Under the Protectorate Milton was appointed Latin Secretary to the
Council of State. In the diplomatic correspondence which was his
official duty, and in the composition of his tract, _Defensio pro
Popululo Anglicano_, he overtaxed his eyes, and in 1654 became totally
blind. The only poetry of Milton's belonging to the years 1640-1660 are
a few sonnets of the pure Italian form, mainly called forth by public
occasions. By the Elizabethans the sonnets had been used mainly in love
poetry. In Milton's hands, said Wordsworth, "the thing became a
trumpet." Some of his were addressed to political leaders, like Fairfax,
Cromwell, and Sir Henry Vane; and of these the best is, perhaps, the
sonnet written on the massacre of the Vaudois Protestants--"a collect in
verse," it has been called--which has the fire of a Hebrew prophet
invoking the divine wrath upon the oppressors of Israel. Two were on his
own blindness, and in these there is not one selfish repining, but only
a regret that the value of his service is impaired--
Will God exact day labor, light denied?
After the restoration of the Stuarts, in 1660, Milton was for a while in
peril, by reason of the part that he had taken against the king. But
On evil days though fallen, and evil tongues,
In darkness and with dangers compassed round
And solitude,
he bated no jot of heart or hope.
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