good authority; but it appears from one of Bliss's notes to Wood

that the piece was afterwards claimed by John Phillips, and in

Edward Phillips's _Theatrum Poetarum_, published in 1675, the

piece is ascribed by name to his brother John, in evidence of his

"vein of burlesque and facetious poetry" (Godwin, Lives of the

Phillipses, p. 158). It was a rather popular piece when first

published, and was twice reprinted after the Restoration.]

During the whole time of Milton's residence in Petty France, his

elder nephew tells us, "he was frequently visited by persons of

quality, particularly my lady Ranelagh (whose son for some time he

instructed), all learned foreigners of note (who could not part out

of this city without giving a visit to a person so eminent), and

lastly by particular friends that had a high esteem for him: viz.

Mr. Andrew Marvell, young Lawrence (the son of him that was President

of Oliver's Council), ... Mr. Marchamont Needham, the writer of

_Politicus_, but above all Mr. Cyriack Skinner." To these may be

added Hartlib, Durie (when he was not abroad), Henry Oldenburg, and

others of the Hartlib-Durie connexion. Altogether, the group is an

interesting one, and it is precisely in and about 1655 that we have

the means of seeing all the individuals of it in closest proximity to

Milton and to each other. As one's curiosity is keenest, at this

point, about Lady Ranelagh, she may have the precedence.

On her own account she deserves it. We have already seen (ante Vol.

III. 658-660) who she was,--by marriage the Viscountess Ranelagh,

wife of Arthur Jones, second Viscount Ranelagh in the Irish Peerage,

but by birth Catharine Boyle, daughter of the great Richard Boyle,

first Earl of Cork, with the four surviving sons of that Earl for her

brothers, and his five other surviving daughters for her sisters.--Of

her four brothers, the eldest, Richard Boyle, second Earl of Cork,

lived generally in Ireland, looking after his great estates there;

and indeed it was in Ireland that most of the family had their chief

properties. But the second brother, Roger Boyle, Lord Broghhill,

already known to us for his services in Ireland under Cromwell, and

for his conspicuous fidelity to Cromwell ever since, was now in

Scotland, as President of Cromwell's Council there. _He_ may be

called the literary brother; for, though his chief activity hitherto

had been in war and politics, he had found time to write and publish

his long romance or novel called _Parthenissa_, and so to begin

a literary reputation which was to be increased by poems, tragedies,

comedies, &c., in no small profusion, in coming years. His age, at

our present date, was about thirty-four. Two years younger was

Francis Boyle, the third brother, afterwards Lord Shannon, and four

years younger still was the philosophical and scientific brother, Mr.

Boyle, or "the Honourable Mr. Robert Boyle." When we last saw this

extraordinary young man, after his return from his travels, i.e. in

1645-48, he was in retirement at Stalbridge in Dorsetshire, absorbed

in studies and in chemical experiments, but corresponding eagerly

with Hartlib and others in London, and sometimes coming to town

himself, when he would attend those meetings of the _Invisible

College_, the germ of the future Royal Society, about the delights

of which Hartlib was never tired of writing to him. This mode of life

he had continued, with the interruption of a journey or two abroad,

till 1652. "Nor am I here altogether idle," he says in one of his

latest letters to Hartlib from Stalbridge; "for I can sometimes make

a shift to snatch from the importunity of my affairs leisure to trace

such plans, and frame such models, as, if my Irish fortune will

afford me quarries and woods to draw competent materials from to

construct after them, will fit me to build a pretty house in Athens,

where I may live to Philosophy and Mr. Hartlib." The necessity of

looking after the Irish fortune of which he here speaks had since

then taken him to Ireland and kept him there for the greater part of

two years. He found it, he says, "a barbarous country, where chemical

spirits were so misunderstood, and chemical instruments so

unprocurable, that it was hard to have any Hermetic thoughts in it;"

and he had betaken himself to "anatomical dissections" as the only

kind of scientific pastime that Irish conditions favoured. On

returning to England, in 1654, he had settled in Oxford, to be in the

society of Wilkins, Wallis, Goddard, Ward, Petty, Bathurst, Willis,

and other kindred scientific spirits, most of them recently

transferred from London to posts in the University, and so forming

the Oxford offshoot of the _Invisible College_, as distinct from

the London original. But still from Oxford, as formerly from

Stalbridge, the young philosopher made occasional visits to London;

