is reproved for his protraction of business; the Grand Duke of Tuscany is warmly thanked for protecting English ships in the harbour of Leghorn; the French king is admonished to indemnify English merchants for wrongful seizure; the Protestant Swiss cantons are encouraged to fight for their religion; the King of Sweden is felicitated on the birth of a son and heir, and on the Treaty of Roeskilde; the King of Portugal is pressed to use more diligence in investigating the attempted assassination of the English minister; an ambassador is accredited to Russia; Mazarin is congratulated on the capture of Dunkirk.  Of all his letters, none can have stirred Milton’s personal feelings so deeply as the epistle of remonstrance to the Duke of Savoy on the atrocious massacre of the Vaudois Protestants (1655); but the document is dignified and measured in tone.  His emotion found relief in his greatest sonnet; blending, as Wordsworth implies, trumpet notes with his habitual organ-music; the most memorable example in our language of the fire and passion which may inspire a poetical form which some have deemed only fit to celebrate a “mistress’s eyebrow"[4]:—­

   “Avenge, O Lord, Thy slaughtered saints, whose bones
      Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold;
      Even them who kept Thy truth so pure of old,
      When all our fathers worshipped stocks and stones. 
    Forget not:  in Thy book record their groans
      Who were Thy sheep, and in their ancient fold
      Slain by the bloody Piemontese that rolled
      Mother with infant down the rocks.  Their moans
    The vales redoubled to the hills, and they
      To Heaven.  Their martyred blood and ashes sow
      O’er all the Italian fields, where still doth sway
    The triple tyrant; that from these may grow
      A hundredfold, who, having learned Thy way,
      Early may fly the Babylonian woe.”

This is what Johnson calls “carving heads upon cherry-stones!”

Milton’s calamity had, of course, required special assistance.  He had first had Weckherlin as coadjutor, then Philip Meadows, finally Andrew Marvell.  His emoluments had been reduced, in April, 1655, from L288 to L150 a year, but the diminished allowance was made perpetual instead of annual, and seems to have been intended as a retiring pension.  He nevertheless continued to work, drawing salary at the rate of L200 a year, and his pen was never more active than during the last months of Oliver’s Protectorate.  He continued to serve under Richard, writing eleven letters between September, 1658, and February, 1659.  With two letters for the restored Parliament after Richard’s abdication, written in May, 1659, Milton, though his formal supersession was yet to come, virtually bade adieu to the Civil Service:—­

                          “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.”