t have been done
by a group of friends who were. The most important of them seem to
have been Annesley (afterwards Lord Anglesey), Sir Thomas Clarges, who
was Monk's brother-in-law, Monk's secretary Morrice, and the poet's
less powerful but {73} still more devoted friend Andrew Marvell.
Between them somehow they saved him, aided no doubt by the general pity
for a blind man, the general respect for his learning which found
expression even in that moment and even in Royalist pamphlets, and, one
may hope, by the knowledge of a few of them that this was a man of
genius from whom there might be great things yet to come. The names of
those who thus made possible the greatest poem in the English language
deserve lasting record; and a word of gratitude may be added to
Clarendon and to Charles II for refraining from saying the easy and not
unnatural word which would have been instantly fatal to their old enemy.

The odd thing is that he was arrested after all. There had been an
order of the House of Commons for his arrest and for the burning of his
books, possibly, as Masson thinks, obtained by his friends to make it
seem unnecessary to except him in the Indemnity Bill. The books were
duly burnt, or such copies of them as came to the hands of the hangman;
and ultimately, at some uncertain date, Milton himself was got into the
custody of the Sergeant-at-Arms. He was soon released, and the story
would not be worth relating but for a curious proof it gives of the
{74} obstinate courage of the poet. The House ordered his release on
December 15; and one would have supposed that he would have been glad
to escape into obscurity and safety again on any terms. But no; the
Sergeant-at-Arms demanded high fees which Milton thought unreasonable;
and even then, when he had almost felt the hangman's rope on his neck,
he would not be bullied by any man. He refused to pay: and though the
Solicitor-General ominously remarked that he deserved hanging, his
friends got the fees referred to a committee and presumably reduced.
Before the beginning of 1661 he was definitely a free man to live his
final fourteen years of political defeat, isolation and silence, of
unparalleled poetic fertility, and, before the end, of acknowledged
poetic fame.

He did not return any more to the fashionable and therefore dangerous
neighbourhood of Whitehall, but lived the rest of his life in a
succession of houses in or near the city, ending in Artillery Walk,