Chapter XVII: Section II: From January 1654-5 to September 1656, or Through the (5)

(LXXI.) TO THE STATES GENERAL OF THE UNITED PROVINCES,
_April_ 1, 1656:--A complaint in behalf of Thomas Bussel,
Richard Beare, and other English merchants. A ship of theirs,
called _The Edmund and John_, on her voyage from Brazil to
Lisbon, was seized long ago by a privateer of Flushing, commanded
by a Lambert Bartelson. The ship itself and the personal property
of the sailors had been restored; but not the goods of the
merchants. The Judges in Holland had not done justice in their
case; and now, after long litigation, an appeal is made to the
chief authority.

(LXXII.) To Louis XIV. OF FRANCE, _April_ 9, 1656 (?): This is
the Credential Letter of LOCKHART, going on his embassy to the
French King. As Lockhart was by far the most eminent of the
Protector's envoys, it may be translated entire: "WILLIAM LOCKHART,
to whom We have given this letter to be carried to your Majesty, is
a Scot by nation, of an honourable house, beloved by us, known for
his very great fidelity, valour, and integrity of character. He,
that he may reside in France, and be with you, so as to be able
assiduously to signify to you my singular respect for your Majesty,
and my desire not only for the preservation of peace between us but
also for the perpetuation of friendship, has received from us the
amplest instructions. We request, therefore, that you will receive
him kindly, and give him gracious audience as often as there may be
occasion, and place absolutely the same trust in whatsoever may be
said and settled by him in our name as if the same things had been
said and settled by Ourselves in person. We shall hold them all as
ratified. Meanwhile we pray all peace and prosperity for your
Majesty and your kingdom."

(LXXIII.) To CARDINAL MAZARIN, _April_ 9, 1656 (?):--A Letter
accompanying the above, and introducing LOCKHART specially to the
Cardinal. It is also worth translating entire: "Seeing the affairs
of France most happily administered by your counsels, and daily
increasing in prosperity to such a degree that your high popularity
and high authority in government are justly increased and enlarged
accordingly, I have thought it fit, when sending an ambassador to
your King with letters and instructions, to recommend him also most
expressly to your Eminence: to wit, WILLIAM LOCKHART, a man of
honourable family, closely related to us, and respected by us
besides for his singular trustworthiness. Wherefore your Eminence
may receive as our own whatsoever shall be communicated by him in
our name, and may also freely commit and entrust to him in my
confidence whatever you shall think fit to communicate in return.
From him too you will learn more at large, what I now again
profess, as more than once already, how high is my feeling of your
great services to France, and what a well-wisher I am to your
reputation and dignity."[1]

[Footnote 1: Neither of these Letters about Lockhart is in the Printed Collection or in Phillips; but both are in the Skinner Transcript (Nos. 110 and 111 there), whence they have been printed by Mr. Hamilton in his _Milton Papers_ (pp. 9-10). He dates them both, as in the Transcript, "_West., Aug._ 1658;" but that is clearly a mistake, and the letters are out of their proper places in the Transcript. Lockhart was nominated for the Embassy in Dec. 1655, and he "took ship at Rye on the 14th of April, 1656, on his way to France" (see a letter of Thurloe's to Pell in Vaughan's _Protectorate_, I. 376-377). I have ventured to affix the exact date "April 9, 1656" to the two letters, because it is on that day that I find Lockhart's departure on his embassy definitely settled in the Council Order Books. Before "Aug. 1658" Lockhart had known Louis XIV. and the Cardinal intimately for more than two years and needed no introduction.]

