Among four letters to young Jones or Ranelagh included in Milton's Latin Familiar Epistles one is undated. It is put second of the four in the printed collection, but it ought to have been put first. It is Milton's first letter to the youth in his new position at Oxford under Henry Oldenburg's charge. The date may be in or about May 1636:—

"To the Noble Youth, RICHARD JONES.

"I received your letter much after its date,—not till it had lain, I think, fifteen days, put away somewhere, at your mother's. Most gladly at last I recognised in it your continued affection for me and sense of gratitude. In truth my goodwill to you, and readiness to give you the most faithful admonitions, have never but justified, I hope, both your excellent mother's opinion of me and confidence in me, and your own disposition. There is, indeed, as you write, plenty of amenity and salubrity in the place where you now are; there are books enough for the needs of a University: if only the amenity of the spot contributed as much to the genius of the inhabitants as it does to pleasant living, nothing would seem wanting to the happiness of the place. The Library there, too, is splendidly rich; but, unless the minds of the students are made more instructed by means of it in the best kinds of study, you might more properly call it a book-warehouse than a Library. Most justly you acknowledge that to all these helps there must be added a spirit for learning and habits of industry. Take care, and steady care, that I may never have occasion to find you in a different state of mind; and this you will most easily avoid if you diligently obey the weighty and friendly precepts of the highly accomplished Henry Oldenburg beside you. Farewell, my well-beloved Richard; and allow me to exhort and incite you to virtue and piety, like another Timothy, by the example of that most exemplary woman, your mother.

"Westminster."

In this letter one observes the rather strict tone of Mentorship assumed towards young Ranelagh, as if Milton was aware of something in the youth, that needed checking, or as if Lady Ranelagh, with her motherly knowledge, had given Milton a hint that the strict tone with him would be generally the best. The tendency to a depreciation of Oxford, which is also visible in the letter, is no surprise from Milton.

The Anti-Oxonian feeling, if that is not too strong a name for it after all, is even more apparent in Milton's next letter, addressed not to young Ranelagh, but to his tutor. Young Ranelagh, it appears, not long after the receipt of the foregoing, had run up to London on a brief visit to his mother, and had brought Milton a letter from Oldenburg. To this Milton replies as follows:—

"To HENRY OLDENBURG, Agent for Bremen with the English Government.

"Your letter, brought by young Ranelagh, has found me rather busy; and so I am forced to be briefer than I should wish. You have certainly kept your departing promise of writing to me, and that with a punctuality surpassed. I believe, by no one hitherto in the payment of a debt. I congratulate you on your present retirement, to my loss though it be, since it gives pleasure to you; I congratulate you also on that happy state of mind which enables you so easily to set aside at once the ambition and the ease of city-life, and to lift your thoughts to higher matters of contemplation. What advantage that retirement affords, however, besides plenty of books, I know not; and those persons you have found there as fit associates in your studies I should suppose to be such rather from their own natural constitution than from the discipline of the place,—unless perchance, from missing you here, I do less justice to the place for keeping you away. Meanwhile you yourself rightly remark that there are too many there whose occupation it is to spoil divine and human things alike by their frivolous quibblings, that they may not seem to be doing absolutely nothing for those many endowments by which they are supported so much to the public detriment. All this you will understand better for yourself. Those ancient annals of the Chinese from the Flood downwards which you say are promised by the Jesuit Martini¹ are doubtless very eagerly expected on account of the novelty of the thing; but I do not see what authority or confirmation they can add to the Mosaic books. Our Cyriack, whom you bade me salute, returns the salutation. Farewell.

"Westminster: June 25, 1656."

That Count Bundt's remonstrance on the employment of a blind man in the Protector's diplomatic business had had no effect will be proved by the following list of state-letters written by Milton immediately after that remonstrance. We bring the list down to Sept. 1656, the month in which the Second Parliament of the Protectorate met:

(LXXVIII.) To KINGS AND FOREIGN STATES GENERALLY, June 1656:¹—This is a Passport by the Protector in favour of PETER GEORGE ROMSWINCKEL, Doctor of Laws. He had been born and bred in the Roman Catholic Church, and had held high offices in that Church at Cologne, but had become an ardent Protestant, and had been for some time in England. He was now on his way back to Germany, to assume the post of Councillor to the widowed Duchess of Symmeren (?); and the Protector desires all English officers, consuls, agents, &c., and also all foreign Governments, to give him free passage and handsome treatment. The tone of the letter is even haughtily Protestant. On the ground that "most people think in Religion with easy acquiescence in exactly what they have received from their forefathers, and not what they themselves, after imploring divine help, have learnt to be true by their own perception and knowledge," the case of Romswinckel is represented as peculiarly interesting; and such phrases as "the Papal superstition" are not spared. The passport was probably expected to come only into Protestant hands.

