had recommended their sons to his care; and his house in Aldersgate-street not being large enough, he had taken a larger in Barbican: and till this could be got ready, the place pitched upon for his wife's abode was the widow Webber's house in St. Clement's Church-yard, whose second daughter had been married to the other brother many years before. The part, that Milton acted in this whole affair, showed plainly that he had a spirit capable of the strongest resentment, but yet more inclinable to pity and forgiveness: and neither in this was any injury done to the other lady, whom he was courting, for she is said to have been always averse from the motion, not daring I suppose to venture in marriage with a man who was known to have a wife still living. He might not think himself too at liberty as before, while his wife continued obstinate; for his most plausible argument for divorce proceeds upon a supposition, that the thing be done with mutual con

sent.

After his wife's return his family was increased not only with children, but also with his wife's relations, her father and mother, her brothers and sisters, coming to live with him in the general distress and ruin of the royal party: and he was so far from resenting their former ill treatment of him, that he generously protected them, and entertained them very hospitably, till their affairs were accommodated through his interest with the prevailing faction. And then upon their

Mr. Todd observes, that Mr. Powell seems to have smarted severely for his attachment to the royal party. In the "Cata"logue of the Lords, Knights,

" and Gentlemen that have com"pounded for their estates," London, 1655, he was thus branded as well as fined: “ Ri"chard Powell Delinquent, per

removal, and the death of his own father, his house looked again like the house of the Muses: but his studies had like to have been interrupted by a call to public business; for about this time there was a design of constituting him Adjutant General in the army under Sir William Waller; but the new modelling of the army soon following, that design was laid aside. And not long after, his great house in Barbican being now too large for his family, he quitted it for a smaller in High Holborn, which opened backward into Lincoln's Inn Fields, where he prosecuted his studies till the King's trial and death, when the Presbyterians declaiming tragically against the King's execution, and asserting that his person was sacred and inviolable, provoked him to write the Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, proving that it is lawful to call a tyrant to account and to depose and put him to death, and that they who of late so much blame deposing are the men who did it themselves: and he published it at the beginning of the year 1649, to satisfy and compose the minds of the people. Not long after this he wrote his Observations

on the articles of peace between the Earl of Ormond and the Irish rebels. And in these and all his writings, whatever others of different parties may think, he thought himself an advocate for true liberty, for ecclesiastical liberty in his treatises against the bishops, for domestic liberty in his books of divorce, and for civil liberty in his writings against the King in defence of the parliament and people of England.

After this he retired again to his private studies : and thinking that he had leisure enough for such a work, he applied himself to the writing of a History of England, which he intended to deduce from the earliest accounts down to his own times; and he had finished four books of it, when neither courting nor expecting any such preferment, he was invited by the Council of State to be their Latin Secretary for foreign affairs.

dem, cum presbyteriani quidam ministri, Carolo prius infestissimi, nunc independentium partes suis anteferri, et in senatu plus posse indignantes, parlamenti sententiæ de rege lata (non facto irati, sed quod ipsorum factio non fecisset) reclamitarent, et quantum in ipsis erat tumultuarentur, ausi affirinare protestantium doctrinam, omnesque ecclesias reformatas ab ejusmodi in reges atroci sententia abhorrere, ratus falsitati tam apertæ palam eundum obviam esse, ne tum quidem de Carolo quicquam scripsi aut suasi, sed quid in genere contra tyrannos liceret, adductis haud paucis summorum theologorum testimoniis, ostendi; et insignem hominum meliora profitentium sive ignorantiam sive impudentiam prope concionabundus incessi. Liber iste non nisi post mortem regis prodiit,

ad componendos potius hominum animos factus, quam ad statuendum de Carolo quicquam, quod non mea sed magistratuum intererat, et peractum jam tum erat. Def. Sec. Pr. W. ii. p. 385. E.

• To which are added remarks upon the letter to Colonel Jones, Governor of Dublin, in which Ormond sought to withdraw him from the service of the Parliament, and upon the representation of the Scots presbytery, at Belfast, in which they declared their abhorrence of the death of the King, the breach of the covenant, and the toleration of the different persuasions. Birch.

b Milton thus describes his labours and circumstances prior to this call to a public situation. Hanc intra privatos parietes meam operam nunc ecclesiæ, nunc reipublicæ gratis dedi; mihi vicissim vel hæc vel illa præter in

He served in the same capacity under Oliver, and Richard, and the Rump, till the Restoration; and without doubt a better Latin pen could not have been found in the kingdom. For the Republic and Cromwell scorned to pay that tribute to any foreign prince, which is usually paid to the French king, of managing their affairs in his language; they thought it an indignity and meanness, to which this or any free nation ought not to submit; and took a noble resolution neither to write any letters to any foreign states, nor to receive any answers from them, but in the Latin tongue, which was common to them all. And it would have been well, if succeeding princes had followed their example; for in the opinion of very wise men, the universality of the French language will make way for the universality of the French monarchy.

But it was not only in foreign dispatches that the government made use of his pen. He had discharged the business of his office a very little time, before he was called to a work of another kind. For soon after the King's death was published a book under his name, entitled Exav Bariλin, or the royal image: and this book, like Cæsar's last will, making a deeper impression and exciting greater commiseration in the minds of the people than the King himself did while alive,

columitatem nihil; bonam certe conscientiam, bonam apud bonos existimationem, et honestam hanc dicendi libertatem facta ipsa reddidere: commoda alii, alii honores gratis ad se trahebant: me nemo ambientem, nemo per amicos quicquam petentem, curiæ foribus affixum petitorio vultu,

aut minorum conventuum vestibulis hærentem nemo me unquam vidit. Domi fere me continebam, meis ipse facultatibus, tametsi hoc civili tumultu magna ex parte detentis, et censum fere iniquius mihi impositum, et vitam utcunque frugi tolerabam. Pr. W. ii. p. 386. ed. 1753. E.

Milton was ordered to prepare an answer to it, which was published by authority, and entitled Ezovozλorns, or the image-breaker, the famous surname of many Greek emperors, who in their zeal against idolatry broke all superstitious images to pieces. This piece was translated into French, and two replies to it were published, one in 1651, and the other in 1692, upon the reprinting of Milton's book at Amsterdam. In this controversy a heavy charge hath been alleged against Milton. Some editions of the King's book have certain prayers added at the end, and among them a prayer in time of captivity, which is taken from that of Pamela in Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia: and it is said, that this prayer was added by the contrivance and artifice of Milton, who together with Bradshaw prevailed upon the printer to insert it, that from thence he might take occasion to bring a scandal upon the King, and to blast the reputation of his book, as he hath attempted to do in the first section of his answer. This fact is related chiefly upon the authority of Henry Hills the printer, who had frequently affirmed it to Dr. Gill and Dr. Bernard his physicians, as they

These replies were called the Είκων ακλαδος, (1651.) and the Vindicia Carolinæ, (1692.) Milton in the Iconoclastes frequently intimated his suspicions that the Icon Basilike was not the production of the King; and the Eixor Aλndin was published in 1649 to enforce the charge of spuriousness against the "King's "Book," as it was then called. This piece was answered the same year by a very inferior writer, according to Dr. Sym

mons, in a pamphlet entitled Είκων ή πιστη. And these pieces were the precursors of a violent controversy, upon the question of the genuineness of the Icon Basilike; the credit of that work being claimed, and with great shew of reason, by Dr. Gauden, afterwards Bishop of Worcester. The public is at this moment expecting a work on this subject from the pen of Dr. Wordsworth, Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. E.