(LXXIV.) To CHARLES X., KING OF SWEDEN, _April_ 17,
1656:--Another extremely polite letter of the Protector to his
Swedish Majesty, marking a farther stage in the proceedings of the
Swedish Treaty.--That Treaty had been going on at Dorset House, the
Swedish Ambassador and the Swedish Resident, continuing their
colloquies with Whitlocke. Fiennes, and Strickland, about pitch,
tar, hemp, mutual privileges of trade between England and Sweden,
trade also with Prussia, Poland, and Russia, and all the other
items of the Treaty, and the Ambassador always pushing on the
business and chafing at the slow progress made. Again and again he
had taken serious offence at something. Once it was because,
waiting on the Protector at Whitehall, he had been kept
half-an-hour before the Protector appeared. It was with difficulty
he was prevented from going away without seeing his Highness; "he
durst not for his head," he said, "admit of such dishonour to his
master"; he had to be pacified by an apology. Then, when he did see
the Protector, he had fresh cause for dissatisfaction. The
propositions of the Treaty, as agreed upon so far between the
Commissioners and the Ambassador, having been reported to the
Council, and there having been a discussion on them there, Thurloe
taking a chief part, new hesitations and difficulties had arisen,
so that, when Cromwell conversed with Count Bundt, the Count was
amazed to find his Highness cooler about the Treaty altogether than
he had expected, and again harping on Protestant interests and the
necessity of including the Dutch. The Count seems then to have
broken bounds in his talk about the Protector to Whitlocke and
others. In his own country, Sweden, he said, "when a man professed
sincerity, they understood it to be plain and clear dealing"; if a
man meant _Yea_ he said _Yea_, and if he meant _No_
he said _No_; but in England it seemed to be different. The
explanations and soft words of Whitlocke and the rest having calmed
him down again, the Treaty proceeded.--One of the most important
meetings at Dorset House, by Whitlocke's account, was on the 8th of
April. Mr. Jessop, as one of the Clerks of the Council, was there
by appointment, and read "the new Articles in English as they were
drawn up according to the last resolves of the Council." A long
debate on the Articles followed. The Ambassador begged "to be
excused if he should mistake anything of the sense of them, they
being in English, which he could not so well understand as if they
had been in Latin, which they must be put into in conclusion; but
he did observe," &c. In fact, he restated his objections to making
pitch, tar, hemp, flax, and sails, contraband, as they were the
staple produce of Sweden. Lord Fiennes, in reply, premised: "that
the Articles were brought in English for the saving of time, and
they should be put in Latin when his Excellency should desire," and
then discussed the main subject. Whitlocke followed, and the
Ambassador again, and Fiennes again, all in English; and "Mynheer
Coyet then spake in Latin, that pitch, tar, and hemp were not in
their own nature, nor by the law of nations, esteemed contraband
goods," &c. Strickland said a few words in reply, and then
Whitlocke made a longer and more lawyer-like answer to Mynheer
Coyet,--also, as he takes care to tell us, speaking in Latin. The
discussion, which was long protracted, and extended to other
topics, was closed by the Ambassador; who said "he desired a copy
of these Articles now debated, and, if they pleased, that he might
have it in Latin, which he would consider of." This was
promised.--The meeting so described was nearly the last in which
the Swedish Resident, M. Coyet, took part. He was on the eve of his
departure from England, leaving his principal, Count Bundt, to
finish the Treaty; and the present brief letter of Milton for
Cromwell to his Swedish Majesty has reference to that fact. "Peter
Julius Coyet," it begins, "having performed his mission to us, and
so performed it that he ought not to be dismissed by us without the
distinction of justly earned praise, is on the point of returning
to your Majesty"; and in three sentences more very handsome
testimony is borne to Coyet's ability and fidelity in the discharge
of his duty, and his Swedish Majesty is again assured of the
Protector's high regard for himself. "A constant course of
victories against all enemies of the Church" is the Protector's
wish for him.--Evidently, again, Cromwell, whatever might be the
issue of the Treaty, was anxious to stand well with the
Scandinavian; in corroboration of which we have this special
paragraph in Whitlocke under date May 3: "This day the Protector
gave the honour of knighthood to MYNHEER COYET, the King of
Sweden's Resident here, who was now SIR PETER COYET, and gave him a
fair jewel, with his Highness's picture, and a rich gold chain: it
cost about £400." Coyet, therefore, had remained in London a
fortnight after the date of Milton's letter.[1] Indeed he remained
a few days longer, assisting in the Treaty to the last.

[Footnote 1: Whitlocke, IV. 227-255: i.e. from Feb. 20, 1655-6, to May 3, 1656.]

(LXXV.) To Louis XIV. OF FRANCE, _May_ 14, 1656:[1]--John
Dethicke, Merchant, at present Lord Mayor of the City of London,
and another merchant, named William Wakefield, have represented to
his Highness that, as long ago as October 1649, a ship of theirs,
called _The Jonas of London_, was taken at the mouth of the
Thames by one White of Barking, acting under a commission from the
son of the late King, and taken into Dunkirk, then governed for the
French King by M. L'Estrades. They had applied for satisfaction at
the time, but had received a harsh answer from the governor.
Perhaps his French Majesty, on receipt of this letter, will direct
justice to be done.

[Footnote 1: Not dated in Printed Collection, Phillips, or Skinner Transcript; but dated by reference to it in a subsequent letter.]

(LXXVI.) TO THE STATES-GENERAL OF THE UNITED PROVINCES, _May_
1656:--Also about a ship, but this time for the recovery of
insurance on one. She was _The Good Hope of London_, belonging
to John Brown, Nicholas Williams, and others; she had been insured
in Amsterdam; she had been taken by a ship of the Dutch East India
Company on her way to the East Indies; the insurers had refused to
pay the sum insured for; and for six years the poor owners had been
hopelessly fighting the case in the Dutch courts. It is a case of
real hardship.

