, at Frankfort-on-the-Main, and it was
the Austrian Leopold, King of Hungary, and not the French Louis
XIV., after all, that had been proclaimed and saluted _Imperator
Romanorum_.[1]

[Footnote 1: Thurloe, VII., at various points from the beginning,
but especially pp. 338, 342, and 257. Foreign dates in Thurloe
have to be rectified.]

(CXXXII.) TO THE KING OF PORTUGAL, _August_ 1658:--A John
Buffield, merchant of London, has been wronged by the detention of
property of his by a Portuguese mercantile firm, and has been
tossed about in Portuguese law-courts. The Protector requests his
Portuguese Majesty to look into the matter and see justice done.

So ends the series of Milton's Letters for Oliver. As there had been
eighty-eight such in all (XLV.-CXXXII.) during the four years and
nine months of the Protectorate, whereas there had been but
forty-four (I.-XLIV.) similar letters during the preceding four years
and ten months of the Commonwealth proper and Interim Dictatorship,
it will be seen that Milton's industry in this particular form of his
Secretaryship had been just twice as great for Oliver as for the
Governments before the Protectorate.[1] That fact in itself is
rather remarkable, when we remember that Milton came into the
Protector's service totally blind. Of course, whoever had been in the
post would have had more to do in the way of letter-writing for the
Protector than had been required by the preceding Councils of State
in their comparatively thin relations with foreign powers; but that a
blind man in the post should have been so satisfactory for the
increased requirements says something for the employer as well as for
the blind man. Thurloe and others had relieved Milton of much of the
secretarial work; there had also been many breaks in Milton's
secretaryship even in the letter-writing department, occasioned by
ill-health, family-troubles, or occupation with literary tasks which
were really public commissions and were credited to him as such; and
at such times the dependence had been on Meadows or some one else for
the Latin letters necessary. Always, however, when the occasion was
very important, as when there had to be the burst of circular letters
about the Piedmontese massacre, the blind man had to be sent to, or
sent for. And what is worthy of notice now is that this had continued
to be the case to the last. At no time in the Secretaryship had there
been a series of more important l