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through Cromwell's Protectorate (1653-58) with his sight totally gone. Almost all that he had written after the close of 1651, if not for a while before that, had been written by the method of dictation; and hence his Sonnets to Cromwell and Vane do not appear in his own hand among the Cambridge MSS. It is positively certain, however, that the Sonnet on the Piedmontese Massacre, and all the State Letters for Cromwell or his son Richard, and all the contemporary pamphlets, were produced by dictation. The blindness that had thus fallen upon Milton in the prime of his manhood, and that shrouded the last two-and-twenty years of his life in darkness, was felt as the greatest of calamities by himself, and was pointed to with coarse exultation by his enemies, at home and abroad, as a divine judgment on him for his defences of the execution of Charles I., and for the part he had otherwise taken in the English Revolution. Again and again in Milton's later writings, in prose and in verse, there are passages of the most touching sorrow over his darkened and desolate condition, with yet a tone of the most pious resignation, and now and then an outbreak of a proud conviction that God, in blinding his bodily eyes, had meant to enlarge and clear his inner vision, and make him one of the world's truest seers and prophets. The present Sonnet is one of the first of these confidences of Milton on the subject of his blindness. It may have been written any time between 1652 and 1655; but it follows the Sonnet on the Piedmontese Massacre in Milton's own volume of 1673.

SONNET XX. : To MR. LAWRENCE.

(Edition of 1673.)

This is an invitation to his friend, in some winter season, when walking out of doors was disagreeable, to a pleasant meeting now and then within doors, when they might enjoy a neat repast together, with talk and music. One naturally refers such a mood of cheerfulness to the time of Milton's life which preceded his blindness. Accordingly, it has been argued by some that the Sonnet must have been written about 1646, and ought to be placed beside the Sonnet to Henry Lawes. In that case, however, the person addressed, "Lawrence, of virtuous father virtuous son," cannot have been, as these words have

always suggested, a son of the well-known Henry Lawrence of St. Ives, from whom Cromwell rented his house and farm in that neighbourhood, and who, after having been member for Westmoreland in the Long Parliament, became a staunch Oliverian, and was made President of Cromwell's Council (1654) and one of his House of Lords (1657). For there is a letter of this Henry Lawrence extant which proves that in the year 1646 his eldest son was then exactly thirteen years of age (Wood's Athenæ, IV. 64: Note by Bliss). Milton's invitation to a neat repast and wine cannot have been to a youngster like that. Hence, still on the supposition that the Sonnet must have been written about 1646, some commentators have concluded that the person addressed was no other than Henry Lawrence himself, the future President, but then no more than M.P. for Westmoreland. They find that he was a person whose talents and principles would have made him a fit companion for Milton, that in 1646 he had published a book called "A Treatise of our Communion and Warre with Angells," and that he wrote other things afterwards. They find also that Milton, in his Defensio Secunda (1654), speaks of President Lawrence as one of the politicians of the time that were known to him either by friendship or by public reputation. "Montacutum, Laurentium, summo ingenio ambos optimisque artibus expolitos" ("Montagu and Lawrence, both men of the highest talent and accomplished in the best arts") are his words; where the Montagu associated with Lawrence is Edward Montagu, afterwards Earl of Sandwich. But, if the person addressed in the Sonnet was actually the Henry Lawrence who is remembered as the President of Oliver's Council, how are we to interpret the opening line, "Lawrence, of virtuous father virtuous son"? The future President was forty-six years of age in 1646, and his father, Sir John Lawrence of St. Ives, had died when he was but a child (Feb. 1604-5). No recollection, and scarcely any tradition, of this long dead knight could have been in Milton's mind. In short, after all, the person addressed in the Sonnet is a son of the President, and the President is only "the virtuous father" of the Sonnet, and not its recipient. This is settled by Phillips in his Life of Milton; where, among the "particular friends" of Milton who visited him most frequently during the eight years when he lived in his house in Petty France, Westminster (1652— 1660), he mentions "Young Lawrence (the son of him that was President of Oliver's Council), to whom there is a Sonnet among the

rest in his printed Poems." This statement of Phillips has been overlooked by the commentators, or there would have been no question on the subject. He does not mention which of the sons of the President was the "Young Lawrence" so often at Milton's house; but, as the eldest son, Edward Lawrence, died in 1657, while Milton was still a tenant of the house in Petty France, it may be assumed that his visitor there was the second son, Henry Lawrence, who became heir in 1657, succeeded to the property on his father's death in 1664, and lived till 1679, or five years beyond Milton. This being concluded, however, or whichever son of the President is taken as "the Young Lawrence" addressed, it follows that the Sonnet cannot have been written so early as 1646; at which year, as we have seen, the future President's eldest son was only thirteen years of age. Nine years later that son was twenty-two years of age, and his brother Henry, the most probable recipient of the Sonnet, was a year or two younger. The Sonnet, then, we should say, was written in or about 1655, when Milton was in his condition of total blindness. And, though this may not at first seem consistent with the cheerful vein of the Sonnet, the explanation is easy. Phillips's account of his uncle's life gives us a glimpse of the household in Petty France which is not altogether one of gloom. Milton's first wife, indeed, had died there in May or June 1652, soon after he had taken possession of the house; and he had thus been left, just at the commencement of his blindness, a widower with three young daughters. But, even during the time of his widowerhood, the house was enlivened by the little hospitalities that had to be shown to the numerous visitors that came to see him. Some of these were foreigners of distinction; others were Londoners of rank; but most assiduous of all were former pupils, and other enthusiastic young men, who accounted it a privilege to read to him, or act as his amanuenses, and to hear him talk. There was a group of such young admirers, and "young Lawrence" was one of them. Sometimes, as we are to fancy, he accompanied Milton in his walks, yielding him the tendance which a blind man required; and Milton's Sonnet is to be taken as a kindly message to the youth, in some season of bad weather, not to stop his visits on that account, but to let him have his company now and then within doors.

