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It is not known who was the author of this piece. Some attributed it to one Janus, a lawyer, of Gray'sInn, and others to Dr John Bramhall, who was then Bishop of Derry, and was made Primate of Ireland after the Restoration: but it is utterly improbable, that so mean a performance, written in such barbarous Latin, and so full of solecisms, should come from the hands of a Prelate of such distinguished abilities and learning. But whoever was the author of it, Milton did not think it worth his while to animadvert upon it himself, but employed the younger of his nephews to answer it; but he supervised and corrected the answer so much before it went to the press, that it may in a manner be called his own. It came forth in 1652, under this title, Johannis Philippi Angli Responsio ad Apologiam Anonymi cujusdam Tenebrionis pro Rege & Populo Anglicano infantissimam; and it is printed with Milton's works; and throughout the whole Mr. Philips treats Bishop Bram hall with great severity as the author of the Apology, thinking probably that so considerable an adversary would make the answer more considerable.

Sir Robert Filmer likewise published some animadversions upon Milton's Defence of the People, in a piece printed in 1652, and intitled Observations concerning the Original of Government, upon Mr. Hobbes's Leviathan, Mr. Milton against Salmasius, and Hugo Grotius de Jure Belli; but I do not find that Milton, or any of his friends, took any notice of it; but Milton's quarrel was afterwards sufficiently

avenged by Mr. Locke, who wrote against Sir Røbert Filmer's principles of government, more, I suppose in condescension to the prejudices of the age, than out of any regard to the weight or importance of Filmer's arguments.

It is probable that Milton, when he was first made Latin Secretary, removed from his house in High Holborn, to be nearer Whitehall: and for 'some time he had lodgings at one Thomson's, next door to the Bull-head Tavern, at Charing-Cross, opening into Spring-Garden, till the apartment appointed for him in Scotland-Yard could be got ready for his reception. He then removed thither; and there his third child, a son, was born, and named John, who, through the ill usage or bad constitution of the nurse, died an infant. His own health too was greatly impaired; and for the benefit of the air, he removed from his apartment in Scotland-Yard to a house in Petty-France, Westminster, which was next door to Lord Scudamore's, and opened into St. James's Park; and there he remained eight years, from the year 1652 till within a few weeks of the King's Restoration. In this house he had not been settled long, before his first wife died in childbed; and his condition requiring some care and attendance, he was easily induced, after a proper interval of time, to marry a second, who was Catharine, daughter of Captain Woodcock, of Hackney; and she too died in childbed within a year after their marriage, and her child, who was a daughter, died in a month after her; and

her husband has done honour to her memory in one of his Sonnets.

Two or three years before this second marriage he had totally lost his sight. And his enemies triumphed in his blindness, and imputed it as a judgment upon him for writing against the King: but his sight had been decaying several years before, through his close application to study, and the frequent headakes to which he had been subject from his childhood, and his continual tampering with physic, which perhaps was more pernicious than all the rest; and he himself has informed us, in his second Defence, that when he was appointed by authority to write his Defence of the People against Salmasius, he had almost lost the sight of one eye, and the physicians declared to him that if he undertook that work, he would also lose the sight of the other: but he was no ways discouraged, and chose rather to lose both his eyes than desert what he thought his duty. It was the sight of his left eye that he lost first: and at the desire of his friend, Leonard Philaras, the Duke of Parma's Minister at Paris, he sent him a particular account of his case, and of the manner of his growing blind, for him to consult Thevenot the physician, who was reckoned famous in cases of the eyes. The letter is the fifteenth of his familiar epistles, is dated September 28, 1654: and is thus translated by Mr. Richardson.

"SINCE you advise me not to fling away all hopes of recovering my sight, for that you have a friend at

Paris, Thevenot the physician, particularly famous for the eyes, whom you offer to consult in my behalf if you receive from me an account by which he may judge of the causes and symptoms of my disease, I will do what you advise me to, that I may not seem to refuse any assistance that is offered, perhaps from God.

"I think 'tis about ten years, more or less, since I began to perceive that my eye-sight grew weak and dim, and at the same time my spleen and bowels to be opprest and troubled with Flatus; and in the morning when I began to read, according to custom, my eyes grew painful immediately, and to refuse reading, but were refreshed after a moderate exercise of the body. A certain Iris began to surround the light of the candle if I looked at it; soon after which, on the left part of the left eye (for that was some years sooner clouded) a mist arose which hid every thing on that side; and looking forward if I shut my right eye, objects appeared smaller. My other eye also, for these last three years, failing by degrees, some 'months before all sight was abolished, things which I looked upon seemed to swim to the right and left; certain inveterate vapours seem to possess my forehead and temples, which, after meat especially, quite to evening, generally, urge and depress my eyes with a sleepy heaviness. Nor would I omit, that whilst there was as yet some remainder of sight, 'I no sooner lay down in my bed, and turned on my side, but a copious light dazzled out of my shut eyes;

and as my sight diminished every day, colours gradually more obscure flashed out with vehemence; but now that the lucid is in a manner wholly extinct, a direct blackness, or else spotted, and, as it were, woven with ash-colour, is used to pour itself in. Nevertheless the constant and settled darkness that is before me, as well by night as by day, seems nearer to the whitish than the blackish; and the eye-rolling itself a little, seems to admit I know not what little smallness of light as through a chink."

But it does not appear what answer he received; we may presume none that administered any relief. His blindness, however, did not disable him entirely from performing the business of his office. An assistant was allowed him, and his salary as Secretary still continued to him.

And there was farther occasion for his service, besides dictating of letters. For the controversy with Salmasius did not die with him, and there was published at the Hague, in 1652, a book intitled the Cry of the King's Blood, &c. Regii Sanguinis Clamor ad Cœlum adversus Parricidas Anglicanos. The true author of this book was Peter du Moulin the younger, who was afterwards Prebendary of Canterbury; and he transmitted his papers to Salmasius; and Salmasius intrusted them to the care of Alexander Morus, a French Minister; and Morus published them with a dedication to King Charles II. in the name of Adrian Ulac the printer, from whence he

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