and always, when there, he was to be found at the house of his

sister, Lady Ranelagh.--What property belonged to Lady Ranelagh

herself, or to her husband, lay also mainly in Ireland; but for many

years, in consequence of the distracted state of that country, her

residence had been in London. "In the Pall Mall, in the suburbs of

Westminster," is the more exact designation. Her Irish property

seems, for the present, to have yielded her but a dubious revenue;

and though she had a Government pension of £4 a week on some account

or other, she seems to have been dependent in some degree on

subsidies from her wealthier relatives. It also appears, though

hazily, that there was some deep-rooted disagreement between her and

her husband, and that, if he was not generally away in Ireland, he

was at least now seldom with her in London. She had her children with

her, however. One of these was her only son, styled then simply Mr.

Richard Jones, though modern custom would style him Lord Navan. In

1655 he was a boy of fifteen years of age, Lady Ranelagh herself

being then just forty. The education of this boy, and of her two or

three girls, was her main anxiety; but she took a deep interest as

well in the affairs of all the members of the Boyle family, not one

of whom would take any step of importance without consulting her. She

corresponded with them all, but especially with Lord Broghill and the

philosophical young Robert, both of them her juniors, and Robert

peculiarly her _protegé_. In his letters to her, all written

carefully and in a strain of stately and respectful affection, we see

the most absolute confidence in her judgment; and it is from her

letters to him, full of solicitude about his health, and of interest

in his experiments and speculations, that we obtain perhaps the best

idea of that combination of intellectual and moral excellencies to

which her contemporaries felt they could not do justice except by

calling her "the incomparable Lady Ranelagh." For that name, which

was to be hers through an entire generation more, was already as

common in talk about her beyond the circle of her own family as the

affectionate one of "Sister Ranelagh" was within that circle. Partly

it was because she was one of the best-educated women of her time,

with the widest tastes and sympathies in matters literary and

philosophical, and with much of that genius of the Boyles, though in

feminine form, which was represented by Lord Broghill and Robert

Boyle among her brothers. Just before our present date we find her

taking lessons in Hebrew from a Scotch teacher of that language then

in London, who afterwards dedicated his _Gate to the Holy

Tongue_ to her, with much respect for her "proficiency in so short

a time," and "amidst so many abstractions as she was surrounded

with." And so in things of greater grasp. In writing to her brother

Robert her satisfaction with the new Experimental Philosophy which he

and others are trying to institute can express itself as a belief

that it will "help the considering part of mankind to a clearer

prospect into this great frame of the visible world, and therein of

the power and wisdom of its great Maker, than the rough draft wherein

it has hitherto been represented in the ignorant and wholesale

philosophy that has so long, by the power of an implicit faith in the

doctrine of Aristotle and the Schools, gone current in the world has

ever been able to assist them towards." But it was not merely by

variety of intellectual culture that Lady Ranelagh was distinguished.

One cannot read her letters without discerning in them a deep

foundation of piety in the best sense, real wisdom, a serious

determination with herself to make her own life as actively useful as

possible, and a disposition always to relate herself to what was

sterling around her. "Though some particular opinions might shut her

up in a divided communion," said Burnet of her long afterwards, "yet

her soul was never of a party. She divided her charities and

friendships, her esteem as well as her bounty, with the truest regard

to merit and her own obligations, without any difference made upon

the account of opinion." This was true even at our present date, when

she was an Oliverian in politics, like her brother Broghill, though

perhaps more moderately so, and in religious matters what may be

called a very liberal Puritan.[1]

[Footnote 1: Birch's Life of Robert Boyle, prefixed to edition of

Boyle's Works, pp. 27-33; Letters of Boyle to Lady Ranelagh and of

Lady Ranelagh to Boyle in Vol. V. of his Works; Notes by Mr. Crossley

to his edition of _Worthington's Diary and Correspondence_ for

the Chetham Society, I. p. 164-165, and 366. Mrs. Green's Calendar

of State-Papers for 1651, p. 574.]