(LXXIX.) To CHARLES X., KING OF SWEDEN, June 1656:¹—A special recommendation of the above Romswinckel to the Swedish King, in the same high Protestant tone.

(LXXX.) TO THE KING OF PORTUGAL, July 1656:—The Portuguese merchants of the Brazil Company owe certain English merchants a considerable sum of money on shipping accounts since 1649 and 1650. The English merchants, understanding that, by recent orders of his Portuguese Majesty, they are likely to lose the principal of the debt, and be put off with the bare interest, have applied to the Protector. He thinks it a hard case, and begs the King to let the debt be paid in full, principal and five years of interest.

(LXXXI.) To CHARLES X., KING OF SWEDEN, July 1656:—After more than two months of farther debating between Count Bundt and the English Commissioners, in the course of which there had been frequent new displays of the Count's high temper, the Treaty between the Protector and Charles Gustavus had at last been happily finished on the 17th of July. On that day, Whitlocke tells as, he and Lords Fiennes and Strickland had their long final meeting over the Treaty with the Ambassador, ending; in formal signing and sealing on both sides. The main difficulty had been got over thus: "Concerning the carrying of pitch, tar, &c. to Spain, during our war with them [the Spaniards], there was a single Article, that the King of Sweden should be moved to give order for the prohibiting of it, and a kind of undertaking that it should be done." On the whole, the Protector was satisfied; and, as he had contracted some admiration and liking for the Ambassador, precisely on account of his unusual spirit and stubbornness, he marked the conclusion of the Treaty by special compliments and favours. "The Swedish Ambassador," says Whitlocke under date July 25, "having taken his leave of the Protector, received great civilities and respects from him, and afterwards dined with him at Hampton Court, and hunted with him. The Protector bestowed the dignity of knighthood upon one of his [the Ambassador's] gentlemen, Sir Gustavus Duval, the mareschal." The present Latin letter by Milton, accordingly, was the letter of honourable dismissal which the Swede was to take back to his master. Perhaps the Swede knew that even this was written by the Protector's blind Latinist.—"Oliver, Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland, Ireland, &c., to the most Serene Prince, Charles Gustavus, King of the Swedes, Goths, and Vandals, &c." is the heading of the letter; which proceeds thus:—"Most Serene King,—As we have justly a very high regard for the friendship of so great a Prince as your Majesty, one so famous for his achievements, so necessarily should that most illustrious Lord, CHRISTIERN BUNDT, your Ambassador Extraordinary, by whose endeavours a Treaty of the closest alliance has just been ratified between us, have been to as, were it but on this pre-eminent account, an object of favour and good report. We have accordingly judged it fit that he should be sent back to you after his most praiseworthy performance of this Embassy: but not without the highest acknowledgment at the same time of his other excellent merits, to the end that one who has been heretofore in esteem and honour with you may now feel that he is indebted to this our commendation for yet more abundant fruits of his assiduity and prudence. As for the transactions that yet remain, we have resolved shortly to send to your Majesty a special Embassy for those; and meanwhile may God preserve your Majesty safe, to be a pillar in His Church's defence and in the affairs of Sweden!—From our Palace of Westminster,—July 1656. Your Majesty's most affectionate, OLIVER, Protector &c."—Count Bundt, we may add, remained in England a month more after all, receiving farther attentions and entertainments; and not till Aug. 23 did he finally depart, taking with him not only Milton's Letter, but also a present from the Protector of £1200 worth of "white cloth" and a magnificent jewel. It was because this jewel could not be got ready at once that he had staid on; and it was worth waiting for. "The jewel was his Highness's picture in a case of gold, about the bigness of a five-shillings piece of silver, set round the case with sixteen fair diamonds, each diamond valued at £60: in all worth about £1000." The Count wore the jewel tied with a blue ribbon to his breast so long as he was in sight, barging down the Thames.¹

(LXXXII.) To the King of Portugal, Aug. 1656:—Mr. Philip Meadows has been in Lisbon since March, busy in the duties of his mission, and sending letters and reports home. There was still danger, however, in being an agent for the English Commonwealth in a Roman Catholic country; and Meadows had nearly shared the fate of Dorislaus and Ascham. On the 11th of May, as he was returning at night to his lodgings in Lisbon, carried in a litter, he was attacked by two horsemen, who "discharged two pistols into the litter and shot him through the left hand."¹ The wound was not serious; but the King of Portugal was naturally in great concern. He offered a large reward for the discovery of the criminals; and, in a Latin letter to Cromwell, dated "Alcantara, May 26, N.S.," he professed his desire to have them punished, whether they were English refugees or native Portuguese.² The present Letter by Milton is the Protector's reply. Though there has been some interval since the receipt of his Majesty's letter, his Highness has not yet heard that the criminals have been apprehended; and he insists that there shall be a vigorous prosecution of the search and recommends that it should be put into the hands of "some persons of honesty and sincerity, well-wishers to both nations."

