During the whole time of Milton’s residence in Petty France, his elder nephew tells us, “he was frequently visited by persons of quality, particularly my lady Ranelagh (whose son for some time he instructed), all learned foreigners of note (who could not part out of this city without giving a visit to a person so eminent), and lastly by particular friends that had a high esteem for him:  viz.  Mr. Andrew Marvell, young Lawrence (the son of him that was President of Oliver’s Council), ...  Mr. Marchamont Needham, the writer of Politicus, but above all Mr. Cyriack Skinner.”  To these may be added Hartlib, Durie (when he was not abroad), Henry Oldenburg, and others of the Hartlib-Durie connexion.  Altogether, the group is an interesting one, and it is precisely in and about 1655 that we have the means of seeing all the individuals of it in closest proximity to Milton and to each other.  As one’s curiosity is keenest, at this point, about Lady Ranelagh, she may have the precedence.

On her own account she deserves it.  We have already seen (ante Vol.  III. 658-660) who she was,—­by marriage the Viscountess Ranelagh, wife of Arthur Jones, second Viscount Ranelagh in the Irish Peerage, but by birth Catharine Boyle, daughter of the great Richard Boyle, first Earl of Cork, with the four surviving sons of that Earl for her brothers, and his five other surviving daughters for her sisters.—­Of her four brothers, the eldest, Richard Boyle, second Earl of Cork, lived generally in Ireland, looking after his great estates there; and indeed it was in Ireland that most of the family had their chief properties.  But the second brother, Roger Boyle, Lord Broghhill, already known to us for his services in Ireland under Cromwell, and for his conspicuous fidelity to Cromwell ever since, was now in Scotland, as President of Cromwell’s Council there. He may be called the literary brother; for, though his chief activity hitherto had been in war and politics, he had found time to write and publish his long romance or novel called Parthenissa, and so to begin a literary reputation which was to be increased by poems, tragedies, comedies, &c., in no small profusion, in coming years.  His age, at our present date, was about thirty-four.  Two years younger was Francis Boyle, the third brother, afterwards Lord Shannon, and four years younger still was the philosophical and scientific brother, Mr. Boyle, or “the Honourable Mr. Robert Boyle.”  When we last saw this extraordinary young man, after his return from his travels, i.e. in 1645-48, he was in retirement at Stalbridge in Dorsetshire, absorbed in studies and in chemical experiments, but corresponding eagerly with Hartlib and others in London, and sometimes coming to town himself, when he would attend those meetings of the Invisible College, the germ of the future Royal Society, about the delights of which Hartlib was never tired of writing to him.  This mode of life he had continued, with the interruption