How long Lady Ranelagh had known Milton is uncertain; but, as her

nephew, the young Earl of Barrimore, had been one of Milton's pupils

in his house in the Barbican, and as we had express information that

he had been sent there by his aunt, the acquaintance must have begun

as early as 1646 or 1647. And now, it appears, through all the

intermediate eight years of Milton's changes of residence and

fortune, including his six in the Latin Secretaryship, the

acquaintanceship has been kept up, and has been growing more

intimate, till, in 1655, in his widowerhood and blindness in his

house in Petty France, there is no one, and certainly no lady, that

more frequently calls upon him, or whose voice, on the staircase,

announcing who the visitor is, he is more pleased to hear. They were

close neighbours, only St. James's Park between their houses; and his

having taught her nephew, the young Earl of Barrimore, was not now

the only link of that kind between themselves. She had not been

satisfied till she had contrived that her own son should, to some

extent, be Milton's pupil too. "My Lady Ranelagh, whose son for some

time he instructed" are Phillips's words on this point; and, though

we included Lady Ranelagh's son, Mr. Richard Jones, afterwards third

Viscount and first Earl of Ranelagh, in our general enumeration of

Milton's pupils, given under the year 1647, when the Barbican

establishment was complete, it was with the intimation that this

particular pupil, then but seven years old, could hardly have been

one of the Barbican boys, but must have had the benefit of lessons

from Milton in some exceptional way afterwards. The fact, on the

likeliest construction of the evidence, seems to have been that

Milton, to oblige Lady Ranelagh, had quite recently allowed the boy

to come daily, or every other day, from his mother's house in Pall

Mall to Petty France, to sit with him for an hour or two, and read

Greek and Latin. To the end of his life Milton found this easy kind

of pedagogy a pleasant amusement in his blindness, and made it indeed

one of his devices for help to himself in his readings and references

to books; and Lady Ranelagh's son may have been his first experiment

in the method. That he retained an interest in this young Ranelagh of

a semi-tutorial kind, as well as on his mother's account, the sequel

will prove.

Strange things do happen in real life; and actually it was possible

that, on the day of one of Lady Ranelagh's visits to Milton, she

might have had a call in her own house from Dr. Peter Du Moulin. For

her ladyship's circle of acquaintance did include this gentleman. He

had been tutor in Ireland to her two nephews, Viscount Dungarvan and

Mr. Richard Boyle, sons of her eldest brother, the Earl of Cork, and

he had come with them, still in that capacity, to Oxford (ante p.

224), and so had been introduced into the whole Boyle connexion.[1]

What amount of awkwardness there may have been in a possible meeting

between Du Moulin and Milton themselves through this common social

connexion of theirs in London has been already discussed. The

Ranelagh circle, for the rest, included all those, or most of them,

that were Milton's friends independently, and could converse about

him in her ladyship's own spirit. The family of Lord President

Lawrence, for example, were in high esteem with Lady Ranelagh; and

the President's son, Mr. Henry Lawrence, Milton's young friend, and

presumably one of his former pupils of the Barbican days, seems to

have been about this time much in the company of her ladyship's

nephew, the Earl of Barrimore. That young nobleman, we may mention,

had become a married man, shortly after he had ceased to be Milton's

pupil in the Barbican, and was now leading a gallant and rather idle

life about London, but not quite astray from his aunt's society, or

perhaps from Milton's either.[2] Then there were Hartlib, Durie,

Haak, and other lights of the London branch of the _Invisible

College_, friends of Robert Boyle for years past, and

corresponding with him and the other luminaries of the Oxford colony

of the _College_. Hartlib, in particular, who now lived at

Charing Gross, and who had found a new theme of interest in the

wonderful abilities and wonderful experiments of Mr. Clodius, a

German chemist, who had recently become his son-in-law, was still in

constant correspondence with Boyle, and was often at Lady Ranelagh's

on some occasion or other.[3] Nor must Milton's new German friend,

Henry Oldenburg, the agent for Bremen, be forgotten. He also, as we

shall find, had been drawn, in a special manner, into the Boyle and

Ranelagh connexion, and was, in fact, entering, by means of this

connexion, on that part of his interesting career for which he is

remembered in the annals of English science. He was to marry Durie's

only daughter, and be retained by that tie, as well as by others, in

the Hartlib-Durie cluster of Milton's friends.