(LXXVII.) TO THE SAME, _May_ 1656:--Three times before letters
have been written to the States-General in the interest of Thomas
and William Lower, who had been left property in Holland by their
father's will, but have been unjustly kept out of the same by
powerful persons there, and tossed from law-court to law-court.
This fourth application, it is hoped, may be more successful.

These thirteen State Letters, were there nothing else, would prove that in and after the winter of 1655-6 Milton's services were again in request for ordinary office-work. But they do not represent the whole of his renewed industry in that employment.

The tremendous Swedish ambassador, Count Bundt, whose energy in his master's interests had swept through Whitehall like a storm, searching out flaws, waking up Thurloe and the Council, and obliging Cromwell himself to be more circumspect, had made his influence felt, it seems, even in the house of the blind Secretary-Extraordinary. It was on the 8th of April, 1656, as we have just learnt from Whitlocke, that the Ambassador, in one of his conferences with Whitlocke, Fiennes, and Strickland, in Dorset House, M. Coyet also being present, had rather objected to the fact that the new Articles of the Treaty, drafted for his consideration by the Council, and brought to the conference by Mr. Jessop, had been brought in English, and not in Latin, as would have been business-like. Latin or English, as the Commissioners knew, it would have been all the same to Count Bundt, inasmuch as it was the matter of the Articles that displeased him; but they had promised that he should have them in Latin, and Whitlocke had judiciously taken the opportunity of speaking in Latin, in reply to some of M. Coyet's observations in the same tongue, as if to show the Ambassador that Latin was by no means so scarce a commodity as he seemed to suppose about the Protector's Court. There had been delay, however, in furnishing the promised Latin translation; and Count Bundt, glad of that new occasion for fault-finding, did not let it escape him. "The Swedish Ambassador," relates Whitlocke under date May 6, 1656, "again complained of the delays in his business, and that, when he had desired to have the Articles of this Treaty put into Latin, according to the custom in Treaties, it was fourteen days they made him stay for that translation, and sent it to one MR. MILTON, a blind man, to put them into Latin, who, he said, must use an amanuensis to read it to him, and that amanuensis might publish the matter of the Articles as he pleased; and that it seemed strange to him there should be none but a blind man capable of putting a few Articles into Latin: that the Chancellor [the late Oxenstiern] with his own hand penned the Articles made at Upsal [in Whitlocke's Treaty], and so he heard the Ambassador Whitlocke did for those on his part. The employment of MR. MILTON was excused to him, because several other servants of the Council, fit for that employment, were then absent."[1] If this is exact, Count Bundt, having been promised the Latin translation on the 8th of April, did not receive it till about the 22nd, and he had been nursing his wrath on the subject for a fortnight more before it exploded. In the delay itself he had certainly good ground for complaint. There was reason also in the complaint that important secret documents had gone to a blind man, who must employ an amanuensis, unless the Commissioners could have replied that the Protector and the Council had thoroughly seen to that matter, and that Milton's amanuensis on such occasions was always a sworn clerk from the Whitehall office. On the whole, the Commissioners seem to have taken more easily than became their places, or than the Protector would have liked, the insinuation of the imperious Count that the Protector's official retinue must be a ragged and undisciplined rout, not to be compared with Karl Gustav's. May not Whitlocke himself, however, thinking at that moment of his own Latin sufficiency, have sharpened the point of the insinuation?[2]

[Footnote 1: Whitlocke, IV. 257.]

[Footnote 2: Whitlocke, from his interest in Swedish affairs, had taken ample notes of the negotiations with Count Bundt; and his story of them is unusually minute. One observes that more than once in the course of it he dwells on the fact that, though employed by the Protector in this business, and taking the lead in it, he was still _not_ one of the Council.]

