Lady Ranelagh, who was to carry the letter to
her son at Oxford on her way to Ireland, did not leave London for at
least another fortnight. The pass for "Lady Catharine, Viscountess of
Ranelagh, and her two daughters," with their servants, eight horses,
&c., to go into Ireland, was granted, I find, by the Protector's
Council, Oct. 7, 1656, on the motion of Lord President Lawrence.[1]
She was to be away in Ireland for some years, occupied with family
business of various kinds; and Milton was thinking with regret of the
blank in his life that would be caused by her absence. For she had
been to him, he says, "in the place of all kith and kin." How much
that phrase involves! Though we have no letters from Milton to Lady
Ranelagh, or from Lady Ranelagh to Milton, and though the fact of
their friendship has been left by Milton unrecorded in that poetical
form, whether of sonnet or of idyll, which has preserved for us so
finely other incidents and intimacies of his life, this one phrase,
duly interpreted, ought to make up for all. Perhaps in no part of any
eminent man's life, especially if he is bereft domestically, is there
wanting this benefit of some supreme womanly interest wakened in his
behalf. Twice in Milton's life, so unfortunate domestically hitherto,
we have seen something of the kind. Twelve years ago, in the old
Aldersgate days of his desertion by his wife, it seemed to be the
Lady Margaret Ley that was paramount. More recently, through the
Westminster years of blindness and widowerhood, the real ministering
angel, if there had been any such, had been that Lady Ranelagh whom
English History remembers at any rate as the incomparable sister of
Lord Broghill and of Robert Boyle. Let there be restored to her
henceforth the honour also of having been Milton's friend.

[Footnote 1: Council Order-Books of date.]

The next extant Epistle of Milton, written when the Second Parliament
of the Protectorate had sat nearly two months, is also quite of a
private nature. Of the German or Dutch youth to whom it is addressed,
Peter Heimbach, I have ascertained only that he had been residing for
some time in London, perhaps originally brought thither in the train
of some embassy or agency, and that he had recently published in
London a Latin letter of eulogy on Cromwell,[1] extremely
enthusiastic and somewhat juvenile. Milton's letter suggests farther
that he had been much about Milton, as amanuensis or what not, but
was now on a