[Footnote 1: Dr. Peter Du Moulin was one of Robert Boyle's friends

and correspondents both before and after the Restoration. It was at

Boyle's request that Du Moulin translated and published in 1658 a

little book called _The Devil of Mascon_, a French story of

well-authenticated spirit-rapping; and the book was dedicated by

Dumoulin to Boyle, and Boyle contributed an introductory letter to

it. Moreover, it was to Boyle that Du Moulin in 1670 dedicated the

first part of his _Parerga_ or Collection of Latin Poems, the

second part of which contained his reprint of the Iambics against

Milton from the _Regii Sanguinis Clamor_.--See Birch's Life of

Boyle, p. 60, and four letters of Du Moulin to Boyle in Boyle's

Works, Vol. V (pp 594-596). In three of these letters, all written

after the Restoration, Du Moulin presents his respectful services to

"My Honourable Lady Ranelagh" in terms implying long-established

acquaintanceship. But there are other scattered proofs of Du Moulin's

long intimacy with the whole Boyle family.]

[Footnote 2: The young Earl had married, hastily and against his

mother's will, in 1649, shortly after he had been Milton's pupil. See

a letter of condolence on the subject from Robert Boyle to his

sister, the young Earl's mother (Boyle's Works, V. 240). For the

intimacy between the young Earl of Barrimore and young Henry Lawrence

see a letter of Hartlib's to Boyle. (Ibid. V. 279).]

[Footnote 3: Letters of Hartlib to Boyle in Vol. V. of Boyle's

Works.]

Marvell, Needham, and Cyriack Skinner are not certainly known to have

been among Lady Ranelagh's acquaintances. _Their_ visits to

Milton, therefore, have to be imagined apart. Marvell's, if he were

still domiciled at Eton, can have been but occasional, but must have

been always welcome. Needham's cannot have been, as formerly, on

business connected with the _Mercurius Politicus_; for Milton

had ceased for some years to have anything to do with the editorship

of that journal. The duty of licensing it and its weekly double,

_The Public Intelligencer_, also edited by Needham and published

by Newcome, was now performed regularly by the omnipotent Thurloe.

Both journals would come to Milton's house, to be read to him; and

Needham, in his visits, would bring other gossip of the town, and be

altogether a very chatty companion. "Above all, Mr. Cyriack Skinner"

is, however, Phillips's phrase in his enumeration of those of his

uncle's friends who were most frequently with him about this time.

The words imply that, since June 1654, when this old pupil of

Milton's had again "got near" him (Vol. IV. pp. 621-623), his

attention to Milton had been unremitting, so that Milton had come to

depend upon it and to expect him almost daily. On that understanding

it is that we may read most luminously four private Sonnets of

Milton, all of the year 1655, two of them addressed to Cyriack

Skinner, and one to young Lawrence. The remaining sonnet, standing

first of the four in the printed editions, is addressed to no one in

particular; but the four will be read best in connexion. In reading

them Cyriack Skinner is to be pictured as about twenty-eight years of

age, and Lawrence as a youth of two and twenty:--

(1)

When I consider how my light is spent

Ere half my days in this dark world and wide,

And that one talent which is death to hide

Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent

To serve therewith my Maker, and present

My true account, lest He, returning, chide,

"Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?"

I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent

That murmur, soon replies:--"God doth not need

Either man's work or his own gifts. Who best

Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state

Is kingly; thousands at his bidding speed,

And post o'er land and ocean without rest:

They also serve who only stand and wait."

(2)

Cyriack, this three years' day these eyes, though clear,

To outward view, of blemish or of spot,

Bereft of light, their seeing have forgot;

Nor to their idle orbs doth sight appear

Of sun, or moon, or star, throughout the year,

Or man, or woman. Yet I argue not

Against Heaven's hand or will, nor bate a jot

Of heart or hope, but still bear up and steer

Right onward. What supports me, dost thou ask?

The conscience, friend, to have lost them overplied

In Liberty's defence, my noble task,

Of which all Europe talks from side to side.

This thought might lead me through the world's vain masque

Content, though blind, had I no better guide.

(3)

Lawrence, of virtuous father virtuous son,

Now that the fields are dank, and ways are mire,

Where shall we sometimes meet, and by the fire

Help waste a sullen day, what may be won

From the hard season gaining? Time will run

On smoother, till Favonius reinspire

The frozen earth, and clothe in fresh attire

The lily and rose, that neither sowed nor spun.