The excuse of the Commissioners to Count Bundt for having sent the Articles to Milton for translation was that "several other servants of the Council, fit for that employment, were then absent." They mast have referred, in particular, to Mr. Philip Meadows, the Latin Secretary in Ordinary. He had, we find, taken some part in the negotiation in its earlier stage;[1] but, before it had proceeded far, he had been selected for a service which took him out of England. In December 1655 it had been resolved to send a special agent to Portugal; and on the 19th of February, 1655-6, at a Council meeting at which Cromwell himself was present, Meadows, thought of from the first, was formally nominated as the fit person. It was a great promotion for Meadows; for, whereas his salary hitherto in the Latin Secretaryship had been £200 a year, his allowance for the Portuguese agency was to be £800 a year or more. On the 21st of February he had £300 advanced to him for his outfit; on the 28th he was voted £100, being for two quarters of his Secretarial salary due to him, with £50 more for the quarter then current but not completed; and within a few days afterwards he was on his way to Lisbon.[2] His departure, I should say--preceded perhaps by a week or two of cessation from office duty in preparation for it--was the real cause of the re-employment of Milton at this time in such routine work as we have seen him engaged in. All or most of his former letters for the Protector, it may have been noticed, e.g. those on the Piedmontese business, had been on important occasions, such as might justify resort to the Latin Secretary Extraordinary; but in the batch written since Dec. 1655, when Meadows's Portuguese mission had been resolved on, the ordinary and the extraordinary come together, and Milton, in writing letters about ships, as well as in translating draft articles, does work that would have been done by Meadows. And this arrangement, we may add, was to continue henceforth. For, despite the sneers of Count Bundt as to the poverty of the Protector's official staff, the Protector and Council, we shall find, were in no hurry to fill up the place left vacant by Meadows, but were quite satisfied that Mr. Milton should go on doing his best alone, with Thurloe to instruct him, and with the help of such underlings in Latin as Thurloe could put at his disposal. My belief is that Milton was pleased at this trust in his renewed ability for ordinary business.

[Footnote 1: Whitlocke, IV. 218; where it is mentioned that in Dec. 1655 Meadows communicated with Whitlocke on the subject of the Treaty by Thurloe's orders.]

[Footnote 2: Council Order Books of dates. It is curious that Whitlocke, noting the new appointment of Meadows, under March 1655-6, enters it thus: "Mr. Meadows was going for _Denmark_, agent for the Protector." Meadows did go to Denmark, but not till a good while afterwards; and the blunder of _Denmark_ at this date for _Portugal_ is one of the many proofs that Whitlocke's memorials are not all strictly contemporary, but often combinations of reminiscences and afterthoughts with the materials of an actual diary.]

Among the matters that occupied the attention of the Protector's Government about this time was the state of Popular Literature.

It is a fact, easily explained by the laws of human nature, and capable of being proved statistically, that since the strong government of Cromwell had come in, and something like calm and leisure had become possible, there had been a return of people's fancies to the lighter Muses. Nothing strikes one more, in turning over the Registers of the old London Book-trade, than the steady increase through the Protectorate of the proportion of books of secular and general interest to those of controversy and theology. One feels oneself still in the age of Puritanism, it is true, but as if past the densest and most stringent years of Puritanism and coming once more into a freer and merrier air. Poems, romances, books of humour, ballads and songs, reprints of Elizabethan tragedies and comedies, reprints of such pieces as Shakespeare's _Venus and Adonis_, collections of facetious extracts from the wits and poets of the reigns of James and Charles I., are now not uncommon. Humphrey Moseley, Milton's publisher of 1645, faithful to his old trade-instinct for poetry and the finer literature generally, was still at the head of the publishers in that line; but Henry Herringman, who had published Lord Broghill's _Parthenissa_, had begun to rival Moseley, and there were other caterers of amusing and humorous books. Publishers imply authors; and so in the London of the Protectorate, apart from stray survivors from among the wits of King Charles's reign, there were men of a younger sort, bred amid the more recent Puritan conditions, but with literary zests that were Bohemian rather than Puritan, Among these, as we have hinted, and as we may now state more distinctly, were Milton's nephews, Edward and John Phillips.[1]

[Footnote 1: My notes from the Stationers' Registers, from 1652 to 1656.]

Such Popular Literature as we have described had been left perfectly free. Indeed Censorship or Licensing of books generally, as distinct from newspapers, had all but ceased. Since Bradshaw's Press-Act of 1649, it had been rather rare for an author or bookseller to take the trouble, in the case of a non-political book, to procure the imprimatur of any official licenser in addition to the ordinary trade-registration; and in this, as an established custom, Cromwell's Government had acquiesced. Only in one particular, apart from politics, was there any disposition to interfere with the liberty of printing. This was where popular wit, humour, or poetry might pass into the ribald, profane, or indecent. Vigilance against open immorality had from the first appeared to Cromwell one of the chief duties of his Government; and he seems to have been unusually attentive to this duty in 1655-6, when he had just put the country under the military police of his Major-Generals and their subordinates. Then it is that we hear most of the suppressing of horse-races and the like, and that we are least surprised at encountering such a piece of information as that "players were taken in Newcastle and whipped for rogues." Now, though by this time there had already, by previous care on the part of Government, been a considerable cleansing of the Popular Literature of London, yet something or other in the state of the book-world about 1655-6 seems to have occasioned new and more special interference. I believe it to have been the increased frequency of ballads, facetiæ, and reprints, of higher literary character than the coarse pamphlets that had been suppressed, but objectionable on the same moral grounds. At all events, all but simultaneously with the Order of the Protector and his Council, of Sept. 5, 1655, concentrating the whole newspaper press in the hands of Needham and Thurloe (see ante pp. 51-52), there had been a new general Ordinance "against Scandalous Books and Pamphlets and for the Regulation of Printing" (Aug. 18, 1655), and it was not long before this Ordinance was put in operation in one or two cases of the kind indicated. Here are some extracts from the Order Books of the Council in April and May 1656:--

