Chapter II (2)

Small comfort at this time can Milton have had from either of his nephews. Not that they had openly separated themselves from him, or even ceased to be deferential to him and proud of the relationship, but that they had more and more gone into those courses of literary Bohemianism those habits of mere facetious hack-work and balderdash, which he must have noted of late as an increasing and very ominous form of protest among the clever young Londoners against Puritanism and its belongings. The _Satyr against Hypocrites_ by his younger nephew in 1655 had been, in reality, an Anti-Puritan and Anti-Miltonic production; and, since the censure of that younger nephew by the Council in 1656 for his share in _The Sportive Wit or Muses' Merriment_, he had naturally stumbled farther and farther in the same direction. By the year 1658, I should say, John Phillips had entirely given up his uncle's political principles, and was known among his tavern-comrades as an Anti-Oliverian. We have no express publications in his name of this date, but he seems to have been scribbling anonymously. Of the literary industry of his more sedate and likeable elder brother, Edward, there is authentic evidence. _A New World of Words, or a General Dictionary, containing the Terms, Etymologies, Definitions, and Perfect Interpretations, of the proper Significations of hard English words throughout the Arts and Sciences_: such is the title of a folio volume published by him in 1657, and for the purposes of which he was afterwards accused of having plagiarized largely from the _Glossographia_ of one Thomas Blount, published in the preceding year. In this piece of labour, which was doubtless a bookseller's commission, he must have had, the question of plagiarism apart, his uncle's thorough good-will; but it cannot have been the same with his _Mysteries of Love and Eloquence: or the Arts of Wooing and Complimenting, as they are managed in the Spring Garden, Hide Park, the New Exchange, and other eminent Places_. That performance, which appeared in August 1658, with a Preface "To the Youthful Gentry," and which must have been in progress at our present date, was much more in the vein of his brother John, and indeed was done to the order of Nathaniel Brooke, the bookseller who had published John's _Satyr against Hypocrites_, and also the more questionable _Sportive Wit or the Muses' Merriment_. "The book," says Godwin, "is put together with conspicuous ingenuity and profligacy, and is entitled to no insignificant rank among the multifarious productions which were at that time issued from the press to debauch the manners of the nation and bring back the King. It consists of imaginary conversations and forms of address for conversation, poems, models of letters, questions and answers, an Art of Logic with examples from the poets, and various instructions and helps to the lover for the composition of his verses; and, if we could overlook the gross provocations to libertinism and vice which everywhere occur in the book, it might be mentioned as no unentertaining illustration of the manners of the men of wit and gallantry in the time when it was published." To Godwin's description we may add that the book includes a Rhyming Dictionary, "useful for that pleasing pastime called Crambo," also a collection of parlour-games, and a number of other clever things. The poems and songs interspersed with the prose were mostly old ones reprinted, some of them chosen with fine taste; but one or two were Phillips's own. Of the model phrases or set expressions which form one of the prose parts of the volume, by way of instruction in the language of gallantry and courtship, specimens are these,--"With your ambrosiac kisses bathe my lips;" "You are a white enchantress, lady, and can enchain me with a smile;" "Midnight would blush at this;" "You walk in artificial clouds and bathe your silken limbs in wanton dalliance." What could Milton do, so far as such a production came within his knowledge, but shake his head and mingle smiles with a frown? Clearly the elder nephew too had slipped the Miltonic restraints. He had not lapsed, however, so decidedly as his brother; and we may partly retract in his case the statement that Milton could have little comfort from him. He still went and came about Milton, very attentively.[1]

[Footnote 1: Godwin's _Lives of the Phillipses_ (1815), 49-57, and 139-140; Wood's _Ath._ IV. 760-769. I have not myself examined Phillips's _New World of Words_; but I have looked at the Thomason copy of his _Mysteries of Love and Eloquence_, where the date of publication is given. Perhaps Godwin is a little too severe in his account of it.]

During the month immediately preceding his wife's death, and the two months following it, there is a break in the series of Milton's State-Letters for Cromwell. But he resumed the familiar occupation on the 30th of March, 1658; and thenceforward to the end of the Protectorate the series is again pretty continuous. Indeed, of this period of Milton's life we know little more than may be inferred from, or associated with, the following morsels of his continued Secretaryship:--

