gainst the charge of servile flattery.
The frank advice which he gives Cromwell on questions of policy is less
conclusive evidence: for, except on the point of disestablishment, it
was such as Cromwell had already given himself. Professor Masson's
excellent summary of it may be further condensed thus--1. Reliance on a
council of well-selected associates. 2. Absolute voluntaryism in
religion. 3. Legislation not to be meddlesome or over-puritanical. 4.
University and scholastic endowments to be made the rewards of approved
merit. 5. Entire liberty of publication at the risk of the publisher. 6.
Constant inclination towards the generous view of things. The advice of
an enthusiastic idealist, Puritan by the accident of his times, but
whose true affinities were with Mill and Shelley and Rousseau.

An interesting question arises in connection with Milton's official
duties: had he any real influence on the counsels of Government? or was
he a mere secretary? It would be pleasing to conceive of him as Vizier
to the only Englishman of the day whose greatness can be compared with
his; to imagine him playing Aristotle to Cromwell's Alexander. We have
seen him freely tendering Cromwell what might have been unpalatable
advice, and learn from Du Moulin's lampoon that he was accused of having
behaved to the Protector with something of dictatorial rudeness. But it
seems impossible to point to any direct influence of his mind in the
administration; and his own department of Foreign Affairs was neither
one which he was peculiarly qualified to direct, nor one in which he was
likely to differ from the ruling powers. "A spirited foreign policy" was
then the motto of all the leading men of England. Before Milton's loss
of sight his duties included attendance upon foreign envoys on State
occasions, of which he must afterwards have been to a considerable
extent relieved. The collection of his official correspondence published
in 1676 is less remarkable for the quantity of work than the quality.
The letters are not very numerous, but are mostly written on occasions
requiring a choice dignity of expression. "The uniformly Miltonic style
of the greater letters," says Professor Masson, "utterly precludes the
idea that Milton was only the translator of drafts furnished him." We
seem to see him sitting down to dictate, weighing out the fine gold of
his Latin sentences to the stately accompaniment, it may be, of his
chamber-organ. War is declared again