, when a man of
parts has the fairest opportunity to play off his abilities to
advantage, that Milton did not rise sooner, nor to a greater
elevation; he was employed by those in authority only as a writer,
which conferred no power upon him, and kept him in a kind of
obscurity, who had from nature all that was proper for the field as
well as the cabinet; for we are assured that Milton was a man of
confirmed courage.

In 1651 our author published his Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio, for
which he was rewarded by the Commonwealth with a present of a thousand
pounds, and had a considerable hand in correcting and polishing a
piece written by his nephew Mr. John Philips, and printed at London
1652, under this title, Joannis Philippi Angli Responsio ad Apologiam
Anonymi cujusdam Tenebrionis pro Rege & Populo Anglicano
infantissimam. During the writing and publishing this book, he lodged
at one Thomson's, next door to the Bull-head tavern Charing-Cross; but
he soon removed to a Garden-house in Petty-France, next door to lord
Scudamore's, where he remained from the year 1652 till within a few
weeks of the Restoration. In this house, his first wife dying in
child-bed, 1652, he married a second, Catherine, the daughter of
Captain Woodcock of Hackney, who died of a consumption in three months
after she had been brought to bed of a daughter. This second marriage
was about two or three years after he had been wholly deprived of his
sight; for by reason of his continual studies, and the head-ach[e], to
which he was subject from his youth, and his perpetual tampering with
physic, his eyes had been decaying for twelve years before.

In 1654 he published his Defensio Secunda; and the year following his
Defensio pro Se. Being now at ease from his state adversaries, and
political controversies, he had leisure again to prosecute his own
studies, and private designs, particularly his History of Britain, and
his new Thesaurus Linguae Latinae according to the method of Robert
Stevens, the manuscript of which contained three large volumes in
folio, and has been made use of by the editors of the Cambridge
Dictionary, printed 4to, 1693.

In 1658 he published Sir Walter Raleigh's Cabinet Council; and in 1659
a Treatise of the Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes, Lond. 12mo.
and Considerations touching the likeliest Means to remove Hirelings
out of the Church; wherein are also Discourses of Tithes, Church-fees,
Church-Revenues, and whether any M