(CXVIII.) To CHARLES X., KING OF SWEDEN, _March_ 30,
1658:--The occasion of this letter was the receipt of news at last
of the climax of the Swedish-Danish war in a great triumph of the
Swedes. "In January 1658 Karl Gustav marches his army, horse, foot,
and artillery, to the amount of twenty thousand, across the Baltic
ice, and takes an island without shipping,--Island of Fünen,
across the Little Belt; three miles of ice; and a part of the sea
_open_, which has to be crossed on planks. Nay, forward from
Fünen, when he is once there, he achieves ten whole miles more of
ice; and takes Zealand itself--to the wonder of mankind." Such, in
Mr. Carlyle's summary (_History of Frederick the Great, i. 223,
edit._ 1869), was the feat of the Swedish warrior against his
Danish enemy. It was followed almost immediately by a Peace between
the two Powers, called _The Peace of Roeskilde_, by which
Sweden acquired certain territories from Denmark, but very generous
terms on the whole were granted to the Danes. Of all this there had
been news to Cromwell, not only from his own correspondents, but
also in an express letter from Charles Gustavus; and it is to this
letter that Milton now replies in Cromwell's name:--"Most serene
and potent King, most invincible Friend and Ally,--The Letter of
your Majesty, dated from the Camp in Zealand, Feb. 21, has brought
Us all at once many reasons why, both privately on our own account,
and on account of the whole Christian Commonwealth, we should be
affected by no ordinary joy. In the first place, because the King
of Denmark (made your enemy, I believe, not by his own will or
interests, but by the arts of the common foes) has been, by your
sudden advent into the heart of his kingdom, and without much
bloodshed, reduced to such a pass that he has at length, as was
really the fact, judged peace more advantageous to him than the
war undertaken against you. Next, because, when he thought he could
in no way sooner obtain such a peace than by using Our help long
ago offered him for a conciliation, your Majesty, on the prayer
merely of the letters of our Envoy, deigned to show, by such an
easy grant of peace, how much value you attached to Our friendship
and interposed good-will, and chose that it should be My office in
particular, in this pious transaction, to be myself nearly the sole
adviser and author of a Peace which is speedily to be, as I hope,
so salutary to Protestant interests. For, whereas the enemies of
Religion despaired of being able to break your combined strength
otherwise than by engaging you against each other, they will now
have cause, as I hope, thoroughly to fear that this unlooked-for
conjunction of your arms and hearts will turn into destruction for
themselves, the kindlers of this war. Do you, meanwhile, most brave
King, go on and prosper in your conspicuous valour, and bring it to
pass that, such good fortune as the enemies of the Church have
lately admired in your exploits and course of victories against the
King now your ally, the same they may feel once more, with God's
help, in their own crushing overthrow."[1] From this letter it will
be seen that the missions of Meadows and Jephson, but especially
that of Meadows, had been of use. The immediate object of the
missions, a reconciliation of Sweden and Denmark, had been
accomplished; and what remained farther was, as Cromwell hints, the
association of the other Continental Protestant powers with these
two Scandinavian kingdoms in a league against Austria and Spain.
How exactly this idea accorded with reflective Protestant sentiment
everywhere appears from a few sentences in one of Baillie's
letters, commenting on the very occurrences that occasioned
Cromwell's present despatch. "I am glad," writes Baillie, "that by
a Peace, however extorted, the Swedes are free to take course with
other enemies. I wish Brandenburg may return to his old posture,
and not draw on himself next the Swedish armies; which the Lord
forbid! for, after Sweden, we love Brandenburg next best.... Our
wish is that the Muscoviter, for reforming of his churches,
civilizing of his people, and doing some good upon the Turks and
Tartars, were more straitly allied with Sweden, Brandenburg, the
Transylvanian, and other Protestant princes. We should rejoice if,
on this too good a quarrel against the Austrians ... he [Charles
Gustavus] would turn his victorious army upon them and their
associates, with the assistance of France and a good Dutch league.
It seems no hard matter to get the Imperial Crown and turn the
Ecclesiastic Princes into Secular Protestants."[2] Very much in the
direction of Baillie's hopes were Cromwell's envoys, Meadows,
Jephson, Bradshaw, and Downing, to labour for the next few months.
Of their journeys hither and thither, their expectations and
disappointments, there are glimpses in successive letters in
_Thurloe_; from which also it appears that Meadows and Downing
gave most satisfaction, and that, after a while, Jephson was
relieved of the main business of the Swedish mission, and that
mission was conjoined with the Danish in the hands of Meadows
(Thurloe, VII. 63-64).

[Footnote 1: The translation of this letter by Phillips is unusually careless. It jumbles the tenses in such a manner that the Peace between Sweden and Denmark does not seem to have yet taken place, but only to be hoped for by Cromwell. In fact, Phillips's translation robs the letter of all its meaning and interest.]

[Footnote 2: Baillie, III. 371.]

(CXIX.) TO THE GRAND-DUKE OF TUSCANY, _April_ 7, 1658:--A John
Hosier, master of a ship called _The Lady_, had been swindled
in April 1656 by an Italian named Guiseppe Armani, who has
moreover possessed himself fraudulently of 6000 pieces of eight
belonging to one Thomas Clutterbuck. There is a suit against Armani
at Leghorn; but Hosier, after going to great expenses, is deterred
from appearing there by threats of personal violence. "We therefore
request your Highness both to relieve this oppressed man, and also
to restrain the insolence of his adversary, according to your
accustomed justice."

