stract consideration of the question, what may be lawfully done against tyrants."* It is one of the most condensed and closely reasoned of all Milton's writings, and satisfactorily establishes those great points of constitutional law which at an earlier period had been advocated by the classic pen of Buchanan, which, in the age succeeding that of Milton, were so logically demonstrated by Locke, and which may now be considered as incorporated with the constitution of our country. Appearing at a time when men's minds were deeply occupied with the question it discusses, public attention was naturally drawn toward it, and through means of it to previous publications of its author. "This treatise," says Phillips, "reviving the fame of other things Milton had formerly published, he was more and more taken notice of for his excellency of style, and depth of judgment; was courted into the service of the Commonwealth; and at last prevailed with (for he never hunted after preferment, nor affected the hurry of public business) to take upon him the office of Latin Secretary."f This fully bears out Milton's own account of the matter:-"No one ever knew me either soliciting anything myself, or through the medium of my friends, no one ever beheld me in a supplicating posture at the doors of the senate, or the levees of the great. I usually kept myself secluded at home, where my own property, part of which had been withheld during the civil commotions, and part of which had been absorbed in the oppressive contributions which I had to sustain, afforded me a scanty subsistence.

I

was surprised by an invitation from the Council of State, who desired my services in the office for foreign affairs."‡

Milton entered upon the office to which he was thus honorably called on the 15th March, 1649. The duties which he was here appointed to discharge were somewhat multifarious. Besides those more especially belonging to his office, such as the translating into English of the state papers of foreign

* Ibid.

† Cited by Todd, Life of Milton, p. 97.

Second Defence, p. 261. Works, vol. i. We have given the above from the English translation, as it stands in Mr. St. John's edition; but it is rather an imperfect version of the original, and in the concluding part quite wrong. Milton was never in the Foreign Office. What he says is, "Me Concilium Status... ad se vocat, meaque opera ad res præsertim externas uti voluit," -the Council of State summoned me, and desired the use of my ervices chiefly in foreign affairs.

VOL. XVIII. NO. III.

...

monwealth, and conducting their correspondence in return, many other tasks were imposed upon him by those whom he served. They seem, indeed, to have committed to him the whole of what may be called the literary and controversial interests of the government. Hence we find him enjoined to examine papers found on certain suspected enemies of the Commonwealth, or such attacks upon it as appeared in print, and to report to the Council thereon;* to reply to some of these attacks; to defend the policy of the Council against those "designers against the peace of the Commonwealth, by whom it had been impugned ; and even to arrange for the printing of such works as the Council saw meet to issue at the public expense. To a mind like Milton's, delighting to luxuriate in the banquet of letters, and even revolving high thoughts of the additions he was himself to make to that rich repast, it must have been unspeakably irksome to be compelled to attend to all the petty and vexatious duties which were thus imposed upon him. But he bore the yoke cheerfully, and seems to have toiled on with the patience of the veriest drudge in his appointed work. Nay, his heart even appears to have been in his duties, for when he might, without censure, have retired from the office, he spurned the idea as unworthy of his patriotism. It was no paltry love of the gains of office which thus chained him to the oar; for his salary at the highest never exceeded £200 per annum, and to this the only additional perquisite he ever received was permission to reside at Whitehall, a permission which was only given to be soon after recalled.§ It is a sight worth looking at this man of supernal genius thus taming himself down to the drudgeries of an inferior station, and discharging the dull and irksome tasks of office with a cheerfulness which the merest red-tapist could hardly exceed-and all from a sense of duty, and love for what he esteemed a good and just cause.

The writings which Milton was either directly or indirectly led by his office as

* Order of Council, May 30, 1649. Ibid. June 23. Ibid. June 25, 1650.

+ Ibid. 26th March, 1649; 28th March.

Ibid. 8th January, 1649-50.

§ Milton went to reside in Scotland Yard in the early part of 1651, and he removed from it in the summer of the same year, in consequence of an order of Parliament which deprived him of that residence. He then went to the "pretty garden house," in Petty France, Westminster, where he remained till within a few weeks of the return of Charles II.

23

Latin Secretary to indite, form a very im- | portant part of his prose works. Of these, the least interesting, perhaps, to us now, in reference at least to himself, are the Letters of State which he addressed from time to time in the name of the government of the Commonwealth, to the different European powers. In an historical point of view, indeed, these are valuable, as indicating the footing on which Cromwell and his party stood with the princes and states of the Continent, and as containing an authentic record of the foreign policy of the Commonwealth; but, in relation to Milton, they possess only an inferior interest. It is his pen that indites the words, but the thoughts are the property of others, and chiefly of that imperial intellect which seems to have dazzled and commanded the mind even of Milton, and made him look up to its possessor as the "chief of men." Viewed as the joint production of Oliver Cromwell and John Milton, these letters, even the least important of them, must ever possess a strong attraction; and some of them, especially those which relate to the sufferings of the Waldenses, in which both Cromwell and his Secretary took so thrilling an interest, will ever remain as monuments at once of the high-toned dignity with which England's greatest ruler upheld her rights and the rights of humanity, and of the fitting utterance which England's greatest poet gave to that ruler's will.

