one, equivalent to L35 now; and, as Needham and Milton are associated on terms of equality, Bradshaw must have been thinking of them together as the two literary officials who had been so much in contact with each other, and with himself, in the days of his Presidency of the Council of State,—­Needham as the appointed journalist of the Commonwealth, and Milton as its Latin champion, and for some time Needham’s censor and supervisor.  In Milton’s case perhaps, as the codicil was drawn up fifteen months after the publication of the Defensio Secunda, the legacy may have been intended not merely as a small token of general respect and friendliness, but also as a recognition by Bradshaw of the bold eulogy on him inserted into that work at a critical moment of his relations to Cromwell.

[Footnote 1:  Ormerod’s Cheshire, III. 409; but I owe the verbatim extract from the codicil to the never-failing kindness of Colonel Chester.—­By an inadvertence the date of Bradshaw’s death has been given, ante p. 495, as Oct. 31, 1659, instead of Nov. 22.]

* * * * *

More than two years had elapsed since Milton’s last letters to Oldenburg and young Ranelagh (ante pp. 366-367).  They were then at Saumur in France, where they remained till March 1658; but since that time they had been travelling about, and from May 1659, if not earlier, they had been boarding in Paris.  There are glimpses of them in letters from Oldenburg to Robert Boyle, and also in letters of Hartlib to Boyle, in which he quotes passages from letters he has received both from Oldenburg and from young Ranelagh.  Thus, in a letter of Hartlib’s to Boyle of April 12, 1659, there is this from Oldenburg’s last:  “I have had some discourse with an able but somewhat close physician here, that spoke to me of a way, though without particularizing all, to draw a liquor of the beams of the sun; which peradventure some person that is knowing and experienced (as noble Mr. Boyle) may better beat out than we can who want experience in these matters.”  Young Ranelagh seems to have fully acquired by this time the tastes for physical and experimental science which characterized his tutor; and his uncle Boyle may have read with a smile this from Hartlib of date October 22, 1659:—­“This week Mr. Jones hath saluted me with a very kind letter, containing a very singular observation in these words:  ’Concerning the generation of pearls I am of opinion that they are engendered in the cockle-fishes (I pray, Sir, give me the Latin word for it in your next) of the same manner as the stone in our body,—­which I endeavour fully to show in a discourse of mine about the generation of pearls; which, when I shall have done it, shall wait upon you for my part in revenge of your observations.  I heard lately a very remarkable story about margarites from a person of quality and honour in this town, which you will be glad, I believe, to hear.  A certain German baron of about twenty-four