What neat repast shall feast us, light and choice,

Of Attic taste, with wine, whence we may rise

To hear the lute well touched, or artful voice

Warble immortal notes and Tuscan air?

He who of those delights can judge, and spare

To interpose them oft, is not unwise.

(4)

Cyriack, whose grandsire on the royal bench

Of British Themis, with no mean applause,

Pronounced, and in his volumes taught, our laws,

Which others at their bar so often wrench,

To-day deep thoughts resolve with me to drench

In mirth that after no repenting draws;

Let Euclid rest, and Archimedes pause,

And what the Swede intend, and what the French.

To measure life learn thou betimes, and know

Toward solid good what leads the nearest way;

For other things mild Heaven a time ordains,

And disapproves that care, though wise in show,

That with superfluous burden loads the day,

And, when God sends a cheerful hour, refrains.

It has been argued that the last two of these Sonnets must be out of

their proper chronological places in the printed editions. They must

have been written, it is said, before Milton lost his sight: for how

are such invitations to mirth and festivity reconcileable with

Milton's circumstances in the third or fourth year of his blindness?

There is no mistake in the matter, however. In Milton's own second

or 1673 edition of his Minor Poems the sonnets, in the order in which

we have printed them,--with the exception of No. 2, which had then to

be omitted on account of its political point,--come immediately after

the sonnet on the Piedmontese Massacre; and there are other reasons

of external evidence which assign Nos. 1, 3, and 4, distinctly to

about the same date as No. 2, the opening--words of which date

_it_ near the middle of 1655. But, indeed, we should miss much

of the biographic interest of the last two sonnets by detaching them

from the two first. In No. 1 we have a plaintive soliloquy of Milton

on his blind and disabled condition, ending with that beautiful

expression of his resignation to God's will in which, under the

image of the varieties of service that may be required by some great

monarch, he contrasts his own stationariness and inactivity with the

energy and bustle of so many of his contemporaries. In No. 2,

addressed to Cyriack Skinner, he treats of the same topic, only

reverting with pride, as he had done several times in prose, to the

literary labour that had brought on his calamity. In both the

intimation is that he has disciplined himself to live on as

cheerfully as possible, taking daily duties, and little pleasures

too, as they come. What more natural, therefore, than that, some

little while after those two affecting sonnets on his blindness had

been written, there should be two others, in which not a word should

be said of his blindness, but young Lawrence and Cyriack Skinner

should find themselves invited, in a more express manner than usual,

to a day in Milton's company? For that is the proper construction of

the Sonnets. They are cards of invitation to little parties, perhaps

to one and the same little party, in Milton's house in the winter of

1655-6. It is dull, cold, weather; the Parks are wet, and the

country-roads all mire; and for some days Milton has been baulked of

his customary walk out of doors, tended by young Lawrence or Cyriack.

To make amends, there shall be a little dinner in the warm room at

home--"a neat repast" says Milton temptingly, adding "with wine,"

that there may be no doubt in that particular--to be followed by a

long talk and some choice music. So young Lawrence is informed in

the metrical missive to _him_; and the same day (unless, as we

may hope, the little dinner became a periodical institution in

Milton's house), Cyriack is told to come too. Altogether they are

model cards of invitation.[1]

[Footnote 1: More detailed reasons for the dating of Sonnets 1, 3,

and 4 (for Sonnet 2 dates itself) will be found in the Introductions

to those Sonnets in the Cambridge Edition of Milton. In line 12 of

No. 2 I have substituted the word "talks" for the word "rings," now

always printed in that place. "Of which all Europe rings from side to

side," is the reading in the copy of the Sonnet as first printed by

Phillips in 1694 at the end of his memoir of Milton; but that copy

is corrupt in several places. The original dictated draft of the

Sonnet among the Milton MSS. at Cambridge is to be taken as the

true text; and there the word is "talks." Phillips had doubtless

the echo of "rings" in his ear from the Sonnet to Fairfax. The more

sonorous reading, however, has found such general acceptance that an

editor hardly dares to revert to "talks."]

We are now in the winter of 1655-6, and we have seen no Secretarial

work from Milton since his letters and other documents in the

business of the Piedmontese Protestants in May, June, and July, 1655.

