etters from Milton's pen than those
just inventoried, written for the Protector in the last five months
of his life, and mostly in the months of May and June, 1658. Two or
three of them are about ships or other small matters, showing that,
even with Marvfell now; at hand for such drudgery, Milton did not
wholly escape it; but the rest are on the topics of highest interest
to Cromwell and closest to his heart. The poor Piedmontese
Protestants are again in danger. Who must again sound the alarm?
Milton. Cromwell's son-in-law, the gallant Falconbridge, starts on
his embassy to Calais. Who must write the letters that are to
introduce him to King Louis and the Cardinal? Milton. The gorgeous
return embassy of the Duke de Crequi and M. Mancini has to be
acknowledged, and the bells rung for the fall of Dunkirk; and with
the congratulations to be conveyed across the Channel on that event
there have to be interwoven Cromwell's thanks to the King and the
Cardinal for having so punctually kept their faith with him by the
delivery of the town to Lockhart. Who shall express the complex
message? None but Milton. Finally, Cromwell would stretch his hand
eastward across the seas to grasp that of the Swedish Charles
Gustavus struggling with _his_ peculiar difficulties, to give
him brotherly cheer in the midst of them, brotherly hope also that
they two, whoever else in a generation of hucksters, may yet live to
lead in a glorious Protestant League for the overthrow of Babylon and
the woman blazing in scarlet. Who interprets between hero and hero?
Always and only the blind Milton. Positively, in reading Milton's
despatches for Cromwell on such subjects as the persecutions of the
Vaudois and the scheme of a Protestant European League, one hardly
knows which is speaking, the secretary or the ruler. Cromwell melts
into Milton, and Milton is Cromwell eloquent and Latinizing.[2]

[Footnote 1: With one exception, all the State-letters of Milton,
from the beginning of his Secretaryship to the death of Cromwell,
that have been preserved either in the Printed Collection or in the
Skinner Transcript, have now been inventoried, and, as far as
possible, dated and elucidated in the text of these volumes. The
exception is a brief scrap thrown in at the end of the Letters for
Cromwell both in the Printed Collection and in the Skinner
Transcript, but omitted by Phillips in his translation as not
worthwhile. It was not written for Cromwell or his Council,