(CXX.) TO LOUIS XIV. OF FRANCE, _May_ 26, 1658:[1]--This is a
very momentous letter. It is Cromwell's appeal to the French King
in behalf once more of the poor Piedmontese Protestants:--"Most
serene and potent King, most august Friend and Ally,--Your Majesty
may remember that, at the time when there was treaty between us for
the renewing of our League [April 1655]--the highly auspicious
nature of which transaction is now testified by many resulting
advantages to both nations and much damage to the common
enemy--there fell out that miserable massacre of the People of the
Valleys, whose cause, forsaken on all hands and sorely beset, we
commended, with all ardour of heart and commiseration, to your pity
and protection. Nor do we think that your Majesty, of yourself, was
wanting in a duty so pious, nay so human, in as far as, by your
authority or by the respect due to your person, you could prevail
with the Duke of Savoy. We, certainly, and many other Princes and
States, were not wanting, in the matter of embassies, letters,
interposed entreaties, on the subject. After a most bloody
slaughter of both sexes and of every age, Peace was at last
granted, or rather a kind of more guarded hostility clothed with
the name of Peace: the conditions of the Peace were settled in your
town of Pignerol--hard conditions indeed, but in which wretched
and poor people that had suffered all that was dreadful and brutal
might easily acquiesce, if only, hard and unjust as they are, they
were to be stood to. They are _not_ stood to; for the promise
of each and all of them is eluded and violated by false
interpretation and various asides: many are thrown out of their
ancient abodes; many are interdicted from their native religion;
new tributes are exacted; a new citadel is hung over their heads,
whence soldiers frequently break forth, plundering or murdering all
they meet: in addition to all which, new forces of late are
secretly being got ready against them, and those among them who
profess the Roman Religion have warning orders to remove for a
time, so that all things now again seem to point to an
exterminating onslaught on those most miserable creatures who were
left over from that last butchery. That you will not allow this to
be done I beseech and conjure you, Most Christian King, by that
right hand of yours which sealed alliance and friendship with Us,
by that most sacred ornament of the title of _Most Christian_;
that you will not permit such a license of furious raging, I do not
say to any prince (for such furious raging cannot possibly come
upon any prince, much less upon the tender age of that Prince, or
into the womanly mind of his Mother), but to those most holy
assassins, who, while they profess themselves the servants and
imitators of our Saviour Christ, Him who came into this world to
save sinners, abuse His most meek name and institutes for savage
slaughters of innocents. Snatch, thou who art able, and who in such
a towering station art worthy to be able, so many suppliants of
yours from the hands of homicides, who, drunk with gore recently,
thirst for blood again, and consider it most advisable for
themselves to lay at the doors of princes the odium of their own
cruelty. Do not thou, while thou reignest, suffer thy titles or the
territories of thy realm, or the most merciful Gospel of Christ,
to be defiled by that scandal. Remember that these very Vaudois
submitted themselves to your grandfather Henry, that great favourer
of Protestants, when the victorious Lesdiguières, through those
parts where there is even yet the most convenient passage into
Italy, pursued the yielding Savoyard across the Alps. The
instrument of that Surrender is yet extant among the Public Acts of
your Kingdom; in which, among other things, it is expressly
provided and precautioned that the Vaudois should thenceforth be
handed over to no one unless with those same conditions on which,
by that instrument, your most invincible grandfather received them
into his protection. This protection the suppliants now implore;
as pledged by the grandfather, they demand it from you, the
grandson. They would prefer and desire to be your subjects rather
than his to whom they now belong, even by some exchange, if that
could be managed; but, if that cannot be managed, to be yours at
least in as far as your patronage, pity, and shelter can make them
so. There are even reasons of state which might exhort you not to
drive back Vaudois fleeing to you for refuge; but I would not, such
a great King as you are, think of you as moved to the defence of
those lying under calamity by other considerations than the promise
of your ancestors, piety, and kingly benignity and greatness of
soul. So the praise and glory of a most beautiful deed will be
yours unalloyed and entire, and through all your life you will find
the Father of Mercy, and His Son, King Christ, whose name and
doctrine you will have vindicated from a wicked atrocity, more
favouring and propitious to yourself. May God Almighty, for His own
glory, the safeguard of so many innocent Christian human beings,
and your true honour, dispose your Majesty to this resolution!" The
letter was sent to Ambassador Lockhart, then commanding the English
auxiliaries at Dunkirk, with very precise instructions to deliver
it to his French Majesty, and to follow it up energetically by his
own counsels.[2] It may have been delivered to Louis XIV. at or
near Calais. It had, as we have seen, full effect. All in all, it
is one of the most eloquent of the Milton series; and Milton must
have exerted himself in the composition.

[Footnote 1: The exact day of the month is not given either in the Printed Collection or in the Skinner Transcript; but it is determined by a letter of Cromwell's to Ambassador Lockhart on the same business. The two letters went together (see Carlyle, III. 357-365).]

[Footnote 2: Letter of Cromwell to Lockhart of date May 25, 1658, printed by Mr. Carlyle, _loc. cit._, from the Ayscough MSS.]

