ions which form one of the
prose parts of the volume, by way of instruction in the language of
gallantry and courtship, specimens are these,--"With your ambrosiac
kisses bathe my lips;" "You are a white enchantress, lady, and can
enchain me with a smile;" "Midnight would blush at this;" "You walk
in artificial clouds and bathe your silken limbs in wanton
dalliance." What could Milton do, so far as such a production came
within his knowledge, but shake his head and mingle smiles with a
frown? Clearly the elder nephew too had slipped the Miltonic
restraints. He had not lapsed, however, so decidedly as his brother;
and we may partly retract in his case the statement that Milton could
have little comfort from him. He still went and came about Milton,
very attentively.[1]

[Footnote 1: Godwin's _Lives of the Phillipses_ (1815), 49-57,
and 139-140; Wood's _Ath._ IV. 760-769. I have not myself
examined Phillips's _New World of Words_; but I have looked at
the Thomason copy of his _Mysteries of Love and Eloquence_,
where the date of publication is given. Perhaps Godwin is a little
too severe in his account of it.]

During the month immediately preceding his wife's death, and the two
months following it, there is a break in the series of Milton's
State-Letters for Cromwell. But he resumed the familiar occupation on
the 30th of March, 1658; and thenceforward to the end of the
Protectorate the series is again pretty continuous. Indeed, of this
period of Milton's life we know little more than may be inferred
from, or associated with, the following morsels of his continued
Secretaryship:--

(CXVIII.) To CHARLES X., KING OF SWEDEN, _March_ 30,
1658:--The occasion of this letter was the receipt of news at last
of the climax of the Swedish-Danish war in a great triumph of the
Swedes. "In January 1658 Karl Gustav marches his army, horse, foot,
and artillery, to the amount of twenty thousand, across the Baltic
ice, and takes an island without shipping,--Island of Fuenen,
across the Little Belt; three miles of ice; and a part of the sea
_open_, which has to be crossed on planks. Nay, forward from
Fuenen, when he is once there, he achieves ten whole miles more of
ice; and takes Zealand itself--to the wonder of mankind." Such, in
Mr. Carlyle's summary (_History of Frederick the Great, i. 223,
edit._ 1869), was the feat of the Swedish warrior against his
Danish enemy. It was followed almost immediately by a Pea