38 DUE HYMNS I
rise to the high place of a prophet and lawgiver. In the same year appeared his tractate "On Education." About the same time a collection of his Latin and English poems appeared, in cluding the " L Allegro," and the " II Penseroso." In 1649 he was appointed Latin Secretary to the Council of State, an office he held for ten years, till the time of the brief protectorate of Richard Cromwell. In his new office it devolved on him to reply to "Icon Basilike," or a "Portraiture of his sacred Majesty in his Solitude and his Sufferings," a work that was being generally read, and was lending some support to the royal cause. His reply was entitled "Iconoclastes, or the Image-breaker. Soon after he was appointed to rebut the " Defensio Regis" of Sal- masius of Leyden, published in 1G49. This he successfully accomplished in his "Defensio Populi Anglicani." This work was much read ; and besides applause, he received as his pay ment the substantial gum of one thousand pounds. Excessive literary labour at length quite quenched his dim sight, which from his boyhood had been injured by unremitting application to studious pursuits, and as he says ; so touchingly
" his light was spent Ere half his days, in this dark world and wide."
Milton s second wife, whom he married in 1G5G, the daughter of Captain Woodcock, of Hackney, was spared to him but one year. He has immortalized her memory in an unsurpassed sonnet, in which he calls her his " late espoused saint."
At the age of forty- seven Milton found himself free from official and political engagements, and able to turn his attention to his great -literary projects. He made some preparation for a Latin Dictionary, and his manuscripts were afterwards used at Cambridge, in the production of a similar work. And he wrote part of a history of his country. But his blindness interfered with the progress of these works, and they were only commenced. The portion of history was published in 1G70, entitled "Six Books of the History of Eugland, reaching to the Norman Con-
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