nterest in this young Ranelagh of
a semi-tutorial kind, as well as on his mother's account, the sequel
will prove.

Strange things do happen in real life; and actually it was possible
that, on the day of one of Lady Ranelagh's visits to Milton, she
might have had a call in her own house from Dr. Peter Du Moulin. For
her ladyship's circle of acquaintance did include this gentleman. He
had been tutor in Ireland to her two nephews, Viscount Dungarvan and
Mr. Richard Boyle, sons of her eldest brother, the Earl of Cork, and
he had come with them, still in that capacity, to Oxford (ante p.
224), and so had been introduced into the whole Boyle connexion.[1]
What amount of awkwardness there may have been in a possible meeting
between Du Moulin and Milton themselves through this common social
connexion of theirs in London has been already discussed. The
Ranelagh circle, for the rest, included all those, or most of them,
that were Milton's friends independently, and could converse about
him in her ladyship's own spirit. The family of Lord President
Lawrence, for example, were in high esteem with Lady Ranelagh; and
the President's son, Mr. Henry Lawrence, Milton's young friend, and
presumably one of his former pupils of the Barbican days, seems to
have been about this time much in the company of her ladyship's
nephew, the Earl of Barrimore. That young nobleman, we may mention,
had become a married man, shortly after he had ceased to be Milton's
pupil in the Barbican, and was now leading a gallant and rather idle
life about London, but not quite astray from his aunt's society, or
perhaps from Milton's either.[2] Then there were Hartlib, Durie,
Haak, and other lights of the London branch of the _Invisible
College_, friends of Robert Boyle for years past, and
corresponding with him and the other luminaries of the Oxford colony
of the _College_. Hartlib, in particular, who now lived at
Charing Gross, and who had found a new theme of interest in the
wonderful abilities and wonderful experiments of Mr. Clodius, a
German chemist, who had recently become his son-in-law, was still in
constant correspondence with Boyle, and was often at Lady Ranelagh's
on some occasion or other.[3] Nor must Milton's new German friend,
Henry Oldenburg, the agent for Bremen, be forgotten. He also, as we
shall find, had been drawn, in a special manner, into the Boyle and
Ranelagh connexion, and was, in fact, entering, by means of this
connexion, on that part