me of his country as a land of intellectual light and
of respect for ancient usage. Foreigners who attempted personal
vilification found him ready to meet them with their own weapons. The
poet of Comus now shows himself a controversialist of unbounded energy.

In 1652, shortly before the death of his wife, Milton became totally
blind. Henceforward the duties of his secretaryship had to be performed
with the aid of an amanuensis. He continued, however, to fill the office
till just before the end of the Protectorate in 1659. In November, 1656,
he married Katharine Woodcocke, who lived but till March, 1658. She left
an infant which died a month after the mother.

Milton's duties as Secretary for Foreign Tongues must have brought him,
one would think, into some sort of personal relation with Cromwell and
the other great parliamentary leaders. The poet leaves us in no doubt as
to the high esteem in which he held these men. But no gossip of the time
admits us to a glimpse of their intercourse with each other. It falls to
Milton to eulogize Cromwell; it never came in Cromwell's way to put on
record his estimate of Milton.

With the restoration of royalty in the person of Charles II., in 1660,
Milton's public activity of course ceased, and the second period of his
life comes to an end. We saw his first period devoted to preparation and
to early essays in poetry, with the distinct conception that poetry was
yet to be the great work of his life. In his second period he expresses
himself in verse but rarely and briefly, but produces controversial
prose, now in English, now in Latin. In this second period he works, as
teacher or as public secretary, for payment, supporting himself and
family. When the third period begins, he loses all employment, goes into
closest retirement, a widower with three daughters growing up from
childhood, and devotes himself to the poetry that he has always
contemplated as the object of his ambition. He has now been blind eight
years.

In view of the conspicuous part that Milton had taken in defending the
right of Parliament to bring a king to the scaffold, it is surprising
that of the Restoration he was not included in the number of those marked
out for the punishment of death. He was for some time undoubtedly in
danger. Fortunately he was overlooked, or, perhaps, was purposely
neglected as being henceforce harmless.

In February, 1663, he married his third wife Elizabeth Minshull, who
faithfully c