(LXXXIII.) To Louis XIV. of France, Aug. 1656:—Again about a ship, but this time in a peremptory strain.—Richard Baker and Co. of London have complained to the Protector that a ship of theirs, called The Endeavour, William Jopp master, laden at Teneriffe with 300 pipes of rich Canary wine, had, in November last, been seized by four French privateer vessels under command of a Giles de la Roche, who had carried ship, cargo, and most of the crew away to the East Indies, after landing fourteen of the crew on the Guinea coast. For this daring act he had pleaded no excuse, except that his own fleet wanted provisions and that he believed the owners of his fleet would make good the loss. The Protector now demands that £16,000 be paid to Messrs. Baker and Co., and also that Giles de la Roche be punished. It concerns his French Majesty's honour to see to this, after that recent League with the English Commonwealth to which his royal oath is pledged. Otherwise all faith in Leagues will be at an end.

(LXXXIV.) TO CARDINAL, MAZARIN, Aug. 1656:—On the same subject as the last. While writing to the King about such an outrage, the Protector cannot refrain from imparting the matter also to his Eminence, as "the sole and only person whose singular prudence governs the most important affairs of the French and the chief business of the kingdom, with equal fidelity, counsel, and vigilance."

(LXXXV.) TO THE STATES-GENERAL OF THE UNITED PROVINCES, Aug. 1656. A Letter of some length, and very important. "We doubt not," It begins, "but all will bear us this testimony—that no considerations have ever been stronger with us in contracting foreign alliances than, the duty of defending the Truth of Religion, and that we have never accounted anything more sacred than the union and reconciliation of those who are either the friends and defenders of Protestants, or at least not their enemies." With what grief, then, does his Highness hear of new dissensions breaking out among Protestant powers, and especially of signs of a rupture between the United Provinces and Sweden! Should there be war between those two great Protestant powers, how the common enemy will rejoice! "To the Spaniard the prospect has already brought such an access of spirit and confidence that he has not hesitated, through his Ambassador residing with you, to obtrude most audaciously his counsels upon you, and that about the chief concerns of your Republic: daring even partly to terrify you by throwing in threats of a renewal of war, partly to solicit you by setting forth a false show of expediency, to the end that, abandoning by his advice your old and most faithful friends, the French, the English, and the Swedes, you would be pleased to form a close alliance with your former enemy and tyrant, pacified now forsooth, and, what is most to be feared, quite fawning." The Protector earnestly adjures their High Mightinesses the States to be on their guard. "We are not ignorant that you, in your wisdom, often revolve in your minds the question of the present state of Europe in general, and especially the condition of the Protestants: how the Cantons of the Swiss following the orthodox faith are kept in suspense by the expectation from day to day of new commotions to be stirred up by their countrymen following the faith of the Pope, and this while they have hardly emerged from that war which, plainly on account of Religion, was blown and kindled by the Spaniard, who gave their enemies leaders and supplied the money; how for the inhabitants of the Alpine Valleys the designs of the Spaniards are again contriving the same slaughter and destruction which they most cruelly inflicted on them last year; how the German Protestants are most grievously troubled under the rule of the Kaiser, and retain their paternal homes with difficulty; how the King of Sweden, whom God, as we hope, has raised up as a valiant champion of the Orthodox Religion, is carrying on with the whole strength of his kingdom a doubtful and most severe war with the most powerful enemies of the Reformed Faith; how your own Provinces are threatened by the ominous league lately struck up among your Papist neighbours, of whom a Spaniard is the Prince; how we here, finally, are engaged in a war declared against the Spanish King." What an aggravation of this condition of things if there should be an actual conflict between their High Mightinesses and Sweden! Will not their High Mightinesses lay all this to heart, and come to a friendly arrangement with Charles Gustavus? The Protector hardly understands the causes of the disagreement; but, if he can be of any use between the two powers, he will spare no exertion. He is about to send an embassy to the Swedish King, and will convey to him also the sentiments of this letter.—That the preparation of this Letter to the States-General had been very careful appears from the following minute relating to it in the Council Order-Books for Tuesday Aug. 19:—"Mr. Secretary [Thurloe] reports the draft of a letter to the States-General of the United Provinces; which was read, and committed to Sir Charles Wolseley, with the assistance of the Secretary, to amend the same, in pursuance of the present debate, and report it again to the Council." Cromwell was himself present at this meeting of the Council, with Lawrence, Lambert, Wolseley, Strickland, Rous, Jones, Skippon, and Pickering. The draft read was most probably the English that was to be turned into Latin by Milton: but this does not preclude the idea that the document itself was substantially Milton's. Thurloe can hardly have drafted such a document. He may have gone to Milton first.

