(CXXXII.) TO THE KING OF PORTUGAL, August 1658:—­A John Buffield, merchant of London, has been wronged by the detention of property of his by a Portuguese mercantile firm, and has been tossed about in Portuguese law-courts.  The Protector requests his Portuguese Majesty to look into the matter and see justice done.

So ends the series of Milton’s Letters for Oliver.  As there had been eighty-eight such in all (XLV.-CXXXII.) during the four years and nine months of the Protectorate, whereas there had been but forty-four (I.-XLIV.) similar letters during the preceding four years and ten months of the Commonwealth proper and Interim Dictatorship, it will be seen that Milton’s industry in this particular form of his Secretaryship had been just twice as great for Oliver as for the Governments before the Protectorate.[1] That fact in itself is rather remarkable, when we remember that Milton came into the Protector’s service totally blind.  Of course, whoever had been in the post would have had more to do in the way of letter-writing for the Protector than had been required by the preceding Councils of State in their comparatively thin relations with foreign powers; but that a blind man in the post should have been so satisfactory for the increased requirements says something for the employer as well as for the blind man.  Thurloe and others had relieved Milton of much of the secretarial work; there had also been many breaks in Milton’s secretaryship even in the letter-writing department, occasioned by ill-health, family-troubles, or occupation with literary tasks which were really public commissions and were credited to him as such; and at such times the dependence had been on Meadows or some one else for the Latin letters necessary.  Always, however, when the occasion was very important, as when there had to be the burst of circular letters about the Piedmontese massacre, the blind man had to be sent to, or sent for.  And what is worthy of notice now is that this had continued to be the case to the last.  At no time in the Secretaryship had there been a series of more important letters from Milton’s pen than those just inventoried, written for the Protector in the last five months of his life, and mostly in the months of May and June, 1658.  Two or three of them are about ships or other small matters, showing that, even with Marvfell now; at hand for such drudgery, Milton did not wholly escape it; but the rest are on the topics of highest interest to Cromwell and closest to his heart.  The poor Piedmontese Protestants are again in danger.  Who must again sound the alarm?  Milton.  Cromwell’s son-in-law, the gallant Falconbridge, starts on his embassy to Calais.  Who must write the letters that are to introduce him to King Louis and the Cardinal?  Milton.  The gorgeous return embassy of the Duke de Crequi and M. Mancini has to be acknowledged, and the bells rung for the fall of Dunkirk; and with the congratulations to be conveyed