Officially, therefore, he had had another relapse into idleness. Not,

however, into total idleness. "_Scriptum Dom. Protectoris

Reipublicæ Anglicæ, Scotiæ, Hiberniæ, &c., ex Consensa atque

Sententia Concilii Sui Edictum, in quo Hujus Reipublicæ Causa contra

Hispanos justa esse demonstratur_, 1655" ("Manifesto of the Lord

Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland. Ireland, &c., put

forth by the consent and advice of his Council, in which the justice

of the cause of this Commonwealth against the Spaniards is

demonstrated, 1655"), is the title of a Latin document, of the length

of about twenty such pages as the present, now always included in

editions of Milton's prose-writings, on the probability, though not

quite the certainty, that it was Milton's performance. If so, it was

the third great document in the nature of a Declaration of War

furnished by Milton for the Commonwealth, the two former having been

his Latin version of the Declaration of the Causes of War against the

Scots in June 1650 (IV. 228) and his similar version of the

Declaration against the Dutch in July 1652 (IV. 482-483). The present

manifesto was perhaps a more difficult document to draft than either

of those had been, inasmuch as Cromwell had to justify in it his

recent attack upon the Spanish possessions in the West Indies.

Accordingly, the manifesto had been prepared with some pains. It

passed the Council finally on the 26th of October, 1655, four days

after the Spanish ambassador Cardenas had left England, and two days

after the Treaty between Cromwell and France had been signed;[1] and

the Latin copies of it were out in London on the 9th of November.[2]

Unlike the previous Declarations against the Scots and the Dutch,

which had been printed in several languages, it appears to have been

printed in Latin only.

[Footnote 1: Council Order Book of date.]

[Footnote 2: Dated copy among the Thomason Pamphlets.]

A general notion of the document will be obtained from, an extract or

two in translation. The opening is as follows:--

"That the causes that induced us to our recent attack on certain

Islands in the West Indies, now for some time past in the

possession of the Spaniards, are just and in the highest degree

reasonable, there is no one but will easily understand if only he

will reflect in what manner that King and his subjects have always

conducted themselves towards the English nation in that tract of

America ... Whenever they have opportunity, though without the

least reason of justice, and with no provocation of injury, they

are incessantly killing, murdering, nay butchering in cold blood,

our countrymen there, as they think fit, seizing their goods and

fortunes, destroying their plantations and houses, capturing any of

their vessels they may meet on those seas, and treating their crews

as enemies and even pirates. For they call by that opprobrious name

all of any nation, themselves alone excepted, who dare to navigate

those waters. Nor do they profess to have any other or better right

for this than reliance on some ridiculous donation of the Pope, and

the fact that they were the first discoverers of some parts of that

western region ... Certainly it would have been disgraceful and

unworthy in us, in possession as we were, by God's bounty, of so

many ships, furnished, equipped, and ready for every use of

maritime warfare, to have chosen to let them rot idly at home,

rather than employ them in those parts in avenging the blood of the

English, so unjustly, so inhumanly, and so often, shed by the

Spaniards there,--nay, the blood too of the Indians, inasmuch as

God 'hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all

the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before

appointed, and the bounds of their habitation' [Acts xvii. 26] ...

Our purpose, however, is to show the right and equity of the

transaction itself, rather than to state all our several reasons

for it. And, that we may do this the more clearly, and explain

general assertions by particulars, it will be proper to cast our

eyes back a little into the past, and to run strictly over the

transactions between the English and the Spaniards, observing the

state of affairs on both sides, as far as mutual relations were

concerned, from the time of the first discovery of the West Indies

and of the Reformation of Religion. For those two great events, as

they were nearly contemporary, occasioned everywhere in the world

vast changes, but especially as between the English and the

Spaniards; which two nations have from that time followed diverse

and almost opposite methods and principles in the management of

their affairs."

The manifesto, accordingly, then reviews the history of the relations

between Spain and England from the time of Henry VIII., appending at

last a long list of more recent outrages by the Spaniards on English

ships and settlements in the West Indies, the dates all duly given,

with the names of the ships and their captains, and the values of the

cargoes. After which, returning to more general considerations, it

discusses the two pretexts of the Spaniards for their sole

sovereignty in the West Indies,--the Papal donation, and the right of

first discovery. Both are dismissed as absurd; and the document ends

with an appeal to the common interests of Protestantism throughout

Europe. Even the recent massacre of the Vaudois Protestants is

brought into the plea. Thus:--