(LXXXVI.) To The King of Portugal, Aug. 1656:—The Protector has received his Portuguese Majesty's Ratification of the Peace negotiated in London by his Extraordinary Ambassador Count Sa in 1654, and also of the secret and preliminary articles of the same; and he has received letters from Philip Meadows, his agent at Lisbon, informing him that the counterpart Ratification on the English side had been duly delivered to his Majesty. There being now therefore a firm and settled Peace between the two nations, dating formally from June 1656, the Protector salutes his Majesty with all cordiality. As to his Majesty's letters of June 24th, mentioning some clauses of the League a slight alteration of which would be convenient for Portugal, the Protector is willing to have these carefully considered, but suggests that the whole Treaty may be perilled by tampering with any part of it.

(LXXXVII.) To THE COUNT OF ODEMIRA, Aug. 1656:—This is a letter to the Prime Minister of Portugal, to accompany the foregoing to the King. The Protector acknowledges the Count's zeal and diligence in promoting the Peace now concluded, and takes the opportunity of pressing upon him, rather than again upon the King, relentless inquiry into the late attempt to assassinate Meadows.

(LXXXVIII.) To CHARLES X., KING OF SWEDEN, Aug. 1656:—A letter very much in the strain of that just sent to the States-General of the United Provinces. Although, knowing what a champion the Protestant Faith has in his Swedish Majesty, the Protector cannot but rejoice in the news of his successes, there is one drawback. It is the accompanying news of the misunderstanding between his Majesty and the Dutch, now come to such a pass, he hears, that open conflict is likely, especially in the Baltic. The Protector is in the dark as to the causes, but ventures to press on his Majesty the views he had been pressing, but a few days ago, upon the Dutch. Let him think of the perils of Protestantism; let him think of Piedmont, of Austria, of Switzerland! "Who is ignorant that the counsels of the Spaniards and of the Roman Pontiff have, for two years past, filled all those places with conflagrations, slaughters, and troubles to the orthodox? If to these evils, so many already, there shall be added an outbreak of bad feeling among Protestant brethren themselves, and especially between two powers in whose valour, resources, and constancy lies the greatest safeguard of the Reformed Churches, so far as human means avail, the Reformed Religion itself must be endangered and brought to an extreme crisis. On the other hand, were all of the Protestant name to cultivate perpetual peace with that brotherly unanimity which becomes them, there will be no reason at all to be very much afraid of inconvenience to us from all that the arts or force of our enemies can do." O that his Majesty may see his way to a pacific settlement of his differences with the Dutch! The Protector will gladly do anything to secure that result.

(LXXXIX.) TO THE STATES OF HOLLAND, Sept. 1856:—William Cooper, a London minister, has represented to the Protector that his father-in-law, John le Maire of Amsterdam, invented, about thirty-three years ago, a certain device by which much revenue was brought in to the States of Holland, without any burden to the people. It was the settling of a certain small seal or stamp to be used in the Provinces ("id autem erat parvi sigilli in Provinciis constitutio"). For the working this invention he had taken into partnership one John van den Brook; and the States of Holland had promised the partners 3000 guilders yearly, equal to about £300 English, for the use of the thing. Not a farthing, however, had they ever received, though the States had benefited so much; and now, as they are both tired out, they have transferred their right to William Cooper, who means to prosecute the claim. The States are prayed to look into the matter, and to pay Cooper the promised annual pension, with arrears.

(XC.) To LOUIS XIV. of FRANCE, Sept. 1656:—His Highness is sorry to trouble his Majesty so often; but the grievances of English subjects must be attended to. Now a London merchant, called Robert Brown, who had bought 4000 hides, part of the cargo of a Dieppe ship, legally taken before the League between France and Britain, had sold about 200 of them to a currier in Dieppe, but; instead of receiving the money, had found it attached and stopped in his factor's hands. He could have no redress from the French court of law to which the suit had been referred; and the Protector now desires his Majesty to bring the matter before his own Council. If acts done before the League are to be called in question, Leagues will be meaningless; and it would be well to make an example or two of persons causing trouble of this kind.

Six of these thirteen State-Letters, it ought to be observed, belong to the single month of August 1656. They form Milton's largest contribution of work of this kind in any one month since the very beginning of his Secretaryship, with the exception of his burst of letters on the news of the Piedmontese Massacre in May 1655. Nor ought it to escape notice that some of the letters of Aug. 1656 are particularly important, and that two of them are manifestos of that passionate Protestantism of the Protector which had prompted his bold stand in the matter of the Piedmontese Persecution, and which had matured itself politically since then into the scheme of an express League or Union of all the Protestant Powers of Europe. It cannot be by mere accident that, when Cromwell wanted letters written in the highest strain of his most characteristic passion, they should have always been supplied by Milton. Whatever might be done by the office people that Thurloe had about him, it must have been understood that, for things of this sort, there was always to be recourse to the Latin Secretary Extraordinary.