(CXXI.) TO THE EVANGELICAL SWISS CANTONS, _May_ 26,
1658:[1]--On the same great business as the last.--"Illustrious and
most honourable Lords, most dear Friends:--Concerning the Vaudois,
your most afflicted neighbours, what grievous and intolerable
things they have suffered from their Prince for Religion's sake,
besides that the mind almost shrinks from remembering them because
of the very atrocity of the facts, we have thought it superfluous
to write to you what must be much better known to yourselves. We
have also seen copies of the letters which your Envoys, who a good
while since were the advisers and witnesses of the Peace of
Pignerol, have written to the Duke of Savoy and the President of
his Council in Turin; in which they show and prove in detail that
all the conditions of the Peace have been broken, and have been
rather a snare for those miserable people than a security. Which
violation of the conditions, continued from the very date of the
Peace even to this day, and every day growing more grievous, unless
they endure patiently, unless they prostrate themselves and lie
down to be trampled on and pushed into mud, their Religion itself
forsworn, there impends over them the same calamity, the same
havoc, which harassed and desolated them, with their wives and
children, in so miserable a manner three years ago, and which, if
it is to be undergone again, will wholly extirpate them. What can
the poor people do? They have no respite, no breathing-time, as yet
no certain refuge. They have to deal with wild beasts or with
furies, to whom the recollection of the former slaughters has
brought no remorse, no pity for their fellow-countrymen, no sense
of humanity or satiety in shedding blood. These things are clearly
not to be borne, whether we have regard to our Vaudois brethren,
cherishers of the Orthodox Religion from of old, or to the safety
of that Religion itself. We, for our part, removed though we are by
too great an interval of space, have heartily performed all we
could in the way of help, and shall not cease to do the like. Do
you, who are close not only to the torments and almost to the cries
of your brethren, but also to the fury of the same enemies,
consider prospectively, in the name of Immortal God, and that
betimes, what is now _your_ duty; on the question of what
assistance, what protection, you can and ought to give to your
neighbours and brothers, otherwise speedily to perish, consult your
own prudence and piety, but your valour also. It is identity of
Religion, be sure, that is the cause why the same enemies would see
you likewise destroyed, nay why they would, at the same time, in
the same by-past year, _have_ seen you destroyed by an
intestine war against you by members of your Confederacy. Next to
the Divine aid it seems simply to be with you to prevent the very
oldest branch of the purer Religion from being cut down in that
remnant of the primitive faithful: and, if you neglect their
safety, now brought to the extreme crisis of peril, see that the
next turn do not, a little while after, visit yourselves. While we
advise thus fraternally and freely, we are meanwhile not idle on
our own part: what alone it is allowed to us at such a distance to
do, whether for securing the safety of those who are endangered, or
for succouring the poverty of those who are in need, we have taken
all pains in our power to do, and shall yet take all pains, God
grant to us both such tranquillity and peace at home, such a
settled condition of things and times, that we may be able to turn
all our resources and strength, all our anxiety, to the defence of
His Church against the fury and madness of His enemies!"

[Footnote 1: The day of the month not given either in the Printed Collection or in the Skinner Transcript; but we may date by the last letter.]

(CXXII.-CXXV.) TO LOUIS XIV. AND CARDINAL MAZARIN: end of
_May_ 1658:[1]--This is a group of four letters, two to the
King and two to the Cardinal, all appertaining to the splendid
embassy of compliment on which Cromwell despatched his son-in-law,
Viscount Falconbridge, in the end of May 1658, when he heard that
the French Court had come so near England as Calais (ante pp.
340-341):--(1.) TO LOUIS XIV. "Most serene and potent King, most
august Friend and Ally,--Thomas, Viscount Falconbridge, my
son-in-law, being on the point of setting out for France, and
desiring to come into your presence, to kiss your royal hand and
testify his veneration and the respect which he cherishes for your
Majesty, though, on account of the great pleasantness of his
society, I am unwilling to part with him, yet, as I do not doubt
but, from the Court of so great a King, in which so many most
prudent and valiant men have their resort, he will shortly return
to us much more accomplished for all honourable occupations, and in
a sense finished, I have not thought it right to oppose his mind
and wish. And, though he is one, if I mistake not, who may seem to
bring his own sufficient recommendations with him wherever he goes,
yet, if he should feel himself somewhat more acceptable to your
Majesty on my account, I shall likewise consider myself honoured
and obliged by that same kindness. May God keep your Majesty safe,
and long preserve our fast friendship for the common good of the
Christian world."--(2.) TO CARDINAL MAZARIN. As his son-in-law Lord
Falconbridge is going into France, recommended by a letter to the
French King, Cromwell cannot but inform his Eminence of the fact,
and give Lord Falconbridge an introduction to his Eminence also.
"Whatever benefit he may receive from his stay amongst you (and he
hopes it will not be small) he is sure to owe most of it to your
favour and kindness, whose mind and vigilance almost singly sustain
and guard such great affairs in that kingdom." (3.) To LOUIS XIV.
"Most serene and potent King, most august Friend and Ally,--As
soon as news had arrived that your Majesty was come into camp, and
was besieging with so great forces that infamous town and asylum of
pirates, Dunkirk, I conceived a great joy, and also a sure hope
that now in a short time, by God's good assistance, the sea will be
less infested with robbers and more safely navigable, and that your
Majesty will soon by your warlike prowess avenge those frauds of
the Spaniard,--one commander corrupted by gold to betray Hesden,
another treacherously taken at Ostend. I therefore send to you the
most noble Thomas, Viscount Falconbridge, my son-in-law, both to
congratulate your arrival in a camp so close to us, and also to
explain personally with what affection we follow your Majesty's
achievements, not only by the junction of our forces, but with all
wishes besides that God Almighty may keep your Majesty's self safe
and long preserve our fast friendship for the common good of the
Christian world." (4.) To CARDINAL MAZARIN. As he is sending his
son-in-law Viscount Falconbridge to congratulate the arrival of his
French Majesty in the camp near Dunkirk, he has commanded him to
convey also salutations and thanks to his Eminence, "by whose
fidelity, prudence, and vigilance, above all, it has been brought
about that French business is so prosperously managed against the
common enemy in so many different parts, and especially in
neighbouring Flanders." It is clear that all these letters cannot
have been sent, but only two of them. The closing words of the two
letters to the King, for example, are identical to an extent
incompatible with the idea that they were both delivered. It may be
guessed by the suspicious that at first the intention was that Lord
Falconbridge should seem to be visiting France for his own
curiosity or pleasure, the Protector only taking advantage of his
whim, and that letters 1 and 2 were then drafted, but that
afterwards it was thought better to send Lord Falconbridge on an
avowed embassy of congratulation in Cromwell's own name, and
letters 3 and 4 were then substituted. Perhaps, however, there was
no duplicity in the affair at all, and the idea of the embassy did
actually originate in a whim of Lord Falconbridge. Anyhow all the
notes were written by Milton, and he kept copies of those not
used.