_Tuesday, April_ 1656:--"That it be referred to the Earl of
Mulgrave, Colonel Jones, and Lord Strickland, or any two of them,
to examine the business touching the book entitled _Sportive Wit
or the Muses' Merriment_, and to send for the author and
printer, and report the same to the Council."

_Friday, April_ 25, 1656:--Present: the Lord President
Lawrence, the Earl of Mulgrave, Lord Lambert, Sir Gilbert
Pickering, Colonel Sydenham, Colonel Jones, the Lord Deputy of
Ireland (Fleetwood), Lord Viscount Lisle, Mr. Rous, Major-General
Skippon, and Lord Strickland. "Colonel Jones reports from the
Committee of the Council to whom was referred the consideration of
a book entitled _Sportive Wit or the Muses' Merriment_, that
the said book contains in it much scandalous, lascivious,
scurrilous, and profane matter. _Ordered_ by his Highness the
Lord Protector, by and with the advice of the Council, That the
Lord Mayor of the City of London and the rest of the Committee for
the regulation of Printing do cause all such [copies] of the said
book as are not already seized to be forthwith seized on, wherever
they shall be found, and cause the same, together with those
already seized, to be delivered to the Sheriffs of London and
Middlesex, who are to cause the same to be forthwith publicly
burnt.--He further reports that Nathaniel Brookes, Stationer, at
the Angel in Cornhill, caused the said book to be printed; that the
printers thereof were John Grismond, living in Ivy Lane, and James
Cotterill, living in Lambeth Hill; and that JOHN PHILLIPS, of
Westminster, was the author of the Epistle Dedicatory.
_Ordered_, That it be referred to Sir John Barkstead, Knight,
Lieutenant of the Tower [and Major-General for Westminster and
Middlesex], to cause the fines to be levied on the said persons
according to law: [also] that the said persons do attend the
Council on Tuesday next."--Milton's younger nephew, therefore, had
been the editor of the offending volume. Of the eleven members of
Council present when this fact came out, six were among those
friends of Milton whom he had specially mentioned in his
_Defensio Secunda_: viz. Fleetwood, Lambert, Lawrence,
Pickering, Sydenham, and Strickland.

_Saturday, April_ 26, 1656:--His Highness the Lord Protector
approves of a great many recent Orders of Council presented to him
all at once by Mr. Scobell, the Clerk of the Council. Among them is
the order "for burning the book called _Sportive Wit_."

_Friday, May_ 9, 1656:--His Highness the Lord Protector
present in person, with Lord President Lawrence, Lambert,
Fleetwood, Sir Gilbert Pickering, Strickland, Sydenham, and
Jones:--_Ordered_, &c. "That the Lord Mayor of the City of
London and the rest of the Committee for regulating Printing do
cause all the books entitled _Choice Droliery, Songs and
Sonnets_ (being stuffed with profane and obscene matter, tending
to the corruption of manners), to be seized wherever the same shall
be found, and cause the same to be delivered to the Sheriffs of
London and Middlesex, who are required to give order that the same
be burnt."

Copies of the second of the two books thus condemned by Cromwell and his Council have, I believe, survived the burning, The publisher was a John Sweeting, who had duly registered the book on the 9th of February 1655-6, shortly after which date it had appeared with this full title, _Choice Drollery, Songs and Sonnets: being a Collection of Divers Eminent Pieces of Poetry of several Eminent Authors, never before printed_. I have not seen any copy of the other book bearing the precise title _Sportive Wit, or the Muses' Merriment_; but there are surviving copies of what may be the same with an alternative title, viz. _Wit and Drollery: Jovial Poems, never before printed, by Sir J.M., Jas. S., Sir W.D., J.D., and other admirable wits_. It had been out in London since. Jan. 18, 1655-6, had been registered on the 30th of that month, and is a respectably printed little book of 160 pages, with the motto "_Ut nectar ingenium_" under the title, and with, the imprint _London. Printed for Nath. Brook, at the Angel in Cornhill_, 1656. It contains moreover a Dedication "To the truly noble Edward Pepes, Esq.," and an Epistle "To the Courteous Reader," both signed with the initials J.P. Either, therefore, this is the same book as the _Sportive Wit or the Muses' Merriment_ which, figures in the Orders of the Council, or John Phillips had edited simultaneously for Nathaniel Brooke (who had been the publisher of his _Satyr against Hypocrites_ in the preceding August) two books of the same general character. Even on the latter supposition, _Wit and Drollery,_ in the absence of _Sportive Wit,_ may serve as a representative of that production of the same editor and the same publisher. The substance of Phillips's Epistle to the Reader in _Wit and Drollery_ is as follows:--