A little item of recent Council-business of which Milton may have heard with some interest appears as follows in the Council Order-Books under date Aug. 7, 1656:—"Upon consideration of the humble petition of Peter Du Moulin, the son, Doctor of Divinity, and a certificate thereunto subscribed, being presented to his Highness, and by his Highness referred to the Council, Ordered ... That the said Dr. Peter Du Moulin, the petitioner, be permitted to exercise his ministerial abilities, the late Proclamation [of Nov. 24, 1655: see ante pp. 61-62], or any orders or instructions given to the Major-Generals and Commissioners in the several counties, notwithstanding." And so even the author of the Regii Sanguinis Clamor was now an indulged man, and might look forward to being a Vicar or a Rector, or something higher still, in Cromwell's Established Church. Can his secret have possibly been then known? Can the Council have known that the man who petitioned the Protector for indulgence, and to whom they now advised the Protector to grant it, was the author of the most vehement and bitter book that had ever been written on the Royalist side, the man who had abused the Commonwealth men as "robbers, traitors, parricides" and "plebeian scoundrels," who had written of Cromwell "Verily an egg is not liker an egg than Cromwell is like Mahomet," and who had capped all his other politenesses about Milton by calling him "more vile than Cromwell, damned than Ravaillac"?¹

SECTION III: FROM SEPTEMBER 1656 TO JUNE 1657, OR THROUGH THE FIRST SESSION OF OLIVER'S SECOND PARLIAMENT.

ANOTHER LETTER FROM MILTON TO MR. RICHARD JONES: DEPARTURE OF LADY RANELAGH FOR IRELAND: LETTER FROM MILTON TO PETER HEIMBACH: MILTON'S SECOND MARRIAGE: HIS SECOND WIFE, KATHARINE WOODCOCK: LETTER TO EMERIC BIGOT: MILTON'S LIBRARY AND THE BYZANTINE HISTORIANS: M. STOUPE: TEN MORE STATE-LETTERS BY MILTON FOR THE PROTECTOR (NOS. XCI.-C.): MORLAND, MEADOWS, DURIE, LOCKHART, AND OTHER DIPLOMATISTS OF THE PROTECTOR, BACK IN LONDON: MORE EMBASSIES AND DISPATCHES OVER LAND AND SEA: MILTON STANDING AND WAITING: HIS THOUGHTS ABOUT THE PROTECTORATE GENERALLY.

Not much altogether is recoverable of Milton's life through that section of the Protectorate which coincides with the first Session of the Second Parliament (Sept. 17, 1656-June 26, 1657). What is recoverable will connect itself with (1) Three Private Epistles of his dated in these nine months, and (2) The series of his State-letters in the same period. To Richard Jones, alias young Ranelagh, still at Oxford with Oldenburg, Milton, four days after the meeting of the Parliament, addressed another letter in that tone of Mentorship which he seems to have thought most suitable for the youth:—

"To the Noble youth, RICHARD JONES.

"Preparing again and again to reply to your last letter, I was first prevented, as you know, by some sudden pieces of business, of such a kind as are apt to be mine; then I heard you were off on an excursion to some places in your neighbourhood; and now your most excellent mother, on her way to Ireland—whose departure ought to be a matter of no ordinary regret to both of us (for to me also she has stood in the place of all kith and kin: nam et mihi omnium, necessitudinum loco fuit)—carries you this letter herself. That you feel assured of my affection for you, right and well; and I would have you feel daily more and more assured of it, the more of good disposition and of good use of your advantages you give me to see in you. Which result, by God's grace, I see you not only engage for personally, but, as if I had provoked you by a wager on the subject, give solemn pledge and put in bail that you will accomplish,—not refusing, as it were, to abide judgment, and to pay the penalty of failure if judgment should be given against you. I am truly delighted with this so good hope you have of yourself; which you cannot now be wanting to, without appearing at the same time not only to have been faithless to your own promises but also to have run away from your bail. As to what you write to the effect that you do not dislike Oxford, you adduce nothing to make me believe that you have got any good there or been made any wiser: you will have to shew me that by very different proofs. Victories of Princes, which you extol with praises, and matters of that sort in which force is of most avail, I would not have you admire too much, now that you are listening to Philosophers [Robert Boyle and his set?]. For what should be the great wonder if in the native land of wethers there are born strong horns, able to ram down most powerfully cities and towns? [Quid enim magnopere mirandum est si vervecum, in patria valida nascantur cornua quæ urbes et oppida arietare valentissime possint? Besides the pun, there is some geographical allusion, or allusion of military history, which it is difficult to make out.] Learn you, already from your early age, to weigh and discern great characters not by force and animal strength, but by justice and temperance. Farewell; and please to give best salutations in my name to the highly accomplished Henry Oldenburg, your chamber-fellow.