[Footnote 1: Exact day not given either in Printed Collection or in Skinner Transcript; but the occasion fixes the time pretty closely.]

(CXXVI.) To THE GRAND DUKE OF TUSCANY, _May_ 1658:--This is
in a very different tone from recent letters of the Protector to
the same Italian Prince (ante p. 372 and p. 378).--His Highness has
been informed of various acts of discourtesy of late to his Fleet
off Leghorn, utterly inconsistent with the terms of friendship on
which he had supposed himself to stand with the Grand Duke.
Accommodation to the ships has been refused, out of deference to
Spain; restrictions have been put on their supplies of fresh water;
English merchants resident in Leghorn, and even the English Consul,
have not been permitted to go on board; shots have actually been
fired; &c. If these things had been done by the Governor of the
Town without orders, let him be punished; but, if otherwise, "let
your Highness consider that, as we have always very highly valued
your good-will, so we have learnt to distinguish open injuries
from-good-will."

(CXXVII.-CXXX.) To LOUIS XIV. AND CARDINAL MAZARIN. _June_
1658:--On the 16th of June there had arrived in London, in rapid
return for the embassy of Viscount Falconbridge to Calais, the
splendid counter-embassy to Cromwell of the Duke de Crequi and M.
Mancini, the Cardinal's nephew (ante pp. 340-341). That in itself
would have been an incident calling for some special acknowledgment
from the Protector; but hardly had the embassy arrived when there
came news of the great event which both Louis XIV. and Cromwell had
for some time been intently expecting--the capture of Dunkirk. On
the 15th of June the keys of the captured town had been handsomely
delivered to Sir William Lockhart by Louis XIV. himself, so that
the Treaty with Cromwell had been fully kept in that particular.
Louis had sent a special Envoy with letters to announce the event
to Cromwell formally; and this Envoy shared in the magnificent
hospitalities which Cromwell showered upon the Duke de Crequi, M.
Mancini, and their retinue. The four following letters all relate
to this glorious occasion, and date themselves between June 16,
when the French ambassadors arrived in London, and June 21, when
they took their departure. (1.) To Louis XIV. "Most serene and
potent King, most august Friend and Ally,--That your Majesty has
so speedily, by the illustrious embassy you have sent, repaid my
mission of respect with interest, besides that it is a proof of
your singular graciousness and magnanimity, comes as a
manifestation also of the degree of your regard for my honour and
dignity, not to myself only, but to the whole English People; on
which account, in their name, I duly return your Majesty my most
cordial thanks. Over the most happy victory which God gave to our
conjoint forces against the enemy [in the Battle near Dunkirk on
June 3, ten days before the surrender of the town: ante p. 340], I
rejoice along with you; and it is very gratifying to me that in
that battle our men were not wanting either to their duty to you,
or to the warlike glory of their ancestors, or to their own valour.
As for Dunkirk, your Majesty's hopes for the near surrender of
which are expressed in your letter, I have the additional joy of
being able so soon to write back that the surrender has now
actually taken place; and my hopes are that the Spaniard will
presently pay for his double treachery by the loss not of one city
only,--the effecting of which result by the capture of the other
town [Bergen, near Dunkirk, now also besieged] I would that your
Majesty may have it in your power to report as quickly. As to your
Majesty's farther promise that my interests shall be your care, in
that matter I have no mistrust, the promise coming from a King of
such worth and friendliness, and having the confirmation of the
word of his Ambassador, the most excellent and accomplished Duke de
Crequi. That Almighty God may be propitious to your Majesty and to
the French State, at home and in war, is my sincere wish." (2.) To
CARDINAL MAZARIN. As we have already seen in Cromwell's
correspondence with France, letters to the King and the Cardinal
then almost always went in pairs, for Louis XIV. was but beginning
his long career of _Grand Monarque_ at the age of twenty,
while the Cardinal, at the age of fifty-six, still retained that
ministerial ascendancy which he had exercised all through the
minority of Louis, and indeed since the death of Richelieu in
1642. This letter of Cromwell's to the Cardinal is even more
interesting than that to the King, and may be given in full:--"Most
Eminent Lord,--While I am thanking by letter your most Serene King,
who has sent such a splendid embassy to return respects and
congratulations and to communicate to me his joy over the recent
most noble victory, I should be ungrateful if I did not at the same
