t an indifferent actor, and he seems
to have been even more careful of his money investments than he was
of his intellectual offspring. Yet these, all men of active business
habits, are among the greatest writers of any age: the period of
Elizabeth and James I. standing out in the history of England as the era
of its greatest literary activity and splendour.

In the reign of Charles I., Cowley held various offices of trust and
confidence. He acted as private secretary to several of the royalist
leaders, and was afterwards engaged as private secretary to the Queen,
in ciphering and deciphering the correspondence which passed between her
and Charles I.; the work occupying all his days, and often his nights,
during several years. And while Cowley was thus employed in the royal
cause, Milton was employed by the Commonwealth, of which he was the
Latin secretary, and afterwards secretary to the Lord Protector. Yet, in
the earlier part of his life, Milton was occupied in the humble vocation
of a teacher. Dr. Johnson says, "that in his school, as in everything
else which he undertook, he laboured with great diligence, there is no
reason for doubting" It was after the Restoration, when his official
employment ceased, that Milton entered upon the principal literary work
of his life; but before he undertook the writing of his great epic,
he deemed it indispensable that to "industrious and select reading"
he should add "steady observation" and "insight into all seemly and
generous arts and affairs." [1318]

Locke held office in different reigns: first under Charles II. as
Secretary to the Board of Trade and afterwards under William III. as
Commissioner of Appeals and of Trade and Plantations. Many literary
men of eminence held office in Queen Anne's reign. Thus Addison
was Secretary of State; Steele, Commissioner of Stamps; Prior,
Under-Secretary of State, and afterwards Ambassador to France; Tickell,
Under-Secretary of State, and Secretary to the Lords Justices of
Ireland; Congreve, Secretary of Jamaica;, and Gay, Secretary of Legation
at Hanover.

Indeed, habits of business, instead of unfitting a cultivated mind for
scientific or literary pursuits, are often the best training for them.
Voltaire insisted with truth that the real spirit of business and
literature are the same; the perfection of each being the union of
energy and thoughtfulness, of cultivated intelligence and practical
wisdom, of the active and contemplative ess