"Westminster: Sept. 21, 1656."

If the date of this letter, as published by Milton himself, is correct, it was written on a Sunday. Yet there can have been no particular haste; for Lady Ranelagh, who was to carry the letter to her son at Oxford on her way to Ireland, did not leave London for at least another fortnight. The pass for "Lady Catharine, Viscountess of Ranelagh, and her two daughters," with their servants, eight horses, &c., to go into Ireland, was granted, I find, by the Protector's Council, Oct. 7, 1656, on the motion of Lord President Lawrence.¹ She was to be away in Ireland for some years, occupied with family business of various kinds; and Milton was thinking with regret of the blank in his life that would be caused by her absence. For she had been to him, he says, "in the place of all kith and kin." How much that phrase involves! Though we have no letters from Milton to Lady Ranelagh, or from Lady Ranelagh to Milton, and though the fact of their friendship has been left by Milton unrecorded in that poetical form, whether of sonnet or of idyll, which has preserved for us so finely other incidents and intimacies of his life, this one phrase, duly interpreted, ought to make up for all. Perhaps in no part of any eminent man's life, especially if he is bereft domestically, is there wanting this benefit of some supreme womanly interest wakened in his behalf. Twice in Milton's life, so unfortunate domestically hitherto, we have seen something of the kind. Twelve years ago, in the old Aldersgate days of his desertion by his wife, it seemed to be the Lady Margaret Ley that was paramount. More recently, through the Westminster years of blindness and widowerhood, the real ministering angel, if there had been any such, had been that Lady Ranelagh whom English History remembers at any rate as the incomparable sister of Lord Broghill and of Robert Boyle. Let there be restored to her henceforth the honour also of having been Milton's friend.

The next extant Epistle of Milton, written when the Second Parliament of the Protectorate had sat nearly two months, is also quite of a private nature. Of the German or Dutch youth to whom it is addressed, Peter Heimbach, I have ascertained only that he had been residing for some time in London, perhaps originally brought thither in the train of some embassy or agency, and that he had recently published in London a Latin letter of eulogy on Cromwell,¹ extremely enthusiastic and somewhat juvenile. Milton's letter suggests farther that he had been much about Milton, as amanuensis or what not, but was now on a visit to Holland.

"To the very accomplished youth, PETER HEIMBACH.

"Most amply, my Heimbach, have you fulfilled your promises and all the other expectations one would have of your goodness, with the exception, that I have still to long for your return. You promised that it would be within two months at farthest; and now, unless my desire to have you back makes me misreckon the time, you have been absent nearly three. In the matter of the Atlas you have abundantly performed all I requested of you; which was not that you should procure me one, but only that you would find out the lowest price of the book. You write that they ask 130 florins; it must be the Mauritanian mountain Atlas, I think, and not a book, that you tell me is to be bought at so huge a price. Such is now the luxury of Typographers in printing books that the furnishing of a library seems to have become as costly as the furnishing of a villa. Since to me at least, on account of my blindness, painted maps can hardly be of use, vainly surveying as I do with blind eyes the actual globe of the earth, I am afraid that the bigger the price at which I should buy that book the greater would seem to be my grief over my deprivation. Be good enough, pray, to take so much farther trouble for me as to be able to inform me, when you return, how many volumes there are in the complete work, and which of the two issues, that of Blaeu or that of Jansen, is the larger and more correct. This I hope to hear from yourself personally, on your speedy return, rather than by another letter. Meanwhile farewell, and come back to us as soon as you can.

"Westminster: Nov. 8, 1656."

One guesses from this letter that Heimbach was then in Amsterdam. It was there, at all events, that the two Atlases about which Milton enquired had been published or were in course of publication. That of John Jansen, called Novus Atlas, when completed in 1658, consisted of six folio volumes; the yet more magnificent Geographia Blaeviana, or Atlas of the geographer and printer John Blaeu, was not perfect till 1662, and then consisted of eleven volumes of very large folio. But various Atlases, or collections of maps in anticipation of the complete Atlas, had been on sale by Blaeu for ten or twelve years previously: e.g., from his own trade-catalogue in 1650, "Atlas, four volumes illuminated, bound after the best fashion, will cost 150 guldens," and "Belgia Foederata and Belgia Regia, two vols., white [uncoloured], 70 guldens, or illuminated 140 guldens." The gulden or Dutch florin was equal to 1s. 8d. English, so that the price of Blaeu's four volume Atlas of 1650 was £12 10s. To Milton in 1656 the price of the same, or of whatever other Atlas he had in view, was to be twenty florins less, i.e. about £11. It was much as if one were asked to give £38 for a book now; and no wonder that Milton hesitated.¹