time pay by letter the thanks due also to your Eminence, who, to
testify your good-will towards me, and your regard for my honour in
all possible ways, have sent with the embassy your most worthy and
highly accomplished young nephew, and even write that, if you had
any one nearer akin to you or dearer, you would have sent that
person in preference,--adding a reason which, coming from the
judgment of so great a man, I consider no mean tribute of praise
and distinction: to wit, your desire that those nearest to you in
blood should imitate your Eminence in honouring and respecting me.
Well, they will perhaps, at least, in your love for me, have had no
stinted example of politeness, candour, and friendliness: of worth
and prudence at their highest there are other far more brilliant
examples in you, by which they may learn how to administer kingdoms
and the greatest affairs with glory. With which that your Eminence
may long and prosperously conduct affairs, for the common good of
the French kingdom, yea of the whole Christian Republic, a
distinction properly yours, I promise that my wishes shall not be
wanting." (3.) To LOUIS XIV.[1] A more formal letter than the
last, acknowledging the French King's own intimation that Dunkirk
had been taken, and given into the possession of Lockhart. "That
Dunkirk had surrendered to your Majesty, and that it had been by
your orders immediately put in our possession, we had already heard
by report; but with what a willing and glad mind your Majesty did
it, to testify your good-will towards me in this matter, I have
been especially informed by your royal letter, and have had
abundantly confirmed by the gentleman in whom, from the tenor of
that letter, I have all confidence,--the master in ordinary of your
Palace. In addition to this testimony, though it needs no farther
weight with me, our Ambassador with you [Lockhart], in discharge of
his duty, writes to the same effect, and there is nothing that he
does not ascribe to your most firm steadiness in my favour. Let
your Majesty be assured in turn that there shall be no want of
either care or integrity on our part in performing all that remains
of our agreement with the same faith and diligence as hitherto. For
the rest, I congratulate your Majesty on your successes and on the
very near approach of the capture of Bergen; and may God Almighty
grant that there may be as frequent exchanges as possible of such
congratulations between us." (4.) TO CARDINAL MAZARIN[2]. This is
on the same occasion and in the same strain. One sentence will
suffice. "With what faith and expression of the highest good-will
all was performed by you, though your Eminence's own assurance
fully satisfied me, yet, that I should have nothing more to
desiderate, our Ambassador, in carefully writing to me the details,
had omitted nothing that could either serve for my information or
answer your opinion of him."--It is curious, after these two last
letters, to turn to those letters of Lockhart's to which Cromwell
refers. They quite confirm his words, though they contain
expressions, about both the King and the Cardinal, of which
Cromwell would not perhaps have sent them literal copies. Thus, in
a letter to Thurloe, of June 14, the day before the delivery of
Dunkirk to the English, but when all the arrangements for the
delivery had been made, Lockhart, speaking of the difficulties he
anticipated in so arduous and delicate a post as the Governorship
of Dunkirk, especially with his small supplies and great lack of
money, adds,--"Nevertheless I must say I find him [the Cardinal]
willing to hear reason; and, though the generality of Court and
Army are even mad to see themselves part with what they call _un
si bon morceau_, so delicate a bit, yet he is still constant to
his promises, and seems to be as glad in the general,
notwithstanding our differences in little particulars, to give this
place to his Highness as I can be to receive it: the King is also
exceeding obliging and civil, and hath more true worth in him than
I could have imagined." Next day Lockhart wrote a brief note to
Thurloe announcing himself as actually in possession, "blessed be
God for this great mercy, and the Lord continue his protection to
his Highness"; and there were subsequent longer letters both to
Thurloe and to Cromwell himself[3]. Dunkirk was called "The Key of
Spanish Flanders"; and the conquest of this place for the
Protectorate was, it is to be remembered, among the last of
Cromwell's great acts.

[Footnote 1: This Letter is not to be found in the Printed Collection or in Phillips; but it is in the Skinner Transcript (No. 102 there), and has been printed by Mr. Hamilton in his _Milton Papers_, 7-8.]

[Footnote 2: Neither is this Letter in the Printed Collection. It stands as No. 103 in the Skinner Transcript, and has been printed by Hamilton, p. 8.]

[Footnote 3: Thurloe, VII. 173 et seq.]

