"1653-4. Feb. 3. OLIVER, P.

"These are to will and require you, out of such moneys as are in or shall come to your hands for the use of the Councell, to pay unto the severall persons, on the other side endorsed, the severall sums to their names mentioned, making in all the summ of one thousand seventy eight pounds, twelve shillings, and a penny, being soe much due unto them on the 1st of January last, intended for their severall salaryes; of which you are not to fayle, and

for which this shall be your warrant.

Whitehall the 3d of Feb. 1653.

Given at

"Mr. Jessop, 17 Oct. to the 1st of Jan. incl. 77 dayes

77 0 0

"Mr. Gualter Frost, as Secretary Assistant to the said Councell of State, from the same time to the 12th Dec. 71 dayes

"Mr. John Milton for halfe a yeare, from 4th July to the first of Jan. last inclusive, at 15s. 10d. per diem

"Mr. Philip Meadowes, for one quarter from the 2d Oct. to 1st Jan.

1659. Oct. 25. A similar Warrant for payment of the Council of State's contingencies to the 22d of Oct. 1659.

0

86 12 0

"At 17. per diem Richard Kingdon. 86 0 "At 2007. per S John Milton

annum each Andrew Marvill. 86 12

0."

Here then is the last payment for official employment to Milton; of whom his nephew about the same time says, that "a little before the king's coming over he was sequestered from his office of Latin secretary, and the salary thereunto belonging." The division of the secretaryship had now allowed him leisure to project, among other literary considerations, the great and imperishable memorial of his fame. Aubrey tells us, that about two years before the Restoration Milton began his Paradise Lost; and Anthony Wood, from Aubrey, relates, that " being dispensed with, by having a substitute allowed him, and sometimes instructions sent home to him, from attending his office of secretary, Milton began that laborious work of amassing out of all the classick authors, both in prose and verse, a Latin Thesaurus, to the emendation of that done by Stephens; THE COMPOSING OF PARADISE LOST; and the

X

* See before what is said of Aubrey's Collections, p. 13.

y

framing a Body of Divinity out of the Bible." Others ascribe to him, during the happy hours which he had now secured for his studies, the design of continuing a History of his native country; with which he certainly proceeded after the publication of Paradise Lost. Of both these in their order. Of the Dictionary I may observe, from Phillips, that the preparations which Milton had long been making were found so discomposed and deficient, "that they could not be fitted for the press;" while I find, however, that they afforded great assistance to the editors of the Cambridge dictionary in 1693 and of the Body of Divinity, long supposed to be irrecoverably lost, and said to be finished after the Restoration, though no particular date is named, an account, furnished by the recent discovery of it in the State-Paper Office, and since published by the gracious command of his Majesty, will close the detail of Milton's writings in the following pages.

1

Thus employed upon gigantick plans, we find him within the same memorable period not averse to

So Phillips relates. Aubrey says, that he heard from the poet's widow, that while he was blind he was writing in the heads of a dictionary; and that she gave all his papers, among which was this dictionary imperfect, to his nephew Phillips.

2 The editors acknowledge their obligation to manuscript collections in "three large folios, digested into an alphabetical order, which the learned Mr. John Milton had made." Pref. p. 2. col. 2.

humbler occupations. He could condescend in 1658

a

to the amusement of editing from a manuscript The Cabinet Council of Ralegh. In 1659 he was on the alert in behalf of the cause he had so long served, and in vindication of his attachment which had been questioned; publishing his Treatise of Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes, and his Considerations touching the Means of removing Hirelings out of the Church. These he addressed to the Parliament of the Commonwealth of England. And upon the dissolution of the Parliament by the army, he wrote

a

Anthony Wood, in his Account of Sir Walter Ralegh, names The Prince or Maxims of State by Ralegh under the year 1642, and adds, 'tis the same with his Aphorisms of State, published by John Milton, in 1661. And again under 1658 he mentions The Cabinet Council, &c. published by J. Milton aforesaid. Now Milton's publication is entitled "The Arts of Empire and Mysteries of State discabinated in Political and Polemical Aphorisms," &c. So that the two publications, usually mentioned by the biographers of the poet, are probably one and the same. The Arts of Empire, &c. again issued from the press in 1692.

b After the Treatise on these Causes was published, Milton was thus addressed by Mr. John Wall in a letter, dated May 26, 1659. "I was uncertain whether your relation [as Secretary] to the Court (though I think a Commonwealth was more friendly to you than a Court) had not clouded your former light; but your last book [this Treatise] resolved that doubt.-Sir, my humble request is, that you would proceed, and give us that other member of the distribution mentioned in your book, viz. that Hire doth greatly impede Truth and Liberty." Pref. to Baron's Edit. of the Iconoclastes. Milton did proceed, as his republican friends wished, and immediately published the Considerations &c. named above. The Treatise &c. was republished in 1790 with a dedication to Dr. Richard Price. The Considerations also were separately reprinted in 1723.

C

A Letter to a Friend concerning the Ruptures of the Commonwealth; and a Brief Declaration of a Free Commonwealth, easy to be put in practice, and without delay, addressed to General Monk. In February 1659-60 he gave to the world, what he hoped might not contain "the last words of expiring liberty," his Ready and Easy Way to establish a Free Commonwealth, which gave rise both to a serious and a ludicrous reply; and soon afterwards Brief Notes upon a Sermon, preached in March 1659-60 by Dr. Matthew Griffith, called The Fear of God and the King. His apprehension of expiring liberty, as he calls it, was now again aroused by the sound eloquence and serviceable zeal of the preacher; who boldly affirmed, that "without the restitution of King Charles to his native rights, we can in reason look for no solid settlement of religion or law, liberty or property, peace or plenty, honour or safety. To all these we can never be firmly restored but by the king, and the king not forced to come by his birthright as a con

The "Dignity of Kingship asserted in Answer to Mr. Milton's Ready and Easy Way, &c. By G. S. A lover of Loyalty. Lond. 1660." The author of this serious and often severe Reply was probably Mr. George Searle, one of the ejected members of the House of Commons, and who was a writer. The burlesque answer was pretended to issue from Harrington's club, in order to point more strongly the ridicule against Milton. But Harrington's club, as Mr. Warton has observed, encouraged all proposals for new models of government; and Milton's intimacy with Skinner, one of its most distinguished members, is well known; so that the remonstrance as from that quarter may be discredited.