ad a single glimpse of the truth
that the essential business of the statesman is to be always moving
from the past to the future without ever letting the bridge between
them break down. The principal food of a political people is custom,
and to break the bridge is to cut off the only source {67} of its
supply. The greatest proof that Cromwell was really a statesman and
not a mere political emergency man of unusual character and ability is
that in his last years he was evidently seeing more and more plainly
that the right metaphor for a statesman is taken from grafting and not
from "root and branch" operations. It is clear that he had seen that
political branches may be pruned away but roots can very seldom be
safely disturbed; and that among the roots in English politics were a
hereditary Monarchy and an established Church. Dynasty and formularies
might perhaps be safely changed; but the things themselves were of the
root, and the tree would not flourish if they were touched. It is
characteristic of Milton that in both these matters he was strongly
opposed to the policy towards which Cromwell was feeling his way. Ten
years had taught him nothing, and the death of Cromwell found him as
blind to political possibilities as the death of Charles I.

One would like to know something of the relations between the two
greatest men of the Commonwealth. But there is little or nothing to
know. It is plain that in most matters they must have been in close
agreement; and in a few, as in the business of the {68} Piedmont
massacres, the two great hearts must have beaten as one, while the
sword of Cromwell stood ready drawn behind the trumpet of Milton's
noble prose and nobler verse. The only surviving act of personal
contact between them is to be found in Milton's sonnet; and that is a
public tribute with no suggestion of private intimacy in it. Indeed,
as Masson has pointed out, it may easily be taken to mean more than it
really does; for it was not written because Milton could not keep
silence about his admiration of Cromwell, but rather, as its full title
shows, as a petition or appeal to Cromwell to save the nation from
parliamentary proposals for the setting up of a State Church and for
limiting the toleration of dissent from it. The sonnet, then, proves
less than it has sometimes been made to prove; and in any case it
proves no intimacy. Perhaps after all, in the case of Milton as in
that of most men who deal with pub