less apprehension that nothing but kingship can restore trade, not remembering the frequent plagues and pestilences that then wasted this city, such as through God's mercy we never have felt since; and that trade flourishes no where more than in the free commonwealths of Italy, Germany, and the Low Countries, before their eyes at this day: yet if trade be grown so craving and importu nate through the profuse living of tradesmen, that nothing can support it but the luxurious expences of a nation upon trifles or superfluities: so as if the people generally should betake themselves to frugality, it might prove a dangerous matter, lest tradesmen should mutiny for want of trading; and that therefore we must forego and set to sale religion, liberty, honour, safety, all concernments divine or human, to keep up trading: if, lastly, after all this light among us, the same reason shall pass for current, to put our necks again under kingship, as was made use of by the Jews to return back to Egypt, and to the worship of their idol queen, because they falsely imagined that they then lived in more plenty and prosperity; our condition is not sound but rotten, both in religion and all civil prudence; and will bring us soon, the way we are marching, to those calami

4

ties which attend always and unavoidably on luxury, all national judgments under foreign and domestic slavery: so far we shall be from mending our condition by monarchising our government, whatever new conceit now possesses us. However, with all hazard I have ventured what I thought my duty to speak in season, and to forewarn my country in time; wherein I doubt not but there be many wise men in all places and degrees, but am sorry the effects of wisdom are so little seen among us. Many circumstances and particulars I could have added in those things whereof I have spoken: but a few main matters, now put speedily in execution, will suffice to recover us and set all right: and there will want at no time who are good at circumstances; but men, who set their minds on main matters and sufficiently urge them in these most difficult times, I find not many. What I have spoken, is the language of that which is not called amiss "The good old Cause:" if it seem strange to any, it will not seem more strange, I hope, than convincing to backsliders. Thus much I should perhaps have said, though I were sure I should have spoken only to trees and stones; and had none to cry to but, with the prophet, "O earth, earth, earth!" to tell the very

soil itself, what her perverse inhabitants are deaf to. Nay, though what I have spoke should happen (which thou suffer not, who didst create mankind free! nor thou next, who didst redeem us from being servants of men!) to be the last words of our expiring liberty.""

This production was made the subject of a sportive and a serious reply: the former, a ludicrous pamphlet affecting to issue from Harrington's republican club, was called "The Censure of the Rota upon Mr. Milton's Book, entitled "The ready and easy Way to establish a free Commonwealth;" and the latter was styled, "The Dignity of Kingship asserted in Answer to Mr. Milton's ready and easy Way, &c."

These attacks were not calculated to occasion much disturbance to the republican author: but he could not feel equally easy on the near approach of that thunder-cloud, which was just ready to burst upon him and his party. His spirit however did not desert him; and, while there remained a possibility of upholding his falling cause, he was resolute and active in its support. Bold in the anticipation of

" P. W. iii, 421, 422, 128.

their triumph, the Royalists had already seised upon the press and the pulpit for the diffusion of their tenets and their resentments; and Dr. Matthew Griffith, one of the late king's chaplains, desirous of making a professional display of his loyalty at a crisis when it might be especially beneficial to him, published a sermon, which he had preached at Mercer's Hall, on (Proverbs xxiv. 21.) "My Son, fear the Lord and the King, and meddle not with them that are given to change." On this provocation Milton instantly kindled; and, in a short but forcible commentary on the Doctor's sermon, renewed his strong avowal of republicanism, at a time when this heresy in British politics was on the point of being finally proscribed. To these "brief notes," as Milton calls his remarks on Grif

* Milton's severity, on this intrusion of the pulpit into the province of politics, reminds us of the asperity with which Mr. Burke reprehended a similar invasion by a modern divine. Dr. Price differed as essentially in his political principles from the chaplain of Charles, as Milton did from the Marquis of Rockingham's secretary: yet the two doctors experienced the same treatment, and the two statesmen concurred in the same sentiments of reprobation. The politics of the pulpit may, at all times, perhaps be liable to just censure; but they are never arraigned when they are not in opposition to our own. If they are convicted of the guilt of a complexion different from our's, they are certain of condemnation, and must not hope to be allowed the benefit of clergy.

fith's sermon, L'Estrange wrote a sharp reply, of which I know nothing more than its title of "No blind Guides:" and with this skirmish terminated the political controversies of the author of Paradise Lost.

Charles was now advancing, with the acclamations of the people, to sit upon the throne of his ancestors; and the Latin Secretary had acted too conspicuous a part in opposition to him and to his family not to be endangered by the event. By his friends therefore, who were solicitous for his safety, Milton was hurried from his house in PettyFrance, where during some years he had been visited with respect by the great, the opulent, and the learned, and was secreted under the roof of a friend in St. Bartholomew's Close, near to West Smithfield." Here his conceal

y Mr. Warton, who occasionally collects curious anecdotes, relates, on the authority of Mr. Tyers, (whose authority also ought to have been stated,) that Milton's friends, for the purpose of suspending the pursuit of his enemies, made a mock funeral for him on the present interesting occasion; and that the trick, when it was afterwards discovered, became an object of the king's mirth. See Warton's Edit. of Milton's Juvenile Poems, p. 358. In Cunningham's History of Great Britain, the same fact is mentioned, and it is said that "the king applauded his policy in escaping the punishment of death by a seasonable show of dying." When he could not murder, this facetious monarch could still laugh.