atching of
Morus's face by the injured Bontia. These may sink into oblivion, while
we may be grateful for the occasion which led Milton to express himself
with such fortitude and dignity on his affliction and its
alleviations:--"Let the calumniators of God's judgments cease to revile
me, and to forge their superstitious dreams about me. Let them be
assured that I neither regret my lot nor am ashamed of it, that I remain
unmoved and fixed in my opinion, that I neither believe nor feel myself
an object of God's anger, but actually experience and acknowledge His
fatherly mercy and kindness to me in all matters of greatest
moment--especially in that I am able, through His consolation and His
strengthening of my spirit, to acquiesce in His divine will, thinking
oftener of what He has bestowed upon me than of what He has withheld:
finally, that I would not exchange the consciousness of what I have done
with that of any deed of theirs, however righteous, or part with my
always pleasant and tranquil recollection of the same." He adds that his
friends cherish him, study his wants, favour him with their society more
assiduously even than before, and that the Commonwealth treats him with
as much honour as if, according to the customs of the Athenians of old,
it had decreed him public support for his life in the Prytaneum.

Milton's tract is also interesting for its pen-portraits of some of the
worthies of the Commonwealth, and its indications of his own views on
the politics of his troubled times. Bradshaw is eulogized with great
elegance and equal truth for his manly courage and strict consistency.
"Always equal to himself, and like a consul re-elected for another year,
so that you would say he not only judged the King from his tribunal, but
is judging him all his life." This was matter of notoriety: one may hope
that Milton had equal reason for his praise of Bradshaw's affability,
munificence, and placability. The comparison of Fairfax to the elder
Scipio Africanus is more accurate than is always or often the case with
historical parallels, and by a dexterous turn, surprising if we have
forgotten the scholar in the controversialist, Fairfax's failure in
statesmanship, as Milton deemed it, is not only extenuated, but is made
to usher in the more commanding personality of Cromwell. Caesar, says
Johnson, had not more elegant flattery than Cromwell received from
Milton: nor Augustus, he might have added, encomiums more heartfelt and