"Reader,--To give thee a broadside of plain dealing, this
_Wit_ I present thee with is such as can only be in fashion,
invented purposely to keep off the violent assaults of melancholy,
assisted by the additional engines and weapons of sack and good
company... What hath not been extant of Sir J. M., of Ja. S., of
Sir W. D., of J. D., and other miraculous muses of the times, are
here at thy service; and, as Webster, at the end of his play called
_The White Devil,_ subscribes that the action of Perkins
crowned the whole play, so, when thou viewest the title, and
readest the sign of 'Ben Jonson's Head, in the backside of the
Exchange, and the Angel in Cornhill,' where they are sold, enquire
who could better furnish thee with such sparkling copies of wit."

Among the included pieces are the younger Alexander Gill's lampoon on Ben Jonson for his _Magnetic Lady_ and Ben Jonson's reply to the same (ante Vol. I. pp. 528-529); there are also several pieces of Suckling; but, for the rest, as the title-page bears, the volume consists chiefly of specimens of _"Sir J. M."_ (Sir John Mennes), _"Jas. S."_ (James Smith), _"Sir W. D"_ (Sir William Davenant), and _"J. D."_ (Dr. Donne), professing not to have been before in print. Whether this was so, and whether the pieces were all authentically by these poets, need not here concern us. It is enough to say that many of the pieces are decidedly, and some very grossly, of the improper kind. The reader will not expect to have this proved by extract; but of the more innocent "drollery" the following stanzas from a poem entitled _"Nonsense"_ may be a sample:--

O that my lungs could bleat like buttered pease!
But bleating of my lungs hath caught the itch,
And are as mangy as the Irish seas,
That doth engender windmills in a bitch.

I grant that rainbows, being lulled asleep,
Snort like a woodknife in a lady's eyes;
Which makes her grieve to see a pudding creep;
For creeping puddings only please the wise.

Note that a hard-roed herring should presume
To swing a tithe-pig in a catskin purse,
For fear the hailstones which did fall at Rome
By lessening of the fault should make it worse.

For 'tis most certain winter woolsacks grow,
Till that the sheepshorn planets give the hint,
From geese to swans, if men could keep them so,
And pickle pancakes in Geneva print.

At worst, the volume was but a catchpenny collection of pieces of a kind of which there was plenty already dispersed in print under the names of the same authors, or of others as classical; and, if this was the same book as the _Sportive Wit,_ or at all like that book, it may have been some mere accident of the moment that brought Government censure upon Phillips's volume, while others, as had, escaped. But how annoying the whole occurrence to Milton![1]

[Footnote 1: Thomason copy of _Wit and Drollery_ in the British Museum, dated Jan. 18, 1655-6.--I failed to find a book with the title _The Sportive Wit_ in the Thomason Collection, and hence my hypothesis that there was but one book, with alternative titles. I am rather inclined to believe, however, that there were two, and have a vague recollection of having seen two books, one with one of the titles and the other with the other, advertised in a contemporary newspaper list of books on sale by the publisher Brooke. In Lowndes's Bibliog. Manual by Bohn, _sub voce_ "Wit," the two books are given as distinct; but then _Sportive Wit or the Muses' Merriment_ is there dated 1656, while there is no notice of an edition of _Wit and Drollery, Jovial Poems,_ till 1661. Though I leave the matter in doubt, some collector of Facetiac may know all about it. In any case, if _Wit and Drollery_ was not the identical book condemned, it is of interest to us as being one of Phillips's editing at the same moment.--Donne, who figures so strangely in _Wit and Drollery,_ had been dead twenty-five years, but was accessible in various editions and reprints of his Poems. The other three poets named in the title-page as the chief authors of the pieces--Sir John Mennes, James Smith, and Davenant--were still alive and publishing for themselves. Indeed the _Musarum Delitice, or Muses' Recreation,_ consisting of pieces by Mennes and Smith, had been published by Herringman only the year before (1655), and was in its second edition in 1658; and it may have been the success of this and Smith in it. Mennes, a stout book that led to Phillips's publication and to the use of the names of Mennes Royalist sea-captain, who had served with Prince Rupert, and was in exile at our present date, became Chief Comptroller of the Navy after the Restoration and lived to 1670. Smith was a Devonshire clergyman, of Royalist antecedents, who had complied with the existing powers and retained his living. After the Restoration he had promotion in the Church: and he died in 1667.]