(CXXXI.) TO CHARLES GUSTAVUS, KING OF SWEDEN, _June_
1658:--Since Cromwell's last letter by Milton to this heroic
Scandinavian (March 30), congratulating him on his generous Peace
with Denmark, and urging the policy of a League of all the northern
Protestant Powers for conjoint action against Austria, Poland, and
Catholicism universally, the movements of the Swede had been most
perplexing. Now he had been turning against the Poles and
Austrians; but again Denmark, or even the Dutch, seemed to be the
object of his resentment, while there was very quarrelsome
negotiation between him and the Elector Marquis of Brandenburg, and
every appearance that the Elector might have to bear the next full
burst of his wrath. All this did not seem favourable to the
prospects of a Protestant League, and Cromwell's envoys, Meadows,
Jephson, Bradshaw, and Downing, had been going to and fro with
their wits on the stretch. Such, in general, was the condition of
affairs when Milton for Cromwell wrote as follows:--"Most serene
and potent King, most dear Friend and Ally,--As often as we look
upon the ceaseless plots and various artifices of the common
enemies of Religion, so often our thought with ourselves is how
necessary it is for the Christian world, and how salutary it would
be, for the easier frustration of the attempts of these
adversaries, that the Potentates of Protestantism should be
conjoined in the strictest league among themselves, and principally
your Majesty with our Commonwealth. How much, and with what zeal,
that has been furthered by Us, and how agreeable latterly it would
have been to us if the affairs of Sweden and our own had been in
such a condition and position that the League could have been
ratified heartily by us both, and with all fit aid the one to the
other, We have testified to your agents from the time when they
first treated of the matter with Us. Nor, truly, were they wanting
to their duty; but, as was their custom in other things, in this
matter also they displayed prudence and diligence. But we have been
so exercised at home by the perfidy of wicked citizens, who, though
several times received back into trust, do not yet cease to form
new conspiracies, and to repeat their already often shattered and
routed plots with the exiles, and even with the Spanish enemy,
that, occupied in beating off our own dangers, we have not hitherto
been able, as was our wish, to turn our whole attention and entire
strength to the guardianship of the common cause of Religion. What
was possible, however, to the full extent of our power, we have
already studiously performed; and, whatever for the future in this
direction shall seem to conduce to your Majesty's interests, we
shall not desist not only to desire, but also to co-operate with
you with all our strength in accomplishing where they may be
opportunity. Meanwhile we congratulate, and heartily rejoice in,
your Majesty's most prudent and most valiant actions, and desire
with assiduous prayers that God may will, for the glory of his own
Deity, that the same course of prosperity and victory may be a very
long one."--So far as Milton's state-letters show, this is the last
of the relations between Oliver Cromwell and Karl-Gustav of Sweden.
But, in _Thurloe_ and elsewhere, there are farther traces of
the great Swede in connexion with Cromwell, and of the interest
which the two kindred souls felt in each other. Passing over some
weeks of still uncertain movement of the Swede hither and thither
in his complications with Austria, Poland, Denmark, Muscovy,
Brandenburg, and the Dutch, we may note the sudden surprise of all
Europe when, early in August, he tore up his brief Peace with
Denmark, re-invaded Zealand, and marched straight upon Copenhagen.
His reasons for this extraordinary act he thought it right to
explain to Cromwell in a long letter dated from his quarters near
Copenhagen, August 18, 1658. The letter can have reached Cromwell
only on his death-bed; and, on the whole, Cromwell had to leave the
world with the consciousness that the League of Protestant Powers
for which he had prayed and struggled was apparently as far off as
ever. The election to the vacant Emperorship had already taken
place at last, July 8, 1658, at Frankfort-on-the-Main, and it was
the Austrian Leopold, King of Hungary, and not the French Louis
XIV., after all, that had been proclaimed and saluted _Imperator
Romanorum_.[1]

[Footnote 1: Thurloe, VII., at various points from the beginning, but especially pp. 338, 342, and 257. Foreign dates in Thurloe have to be rectified.]

(CXXXII.) TO THE KING OF PORTUGAL, _August_ 1658:--A John
Buffield, merchant of London, has been wronged by the detention of
property of his by a Portuguese mercantile firm, and has been
tossed about in Portuguese law-courts. The Protector requests his
Portuguese Majesty to look into the matter and see justice done.

