Bigot for his whole life tallies with the notion we should have of him, at the age of thirty-two, from Milton’s letter!  He had been in England some time ago, it appears, and had there, like other foreigners, paid his respects to Milton.  And now, either from Rouen, or more probably from Paris, he had reopened the communication, quite in the style of a man such as Bayle paints him.  The immediate object of his letter seems to have been to ask Milton to have some doubtful passages in a book “On the Manner of Holding Parliaments” compared with MS. authorities in London; but he had taken occasion to express also his vivid recollection of Milton, his interest in Milton’s present condition, and his desire to be of use to him in the quest or purchase of foreign books.

Milton, who had evidently performed very punctually Bigot’s immediate commission,[1] did, it will be observed, send him a commission in return.  It deserves a little explanation:—­There was then in course of publication at Paris, under the auspices and at the expense of Louis XIV., the first splendid collective edition of the Byzantine Historians, i.e. of that series of Historians, Chroniclers, Antiquarians, and Memoir-writers of the Eastern or Greek Empire from the 6th century to the 15th in whose works lies imbedded all our information as to the History of the East through the Middle Ages.  The publication, which was to attain to the vast size of thirty-six volumes folio, containing the Greek Texts with Latin Translations and Notes, was not to be completed till 1711; but it had been begun in 1645.  Now, in Milton’s library, it appears, the Byzantine Historians were already pretty well represented, either in the shape of the earlier volumes of this Parisian collection, or in that of separate prior editions of particular writers.  There were some gaps, however, which he wanted to fill up.  He wanted the Chronographia of Theophanes Isaacius, a chronicle of events from A.D. 277 to A.D. 811; also the Brevarium Historicum of Constantine Manasses, a metrical chronicle of the world from the Creation to A.D. 1081; also the book of Georgius Codinus, the compiler of the fifteenth century, entitled Excerpta de Originibus Constantinopolitanis; also that of Anastasius Bibliothecarius on the Lives of the Popes.  The Parisian editions of these, or of the first three, were now out (all in 1655).  At the same time there might be sent him the Parisian editions, if they had appeared, of the Annals of Michael Glycas, bringing the History of the World from the Creation to A.D. 1118, and the valuable Lives of John and Manuel Comnenus by Joannes Cinnamus, the imperial notary of the 12th century.—­As the Parisian edition of Michael Glycas (by Labbe) did not appear till 1660, and that of Joannes Cinnamus (by Du Cange) not till 1670, Bigot can have forwarded to Milton only the first-mentioned Byzantine books.  One may imagine the arrival of the parcel of learned