Just four days after the date of the letter to Heimbach, i.e. on the 12th of November, 1656, there took place an event of no less consequence to the household in Petty France than Milton's second marriage, after four years of widowerhood. It was performed, as the Marriage Act then in force required, not by a clergyman, but by a justice of the peace, and is registered thus in the books of the parish of St. Mary Aldermanbury, London, under the year 1656: "The agreement and intention of marriage between JOHN MILTON, Esq., of the Parish of Margaret's in Westminster, and MRS. KATHARINE WOODCOCKE, of the Parish of Mary's in Aldermanbury, was published three several market-days in three several weeks, viz. on Wednesday the 22nd and Monday the 27th of October, and on Monday the 3rd of November; and, no exceptions being made against their intention, they were, according to the Act of Parliament, married the 12th of November by Sir John Dethicke, Knight and Alderman, one of the Justices of Peace for this City of London."¹ Of this KATHARINE WOODCOCK (the "Mrs." before whose name does not mean that she had been married before) we learn farther, from Phillips, that she was "the daughter of Captain Woodcock of Hackney"; and that is nearly all that we know of her family. A Captain John Woodcock, who is found giving a receipt for £13 8s. to the Treasurer-at-War on Oct. 6, 1653, on the disbanding of his troop, may possibly have been her father, as no other Captain Woodcock of the time has been discovered.² There is reason to believe that Milton had not been acquainted with the lady before his blindness, and so that, literally, he had never seen her. Not the less, for the brief space of her life allotted to their union, she was to be a light and blessing in his dark household.

The household better ordered; the three young orphan girls of the first marriage better tended; more of lightsomeness and cheerfulness for Milton himself among his books; continuance, under new management, of the little hospitalities to the learned foreigners who occasionally call, and to the habitual visitors: so, we are to imagine, pass away at home those winter months of 1656-7 during which the great topics of interest outside were the war with Spain, Sindercombe's plot against the Protector's life, the debates in Parliament over the case of James Nayler, and the proceedings there for amending the system of the Protectorate, whether by converting it into Kingship or otherwise. Not, however, till the last day of March 1656-7, or three months and a half after the marriage with Katharine Woodcock, have we another distinct glimpse of Milton in his private life. On that day he dictated, in Latin, the following letter:—

"To the most accomplished EMERIC BIGOT.

"That on your coming into England I had the honour of being thought by you more worth visiting and saluting than others was truly and naturally gratifying to me; and that now you renew your salutation by letter, even at such an interval, is somewhat more gratifying still. For in the first instance you might have come to me perhaps on the inducement of other people's opinion; but you could hardly return to me by letter save at the prompting of your own judgment, or, at least, good will. On this surely I have ground to congratulate myself. For many have made a figure by their published writings whose living voice and daily conversation have presented next to nothing that was not low and common: if, then, I can attain the distinction of seeming myself equal in mind and manners to any writings of mine that have been tolerably to the purpose, there will be the double effect that I shall so have added weight personally to my writings, and shall receive back by way of reflection from them credit, how small soever it may be, yet greater in proportion. For, in that case, whatever is right and laudable in them, that same I shall seem not more to have derived from authors of high excellence than to have fetched forth pure and sincere from the inmost feelings of my own mind and soul. I am glad, therefore, to know that you are assured of my tranquillity of spirit in this great affliction of loss of sight, and also of the pleasure I have in being civil and attentive in the reception of visitors from abroad. Why, in truth, should I not bear gently the deprivation of sight, when I may hope that it is not so much lost as revoked and retracted inwards, for the sharpening rather than the blunting of my mental edge? Whence it is that I neither think of books with anger, nor quite intermit the study of them, grievously though they have mulcted me,—were it only that I am instructed against such moroseness by the example of King Telephus of the Mysians, who refused not to be cured in the end by the weapon that had wounded him. As to that book you possess, On the Manner of Holding Parliaments, I have caused the marked passages of it to be either amended, or, if they were doubtful, confirmed, by reference to the MS. in the possession of the illustrious Lord Bradshaw, and also to the Cotton MS., as you will see from your little paper returned herewith. In compliance with your desire to know whether also the autograph of this book is extant in the Tower of London, I sent one to inquire of the Herald who has the custody of the Deeds, and with whom I am on familiar terms. His answer is that no copy of that book is extant among those records. For the help you offer me in return in procuring literary material I am very much obliged. I want, of the Byzantine Historians, Theophanis Chronographia (folio: Greek and Latin), Constantini Manassis Breviarium Historicum, with Codini Excerpta de Antiquitatibus Constantinopolitanis (folio: Greek and Latin), Anastasii Bibliothecarii Historia et Vitæ Romanorum Pontificum (folio); to which be so good as to add, from the same press, Michael Glycas, and Joannes Cinnamus, the continuator of Anna Comnena, if they are now out. I do not ask you to get them as cheap as you can, both because there is no need to put a very frugal man like yourself in mind of that, and because they tell me the price of these books is fixed and known to all. MR. STOUPE has undertaken the charge of the money for you in cash, and also to see about the most convenient mode of carriage. That you may have all you wish, and all you aspire after, is my sincere desire. Farewell.