Less unsatisfactory to Milton, must hare been the literary appearances about the same time of his elder nephew, Edward Phillips. On the same day on which the stationer Nathaniel Brooke had registered _Wit and Drollery_ edited by John Phillips, i.e. on Jan. 30, 1655-6, he had registered two tales or small novels called "_The Illustrious Shepherdess_" and "_The Imperious Brother_" both "written originally in Spanish and now Englished by Edward Phillips, Gent."[1] The first of these translations, both from the Spanish of Juan Perez de Montalvan (1602-1638), is dedicated by Phillips to the Marchioness of Dorchester, in what Godwin calls "an extraordinary style of fustian and bombast."[2] With the exception, of such affectation in style, which Phillips afterwards threw off, there is nothing ill to report of these early performances of his; and two translations from the Spanish were a creditable proof of accomplishment. But still more interesting was another literary performance of Edward Phillips's of the same date. This was his edition of the Poems of Drummond of Hawthornden.

[Footnote 1: Stationers' Registers of date.]

[Footnote 2: Godwin's _Lives of the Phillipses_, 138-139. I know the translations only from Godwin's account of them.]

Drummond had died in 1649, leaving in manuscript, at Hawthornden or in Edinburgh, not only his _History of Scotland from 1423 to 1542, or through the Reigns of the Five Jameses_, but also various other prose-writings, and a good deal of verse in addition to what he had published in his life-time. Drummond's son and heir being under age, the care of the MSS. had devolved chiefly on Drummond's brother-in-law, Sir John Scot of Scotstarvet, a well-known Scottish judge, antiquary, and eccentric. Hitherto the troubles in Scotland had prevented the publication by Sir John of these remains of his celebrated relative, the only real Scottish poet of his generation. With the other Scottish dignitaries and officials who had resisted the English invasion, Sir John himself had been turned out of his public posts, heavily fined, and remitted into private life (Vol. IV. p. 561). Gradually, however, as Scotland had become accustomed to her union with England, things had come round again for the old ex-Judge, as well as for others. There is reason to believe that he was in London for some time in 1654-5, soliciting the Protector and the Council for favour in the matter of his fine, if not for restoration to one of his former offices, the Director of the Scottish Chancery. The case of Scot of Scotstarvet, at all events, _was_ then under discussion in the Council, with the result that his fine, which had been originally £1500, but had been reduced to £500, was first reduced farther to £300, and next, apparently by Cromwell's own interposition, altogether "discharged and taken off, in consideration of the pains he hath taken and the service he hath done to the Commonwealth."[1] If Scotstarvet himself, then seventy years of age, had come to London on the business, he must have brought Drummond's MSS., or copies of them, with him. On the 16th of January 1854-5 there had been registered at Stationers' Hall, as forthcoming, Drummond's _History of Scotland through the Reigns of the Five Jameses_, with a selection of other prose-writings of his, chiefly of a political kind; and the volume did appear immediately, as a handsome small folio, bearing date 1655, and "printed by Henry Hills for Rich. Tomlins and himself." As Henry Hills was one of the printers to his Highness and the Council, the appearance from his press of a volume so full of conservative doctrine, inculcating so strongly the duty of submission to kingly prerogative and to constituted authority, may not be without significance. Another interesting circumstance about it is that it had appeared under the charge of a London editor, "Mr. Hall of Gray's Inn,"--i.e., unless I am mistaken, that Mr. John Hall whom we saw brought in, at £100 a year, to do pieces of literary hackwork for the Council under Milton as long ago as May 1649, and who had been in some such employment for the Council, at least occasionally, ever since (ante p. 177). Accidental or not, the fact that the editor of Drummond's Prose Writings, selected by Scotstarvet or by the printer Hills, should have been a servant of the Council of State, and a kind of underling of Milton in that capacity, is at least curious. But it becomes more curious when taken in connexion, with the fact that the editor of the companion volume, containing the first professedly complete edition of Drummond's Poems, was Milton's elder nephew. This volume, though announced by Mr. Hall in his Introduction to the Prose Volume, did not appear till about a year afterwards, and then as an octavo of 224 pages, with this title, _"Poems by that most famous Wit, William Drummond of Hawthornden ... London, Printed for Rickard Tomlins, at the Sun and Bible, neare Pye-Corner,_ 1656." The volume is dedicated to Sir John Scot of Scotstarvet, and includes about sixty small pieces of Drummond never before published, which Sir John had supplied from the Hawthornden MSS. Apart from revision of the proofs, Phillips's editorship consisted in a prose preface, signed "E.P.," and a set of commendatory verses, signed in full "Edward Phillips."

