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' MILTON 563 had aroused throughout Europe a feeling of horror and indignation, and created a reac- tionary tendency even among the partisans of the revolution. Milton wrote " The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates," published within a month after the death of the king, in which he undertook to prove that subjects have a right to depose or put to death a wicked monarch. He also published " Observations " on the ar- ticles of peace which the earl of Ormond had concluded in the king's name with the Irish Catholics. On the establishment of the com- monwealth, Latin was fixed upon as the official language of intercourse with foreign states. To Milton, in view both of his scholarship and his services, was given the office of secretary for foreign tongues; and 16 letters and other documents first published by the Camden so- ciety in 1859 confirm all previous impressions of his skill in Latin composition, and of the eloquence, energy, and dignity he gave to the political despatches of the commonwealth. He vindicated the freedom of England on the seas, protested against the persecution of the Wal- denses by the duke of Savoy, and expounded to Europe the position and policy of the new government. The Eilcon Basilike was passing through numerous editions, and winning popu- lar sympathy for the "royal martyr," and he therefore prepared a counteractive under the title of EiTconoUastes (1649). Claude de Sau- maise (Salmasius), one of the most distinguish- ed contemporary scholars, was instigated by Charles II., then a refugee in Holland, to com- pose an elaborate defence of the inviolability of kings, and especially of royalty in England, in a treatise worthy to be submitted to the learned of Europe. The name of the author was sufficient to secure fame and extended in- fluence to his work, and the council imme- diately made an order "that Mr. Milton do prepare something in answer to the book of Salmasius." This was the occasion of his Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio contra Salmasii Defensionem JRegiam (1650), in which he as- sailed at once the philosophy and Latinity of his opponent, and surpassed him in scholastic vituperation. It was deemed a triumph, and he received the thanks of the council and the congratulations of the foreign ministers in London. His eyesight had been failing for several years, and his physicians informed him before he undertook this defence that total blindness was threatened ; but he regarded the task as a "sacred duty, and it hastened the mal- ady, the "drop serene" (gutta serena), as it is termed in his plaintive account of it. Before 1654 he was completely blind, though his eyes were perfectly clear, and without mark, speck, or disfigurement. He had already removed to the house in Petty France, opening into St. James's park, in which he remained till the restoration, and which was afterward occupied by Hazlitt. In 1652 appeared Regii Sanguinis Clamor ad Ccelum, written by Dumoulin, a Frenchman resident in England, but attrib- uted to Moore (Morus), a Scotchman resident in France, abounding in calumnious invective against Milton personally. This occasioned his Defensio Secunda (1654), a noble defence of his own conduct, a vindication of the par- liament, and a merciless retaliation for the scurrilities of his antagonist. The dispute was prolonged by two additional pamphlets on each side. Milton continued to write many of the more important state papers until the year of the restoration, and was also Occupied with his history of England, with framing a body of divinity, and perhaps with the composition of his great poem, the subject of which he had at length determined. He also opposed to the last in divers tracts and letters the return of the monarchy. For 20 years he had been the foremost literary champion of the principles of English liberty, then struggling for recog- nition. His polemical writings abound in passages of the finest declamation, marked by a peculiar majesty of diction, and by a sus- tained and passionate magniloquence. The political theory which he advanced was in some respects peculiar to himself. He advocated a free commonwealth, without a sovereign or a house of lords. The government should be in- trusted to a general council of ablest men, chosen by the nation, and he opposed the co- existence of any popular assembly. He would not even have the members of the council chosen directly by a popular vote, but recom- mended three or four "sifting and refining" processes. After the restoration, a proclama- tion was issued for the arrest of Milton, and two of his books were publicly burned. He lived in concealment till the act of indemnity placed him in safety. His first wife had died in 1652 or 1653, leaving him three little girls; he married a second time, Nov. 12, 1656, Cath- arine, daughter of a Captain Woodcock of Hackney ; but his wife, whose memory is em- balmed in one of his most beautiful sonnets, survived only 15 months; and about 1663 he married Elizabeth Minshull, daughter of Ralph Minshull of Cheshire. The last was a mar- riage of convenience, arranged by a friend, because his daughters had ceased to treat him with kindness. They however lived in his house five or six years longer, in constant quar- rel with their stepmother. Unsubdued by pain, obloquy, and blindness, amid domestic infeli- cities and the profligacy of the era of the comic dramatists, and witnessing the public defeat of the principles which he had represented, he meditated and dictated the poems of "Paradise Lost" and "Paradise Regained." According to Ellwood, the former was completed and the latter was begun at Chalfont, whither Milton retired from London during the plague of 1665. "Paradise Lost" was sold to Samuel Simmons, bookseller, April 27, 1667, for 5 in hand, and a promise of the same sum on the sale of the first 1,300 copies of each edition, none of which was to exceed 1,500 copies. The second payment was received in 1669, the