The first publication into which Milton's office indirectly led him, was that which appeared under the following title :- " Iconoclastes. In answer to a Book, entitled 'Icon Basilike: the portraiture of his Sacred Majesty in his Solitude and Sufferings." The work to which Milton here replies, and which is now pretty generally believed to have been the production of Dr. Gauden, successively Bishop of Exeter and of Worcester after the Restoration, purports to be the composition of the deceased king, and its manifest design is to produce an impression in his favor, by not only defending his conduct to his subjects, but also representing him in the light of a mild, devout, and heavenly martyr. It was published a very

short time after the death of Charles, and though there were several who saw through the imposition, and were satisfied it was not the work of the king, (Milton among the rest,) by the country at large, it was received as genuine, and extensively and eagerly perused. To counteract the effect which it was everywhere producing, Milton wrote his

"Iconoclastes;" in which, with great minuteness and vigor, he replies to all that is advanced in the "Icon," in defence of the policy, and in honor of the character of Charles. Written for popular effect, it is much simpler in style, quieter in manner, and more homely in conception, than was usual with its author. Here and there an expression occurs which betrays the poet,* and not seldom the fire of an ardent temper breaks forth in indignant flashes; but for the most part, the "Iconoclastes" is a sober, minute, closely-reasoned, and unimpassioned refutation of the statements of the "Icon." The author's purpose in writing it, he tells us, was "not a desire to descant on the misfortunes of a person fallen from so high a dignity," nor "by fond ambition, or the vanity to get a name, present or with posterity, by writing against a king," but "for their sakes who, through custom, simplicity, or want of better teaching, have not more seriously considered kings than in the gaudy name of Majesty, and admire them and their doings as if they breathed not the same air with other mortal men." Hence he scrupled not to take up the gauntlet which had been thrown down, though a king's, in defence of liberty and the Commonwealth. That the work was written at the request of the Council of State, we know from Milton's own statement; but that it was a piece of mere hireling service, for which he received a pecuniary reward from the Councilthough it has been confidently asserted, and though on the strength of this assertion Milton has been called "a mercenary Iconoclast," -is altogether untrue. We have the author's own solemn statement to the contrary: "My hands," says he to Morus, "were never soiled with the guilt of peculation; I never was even an obolus the richer by those exertions which you most vehemently traduce." We have the corroborative evidence afforded by the fact that the books of the Council retain no trace of any remuneration having been made to him

* One of his expressions has been borrowed, without acknowledgment, by a poet of our own day. In speaking of a parliament without power

of opposing the royal will, he describes it as

"struck as mute and motionless as a parliament of tapestry in the hangings." What Milton here applies to tapestry, Campbell applies to painting

"And Painting mute and motionless
Steals but a glance of time."

Valedictory Stanzas to Kemble.

Second Def. Work, vol. i. p. 268.
Second Def. p. 243.

for this labor, whilst they do not fail to record the "fitt reward" which the Council awarded to John Durie for translating the work into French. And we have the fact that he was permitted to make the writing of this book suit his own convenience, "beginning it late, and finishing it leisurely in the midst of other employments and diversions"*-a favor which, as Mr. Todd justly reasons, would hardly, in the case of a work, the early appearance of which was of importance, have been conceded to a mere hireling scribe.

The "Iconoclastes" appeared in the closing part of the year 1649. The same period witnessed the publication of a work which was destined to involve Milton in the most protracted and the most violent controversy in which he ever embarked. This was the "Defensio Regia pro Carolo I.," by Claude Saumaise, better known as Salmasius.

Charles II. was at this time residing at the Hague, "living with and upon the Prince of Orange," as Clarendon tells us; poor enough and dispirited enough, yet in clined to make an effort or two more to regain the splendid patrimony from which he had been driven. The impression which had been produced in England by the publication of the "Icon Basilike" probably suggested the idea of following it up by a still more energetic attack upon the Commonwealth party. The poor king had one hundred Jacobusses in his purse, and these he resolved to sacrifice in order to procure such a publication. A ready instrument was found in Salmasius, then one of the Professors at Leyden, and who enjoyed the reputation of being one of the most learned men of his age. He was unquestionably a man of abilities. His memory was prodigious; his reading was unbounded; and his ingenuity considerable. His linguistic attainments and his philological writings still command respect; in his own day he was deemed such a prodigy, that people were wont to say that what Salmasius did not know was not knowable. But there were many things he did not know, and many literary qualifications he did not possess; and these, unhappily for him, were the very things and the very qualifications especially requisite for the work to which the exiled prince summoned him. He was ignorant of political science and the principles of social ethics. He was ignorant of

the English constitution, the English history, and the temper of the English people. Worst of all, he was ignorant of his own ignorance, and addressed himself to his task with all the confidence and self-sufficiency which learned ignorance is apt assume. His temper also was bad; he vous overbearing and insolent; and he indu, & to its full extent in that license of vituperation which the scholars of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries seem to have regarded as their peculiar privilege; judging, apparently, that there was no excess of Scommatism to which a writer might not resort, provided always he kept the peace with Priscian, and clothed his anger in Ciceronian Latin. In his scholarship, moreover, there was all that painful attention to trifles, that "insanum minutiarum studium," which Ruhnken tells us is peculiar to otiose litterateurs.* His mind had nothing great in it, nothing comprehensive, nothing original. He was a successful scholar, and nothing more. What Pope has most unjustly put into the mouth of Richard Bentley, was to the letter true of Salmasius :