[Footnote 1: Council Order Books, March 9 and March 19, 1654-5.]

Drummond's Poetry had long been known to Milton in the fragmentary state in which alone it had been till then accessible, i.e. in the successive instalments of it published by Drummond himself in Edinburgh between 1613 and 1638. There might be proof also that Drummond was one of Milton's favourites, and regarded by him as one of the sweetest and truest poets that there had been in Great Britain through that age of miscellaneous metrical effort, much of it miscalled Poetry, which included the whole of the laureateship of Ben Jonson and the beginning of that of Davenant. Accordingly, it is not difficult to suppose that phrases about Drummond from Milton's own mouth were worked by Phillips into his prose preface to the London edition of the Poems of Drummond. There is a little hyperbolism in that preface; but the opening definition of Drummond's genius is exact, and the fitness of some of the phrases quite admirable. Thus:--

"To say that these Poems are the effects of a genius the most
polite and verdant that ever the Scottish nation produced, although
it he a commendation not to be rejected (for it is well known that
that country hath afforded many rare and admirable wits), yet it is
not the highest that may be given him; for, should I affirm that
neither Tasso, nor Guarini, nor any of the most neat and refined
spirits of Italy, nor even the choicest of our English Poets, can
challenge to themselves any advantage above him, it could not be
judged any attribute superior to what he deserves ... And, though
he hath not had the good fortune to be so generally famed abroad as
many others, perhaps of less esteem, yet this is a consideration
that cannot diminish, but rather advance, his credit; for, by
breaking forth of obscurity, he will attract the higher
admiration, and, like the sun emerging from a cloud, appear at
length with so much the more forcible rays..."

Milton's interesting German friend, Henry Oldenburg, had recently removed from London to Oxford. "In the beginning of this year," says Wood in his _Fasti_ for 1656, "studied in Oxon, in the condition of a sojourner, HENRY OLDENBURG, who wrote himself sometimes GRUBENDOL [anagram of OLDENBUBG]; and in the month of June he was entered a, student by the name of _'Henricus Oldenburg, Bremensis, Nobilis Saxo'_: at which time he was tutor to a young Irish nobleman, called Henry O'Bryen [son of Henry, Earl of Thomond], then also a student there."[1] As we construe the case, Oldenburg, having been for some years in England as agent for Bremen, had begun to see that he was likely to remain in England permanently; and he had gone to Oxford for the benefit of a year of study there with readings in the Bodleian, and the society more especially of Robert Boyle, Wilkins, Wallis, Petty, and the rest of the Oxford colony or offshoot from the _Invisible College_ of London. Desirable on its own account, this migration to Oxford had been made easier to him financially, if it had not been, occasioned, by the arrangement that he should be tutor there to the young Irish nobleman whom Wood names. But this young nobleman was not to be Oldenburg's only pupil at Oxford. Though Wood does not mention the fact, there went with him thither, or there speedily followed him thither, to be also under his charge, another young Irish nobleman. This was no other than, our own Richard Jones, son of Viscount and Lady Ranelagh, the Benjamin among Milton's pupils. Whatever had been the nature of Milton's recent instructions of the youth, they had now ceased, and Oldenburg was to be thenceforward the youth's more regular tutor. It does not seem to have been intended that young Ranelagh should formally enter a college, so as to receive the usual education at the University, but only that he should obtain some acquaintance with Oxford and its ways, and be for a while in the society of his uncle Boyle, and of his two cousins, Viscount Dungarvan and Mr. Richard Boyle. If these two sons of the Earl of Cork were still under the tutorship of Dr. Peter Du Moulin, Oldenburg and Jones at Oxford must have come necessarily also into constant intercourse with that very secret admirer of Milton. Oxford, we do gather, was still Du Moulin's head-quarters; but he was so much on the wing thence that Oldenburg might expect to succeed him in the tutorship of at least one of the young Boyles. Oldenburg was then thirty years of age, and young Ranelagh about sixteen.

[Footnote 1: Wood's Fasti, II. 197.]

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 Martini[1] 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."

[Footnote 1: Martin Martini, Jesuit Missionary to China, was born 1614 and died 1661.]

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.

[Footnote 1: This Letter is not given in the Printed Collection or in Phillips; it is in the Skinner Transcript, and has been printed by Mr. Hamilton in his _Milton Papers_ (pp. 5-6).]

(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.

[Footnote 1: Not in Printed Collection or Phillips, but in Skinner Transcript, and printed by Hamilton (_Milton Papers_, 6-7).]

(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]

[Footnote 1: Whitlocke, IV. 257-273.]