To-morrow let my sun his beams display,
Or in clouds hide them;—I have liv’d to-day!”
[57] John Milton, b. 1608; d. 1674. Editions of his works are numberless; but Dr. Masson is the fullest and best accredited contributor to Miltonian literature.
[58] John and Edward Phillips both with him; the latter only as pupil.
[59] More probably, perhaps, sulking for lack of her old gayeties of life in the range of Royal Oxford. Aubrey’s accounts would favor this interpretation.
[60] Poems of Mr. John Milton, both English and Latin, composed at several Times. London, 1645.
[61] In that day Whitehall Street was separated from Charing Cross by the famous gate of Holbein’s; and in the other direction it was crossed, near Old Palace Yard, by the King’s-Street Gate—thus forming a vast court.
[62] Salmasius, a Leyden professor, had been commissioned by Royalists to write a defence of Charles I., and vindicate his memory. Milton was commissioned to reply; and the result was—a Latin battle in Billingsgate.
Milton calls his antagonist “a grammatical louse, whose only treasure of merit and hope of fame consisted in a glossary.”
[63] His blindness dating from the year 1652.