310 



MILTON. 



Milton, still it must be remembered, that this work professed 

 not to discuss the question personally respecting Charles, 

 hut respecting the abstract principle of human rights 

 and regal responsibility, at the root of which the anti- 

 regicides were now striking. Whatever treatment it 

 might have been true and humane policy to have im- 

 posed on the fallen monarch, it was not to be tolerated 

 that his fate should be called in question, on the atro- 

 cious principle that kings are not responsible. So that 

 Milton, as far as abstract principle was concerned, is 

 not to be viewed in the light of one contributing to 

 shed Charles's blood, but to be justified for slaying the 

 monstrous opinions that rose out of it. 



Kis next work was a pamphlet on the articles of 

 peace, which the Earl of Ormond concluded at Kil- 

 kenny in the king's name with the Irish insurgents. 



Without imputing to Charles any participation in the 

 horrible massacre of the Irish protestants, it is clear that 

 the treaty with the Catholics, concluded under the 

 king's name and authority by Ormond, was sufficient to 

 confirm the public prepossession on the subject, and to 

 give an appearance of the tone of truth to republican 

 and puritan invective. Milton, therefore, found it not 

 difficult to be severe on the articles of a peace, which, 

 by abandoning the English and Protestant cause in 

 Ireland, permitted their enemies to indulge in sangui- 

 nary revenge. When he had concluded this attack, he 

 returned to the more quiet occupations ofliterature, and 

 finished four books of his history of England. These 

 come down no farther than the union of the heptarchy 

 under Edgar. Two other books, written at a subse- 

 quent period, namely, after his controversy with Morus, 

 bring the narrative as far as the battle of Hastings. It 

 is a history unfortunately terminating at the period 

 where our annals begin to be interesting j but the ma- 

 terials are copious and curious, and the style energetic, 

 though occasionally harsh. The first book is abandon- 

 ed without reserve to the fables of Geoffrey of Mon- 

 mouth, and was intended, as the author intimated, ra- 

 ther to suggest subjects to the poet, than maxims to the 

 statesman or sage. 



On the death of Charles I. the executive power f the 

 commonwealth was lodged in a council of 38 members 

 of the legislative assembly, who made England for a 

 time command the respect and terror of Europe. Re- 

 solving to adopt the old Roman language in their in- 

 tercourse with foreign powers, they appointed a Latin 

 secretary ; and the learning, talents, and republicanism 

 of Milton, pointed him out as the person best fitted to 

 fill this office. The .younger Vane and Bradshaw, who 

 have both been the subject of his panegyric, are suppo- 

 sed to have first suggested his appointment. His con- 

 tinuance in this office was prolonged to the Restoration ; 

 and the state papers in his department were models in 

 the class of diplomatic compositions. Those letters in 

 particular which he wrote in the Protector's name, to 

 mediate for the oppressed Protestants of Piedmont, re- 

 flect a lustre on the reign of Cromwell) and on the his- 

 tory of England. 



Milton had scarcely entered on the proper functions 

 of his office, when he was summoned by the new go- 

 vernment to the discharge of another and peculiar duty. 

 One of the contrivances of the royalists after the death 

 of Charles, to stimulate public enthusiasm in their cause, 

 was to publish the Eikon Basilike, or portrait of his sa- 

 cred majesty in his solitude and sufferings. The book 

 was given out to be a collection of the feelings and re- 

 flections which Charles I. had at various times during 



the civil wars committed to writing. It represents him 

 in the constant intercourse of prayer with his Maker, 

 asserting the integrity of his motives before the Search- 

 er of hearts, and appealing to his juitice from the injus- 

 tice of man. There are few men, whose conduct 

 through life would sanction them in writing such a di- 

 ary, to make conscientiously such constant appeals to 

 the Deity in favour of the purity of their motives, and 

 Charles was neither so pure as to be able to make them 

 with a safe conscience, nor so hardened as to have made 

 them with cool hypocrisy. It has been ascertained, by 

 proofs which no reasonable man can reject, that this 

 book, representing him as a saint and a martyr, was 

 written for the political ends of the royalists by Dr. 

 Gauden ; and it is remarkably curious, that the most 

 decided confession of the spuriousness of the Eikon was 

 made by Charles's own sons Charles II. and the Duke 

 of York *. The work, however, was considered as ge- 

 nuine when Milton wrote his remarks on it, although 

 there were internal symptoms against its authenticity 

 which his sagacity could not overlook. The council of 

 state saw the dangerous impression which the Eikon 

 Basilike was calculated to make. They might have sup- 

 pressed it by force ; but they preferred waging war, 

 by opposing argument to argument, and book to book. 

 Milton, at their desire, wrote the Iconoclastes, or image- 

 breaker, in which he disclaims the intention of insult- 

 ing the memory of Charles, but confronts the monarch's 

 actions with the piety ascribed to him, and has even 

 hinted at the work having been manufactured for him 

 by his household rhetorician, a suspicion which time 

 has verified. 



Milton's memory has been charged with three several 

 offences in the Iconoclastes, or Image Breaker. In the 

 first place, with having too rudely blamed the king for 

 making use of a prayer which he borrowed from a ro- 

 mance, namely, Sir Philip Sydney's Arcadia ; in the 

 next place, with having interpolated the Eikon Basilike 

 with that prayer, in order that he might establish a 

 ground of censure ; and, in the third place, with hav- 

 ing uncharitably insulted Charles's memory, on account 

 of his intimacy with the plays of Shakespeare. The 

 first accusation is true, the two others are absurd. 

 He did, with unnecessary harshness, animadvert on 

 Charles's having borrowed a prayer from a romance, 

 but he did not interpolate the Eikon ; for in the first 

 edition of the Eikon, printed by Royston a royalist, the 

 prayer in question is to be found. His animadversion 

 on the king's fondness for Shakespeare is perfectly un- 

 blameable : the gust of all that he says, is merely to 

 convey the remark, that pious and clement sentiments 

 have often been put into the mouths of tyrants, and by 

 no poet more than by Shakespeare, with whom Charles 



I. was so well acquainted 



On being appointed to the office of Latin secretary, 

 Milton removed first to a lodging at Charing Cross, and 

 afterwards to apartments in Scotland Yard. In this 

 last residence his wife had her third child, a son, who 

 died in his infancy, on the 16th of March, 1650. In 

 1652, he changed his abode to Petty France, where he 

 occupied, till the Restoration, a handsome house open- 

 ing into St. James's Park. 



He bad no sooner finished his Iconocla les, than he 

 entered into his controversy with Salmasius. This 

 learned Frenchman, (Saumaise, or Salmasius,) an ho- 

 norary professor of Leyden, was employed by Charles 



II. to write the Defensio Eegia, or an appeal to the 

 world in behalf of the cause of royalty, prelacy, and the 



When a copy of the Eikon was sold among the books of the first Earl of Angleses, ft memorandum was found in it in that nobleman's 

 handwriting, attesting that Charles II. and the Duke of York had disavowed the Etkoit as the woik of their father. 