So ends the series of Milton's Letters for Oliver. As there had been eighty-eight such in all (XLV.-CXXXII.) during the four years and nine months of the Protectorate, whereas there had been but forty-four (I.-XLIV.) similar letters during the preceding four years and ten months of the Commonwealth proper and Interim Dictatorship, it will be seen that Milton's industry in this particular form of his Secretaryship had been just twice as great for Oliver as for the Governments before the Protectorate.[1] That fact in itself is rather remarkable, when we remember that Milton came into the Protector's service totally blind. Of course, whoever had been in the post would have had more to do in the way of letter-writing for the Protector than had been required by the preceding Councils of State in their comparatively thin relations with foreign powers; but that a blind man in the post should have been so satisfactory for the increased requirements says something for the employer as well as for the blind man. Thurloe and others had relieved Milton of much of the secretarial work; there had also been many breaks in Milton's secretaryship even in the letter-writing department, occasioned by ill-health, family-troubles, or occupation with literary tasks which were really public commissions and were credited to him as such; and at such times the dependence had been on Meadows or some one else for the Latin letters necessary. Always, however, when the occasion was very important, as when there had to be the burst of circular letters about the Piedmontese massacre, the blind man had to be sent to, or sent for. And what is worthy of notice now is that this had continued to be the case to the last. At no time in the Secretaryship had there been a series of more important letters from Milton's pen than those just inventoried, written for the Protector in the last five months of his life, and mostly in the months of May and June, 1658. Two or three of them are about ships or other small matters, showing that, even with Marvfell now; at hand for such drudgery, Milton did not wholly escape it; but the rest are on the topics of highest interest to Cromwell and closest to his heart. The poor Piedmontese Protestants are again in danger. Who must again sound the alarm? Milton. Cromwell's son-in-law, the gallant Falconbridge, starts on his embassy to Calais. Who must write the letters that are to introduce him to King Louis and the Cardinal? Milton. The gorgeous return embassy of the Duke de Crequi and M. Mancini has to be acknowledged, and the bells rung for the fall of Dunkirk; and with the congratulations to be conveyed across the Channel on that event there have to be interwoven Cromwell's thanks to the King and the Cardinal for having so punctually kept their faith with him by the delivery of the town to Lockhart. Who shall express the complex message? None but Milton. Finally, Cromwell would stretch his hand eastward across the seas to grasp that of the Swedish Charles Gustavus struggling with _his_ peculiar difficulties, to give him brotherly cheer in the midst of them, brotherly hope also that they two, whoever else in a generation of hucksters, may yet live to lead in a glorious Protestant League for the overthrow of Babylon and the woman blazing in scarlet. Who interprets between hero and hero? Always and only the blind Milton. Positively, in reading Milton's despatches for Cromwell on such subjects as the persecutions of the Vaudois and the scheme of a Protestant European League, one hardly knows which is speaking, the secretary or the ruler. Cromwell melts into Milton, and Milton is Cromwell eloquent and Latinizing.[2]

[Footnote 1: With one exception, all the State-letters of Milton, from the beginning of his Secretaryship to the death of Cromwell, that have been preserved either in the Printed Collection or in the Skinner Transcript, have now been inventoried, and, as far as possible, dated and elucidated in the text of these volumes. The exception is a brief scrap thrown in at the end of the Letters for Cromwell both in the Printed Collection and in the Skinner Transcript, but omitted by Phillips in his translation as not worthwhile. It was not written for Cromwell or his Council, but only for the Commissioners of the Great Seal--whether for those under the Protectorate, or for their predecessors, does not appear, though perhaps that might be ascertained. The scrap may be numbered at this point, though inserted only as a note:--(CXXXIII.) "We, Commissioners of the Great Seal of England, &c., desire that the Supreme Court of the Parliament of Paris will, on request, take such steps that Miles, William, and Maria Sandys, children of the lately deceased William Sandys and his wife Elizabeth Soame, English by birth and minors, may be able, from Paris, where they are now under protection of the said Court, to return to us forthwith, and will deliver the said children into the charge of the Scotchman James Mowat, a good and honest man, to whom we have delegated this charge, that he may receive them where they are and bring them to us; and we engage that, on opportunity of the same sort offered, there will be a return from this Court of the like justice and equity to any subjects of France."]

[Footnote 2: The uniformly Miltonic style of the greater letters for the Protector, the same style as had been used in the more important letters for the Commonwealth, utterly precludes the idea that Milton was only the translator of drafts furnished him. In the smaller letters, about ships wrongfully seized and other private injuries, the case may have been partly so, though even there Milton must have had liberty of phraseology, and would imbed the facts in his own expressions. But there was not a man about the Council that could have furnished the drafts of the greater letters as we now have them. My idea as to the way in which they were composed is that, on each occasion, Milton learnt from Thurloe, or even in a preappointed interview with the Council, or with Cromwell himself, the sort of thing that was wanted, and that then, having himself dictated and sent in an English draft, he received it back, approved or with corrections and suggested additions, to be turned into Latin. Special Cromwellian hints to Milton for the letter to Louis XIV, on the alarm of a new persecution of the Piedmontese (ante pp. 387-9) must have been, I should say, the causal reference to a certain pass as the best military route yet into Italy from France, and the suggestion of an exchange of territories between Louis and the Duke of Savoy so as to make the Vaudois French subjects. The hints may have been given to Milton beforehand, or they may have been [n]otched in by Cromwell in revising Milton's English draft.]

The last letters to Louis XIV., Mazarin, and Charles Gustavus of Sweden, bring us to within about two months of Cromwell's death, and the last one of all, that to the King of Portugal, to within less than a single month of the same. We have yet a farther trace of the diplomacies proper to Milton's office round the dying Protector. Here, however, it is not Milton that comes into view, but his colleague or assistant, Andrew Marvell.