[Footnote 2:  The young Earl had married, hastily and against his mother’s will, in 1649, shortly after he had been Milton’s pupil.  See a letter of condolence on the subject from Robert Boyle to his sister, the young Earl’s mother (Boyle’s Works, V. 240).  For the intimacy between the young Earl of Barrimore and young Henry Lawrence see a letter of Hartlib’s to Boyle. (Ibid.  V. 279).]

[Footnote 3:  Letters of Hartlib to Boyle in Vol.  V. of Boyle’s Works.]

Marvell, Needham, and Cyriack Skinner are not certainly known to have been among Lady Ranelagh’s acquaintances. Their visits to Milton, therefore, have to be imagined apart.  Marvell’s, if he were still domiciled at Eton, can have been but occasional, but must have been always welcome.  Needham’s cannot have been, as formerly, on business connected with the Mercurius Politicus; for Milton had ceased for some years to have anything to do with the editorship of that journal.  The duty of licensing it and its weekly double, The Public Intelligencer, also edited by Needham and published by Newcome, was now performed regularly by the omnipotent Thurloe.  Both journals would come to Milton’s house, to be read to him; and Needham, in his visits, would bring other gossip of the town, and be altogether a very chatty companion.  “Above all, Mr. Cyriack Skinner” is, however, Phillips’s phrase in his enumeration of those of his uncle’s friends who were most frequently with him about this time.  The words imply that, since June 1654, when this old pupil of Milton’s had again “got near” him (Vol.  IV. pp. 621-623), his attention to Milton had been unremitting, so that Milton had come to depend upon it and to expect him almost daily.  On that understanding it is that we may read most luminously four private Sonnets of Milton, all of the year 1655, two of them addressed to Cyriack Skinner, and one to young Lawrence.  The remaining sonnet, standing first of the four in the printed editions, is addressed to no one in particular; but the four will be read best in connexion.  In reading them Cyriack Skinner is to be pictured as about twenty-eight years of age, and Lawrence as a youth of two and twenty:—­

(1)

  When I consider how my light is spent
  Ere half my days in this dark world and wide,
  And that one talent which is death to hide
  Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent
  To serve therewith my Maker, and present
  My true account, lest He, returning, chide,
  “Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?”
  I fondly ask.  But Patience, to prevent
  That murmur, soon replies:—­“God doth not need
  Either man’s work or his own gifts.  Who best
  Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best.  His state
  Is kingly; thousands at his bidding speed,
  And post o’er land and ocean without rest: 
  They also serve who only stand and wait.”

(2)