"Westminster: March 24, 1656-7."

Of the French scholar to whom this letter was addressed there is an excellent notice in Bayle. "EMERIC BIGOT," says Bayle, "one of the most learned and most honest men of the seventeenth century, was a native of Rouen, and of a family very distinguished in the legal profession. He was born in 1626. The love of letters drew him aside from public employments; his only occupation was in books and the acquisition of knowledge; he augmented marvellously the library which had been left him by his father. Once every week there was a meeting at his house for talk on matters of erudition. He kept up literary intercourse with a great number of learned men; his advices and information were useful to many authors; and he laboured all he could for the good and advantage of the Republic of Letters. He published but one book [a Life of St. Chrysostom]; but apparently he would have published others had he lived to complete them. M. Ménage in France, and Nicolas Heinsius among foreigners, were his two most intimate friends. He had none of the faults that accompany learning: he was modest and an enemy to disputes. In general, one may say he was the best heart in the world. He died at Rouen Dec. 18, 1689, aged about sixty-four years." How exactly this description of Bigot for his whole life tallies with the notion we should have of him, at the age of thirty-two, from Milton's letter! He had been in England some time ago, it appears, and had there, like other foreigners, paid his respects to Milton. And now, either from Rouen, or more probably from Paris, he had reopened the communication, quite in the style of a man such as Bayle paints him. The immediate object of his letter seems to have been to ask Milton to have some doubtful passages in a book "On the Manner of Holding Parliaments" compared with MS. authorities in London; but he had taken occasion to express also his vivid recollection of Milton, his interest in Milton's present condition, and his desire to be of use to him in the quest or purchase of foreign books.

Milton, who had evidently performed very punctually Bigot's immediate commission,¹ did, it will be observed, send him a commission in return. It deserves a little explanation:—There was then in course of publication at Paris, under the auspices and at the expense of Louis XIV., the first splendid collective edition of the Byzantine Historians, i.e. of that series of Historians, Chroniclers, Antiquarians, and Memoir-writers of the Eastern or Greek Empire from the 6th century to the 15th in whose works lies imbedded all our information as to the History of the East through the Middle Ages. The publication, which was to attain to the vast size of thirty-six volumes folio, containing the Greek Texts with Latin Translations and Notes, was not to be completed till 1711; but it had been begun in 1645. Now, in Milton's library, it appears, the Byzantine Historians were already pretty well represented, either in the shape of the earlier volumes of this Parisian collection, or in that of separate prior editions of particular writers. There were some gaps, however, which he wanted to fill up. He wanted the Chronographia of Theophanes Isaacius, a chronicle of events from A.D. 277 to A.D. 811; also the Brevarium Historicum of Constantine Manasses, a metrical chronicle of the world from the Creation to A.D. 1081; also the book of Georgius Codinus, the compiler of the fifteenth century, entitled Excerpta de Originibus Constantinopolitanis; also that of Anastasius Bibliothecarius on the Lives of the Popes. The Parisian editions of these, or of the first three, were now out (all in 1655). At the same time there might be sent him the Parisian editions, if they had appeared, of the Annals of Michael Glycas, bringing the History of the World from the Creation to A.D. 1118, and the valuable Lives of John and Manuel Comnenus by Joannes Cinnamus, the imperial notary of the 12th century.—As the Parisian edition of Michael Glycas (by Labbe) did not appear till 1660, and that of Joannes Cinnamus (by Du Cange) not till 1670, Bigot can have forwarded to Milton only the first-mentioned Byzantine books. One may imagine the arrival of the parcel of learned folios in the neat new tenement which Milton inhabited in Petty France; and it gives one a stronger idea than we have yet had of Milton's passion for books, and of his indomitable perseverance and ingenuity in the use of them in his blind state, that he should have taken such pains, at our present date, to supply himself with copies of some of the rare Byzantine Historians. Connecting this purchase, through Bigot, with the recent inquiry, through Heimbach, about the price of Blaeu's great Atlas, may we not also discern some increased attention to the furnishing of the house occasioned by the second marriage?