"Like buoys, that never sink into the flood, On Learning's surface we but lie and nod.

For thee we dim the eyes and stuff the head With all such reading as was never read; For thee explain a thing till all men doubt it, And write about it, goddess, and about it."

"

When such a man undertook to arraign the people of England, and defend the memory of the beheaded king, what could he do but make pedantry supply the place of intelligence, and substitute effrontery for argument? The "fortiter in re' was beyond his reach, the "suaviter in modo" was contrary to his taste and habits. The only course open to him was that which he followed. Shutting himself up in his library, he set himself to quote all sorts of authors in suppor of the sacredness of kings, and the inviolability of their persons. He starts from the loftiest position of Divine Right! A king!-what is a king? "Plainly he who is the supreme power in the state, a power beholden to none but God, to whom alone the king is obliged to render a reason of his acts, and to none besides he who may do what he likes, who is exempt from laws, who gives laws, but receives none, and hence judges all, but

* Orat. de Doctore Umbrat. p. 13. Opusc. Ruhnken, ed. Kidd.

even from those who afterward periled all in their efforts to support the throne. On the great mass of the people they never made any impression. Among them it had, ever since England was England, been held as a settled thing, that there was a point beyond which no prince could urge his prerogative and no freeborn people could submit; and their history presented to them too many instances in which the haughtiest of their sovereigns had been compelled to respect the popular will, and too many instances in which the reigning dynasty had been changed by force of domestic arms, for them to be very overwhelmingly impressed with a sense of "the divinity that doth

Here, having neither Talmuds nor classics to quote from, he is sadly puzzled to keep up appearances; still he makes a manful effort, and by help of William of Malmesbury, Matthew of Paris, Gervasius, &c., illustrated here and there by Aristotle, Tacitus, Mela, Juvenal, and others of the ancients, he manages very respectably to fill up a goodly number of pages. In the concluding chapters (x. xii.) he discusses the character and proceedings of the party by whom the king had been beheaded, and defends the character and conduct of Charles. This is by much the ablest part of his work; it is written with less stiffness and much greater vigor than the preceding parts; and when one compares its animated eloquence and hearty vituperation with the dreary pedantry of the earlier chapters, it is hard to resist the suspicion that some such pen as that of Hyde was at work, and that Salmasius had no other hand in this part of the "Defensio" than that of translating into Latin the thoughts and words of a greatly more vigorous mind than his own.

The publication of this work appears to have produced no great sensation either on the Continent or in England. This is not surprising. Few except unoccupied scholars were likely to toil through its heavy pages; and whilst its main purpose possessed only a secondary interest to the continental nations, its fundamental thesis was one which few Englishmen of any party then in England were prepared to adopt. Those theories of government on which the Divine right of kings is based, based were unknown in this country before the days of Laud, and when propounded, they had received little welcome

more modest-had he assumed lower ground - had he followed up the impression produced by the "Icon Basilike," by, like it, dwelling rather on the personal merits and sufferings of the late king, than by mooting great political and constitutional questions, in which he assumed positions to which few good and no thoughtful men could assent, he would better have served the cause of his employer, and if not in quantity, certainly in quality, rendered a fairer equivalent for his hundred Jacobusses. As it was, he, like many a hired pleader, both before and since, spoiled his cause by overdoing it.

But though the work of Salmasius created no remarkable sensation, it yet contained enough to render it desirable that it should not be left unanswered. Milton was accordingly enjoined, by an order in Council, of the date January 8th, 1849-50, to "prepare something in answer to the booke of Salmasius, and when he hath done itt, bring itt to the Councell." His answer was ready by the close of the year, and on the 23d of December, 1650, it was "ordered that Mr. Milton doe print the treatise which he hath written, in answer to a late booke written by Salmasius against the proceedings of this Commonwealth." The work appeared in the early part of the following year, under the title "Joannis Miltoni Angli pro Populo Anglicano Defensio contra Claudii Anonymi, alias Salmasii Defensionem Regiam."

On this production Milton put forth all his strength. He seems to have entered upon it with the design not merely of defending the Commonwealth, but of crushing the presumptuous pedant by whom it had been assailed. For Salmasius he evidently felt no respect, and to him he shows no pity. With a learning equal at least to his