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CHAPTER XIX.

NOTWITHSTANDING the sadly changed times and his own discrowned political principles, the unwavering respect and even veneration accorded to Milton after the Restoration, proves the high estimation in which his genius, integrity, and unostentatious piety were universally held. Toland, after mentioning that numbers of the nobility and the more cultivated gentry were his habitual visitors, adds, "Nor was he less frequented by foreigners to the last, than in the time of his flourishing condition before the Restoration." Indeed his illustrious foreign friends and correspondents always manifested the kindest regard and exhibited the most watchful solicitude, from the unhappy day when blindness first struck him, until the hour of his death.

Thus a rumor having been circulated that he had fallen a victim to the plague in 1666, Peter Heimbach, a learned and famous German scholar and politician, and perhaps a

sometime pupil of the immortal Englishman, wrote anxiously to inquire into the truth of the report. To this letter Milton penned the following reply:

"TO THE MOST ACCOMPLISHED PETER HEIMBACH, COUNCILLOR OF STATE TO THE ELECTOR OF BRANDENBURGH :

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'That in a year so pestilential and so fatal as the present, amid the deaths of so many of my compatriots, you should have believed me likewise, as you write me word, in consequence too of some rumor or other, to have fallen a victim, excites in me no surprise; and if that rumor owed its currency among you, as it seems to have done, to anxiety for my welfare, I feel flattered by it as an instance of your friendly regard. Through the goodness of God however, who had provided me with a safe retreat in the country, I still live and am well; and would that I could add, not incompetent to any duty which it may be my further destiny to discharge.

"But that, after so long an interval, I should have recurred to your remembrance, is highly gratifying to me; though, to judge from your eloquent embellishments of the matter,

when you profess your admiration of so many different virtues united in my single person, you seem to furnish some ground for suspecting that I have indeed escaped from your recollection. From such a number of unions, in fact, I should have cause to dread a progeny too numerous, were it not admitted that in disgrace and adversity the virtues principally increase and flourish. One of them, however, has not made me any very grateful return for her entertainment; for she whom you call the political, though I had rather you had termed her love of country, after seduciug me with her fine name, has nearly, if I may so express myself, deprived me of a country. The rest indeed harmonize more perfectly together. Our country is wherever we can live as we ought.

"Before I conclude, I must prevail on you to impute whatever incorrectness of orthography or of punctuation you may discover in this epistle to my young amanuensis, whose total ignorance of Latin has imposed on me the disagreeable necessity of actually dictating to him every individual letter.

"That your deserts as a man, consistently with the high promise with which you raised my expectations in your youth, should have elevated you to so eminent a station in your sovereign's favor, gives me the most sincere pleasure; and I fervently pray and trust that you may proceed and prosper. Farewell.

"LONDON, August 15, 1666."

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In 1671 Milton published the "Paradise Regained," and "Samson Agonistes, a poem written after the completion, in 1666, of the "Paradise Lost" and the "Paradise Regained."

It seems peculiarly appropriate that the blind Samson who typifies the physical strength of antiquity, should be celebrated by the blind. Samson of literature, who had groped for the pillars, and who overthrew the temple of English tyranny.

Of the merits of this noble and pathetic drama, all critics are loud in the praise, though several writers have quarrelled with its con

* Agonistes, from a Greek word, meaning a contender in the public games of Greece, which were called agones, whence our English word agony. This was the peculiarly appropriate title which Milton chose for the hero of his drama, the catastrophe of which results from an exhibition of his strength in the public games of the Philistines. See Symmons, p. 490.

duct, and also with some portions of its structure. Still, in pathos of sentiment, in breadth of tone, in dignity of diction, and in that marvellous and heaven-kissing sublimity which immortalizes all of Milton's more elaborate compositions, "Samson Agonistes" is hardly surpassed even by the transcendent glories af "Paradise Lost."

Milton's philosophy, unlike that of the old philosophers of the Grecian and Roman schools, which scorned to descend to the advancement of humble and useful things, was derived from the broader school of Lord Bacon, the key to whose philosophic system, as Macauley assures us, is found in two words-progress and utility. Therefore, notwithstanding the high and ideal level upon which many of his works stood, he stooped with grace and ease to perform the humblest offices of utility. He had already published several treatises for the special assistance and advancement of young students. The year following the appearance of the "Samson Agonistes" witnessed another instance of his literary condescension. He wrote in 1672, for the aid of advanced schol

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