SONNET XXI.: To CYRIACK SKINNER.

(Edition of 1673; and Copy of the last ten lines, in the hand of an amanuensis, among the Cambridge MSS.)

This Sonnet also, like the last, might appear, on a first reading, to belong to a time before Milton's blindness. For it is in the same hospitable vein, and invites to leisure and mirth. Moreover, the eighth line, "And what the Swede intend and what the French," might perhaps most naturally suggest a time before the Peace of Westphalia (1648), when French armies under Turenne and other generals, and Swedish and mixed armies under Vrangel and others, were fighting out the last dregs of that Thirty Years' War the Swedish part in which had been so striking at an earlier stage. Yet, as the Swedish activity in Europe did not end in 1648 any more than the French,-as, in fact, the wars of the Swedish King Charles X. (1654-1660) against Poland, Russia, and Denmark, were as loud matters of European rumour as the contemporary wars of the French King Louis XIV. against Spain in the Netherlands,—it would be an ignorant interpretation of the line that would make it necessarily throw back the Sonnet to the close of the Thirty Years' War. And the Sonnet itself, besides that it comes immediately after that to Mr. Lawrence in Milton's own volume of 1673, looks like an invitation in the same strain as that Sonnet, and written about the same time, but to a different person. There is a correspondence even between the compliment of pedigree which opens this Sonnet, "Cyriack, whose grandsire, etc.," and that which opens its predecessor, "Lawrence, of virtuous father, etc." All that we know, too, of Cyriack Skinner and his connexion with Milton confirms the notion that the two Sonnets were written about the same time, i.e. a year or two after Milton's total blindness had begun, and when he was living in his house in Petty France.

Phillips, in his list of the friends of Milton who visited him there, mentions, "above all, Mr. Cyriack Skinner": words which imply that Skinner was even a more frequent visitor than young Lawrence. There is even a probability that he had been one of Milton's pupils ; for Wood describes him (Ath. Oxon. III. 1119) as "a merchant's son of London, an ingenious young gentleman and scholar to Jo: Milton,”

informing us farther that he became a leading member of Harrington's celebrated political debating club, called The Rota, which held its meetings in 1659 at "the Turk's Head in the New Palace Yard at Westminster." From the Sonnet itself we learn that, besides being thus interested in political speculations, or before being so interested, Skinner was an eager student of mathematical and physical science. Wood seems to have been wrong in calling him " a merchant's son of London"; for he is otherwise known as the third son of William Skinner, a Lincolnshire squire, who had married Bridget, second daughter of the famous lawyer and judge Sir Edward Coke. This explains the compliment of pedigree in the first line of the Sonnet. As this William Skinner died in 1627, Cyriack, his son, though described as "an ingenious young gentleman" in 1659, must have been considerably older than young Lawrence. There is extant a deed of conveyance, of the date May 7, 1660, by which Milton makes over to "Cyriack Skinner, of Lincoln's Inn, Gentleman," a Bond for £400 given to Milton by the Commissioners of Excise (Mr. Leigh Sotheby's "Milton Ramblings," p. 129). The transaction proves how intimate Milton was with Skinner; for it was on the eve of the Restoration, when property invested in Excise Bonds was not likely to be worth much to Milton or his representatives. The deed also disproves the idea that Cyriack Skinner was himself a merchant, an idea which has somehow been substituted for the tradition that he was a merchant's son.

But, if not a merchant, or a merchant's son, Cyriack Skinner had brothers, or other near relatives, in Daniel Skinner and Thomas Skinner, who are heard of as London merchants as early as 1651, carrying on business in Mark Lane. Nay more, a son of this Daniel Skinner, merchant of Mark Lane, himself named Daniel, became so very closely connected with Milton in the last years of his life that there has been much confusion, on that account, between him and (his uncle?) Cyriack. It may have been in or about 1673 that this Daniel Skinner, then a mere youth, who had been at Trinity College, Cambridge, and had in that year taken his B.A. degree, became, perhaps through Cyriack's recommendation, Milton's chief amanuensis. He was employed in making a fair transcript for the press of Milton's Latin Treatise De Doctrinâ Christianâ, which had been long in progress, and the rough copy of which, in the hands of various previous amanuenses, but especially of one, had at length been.

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